

Ask HN: Can we get an clear definition of bureaucracy and its implications? - wh-uws

I often hear this word tossed around and I know people seem to universally agree that it is bad but I can't decipher exactly what they mean by it from anywhere on HN.<p>Also in a theoretically perfect company how do you manage getting things done / ship without any kind of process while having a way for people to grow and advance in a company and still not bog it down with "political" "bureaucracy"?
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pg
Off the top of my head, it's when you can't act unilaterally.

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netcan
It's one of those instances where definitions, especially concise ones, always
end up conveying less meaning the the original word. They are really a bunch
of behaviors or characteristics we associate with the words. What is classy,
sexy, tragic, trashy etc.

What we can find are behaviors and characteristics that can act as a test for
bureaucratic or political because its hard to imagine a company embodying them
without embodying some others.

Political is neither equitable nor meritocratic. If a decision is made for
neither of those reasons, it will probably be described as political. Applying
it to hiring, promotions, raises, partnerships and sales seems to hold up
well. If the beauty queen isn't the prettiest and there aren't any equity
issues involved, it's political. If a hire isn't the best or a raise isn't
fair, it's probably political. I think there's a definition here. It's
interesting that this defines political decisions as pretty much a particular
class of wrong decisions.

Bureaucratic is when rules are obeyed for their own sake, not for whatever
reason they were made. I think it also implies lots of rules.

With those two definitions it seems like political is always bad. Bureaucratic
might have some uses.

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pshapiro
Just like a religion, it's when words and rules become more important than
problems (and thus the truth that can be confirmed through those problems). If
so, people are forced to do things that don't match the problems, and so the
reason why they do things becomes to match a rule instead of an existent
problem.

The implication is that the organization that runs like that will get bigger
and bigger, worse and worse, and the activities of the group will make them
exhaust themselves and lose their ability to understand their market and to
adapt quickly, as the source of their ability is based on seeing things that
exist now rather than a year ago. It's hard for a small organization to stay
afloat like that, much less an entire country. Although countries are so big
that they can appear to be doing just fine for a while but eventually the
interest catches up with them.

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iuguy
Doing things for the sake of doing it, even with the best intentions. See
'Best Practice', 'Competency Based Framework' or 'Standards Compliance
Management'.

I'm not saying those things can't be good, but they're not panaceas. If you're
aiming that high your sights are too low.

