I heared that there were some comments that I was also late at the Bachelors: I was one of the student that the VU “forgot” to send an invitation to. So it was real luck that I found out that I was supposed to be there.
If you like I can send you about 50 emails about bureaucracy at the VU like for instance this one:
—– Original Message —–
From: “Studieadviseur/Study-advisor”
To: xxxx
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 12:08 PM
Subject: RE: bachelor uitreiking
Die is er.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Ella Noordhoek
Studieadvies
Tel: 020 - 598 6116 (telefonisch spreekuur: ma t/m vrij van 11.00 tot
12.00 uur)
Email: studieadviseur@feweb.vu.nl of enoordhoek@feweb.vu.nl
NB: afspraken met de studieadviseur via het studiesecretariaat, kamer
2A16.
Tel: 020 - 598 6111
—–Original Message—–
From: xxxx]
Sent: dinsdag 25 september 2007 23:59
To: Studieadviseur/Study-advisor
Subject: bachelor uitreiking
Geachte studieadviseur,
is er eigenlijk nog een soort bachelordiploma uitreiking?
still struggling with empirical material, I’m now doing depth interviews with everyone I know about Bureaucracy, it’s perceived bad name, and whether this is justified.
“Efficiency and Bureaucracy are often named as each others opposites”, I heard about trends in democratisering, and more.. Hopefully I can connect the dots (as the teacher told me to), and make a structurized end report.
I’m curious toward what more there will come up out of my numerous interviews..
This is one of my final postings, so it’s time for Summarizing and evaluating what I’ve learned:
On one hand I’m very happy with the fact we finally got an assignment where we can write in understandable “human” language in stead of the not for everyone understandable academic language. I really think science will actually enormously evolve when using more understandable language. That also makes science more accessible for people who haven’t done a study in this area.
Not only therefore I think this is a very useful course. Besides this, I’d have loved it to get one quick course of video editing. Because I think this will be a common skill the next years in this time of emerging new media.
On the other hand, I found the blogging also very experimental, fun, but not always very useful and sometimes vague. Perhaps it’s an idea to let the structure a bit more loose, so that people can actually learn from eachother when shorter postings are also allowed: that makes it less threshold to discuss and reply. Perhaps points for active participation too(?). For the communicatiewetenschappen course “new media and digital communication” we also used blog systems, however, we used a blog system that was easier and more encouraging to reply. Perhaps because our group was also smaller..
I hope I write my paper right.
This final blog I want to look back a little at the quest so far. During the quest I learned a lot about bureaucracies, so much is clear. I also encountered some challenges, which I seem to have survived. On top of that I got confronted a couple of times, of which last Thursday was the last time and all of this contributed to me continuing my quest in one way or another. But my learning process hasn’t finished yet. Even though this is my final blog, my quest will continue until I’ve managed to finish my paper in such a way that any lay person will understand what bureaucracy is all about and why the bad name it has is or isn’t justified. This appears to be a rather difficult task because the conceptions people tend to hold about bureaucracy are quite bad and narrow as well. My task is therefore to educate them, just like I educated myself the last couple of weeks about this subject. It will be difficult to write things down in such a way that they are easy to read, but still make sense and are grounded; that’s one thing that is certain by now. That will be my last challenge until, ultimately, victory. And believe me, I will raise my arms and drink a couple of pints when that time has come. Until then however my quest continues and I will have to remain at the look out. Because you can never know what surprises will pop up.
I want to end my blog with a phrase that is one of my favourites actually, and which I think can quite easily be applied to employees in a bureaucracy when we use the narrow definition lay persons tend to use. It appears that the employees in bureaucracies have total freedom in what they do and how they do it, just as long as they accurately follow the procedures. So “you can do it your own way, if it’s done just how I say”. Let us hope we can alter the perceptions about bureaucracy a little by educating the lay as well as the academics.
Thanks for following my quest and helping me out by giving comments. I hope you enjoyed reading my blogs, and that they were entertaining as well as helpful. Good luck to all!
When I left my scientific desert I went to the town of entertainment. There it was that I celebrated that I have written and posted my last blog! In this town I heard the following quotes, which I want to share with me fellow question- neers, ….
“Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble.”
- James H. Boren
”Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.”
- Albert Einstein
When I went home to the starting point of my Quest, the Scientific Desert, it turned out that it did not look the same. It was not a desert anymore, but more a kind of ‘savannah’ with vegetation and inhabited by animals and tribes. These tribes represent all my findings in my Quest. I am going to visit them all and try to make a story of their stories. It will be a kind of patchwork story, because my quest let me see that the more you are searching and questioning, the more different points of view you get. This last part of my
quest will be to make of all these parts a complete story.
I have to do some extra desk research on the relation between culture and bureaucracy. In my empirical research several people pointed to this relation, but there are not many articles about the relation of bureaucracy and culture. I could find the review of the book: Cultures in Conflict: The Four Faces of Indian Bureaucracy. By Stanley J. Heginbotham. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975). This review luckily started with the remark that there is not much written about this subject. The specific focus of field research was on that part of the development administration of Tamil Nadu which was responsible for implementing a program to popularize the use of high-yielding varieties of rice in the villages.
In this research in India the writer distinguished between 4 cognitive models of organization. Each model attempts to catch a different constellation of norms and values about three interrelated sets of cognitive orientations:
1. perceptions of the broad goals and dynamics of an organization;
2. perceptions of the motivations, loyalty, and responsiveness to various incentives by people working at different levels within the organization;
3. perceptions related to the clients the bureaucracy is supposed to serve.
One of the major problems encountered in the field research was the reluctance to allow the extension workers in the villages sufficient flexibility to be able to respond effectively to the individual requirements of different villages. In two cognitive models the general goal orientation is the maintenance of balance and order in the system, whereas in the other two models the goal is to bring about change. Where the first two cognitive models reign, community development programs requiring flexibility are difficult to implement.
My conclusion when reading this is that is does not matter very much how you look at the different culture. Each country, village or organization needs the model and structure that bests fits its goals. And that depends on a lot of factors. Even in a vast country like India, many cognitive models/ strategies are used by the people to implement change, sometimes hampered by tradition. In that way you can also look at our Western culture, where bureaucracy has its own tradition and has become his own stereotype cognitive model.
Saturday morning…. always tricky!
But I will try to write an interesting very last blog….
Last Thursday we came together during the Confrontation Lecture and this meeting has changed a lot for me! The final paper has to be an exciting story in which you’re telling about your research. In our case it’s not so easy to explain what bureaucracy exactly is, because there are a lot of different perspectives of this topic. So I would like to point out this subject by means of different views;
• people with a lot of experience in bureaucratic organizations
• employees of a non bureaucratic organization, who worked in a bureaucracy in the
past
• people who are working for the government
• theory of bureaucracy (Weber and other scientists)
• customers and clients of bureaucratic organizations
When I distinguish this ‘groups’, the reader will get a better understanding of this difficult topic. It’s important you’ll explain why something is difficult instead of trying to explain it totally clear.
Don’t forget to use one of the recommended articles in your paper!
Last, but not least; it’s very important to keep in mind that you have to convince lay- persons!
Good luck with you paper next week! Maybe we can help each other if there’re problems!
This will be the last blog I will write, and see this as a nice opportunity to reflect on the past 6 weeks. It were ‘some weeks’! I really appreciate that the teachers took an effort to make the course innovative and creative. I like that we were introduced to the lay-person, and noticed that writing for or explaining to a lay-person is difficult but a necessary competence for us.
The challenges were, some more than others, indeed challenging… Looking back I can see the learning objectives of these challenges. Although I have to say, making a movie is a bit too much. I feel it did not add up to the course at all except stress and frustration. It took up a lot of time, time I’ve rather spend on writing my essay. Also the criteria for this challenge were not really fair. People with experience in this area had an advantage. Students who have none, start of with a disadvantage. Therefore, saying this is to compensate for lost points (i.e. challenges which couldn’t be completed due to work!!!) is not righteous.
The blog were interesting as well but also very time consuming and sometimes an obligation. Discussing our findings is a good idea but I think we all could benefit more from this if we could talk to each other in person, just like the Final CL. Perhaps a workgroup in some form is more efficient and effective.
I think Management Studies introduced us to a new way of thinking. The course showed that there is not one good way of thinking. We have seen many theories on several topics with own perspectives and all can contribute something to our learning processes.
Good luck writing your essay!!!! Viva la Lay-man ;-)
Last Thursday we’ve had our final confrontation. This was the moment to talk to our Quest-ion group in real life and fire questions at dhr Wolters. It was fun to see who were the person behind our ‘secret-agents’ names. During our lecture we had some fruitful discussions on various topics, although we did not agree on everything (which isn’t bad at all!!!), I feel we were inline with each other about the ‘answer’ or ‘conclusion’ to our question. Bureaucracy isn’t so bad, it is even necessary to organize some work processes. Therefore the bad name isn’t really justified.
But however, my empirical research shows something else!! According to the people I interviewed the bad name is really justified! Sometimes I felt like some sort of social worker when frustrations were put in to the open! For your enjoyment some terms:
- “Anti-maatschappelijke hantering”
- “Het zijn enorm flauwe regeltjes!”
- “Vervelend is soms wel de directe confrontatie met overheidsmedewerkers zoals stadswacht en politie; dan ervaar je persoonlijk de uitwassen van de burocratie.”
For me, my findings lead to a new perspective on the question. It seems that lay-persons associated bureaucracy only with governance operations, like police, ARBO, licences etc. (Even if I tried to associated bureaucracy to their on organization…)
It appears that for a Management Studies- student and a lay-person, bureaucracy means two different things. It also seem that the word bureaucracy is a deterioration. Consequently working with different perspectives (students vs. layperson) on the term bureaucracy will ask for an excellent explanation of our side. We will first have to convince them that there is more to bureaucracy then they initially thought. Subsequently I will try to convince them (this of course can be different for all of us), that bureaucracy isn’t that bad after all, i.e. it wasn’t meant to be.
I know this will be difficult, because will I’m writing they might still be in line for a new licence and already had to take 6 new passport photographs (and in the meanwhile, probably lost their good mood…)
In my last blog (excluding the one with the movie) I used an article of Prendergast to gain some insights into whether or not the bad name of bureaucracy is justified. As we all know by now this justification issue can be approached from multiple angles. This blog I will use another article that gives us just another insight into why this bad name may indeed (for at least a part) not be justified. We all know that the work of Weber had been misinterpreted and mistranslated to some extend, that’s is nothing new, Gyorgy Gajduschek (2003) comes up with a really interesting mistranslation and misinterpretation which I hadn’t seen before however (I actually went trough most of the other blogs to check for this article but I couldn’t find it, so maybe I can really help some fellow quest-folks out as well!).
The main point Gajduschek makes is that Weber didn’t perceive bureaucracies to be superior because of the efficiency to be gained from them, but rather because of the superior uncertainty reduction bureaucracies offer. Actually, the whole word efficiency wasn’t used by Weber at all! This is just translated wrong as well. Efficiency does play a role in the whole though, but definitely not to the same extend as uncertainty reduction does. Both efficiency and uncertainty reduction, Gajduschek claims, are part of the bureaucratic rationality Weber talked about. However only efficiency has gained attention in further research, while most aspects of the bureaucratic rationality are concerned with uncertainty reduction. On top of that it is on the level of this uncertainty reduction that bureaucracies are indeed superior according to the author. Since research however focused on efficiency, and it turned out that this wasn’t superior at all, primarily negative conclusions were drawn about both the theory of Weber and bureaucracies as such (at least by academics).
But if the superiority of bureaucracies isn’t to be found at the efficiency level, should we then judge it on that level? This appears to be wrong. So because Weber was mistranslated, the essence of his theory was changed, leading to research that focused on efficiency, whereas uncertainty reduction should have received most attention in research. This means that the bad name bureaucracy got in theory, might not be justified! That is, if Gajduscheks interpretation is the right one of course. I’ve so far found little (read: no) research that builds on or tests the authors findings however, so that is a little bit disappointing. Still this article gives some interesting insights into the last part of the question. Tomorrow you can expect my final blog. Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekends.
