6 ms·

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010)

67 points by Bluestein 2y ago

xnx 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    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-are-used-as-stages-people-lose-trust-book-argues https://www.npr.org/2020/01/30/800922222/when-institutions-a... [1] - https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-big-econ-error https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-big-econ-error
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
Not sure this counts as 'a law' in scientific terms.
- RandomCitizen12 2y ago
  Why would it have to?
- function_seven 2y ago
  As soon as I finish my scientific investigation into Murphy's Law, I'll get right on it...
mentalgear 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      The problem is that the institutionalists define "first-order" safeguards. They also often control key relationships like access to the board of directors
- begueradj 2y ago
  The right and thorough answer to your question would involve psychology, psychology and evolution.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
torcete 2y ago
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 2y ago
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?
- gradschoolfail 2y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/Team-Topologies-Organizing-Business-Technology/dp/B07VWYNGCQ https://www.amazon.com/Team-Topologies-Organizing-Business-T... Pace Wigner (at this point he deserves a “talisman” — FMD might agree now), those expanders are indeed unreasonably effective, just like bureaucracies (according to the ever optimistic Kafka). Emergent intelligence in governments and institutions, may not be just a Good Idea? (Abuse of Gandhi/de Maistre, sorry) > Let me end on a more cheerful note. The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. EDIT: FrankWilhoit has some sayings regarding how, in order to reduce (Clausewitzian?) Friction, we should look at glue (interclique edges?)and not just syntax (cliques/juntas?) like what planners do. (The novelty of the idea seems to me to be in that planners usually dont attend to the strycture of egdes as much)
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    It just occurred to me that it's entirely fitting how often Kowalski refers to the Caudine Forks, for that battle is a metaphor for ping pong arguments: Suppose we have two statements (Romans), A and B. A priori, there are four possible situations: A & not B | A & B | not A & not B | not A & B However, as mathematicians, let us play the Samnite. First we close one pass, in proving A → B, which is equivalent to ruling out A & not B. Then we close the other pass, in proving B → A (ruling out not A & B). Now our romans, err, statements are confined to A & B | not A & not B, and (with no truth values having been harmed) must therefore pass under the yoke of equivalence: A ↔ B.
sitkack 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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.

67 points by Bluestein 2y ago

xnx 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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-are-used-as-stages-people-lose-trust-book-argues https://www.npr.org/2020/01/30/800922222/when-institutions-a... [1] - https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-big-econ-error https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-big-econ-error
jandrewrogers 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago

Not sure this counts as 'a law' in scientific terms.

RandomCitizen12 2y ago
Why would it have to?
function_seven 2y ago
As soon as I finish my scientific investigation into Murphy's Law, I'll get right on it...

mentalgear 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    The problem is that the institutionalists define "first-order" safeguards. They also often control key relationships like access to the board of directors
begueradj 2y ago
The right and thorough answer to your question would involve psychology, psychology and evolution.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

torcete 2y ago

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 2y ago

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?

gradschoolfail 2y ago
https://www.amazon.com/Team-Topologies-Organizing-Business-Technology/dp/B07VWYNGCQ https://www.amazon.com/Team-Topologies-Organizing-Business-T... Pace Wigner (at this point he deserves a “talisman” — FMD might agree now), those expanders are indeed unreasonably effective, just like bureaucracies (according to the ever optimistic Kafka). Emergent intelligence in governments and institutions, may not be just a Good Idea? (Abuse of Gandhi/de Maistre, sorry) > Let me end on a more cheerful note. The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. EDIT: FrankWilhoit has some sayings regarding how, in order to reduce (Clausewitzian?) Friction, we should look at glue (interclique edges?)and not just syntax (cliques/juntas?) like what planners do. (The novelty of the idea seems to me to be in that planners usually dont attend to the strycture of egdes as much)
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  It just occurred to me that it's entirely fitting how often Kowalski refers to the Caudine Forks, for that battle is a metaphor for ping pong arguments: Suppose we have two statements (Romans), A and B. A priori, there are four possible situations: A & not B | A & B | not A & not B | not A & B However, as mathematicians, let us play the Samnite. First we close one pass, in proving A → B, which is equivalent to ruling out A & not B. Then we close the other pass, in proving B → A (ruling out not A & B). Now our romans, err, statements are confined to A & B | not A & not B, and (with no truth values having been harmed) must therefore pass under the yoke of equivalence: A ↔ B.

sitkack 2y ago

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 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago

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 2y ago
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.