The real impact on the market for bureacracy is in the used human resources that are reshaped for a better marginal productivity or a better way of using their services. For in depth awarness on the evolution of bureaucrats and bureaucracy we can see some of their transformational advantages:
I. Bureaucrats are transformed, let's say, by the human resources officers, in evaluators of opportunity costs, but a cost from the perspective of the firm, not theirs.
II. They evaluate their own jobs, and make a report about the future of the firm, without their posts.
II.1. A bureaucrat discovers that his post is totally useless for the firm, and makes a sincere statement about that. Nevertheless, to be motivated to be sincere, the bureaucrat is given some assurances about his future. The firm will fire him, giving compensatory payments, but along with important savings obtained through the fact that the bureaucrat gave up his post. The more departments in the firm, the bigger the bureaucracy, as can be seen in figure 1 (see Helpful Materials section), hence the interest of the firm to reduce the number of posts.
II.2. Most probably, the bureaucrat will not be sincere. He assures the firm that his post is essential, but who says that his very own person is that most suitable for that post? Hard time for him to give a sincere answer. But competition, which he has avoided ever since, could provide a solution. What is to be done in order to raise competition?
III. A rise in the remaining bureaucrat staff wages will follow and ... will make bureaucratic posts less appealing for bureaucrats and more appealing for non-bureaucrats. But will bureaucracy contract? Yes, of course, because bigger wages will come along with bigger responsibilities, the former bureaucratic posts will be bureaucratic no more. Bureaucrats will find themselves besieged by other people who targeted the same posts, very appealing because of the big wages. Along with the competition they usually avoided, bureaucrats are also under siege of brand new responsibilities. As figure 2 (see Helpful Materials section) shows, at low wages there is a low competition level, where only one person is interested about the bureaucrat's job. But at high competition level, there are several more. The bureaucratic profile of the post could implode under competition and bigger wages.
A particular case that is an interesting and potent challenge for this study-case is the idea of outsourcing bureaucracy. In figure 2 (see Helpful Materials section), below the axis, there is a symmetrical view of the competition of a foreign market participant. The competition is under an opposite formula; the firm will be more interested about outsourcing the bureaucratic posts the lower will be the wages demanded by foreign contractors. But yet again, for the moment outsourcing the bureaucracy is like the laws of thermodynamics. Energy can not disappear, energy is simply changing its status. Sending bureaucracy away from home does not look like a management solution, because bureaucracy, just as energy, will simply take a walk, remaining strong, or maybe looming abroad, like a tropical less-known virus.
More money, tighter competition and more tasks in the profile of a bureaucratic post could finally make bureaucracy less appealing.Due to the niche that this hack addresses, we need to see the breakdown structure of the decisional hierarchy and the connections or multi-links that are created between posts, be it in a vertically or horizontally deployment.
The first step is to underline the relations between decision makers, the problem' issuers and the mechanism that links the problem (the hypothesis and the conclusion) to the solution.
Another component that is important in the work process is the time gap between when the problem appears, it is noted and the moment when a solution is given. This time frame must be seen from two vantage points:
- from an abstract view: the time for one problem to appear, to be noted and to get solved.
- from a general view: the sum of the problems (issues) that are in a company, at the same level of responsibility or at other levels.
Grigore Ioan Pirosca, Ph.D. Lecturer at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Romania, is the "idea man" behind this hack and together we tried to create an external theoretical model that could be implemented on the short run in organizations all over the world and with small initial costs for implementation.
1. Du Gay, Paul (2005), The Values of Bureaucracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford
2. Hamel, Gary (2011), First, Let's Fire all the Managers, www.hbr.org
3. Hamel, Gary, Price, Colin (2011), Creating Inspired, Open and Free Organizations, www.hbr.org
4. Handler, Joel F. (1996), Down from Bureaucracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
5. Peters, B. Guy (2001), The Politics of Bureaucracy, Routledge Publishing, New York
6. Sthyre, Alexander (2007), The Innovative Bureaucracy, Routledge Publishing, New York
* Law Abiding Citizen - the movie (2009), Overture Films