It is believed that bureaucracy and scientific management belong to the past, and that a post-bureaucratic epoch has risen, but in order to examine whether this is true or not it is essential that the different sectors that formulate today’s society are examined. This essay is going to focus on the rhetoric versus the reality of practices within the modern organisations, in order to identify the extent to which bureaucracy and scientific management are still evident. As supported by Grey (2013) bureaucracy and scientific management were driven by instrumental rationality, in contrast with post-bureaucratic practices which focus more on value rationality. So, in order to support that a post-bureaucratic epoch has risen, its critical to evaluate the underlying goals of organisations. What seems to be maybe the most important though, is to evaluate the practices that really take place in the organisations both from an academic and a personal perspective.
Bureaucracy in the Present.
In contrast with the rhetoric which supports that scientific management is long gone, there are little empirical evidence in support of radical changes, neither in organisation (Barley and Kunda, 2001) nor in managerial work (Hales,2002,2005). This supports Weber’s idea, that bureaucracy is a continuum not a condition that is either entirely present or absent. In relation to the present bureaucracy has shifted as the internal challenges and the external environment has been modified. One major trend is that companies have consistently tried to improve quality while reducing their costs (Praxis, 2010). With globalisation and the development of open markets across borders, companies still have try to gain a competitive advantage over other companies or over other countries. Like Taylor’s concern of productivity within the workforce, managers in the UK are still focusing on how to achieve upward mobility through an expansion of high skilled employment. The twentieth century was characterised by the mechanical Taylorism, and the Fordism production line where the knowledge of workers was monitored and re-designed in the assembly line, and now the twenty first century is the epoch of digital Taylorism. This includes making an interpretation of knowledge work into working knowledge through capture and modification of knowledge into programming accessible to everyone. The reality though is, that knowledge workers still face routinisation, and only a small number of the whole workforce has access to creativity, innovation and autonomy. In conclusion, the reality has much more to do with the dark side of capitalism, routinisation, surveillance, control and exploitation (Lauder, Brown, Brown,2008).
Private and Public Sector.
Evidence from both private and public-sector organisations show that bureaucratic practices still remain and even becoming more intense, making the epochal claims about a post-bureaucratic epoch unreliable and irrelevant. On the one hand, the assembly line has developed into McDonaldisation which is the main reason for McDonald’s success. Even major corporations like McDonalds and Amazon focus their success on bureaucratic practices, uniformity and predictability and they do not seem eager to change their operational practices. On the other hand, it should be expected by the government and the public sector to embrace the post-bureaucratic values in order to reflect a role model for the whole society but again that does not seem to be the case. Public sector organisations in the Australian state of Queensland showed that ten out of twelve units were dominated by a bureaucratic model that paid attention to controlling mechanisms by adopting certain rules and procedures (Parker, Bradley, 2004). Another research conducted in the UK gathered information from ten public sector organizations including local authorities, the National Health Service, the Civil Service, police authorities, broadcasting and transport. The study found that “traditional functional lines of authority co-exist with newer, networked, forms of coordination” (Morris and Farrell, 2007). What these findings suggest is that some organisations use bureaucracy as a tool for success, while others, like the two examples of the public sector, try to change but for now their organisational model seems more like a hybrid combining the two practices together rather than post-bureaucracy itself.
Knowledge intensive firms
From the foresaid, the gap between the rhetoric and reality seems to be really significant, which suggests that a distinction between those two should be done for every different organisational sector that the essay writes upon. Knowledge intensive firms regularly manage assignments that discredit and break with bureaucratic methods of operation, chain of command, division of labour, formal procedures and institutionalisation. The mainstream thoughts on modern organisations and on KIFS specifically, proposes that bureaucratic methods of operation are replaced for more organic and more customer orientated and production systems are more concentrated on knowledge more than ever, all components that make bureaucratic models of operations a less-suitable alternative. In reality though, Alvesson et al. (2003) encourage the thought that, knowledge intensive firms use bureaucratic modes as form of managerial control and it has cultural and rhetorical significance rather that material. Beta and Pharma in his study are organisations that changed from organic organisational forms to a more bureaucratic form in order to solve problems created by size and environmental stability and are a perfect example of selective-bureaucratisation. Another study on a research and development setting demonstrates that it is essential to commit time and energy to regulatory problems to be a good manager. In their findings both Alvesson et al. and Ola Edvin Vie propose that the practices found in recent firms are between a bureaucratic and a post- bureaucratic approach and as Ola Edvin Vie puts it “selective bureaucracy” is leading in the managerial work environment.
Organisational Rationality.
Max Weber identified that increasing rationalisation of society in general and managerial work specifically can become highly problematic, causing what he called as “iron cage”. Rather than managing decisions through qualities and feelings, decisions are made by effectiveness at any cost. As with bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy, it seems like the rationality in organisations is somewhere in the middle between instrumental and substantive. Corporate social responsibility policies are adopted by many firms in order to protect the environment or the workforce. It seems like the biggest firms like Google, Microsoft, Apple, BMW and many more use corporate social responsibility policies to help the society as whole because they understand their role in the society while achieving their goals. Such firms have adopted selective bureaucracy practices combining as foresaid bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy. It is well-known that Apple is one of the world’s leading technology company and has been characterized by Greenpeace “the greenest tech company in the world” in the last three years because it takes full advantage of renewable energy and uses recycled paper products for packaging. On the other hand, Apple’s partner Foxconn is well known for not protecting the human rights of its working labour and dehumanising people by treating them as machines. As a result, Apple is trying to be effective and efficient but that has an effect on protection of the rights of the working labour of its biggest manufacturer, which is very instrumental rationalised, but tries to protect the environment which is more value orientated. This can have a rather negative impact upon the company in terms of employability and motivation in the workplace because, recent studies have shown that people with a good corporate social responsibility policy are more employable than others and the idea that their actions create value for the whole society becomes a motivating factor that can boost productivity. It can be said that companies like Apple are moving to an adhocracy and more value orientated rationality but as bureaucracy and scientific management, in the first section, instrumental rationality is still evident and amplified in some areas.
Critical Evaluation of Current Practices.
From one perspective, the orthodox has praised the coming of post-Fordism as not just a radical change from the past, from conventional Fordist authoritative structures based on inflexible various levelled and bureaucratic charge and control administrations, but additionally as the start of the elimination of the issue of work environment alienation and corruption. Then again, critics challenge this blushing perspective by saying that post-Fordism does not bring forward what it guaranteed. It has been clear that the current practices in the business environment are somewhere in the middle of bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy. The problem is as Willmott states it that “Mainstream literature sees organizational transformation as a smooth process from one organizational form to another” and thus that creates some problems.
First and foremost, in the mainstream literature it cannot be identified real questioning of the management theory versus what is happening in reality in a meaningful and radical way that will produce the right guidance for adopting new ethics and morals in order to become more social responsible. Also, the basis of post-bureaucracy supports that these new practices will help prevent the alienation and the degradation of the division of labour, but the truth is that there has been no relevant nor in depth review of the fundamental cause of these problems, in order to help the prevention of them. Supporting this argument, with the augmentation of the economic crisis in recent years, both managers and workers are dealing with dilemmas and fear about earning a living and sustaining a dignity while being treated as expandable resources and as machines. A great example of this can be Amazon, because it clearly treats workers as “human resources” and machines, by taking advantage of zero hour contracts and hiring and firing people in order to prevent making a regular contract with them, monitoring them at all time and not giving the right to talk to co-workers are just a few examples of how one of the biggest retailers in the world is dehumanising its workforce. As a result, as years pass by the workplace is ought to become more meaningful and rewarding, but it seems to be involving into an exercise of new ways of surveillance that produces new ways of disbarment rather than empowerment.
Another limitation of the current practices is that they fail to present how organisations will transform into more human centred organisations in order to promote more democratic and emancipatory workplace that does not have as its only priority the profit and organisational growth. That the new and post-bureaucratic ideas support that they have revolutionised the public sector by re-engineering their organisation structure and human resource capabilities. These ventures are intended to dissolve the rigidities and wasteful aspects related with conventional post-war welfare state various hierarchical and bureaucratic structures, which are viewed as having made public sector ‘inefficient and enlarged’ and to furnish citizens with more values-for-money public administrations that fulfil their requirements and desires. Once again critics have a different perspective of the matter between the perceived and the reality of the outcomes of the re-engineered public sector. Acknowledging the fact the employees in some organisations are enabled to be more creative and innovative, in contrast to the traditional practices they also point out that hierarchy, rigid bureaucracy, command- and-control management practices, low-skilled detailed divisions of labour, strict demarcation and unequal rewards, recognition and remuneration determined by class, gender, race and social inequalities have far from disappeared in the new workplace (Thompson and Warhurst, 1998). Additionally, in the private sector the use of Atkinson’s flexible firm has become very popular which is thought to be a key benefit of new forms of organisation by mainstream theorists. In theory, the model provides flexibility and organisational performance while reducing costs but in practise as Willmott present it “They rarely look beyond these priorities at the potential implications of the flexible firm for core and peripheral employees, in terms of job security, skill development and career opportunities”.
Conclusion.
Although the current practices are different than the past in some extent, it is wrong to believe that bureaucracy and scientific management belong to the past. Bureaucracy is thought as a synonym of red tape and dehumanisation (Grey, 2013), but it is philosophically accepted that every theory has two sides, and bureaucracy has both advantages and disadvantages. that can help the organisation and in addition, the society to grow. Instrumental rationality in terms of bureaucracy and scientific management is still evident in the workplaces but has been modified in recent years towards a more substantive and value orientated form. From a rough analysis of the practices it can be identified that the model that dominates the organisational environment does not lessen the problems neither promises that there will come a day that all these problems will be in the past. Organisations still have a lot to change in order to become more value orientated and more flexible, adaptable and informal.