Sociology

When interpreted positively,
bureaucracy refers to the collective organizational protocols, structure and
procedures put in place to manage activities within organizations or within a
government. The traditional role of a bureaucracy is to implement policies
originating from leadership through the utilization of well laid out
standardized procedures based on set rules and regulations. A bureaucracy is
characterized by division of powers through hierarchies and the fundamental
reason for its establishment is to anticipate an organizations needs and
respond to them through utilization of resources available within the
organization. In reality, a well run bureaucracy is the dream of every
organization but the reality in most situations is that there is a
considerable informal and individualistic influence in bureaucracies that
distorts the interpretation and execution of policies thereby derailing and
devastating the good intentions of organizations as is the obvious case in
FEMAs New Orleans Office (Keteyian, 2009).  When bureaucracy is abused, it
results to inefficiency red tape rigidity and officiousness that defeat rather
than help the cause of a much needed service.

Analysis of bureaucracies yields
a myriad of inherent problems and associated consequences. One major problem
with a bureaucracy is that the very principles used to generate it can
degenerate if the social and corporate willingness is not well cultured.

Degeneration of a bureaucracy is characterized by corruption, nepotism and
infighting. Common problems in bureaucracies include overspecialization where
individual officials are not aware or do not care about the larger
consequences produced by their actions. In addition, there is widespread
rigidity and inertia on procedures which makes decision making almost
impossible and very slow which delays the adoption of quick response
decisions. As such, it becomes very hard to effect necessary changes,
adaptation and innovation of new ideas and practices within an organization.

In addition, the idea of group thinking within a bureaucracy reduces the vigor
with which members think and critically analyze their organization which makes
it almost impossible for organizations to realize their shortcomings and
limitations. Also, the majority rule in bureaucracies defeats minority
innovative ideas which may be disregarded on the basis of personal bias,
prejudice or blatant ignorance of the facts presented.

Whether an organization
or the people are responsible for the failure of bureaucracies is a critical
issue between which a thin line lies. First, bureaucracies are established by
organizations with an aim of increasing their efficiency in the delivery of
services. Due to loopholes that are impossible to eliminate in human systems,
individuals utilize the organizations weaknesses and formal rigidity in
frustrating efforts officially. An official may neglect to do a
straightforward task by asserting that it is not his official duty. In a large
scale, officials neglect to address critical issues feigning that it belongs
to other departments. When individuals stationed in different departments fail
to own up responsibility, the consequence is that project efforts are
frustrated and like in the case of FEMA in New Orleans, the neglect and non-
responsiveness of officials end up delaying intervention and risking lives.

Organizations can take the blame when their established bureaucracies are
misused especially based on lack of follow up, close supervision and lack of
calling officials to account.

The coordination of an organizations activities
requires well established policies that necessitate the establishment of a
hierarchy. Since this is necessary in all organizations, the aim then should
be to implement strategies that would reduce and if possible eliminate the
pathology of inefficient bureaucracies. Some of the ways that can be used to
achieve this includes the idea of scouting where organizations gathers
external information from other organizations aimed at improving their own
systems (Holder, 2009). In addition, organizations can engage in open space
fact finding meetings as well as organize energy developing conferences. The
ability of an organization to focus and evaluate its weakness would be a good
genesis of solving toxic bureaucracy. In addition, organizations can organize
search solution meetings that should be used to brainstorm on their weaknesses
and assist in adoption of efficient future strategies (Holder, 2009). Lastly,
organizations can structure their bureaucracies into as participatory work
design model where top-down leadership is involved in planning and
implementation of the organizations objectives. The idea would be to increase
responsiveness in all levels of the organization.