Article 63. Bureaucracies: What Shapes their Behavior
The simple answer is that bureaucracies grow and change over time and shape themselves in reaction to changing missions and their public image into what they finally become. The organization’s mission is in step with the agency’s culture if the culture is widely and heartily shared by most of the organization’s members. There is a direct connection between an organization’s mission and the organization’s culture. What bureaucrats do depends not only on what they think their primary task is, but to a large extent in the pride of who they think they are. A perfect example is the FBI whose overall mission is to stop crime with the “G-man” culture.
Government agencies have varying missions but can be classified into four groups by the way that their goals can be measured. The groups are, Facilitating organizations, Regulatory organizations, Service organizations, and Responding organizations. This distinction is chiefly based upon the visibility measurability of the organizations’ outputs and procedures. In this logic, the “Facilitating organization” is defined as having both measurable processes and visible understandable outputs (example: Social Security Administration). “Regulatory organizations” perform measurable processes, but they have no visible or easily measurable outputs (example: Environmental Protection Agency). The “Service organization” is characterized by having a lack of measurable processes and but have visible outputs (example: army and navy). However, the “Responding organization” has neither measurable controllable processes nor visible outputs (i.e., the Police Department, the Department of Education). The newly formed Department of Homeland Security (DOHS) can trace its mission development problems to its lack of a universal shared culture. The DOHS which has a service mission was formed from FEMA which had a different responding mission and a responding culture.
The bureaucracies culture the definition of its tasks and rules with the limitations of its capabilities influence its performance and can often produce seemingly “irrational” behavior. The main reason behind “red tape” can be explained with the fact that since there are high risks at stake when the rules are violated there is a “tendency” to multiply the rules. When public scandals occur the rules are tightened to impede future scandals and violations that consume the public trust.
Bureaucracies in addition to their main objectives make the efficiency measurement problem more complex and elusive. If goals are taken into consideration the efficiency of the public organization increases. The question of why public agencies are not given specific and well-defined goals lies with the following problem. As time passes, different interests find a place in the mission of the organization and accordingly new goals supported by legislatures need to be satisfied by the agency and are added to the “objectives” list of the agency. An example is that one of the mission’s of the FBI was to stop bank robberies now they have the primary task of defending against terrorist attacks.
For information on why bureaucracies provide a poor work environment for employees, are slow to respond with red tape and may also be dangerous to the public see: Article 101. “The Hampton Virginia Innovation Story” for how to get rid of Red Tape. And Article 1. “Reforming Business and Government Bureaucracies”, Article 5. “Government Bureaucracies and Document Turn-Around Time” and Article 58. “FDA Allows Thousands to Die Through its Bureaucratic Rules”.
