Why Does Post-Bureaucracy Lead to More Formalisation?

Abstract

This paper discusses and tries to explain the paradoxical observation that a local government reform aimed at reducing or even removing bureaucracy actually leads to more formalisation, not less. During the last 10–15 years more than 40 per cent of Norwegian municipalities have adopted an organisational model that makes the administration more disaggregated, decentralised and flat. The reform has been promoted by strong post- or even anti-bureaucratic rhetoric, arguing for increased managerial autonomy at the operational level. The basic idea is that greater autonomy will create better performance. The paradox of increased formalisation is discussed on the basis of rhetoric, unintended consequences, diagnostic problems and linguistic problems. The paper concludes by pointing out the need for a more nuanced conception of bureaucracy than the dichotomous approach of post-bureaucracy can offer. It also outlines a couple of supplementing explanations for increased formalisation.

Key Words:

• Local government reform
• agency model
• post-bureaucracy
• formalisation

Notes

In this paper, the term agency is used. The Norwegian term for agency is ‘resultatenhet’. The term resultatenhet may be translated in different ways, for instance as ‘service-providing unit’, ‘cost unit’, ‘performance unit’, ‘agency’, etc. Whatever it is called, these units are schools, kindergartens, homes for the elderly, home care, financial department, ICT department, etc., providing services to citizens or internal support to top management, to local political councils and boards and to service-providing units.

Only those municipalities were included where there was 100 per cent agreement among the respondents that balanced scorecard is being used. As for the eight remaining municipalities, the agreement ranges from 10 per cent to 67 per cent, a result which is in itself fascinating.