I have mentioned before that I am working on a rewrite of my posts on bureaucracy, and, as so often happens, when I undertake such a project, life has handed me a perfect example of a point I want to make.

As most readers know I work in "Information Technology". In the past, that meant I wrote programs for private firms, or for the government. As I had no managerial ambitions, and as jobs dried up following the dot-com crash (not to mention not wanting to work ninety hour weeks or more), I gradually moved from programming to administration. Fortunately, I was not one of those "application developers", who knows only the latest trendy language or can plug together pre-made widgets. I started writing in assembly language (well, after learning BASIC), I worked as a volunteer on several version of Unix (not Linux, as I dislike a lot of the trendy types it attracts), and I drove other programmers crazy by complaining about wasted processor cycles and overprogrammed code. So it was easy to go into computer administration.

Unfortunately, IT support and administration tends to be very bureaucratic, for the same reasons the government does. IT may produce revenue, but it is very hard to determine how much it contributes. (I bet building maintenance, campus security and other support positions are similarly plagued by bureaucracy.) In programming it was easy to tell how much revenue a project generated. No, we could not assign profit to each component, but we did know what was popular, what wasn't, and how much money came in, so we could use some loose version of cost accounting. IT administration doesn't allow that. Oh, at the top level there is always the possibility of contracting out the whole task, so on a topmost level cost accounting works, but internally, IT departments are as bureaucratic as they come.

And so, my job often provides me with ideal examples of just what is wrong with bureaucracy.

For example, during major projects, we normally set up mailing lists or conference lines so that we can communicate about problems, or about which steps are complete. In reality most of us would prefer to communicate one on one with the person we need to help solve our problems, as the multi-party phone lines tend to be clogged with other people asking about things we don't understand, or in which we are not interested, but we dare not hang up as the bosses demand attendance. (Most of us believe these conference calls are organized just so that higher level bosses know middle managers are there, since their jobs are so ill-defined, they need these mass phone calls to show how essential they are.) And so we sit listening to irrelevant conversations or dead air, our phones muted, while we try to type one handed.

But what makes these mailing list and conference calls so funny is that each of us are told by our bosses not to actually use the service to talk about problems, as that would make them look bad. Instead, we have to communicate privately, as we ant to anyway, and then let our bosses make official announcements that everything is fine, even if there is a complete crisis.

Similarly, when there is a real problem, we cannot act until someone sets up a conference line, and we have a large meeting to "discuss" the problem. I am terrified every time a problem arises which requires time to fix, as I know it will take many times longer as I will have to sit in on a half dozen conference calls before I am left alone to apply the fix I know will work. Worse, I have to "keep in touch" with multiple departments, whose workers are not interested in the problem, and who will provide no support, as their managers are trying to look "proactive" as well, and mine is striving to show he is "doing something". (Yes, this sounds familiar, doesn't it? Cf "Doing Something".)

And then there are the "post mortem" meeting, which I described before. ("How the Government Corrupts Relationships", "Off Topic") They are also intended to "allow us to learn from our mistakes", but in reality they are a chance for middle management to deflect blame. Oddly, three managers can all sit in the same meeting, hear the same information, yet only one is to blame for "missing" that the plan could trigger a previously unknown error. Which actually points out one other interesting aspect of bureaucracy I have not mentioned before.

Someone is always to blame.

This is one of the absolutes of bureaucracy. You would think with an organizational system driven by avoiding blame the managers would be fast to absolve one another. The same way drunks tell one another they aren't drinking "too much", it would seem reasonable for bureaucratic managers to let each other off the hook in exchange for the same.

But it never happens.

And there are two reasons.

First, by the time the question of blame has arisen, either someone higher up is angry, or the managers are convinced they will be, and so blame must be assigned. Once there is an irate superior, it is impossible to pass something off as unanticipated, impossible to predict or simple chance, it must be the fault of someone, and so blame must be assigned. Which means that no one, even if they were so inclined, is going to let anyone else off the hook.

Worse, even if there is no one irate, bureaucracy breeds fear. I know from my job there are certain services which are the subject of constant angry calls. When they go down for two or three minutes it is as if the world ended. Even during off hours when no one is on the machine, it is possible some compulsive middle manager is checking and will spot an error. And thanks to the existence of such obsessives other managers anticipate problems even when there are none. So even if no one is out for blood, calling for a sacrificial lamb, managers worry someone will, and so they assign blame even when they probably need not do so.

And that behavior is only reinforced by the second cause.

Bureaucratic organizations are essentially zero sum games. Yes, they grow in good times, or when the firm as a whole grows, but support organizations are not profit making in the traditional sense, and so they cannot support their own growth the way profit producing branches do. So there is only a limited pool of money, a limited number of employees, and a limited amount of managerial authority. (I have lived through quite a few office power struggles, so I know of what I speak here.) With only so much to go around, it is second nature for managers to look for ways to push out rivals, to expand their own authority, and to defend what they have against others. I am not saying everyone who goes into bureaucratic management has this mindset, only that those who do not tend not to last. The system, selects for such traits.

And, given that selection, the assignment of blame is not just a means to avoid trouble and preserve one's job, it is also a tool to use against rivals. And as such, it is almost impossible to imagine a manager with any ambition allowing another manager to be forgiven for a mistake, even if it could not have possibly been foreseen.

As a result, we have the organizations we have today. Even when they do not have ties to the government, or government funding insulating them from competition, certain portions of for profit businesses still tend to have bureaucratic management, with the consequences I have described here, and elsewhere.

So, why do I mention this? Other than to blow off some steam over stupid policies? Because, as I wrote in "The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Management in Government Enterprises", bureaucracy is inevitable once the government is involved. And not just in support branches, but everywhere. Yes, we still have bureaucracy is some parts of private, profit driven firms, but the government's involvement ensures even retail stores and factories will run this way. And so, for the benefit of those who have never worked in a bureaucratic firm or division, I hope to provide here, and in my comprehensive post of bureaucracy, a small taste of what bureaucratic management does to a business, just to drive my point home. (It is interesting to read "How the Government Corrupts Relationships" and "In Praise of Contracts", or even "Greed Versus Evil", as they makes a nice parallel to this post.)

POSTSCRIPT

For those interested, you can read my writing on bureaucracy before I post the comprehensive essay by following these links to my essays, "Bureaucratic Management", "The Bureaucratic Mind", "Bureaucracy Revisited", "The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Management in Government Enterprises", "Bureaucratic Management and Self-Policing", "Killing the Railroads", "You Don't Drown in a Glass of Water - Vouchers Revisited", "Why Vouchers are not the Answer", "Never Ascribe To Evil, A Discussion of Education", "In The Most Favorable Light", "Redundancy as a Protective Measure", "Adaptability and Government", "Inflexibility and Bureaucracy", "A New Look At Intervention", "Grow or Die, The Inevitable Expansion of Everything", "Somewhat Off-Topic Rants" and "Organizations as Filters". I would also recommend the related essays "Absolute Values", "The Inherent Disappointment of Authoritarianism" and all of "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences", my ongoing series of essays (or perhaps serialized on-line book).

POSTSCRIPT II

It is a bit off topic, but I have realized recently that I have something approaching a phobia when it comes to filling out forms. I have always been reticent to complete forms, putting off everything from my taxes to my request for security clearance to my voter registration until the last minute, but now that I have to fill out tons of papers for my upcoming divorce proceedings, I am coming to realize I actually almost fear filling them out.

I think part of it may come from having worked in the government for some time, as there is nowhere more filled with forms, especially when I worked in social services. My entire job was helping applicants fill out forms, find forms for employers and landlords to complete, and then using those forms to fill out my own forms which I would submit. After that job I never wanted to see another form again. Sadly, less than two years later my first programming job was creating computer forms for the Department of Labor, then drawing up test plans for the testers to fill out as the tried out the software.

But I think there is something more, and as I was thinking about this post tonight, it came to me. Forms always portend something bad, or, at best, the avoidance of something bad.

Think about it, when was the last time you filled out a form in expectation of something good? Forms are always about spending money, fulfilling legal obligations, legal headaches, or, at best, finding out whether or not you qualify for a loan or credit card. Now, I will grant, getting a loan, or finding a job, is a good thing. But when you fill out those forms, odds are good you are not thinking about the joy of receiving the job or loan, but instead fretting over the possibility of failure.

In other words, whenever you touch a form, it is quite likely you are going to be unhappy. Or, at best, relieved that you avoided the worst. I simply cannot dredge up from my memory even one happy moment which involved filling out a form.

Of course this is partly tongue in cheek, and when it isn't it is colored by my own hatred of paperwork. (One of the reasons I have avoided jobs in management. Preferring programming and problem solving -- with rational, mechanistic problems -- rather handling people, is the other.) But I do think in some ways it is true, at least for me. Long, boring forms almost never appear in circumstances I would call happy, or even acceptable, and as a result, I tend to dislike the thought of filling them out.

It may also be one of the reasons I find writing about bureaucracy and its many ills so rewarding. Of course, everything I write is also true, and bureaucracy really is one of the more damaging aspects of government intervention into the free market, but perhaps my loathing of paperwork makes me just a little more likely to notice the problems of bureaucracy than others.

POSTSCRIPT III

There is a tiny bit of poetic license involved in this post. Everything I said is accurate, all events and actions recounted are true, but I described as "my boss" an amalgam of several bosses, some my own from past positions, some with whom I have dealt but who were not directly over me. I thought it easier to simply recount these tales as if attributable to a single person rather than make distinctions between them of interest to no one but me, and maybe my boss himself. And, to be honest, this disclaimer is probably equally interesting to everyone reading it. Still, I felt the need to both make clear the true origins of the many actions described above so as not to mislead my readers, and to let my boss off the hook a bit, as my description really was not fair to him. (Though I somehow doubt he will ever read this.)

POSTSCRIPT IV

I realize my complaints are applicable to almost any job. I have worked in a variety of positions, so I know it is hardly unique to IT, nor is it unique to support organizations, nor to government. My only point here is that bureaucracy tends to make it commonplace, that these traits may sometimes appear in any enterprise, but they always do in bureaucracy. But that distinction may require more time than I have right now, so I will describe this in more detail in my longer post.