Bureaucratic & Humanistic Cultures

There's a natural dichotomy between conservative, control-focused organisations and progressive, outcome-focused organisations.

Early last century, Weber argued that bureaucracies are the most effective way of structuring labour. Toyota turned this around, showing that self-motivated employees are more effective.

There's a currently popular view that bureaucracy is more suited to process work, where autonomy seems less necessary and outcomes can be strictly measured, whereas adhocracy is more suited to knowledge work where high autonomy is required and outcomes are more difficult to quantify.

However, this ignores the learnings from Toyota where many jobs are process-oriented and measurable. It turns out that bureaucracy is almost never a superior option. It's a sub-optimal solution that organisations fall back on when more effective approaches have failed.

In Bureaucracies, control is more important than outcomes. So while bureaucracies state their values as accountability and achievement, these inevitably become blame and adherence to rules.

The following list indicates tendencies rather than absolutes, but the tendencies are strong.