Businesses are quite complex. A lot of bureaucracy starts as an attempt to organize and simplify the problem space. There are simply too many decisions for one

Businesses are quite complex. A lot of bureaucracy starts as an attempt to organize and simplify the problem space. There are simply too many decisions for one person to make and informal processes fall apart at scale. This is also where things take on a life of their own. Without strong guidance, you end up with the rules becoming more important than reality.