Bureaucracy, Public Servants, and Digitalisation in Public Service Provision

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Is bureaucracy ‘dead for good’ in the delivery of public services? Are there any of the principles defined by Max Weber still relevant for public sector organisations? Use relevant examples to develop your answer to the questions.Bureaucracy is a management approach that emphasizes a structured organization where positions and authority are defined based on formal rules. In other words, bureaucracy relies on a set of rules and procedures, including the separation of functions and hierarchical structure (Wahab and Jawando, 2008). In the public sector, bureaucracy calls for the separation of functions. For instance, government departments are staffed with non-elected officials, a move aimed at separating administration from politics. It is widely used in the public sector to organize and manage government agencies. While bureaucracy has widespread use, it has been facing criticism. Recently, technological, competitive, and political changes have reconfigured the organizational landscape. Organizations are trying to make their operations more efficient to ensure they are not left behind in the changes taking place. In this context, bureaucracy has been receding in both general and scholarly discourse. Bureaucracy has been seen as slow, inflexible, and leading to a lack of responsiveness to the needs of the people (Monteiro and Adler, 2022). Despite the widespread criticism of bureaucracy and its receding in general and scholarly discourse, there is a sharp contrast to reality on the ground. Bureaucracy continues to be used widely and has proven remarkable in management practice. Hence, bureaucracy is not dead as some people might think.
Public sector organizations continue to rely on core features of democracy to deliver services to the citizens. Sociologist Max Weber’s focus on the trend of rationalization led him to examine the operation and expansion of large-scale enterprises in both the public and private sectors. Weber believed that the bureaucratic coordination of human actions was a critical mark in the modern social structure. He formulated a set of principles he believed defined a bureaucratic organization, which are still applicable in public sector organizations. One of the relevant principles is the hierarchy. The principle indicates that higher positions exert control over the lower ranks. In an organization, hierarchy demands the establishment of a chain of command that outlines positions and how they relate (Seo et al., 2012). There is a top-down approach, where the top supervises the activities of the lower positions. The principle of hierarchy is critical for the functioning of government institutions. The presence of a clear chain of command ensures that public servants understand their authority and its limitations. For instance, the National Health Service (NHS) has a hierarchical structure where the superiors have control over how the organization operates. The top-down approach in NHS ensures that citizens can hold the organization accountable for its actions since they can establish the individuals who made a particular decision.
Another principle relevant to the government sector is written and formal procedures. This means that b...