[HN Gopher] The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010)
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The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010)
Author : Bluestein
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-08-26 09:08 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jerrypournelle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jerrypournelle.com)
| xnx wrote:
| This definition leaves out those in a bureaucracy who are only
| devoted to themselves. I assume since their personal devotions
| may or may not have to do with the goals of the organization or
| the organization itself that their impact cancels out.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > This definition leaves out those in a bureaucracy who are
| only devoted to themselves.
|
| Indeed that's a frequent specimen, along with what I would call
| "devoted to nothing" - simple freeloaders, there for the ride,
| just getting by through the law of minimal effort ...
| virgilp wrote:
| This is a good observation but one can argue that those devoted
| to themselves are a subset of those devoted to the organization
| (to further their goals, they act as being part of the second
| category, since that's the most profitable)
| hammock wrote:
| If you're being paid by the organization, you're being paid
| for something. Either for work that accretes to the goals of
| the organization, work that accretes to the organization
| itself, or some combination of the two
| wcunning wrote:
| That's a fine interpretation, but the observable evidence
| lately would indicate otherwise. The two terms to look into
| are "institutions as platforms" from Yuval Levin at the
| American Enterprise Institute [0], describing congressional
| representatives who spend more staff budget on comms than
| policy and more of their time on cable news hits than on
| committee meetings. The second is "public choice theory"
| economics which is the branch of economics describing why
| policy doesn't align with stated goals on a regular basis.
| Robin Hanson had a good substack on the second one just
| today, in fact [1].
|
| [0] - https://www.npr.org/2020/01/30/800922222/when-
| institutions-a... [1] - https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-
| big-econ-error
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Yes, when I was doing work for the UN there were three
| categories of people in the organization and the lines between
| them were quite bright. I've described it this way to many
| people who are curious.
|
| You had the true believers in the mission, which was a
| minority. You had an army of bureaucrats, who were solely
| motivated by a steady paycheck and were incentivized to be
| paperwork and meeting maximalists to justify their lifetime
| appointment. And then you had a large minority -- larger than
| the true believers -- of grifters and sinecures, typically a
| nephew of the president of some undeveloped country or similar,
| who were openly there to collect as much free money as possible
| without even the pretense of work.
|
| That last group, while obviously devoted to themselves, were
| devoted to the organization to the extent that they are
| parasites and the organization is the host. But they only need
| the organization to exist, not the organization's mission.
| alphazard wrote:
| It should always be assumed that everyone participating in a
| bureaucracy is selfishly motivated.
|
| The difference is some people see a path to personal success by
| creating shareholder value (better product, less cost, etc.),
| while other people focus on fortifying their current
| arrangement to ensure it can't be made worse.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| Not sure this counts as 'a law' in scientific terms.
| RandomCitizen12 wrote:
| Why would it have to?
| function_seven wrote:
| As soon as I finish my scientific investigation into Murphy's
| Law, I'll get right on it...
| mentalgear wrote:
| Interesting to learn about that Iron Law. Though what I find
| missing in the mini blog post is an explanation why the second
| group ("the pure institution for institution sake" mindset) tends
| to take over the organisation.
|
| Is it because they are more invested in the
| organisational/administrative tasks versus the first group's
| actual goal archiving mindset ? As these goals of the first group
| lie outside the organisation, the simple distance of goals within
| vs without might be one significant part. E.g. easier to achieve
| something within then outside, hence more power over time.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> why the second group ( "the pure institution for institution
| sake" mindset) tends to take over the organisation._
|
| Because they can focus 100% of their time and effort on
| controlling the organization, whereas the first group can only
| focus the time and effort on that that they can spare from
| getting the actual work done that they are in the organization
| to do.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Makes sense. I'm wondering now how a "safeguard" from this
| behaviour could look like. E.g. make a person's promotion
| within an organisation depending on achieving also "first-
| order" goals of the organisation.
| pirate787 wrote:
| The problem is that the institutionalists define "first-
| order" safeguards. They also often control key
| relationships like access to the board of directors
| begueradj wrote:
| The right and thorough answer to your question would involve
| psychology, psychology and evolution.
| torcete wrote:
| I wonder whether the iron law of bureaucracy could be a special
| case, or maybe related to, the iron law of oligarchy by Robert
| Michels.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| So I've been learning about expander graphs, and it seems like
| they preserve some of the good things about hierarchies (low
| fanout) while being very unlike hierarchies in other ways (higher
| # of paths, lower # of hops, between an arbitrary pair of nodes).
|
| Have any HBR types done a case study of non-traditional firm
| organisation, along expander lines?
| sitkack wrote:
| All Bureaucratic Structures eventually become self supporting.
| Religion, business, government, non-profits, industry groups,
| standards bodies, everything.
|
| Bureaucracy isn't inherently bad, but it is a dragon that
| everyone should keep a very watchful eye on.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| Hand written html, no CSS, #FF0000 font color AND egregious use
| of gifs? And not a single piece of social media?! Now THIS is a
| what website should look like! Maybe I am just getting old but I
| miss the Good Old Days of the web.
| fmajid wrote:
| Jerry Pournelle was a Sci-Fi writer, but he also consulter for
| the US Department of Defense and was a longtime columnist for
| Byte Magazine.
| duxup wrote:
| At several big companies I worked at HR was at the center of the
| second group. They had no concept of what the organization "did"
| as far as product output and so on. As far as they were concerned
| they were the organization.
|
| At one company we had a couple round of layoffs, thus there were
| more demands on everyone's time. HR then would drag us into
| "mandatory not required" meetings where they would waste a week
| of our time teaching us about "stress management" from people who
| as far as we could tell spent much of their time in the
| breakroom.
|
| One such HR person even went so far as to file a complaint, with
| HR, that the team that sat next to them in the office ... weren't
| very social / didn't attend social events put on by HR.
|
| I never know what to do with these kind of people... I
| laboriously explained to a few what other people did, but I
| mostly just insulate myself from them so it isn't as frustrating.
| Spivak wrote:
| People make fun of the term "justice involved individual" but
| this is exactly the same dynamic. You are at your safest when
| you are as far as humanly possible, physically and
| organizationally, from their orbit. I'm safe from HR not
| because I'm innocent (like that matters) but because none of
| them even know who I am.
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