CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
to the Study
Bureaucracy is a distinctive
arrangement used by human beings to organize their activities. The invention of
Western bureaucracy several centuries ago helped solve the problem for leaders
of governing human systems that grew larger and more complicated with each
passing year. The great virtue and probably defining characteristic of
bureaucracy, according to the one of the founders of sociology, German Max
Weber ( 1864-1920), is as “an institutional method for applying general rules
to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and
predictable”.
Weber contributed much to the
understanding of bureaucracy as a social phenomenon. His ideal bureaucracy
legitimately, efficiently, and rationally organized people and work to get
things done by the elected leader in a democracy. Bureaucracy, he noted,
provides for the role of the “functionary” (an interesting word), who is the
person interspersed between leader and electorate within a democratic system.
Ten features of the Weberian bureaucracy archetype follow:
1. The
bureaucrats must be personally free and subject to authority only with respect
to the impersonal duties of their offices.
2. The
bureaucrats are arranged in a clearly defined hierarchy of offices.
3. The
functions of each office are clearly specified.
4. The
bureaucrats accept and maintain their appointments freely—without duress.
5. Appointments
to office are made on the basis of technical qualifications, which ideally are
substantiated by examinations administered by the appointing authority, a university,
or both.
6. The
bureaucrats receive money salaries and pension rights, which reflect the
varying levels of the hierarchy. While the bureaucrats are free to leave the
organization, they can be removed from their offices only under previously
stated, specific circumstances.
7. The
office must be the bureaucrat’s sole or at least major occupation.
8. A
career system is essential; while promotion may be the result of either
seniority or merit, it must be premised on the judgment of hierarchical
superiors.
9. The
bureaucrats do not have property rights to their office or any personal claim
to the resources that go with it.
10.
The bureaucrat’s conduct must be subject
to systematic control and strict discipline.
Bureaucracy has been called a
concept with a career. Today it has at least four separate meanings:
1. The
totality of government offices or bureaus that constitute the permanent
government of a state; that is, those people and functions that continue
irrespective of changes in political leadership.
2. All
of the public officials of a government.
3. A
general invective to refer to any inefficient organization encumbered by red
tape.
4. A
specific set of structural arrangements.
Bureaucracy
is sometimes called the “fourth branch of government…While technically under
control of the executive branch, it sometimes seems to function as if it had a
will, power, and legal authority all its own.”
Most
people at some time or another complain about two main problems with
bureaucracy: inefficiency and arbitrariness,
according to political scientist and author James Q. Wilson. Wilson received
his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1959 and later taught at Harvard
and UCLA. (He is well known for his influential “broken windows” theory of
crime (1982), that is, if police and the community ignore public disorder
(symbolized by broken windows), then law-abiding people will be intimidated and
criminals will get the message that “anything goes.” Many police
departments adopted this theory as part of “community policing.” Without good
statistics on crime rates, nobody would know what worked in fighting crime.)
Weber was a German
sociologist and formulated ideas on the ideal management approach for large
organizations. Unlike Taylor and Fayol who tried to solve practical problems
related to the activity of managing, Weber was more concerned with the basic
issue of structuring the enterprise. He developed a set of ideas about the
structure of an organization that define what we know as “bureaucracy.”
The
characteristics of an ideal formalized organization or bureaucracy as described
by Weber consist of the following set of typical characteristics:
- Division of labor : authority and
responsibility are defined very clearly and set out as official duties; - Hierarchy of authority: office
positions are organized in a hierarchy of authority resulting in a chain
of command or what is known as “the scalar principle”; - Formal selection: employees are
selected on the basis of technical qualifications (merits) through formal
examinations, education or training; - Career managers: managers are not
owners of the units they administer, but professionals who work for fixed
salaries and pursue “careers” within their respective fields; - Formal rules: administrators must
function according to strict formal rules and other controls regarding the
conduct of their official duties. These rules and controls would be
impersonal and uniformly applied. .
Because of the emphasis
on efficiency that had developed around the turn of the 20th century, many management
scholars and practitioners interpreted Weber’s writings on bureaucracy as a
prescription for organizing. However, Weber was more interested in developing
his bureaucratic type as a method for comparing organizational forms across
societies. He believed firmly that not one single organization would conform to
the dimensions of his bureaucratic model. He only believed that some
organizations would have a close resemblance to his ideal type of bureaucracy.
Weber was merely testing his thesis of the modernization of society
characterized by rationalization. The more modern societies become, the more
rational the citizens will become and the greater the need to create
bureaucratic organizations. It was Weber’s interest in the rationality of
social life that directed his attention to the study of organizations.
On the topic of bureaucracy and
efficiency, Wilson wrote: “Efficiency is a ratio of valued resources used to
valued outputs produced…The smaller that ratio, the more efficient the
production. If the valued output is a rebuilt skating rink, [for example,] then
whatever process uses the fewest dollars or the least time to produce a
satisfactory rink is the most efficient process.”
But, Wilson notes, the valued output may
not be only a rebuilt skating rink! Government has many valued outputs,
including “a reputation for integrity, the confidence of the people, and the
support of important interest groups. When we complain about skating rinks not
being built on time we speak as if all we cared about were skating rinks. But
when we complain that contracts were awarded without competitive bidding or in
a way that allowed bureaucrats to line their pockets we acknowledge that we
care about many things besides skating rinks; we care about the onstraint that we
want government to observe.
But is honest and accountable in its actions and properly
responsive to worthy constituencies may be a very efficient government, if we
measure efficience by taking into account all of the valued outputs.” Wilson
concludes: “A perfectly efficient agency could be a monstrous one, swiftly
denying us our liberties, economically inflicting injustices, and competently
expropriating our wealth.”
Arbitrariness refers to “officials
acting without legal authority, or with that authority in a way that offends
our sense of justice. Justice means, first, that we require the government to
treat people equally on the basis of clear rules known in advance: If Becky and
Bob both are driving sixty miles per hour in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone and
the police give a ticket to Bob, we believe they also should give a ticket to
Becky. Second we believe that justice obliges the government to take into
account the special needs and circumstances of individuals: If Becky is
speeding because she is on her way to the hospital to give birth to a child and
Bob is speeding for the fun of it, we may feel that the police should ticket
Bob but not Becky. Justice in the first sense means fairness, in the second it
means responsiveness. Obviously, fairness and responsiveness often are in
conflict.”
Wilson says “the checks and balances
of the American constitutional system reflect our desire to reduce the
arbitrariness of official rule. That desire is based squarely on the premise
that inefficiency is a small price to pay for freedom and responsiveness.
Congressional oversight, judicial review, interest-group participation, media
investigations, and formalized procedures all are intended to check
administrative discretion.” Constraints such as these reduce the efficiency of
an agency but also its arbitrariness. “We want the government to be both fair
and responsive, but the more rules impose to insure fairness (that is, to treat
all people alike [like Becky and Bob above]), the harder we make it for the
government to be responsive (that is, to take into account the special needs
and circumstances of a particular case.)”.
Americans fear bureaucracy’s use of
discretion to guide decisions and actions, and insist on rules, for example,
particularly “at the hands of street-level bureaucracies that deal with us as
individuals rather than as organized groups and that touch the more intimate
aspects of our lives [e.g., police, schools, medical institutions, prisons].
That worry is natural; in these settings we feel helpless and The State seems
omnipotent. We want these bureaucracies to treat us fairly but we also want
them to be responsive to our particular needs…”
Did you know that European
bureaucracies are less rule-bound than American bureaucracies? This is true,
according to Wilson. “The United States relies on rules to control the exercise
of official judgment to a greater extent than any other industrialized
democracy. The reason…has little to do with the kinds of bureaucrats we have
and everything to do with the political environment in which those bureaucrats
must work.”
How then does a society strike a
reasonable balance between governance by rules and governance by discretion?
First, Wilson suggests, we must “sensitize ourselves to the gains and losses
associated with governance by rule rather than by discretion.” We need to be
aware that in America rules induce agencies to
1
produce
certain observable outcomes,
2
create
offices, procedures, and claims inside an organization that can protect
precarious values, and
3
Specify
minimum standards that must be met.
Talented, strongly motivated people
usually will find ways of making even rule-ridden systems work to get the job
done, says Wilson. Second, if we wish to complain about how rule-ridden our
government agencies seem to be, we should direct those complaints not to the
agencies but to the Congress, the courts, and the organized interests that make
effective use of Congress and the courts.”
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
The
public bureaucracy in Nigeria is beset with a number of problems that have
hampered its effective role in governance in the country. One of the major
problems confronting the public bureaucracy in Nigeria is its politicisation.
Several offices in the civil service were at one or the other politicised by
the military. These include the offices of the Permanent Secretary and the Head
of Service. although, there is nothing wrong with the bureaucracy performing
political functions, but the fear is that unless such political functions are
carefully controlled, they can further aggravate the already strained
relationship between the political officers and the bureaucrats, with
unpleasant consequences during a democratic regime. The political officers
would regard such political roles performed by the bureaucrats as usurpation of
powers and trespass. This however arose the interest of the researcher to find
out the effect of bureaucratic reforms on public service in Ivo LGA in Ebonyi
State.
1.3 Objective
of the Study
The
main objective of this study is to find out the effect of bureaucratic reforms
in the Ivo LGA public service; specifically the study intends to:
1.
Find out if bureaucratic structure and
control affects Ivo LGA public service to achieve its objective.
2.
Find out if bureaucratic reform improve
decision making in Ivo LGA public service
3.
Investigate if bureaucratic reforms improve productivity in
Ivo LGA public service
1.4 Research
Questions
1.
Does bureaucratic structure and control
affects Ivo LGA public service to achieve its objective.
2.
Does bureaucratic reform improve
decision making in Ivo LGA public service
3.
Does
bureaucratic reforms improve productivity in Ivo LGA public service
1.5 Significance
of the Study
1.
The findings in this study shall be of
immense help to administrators and managers in correcting animates coherent in
a bureaucracy set up.
2.
It will aid the government and
organizations to avoid bureaucracy bottle neck red tapes and I do not care
attitude portrayed by workers.
3.
it will also help organization in
boosting productivity
4.
Corporate bodies and entrepreneurs that
mish to shard their own business organization would find this study invaluable
in t heir endeavors.
5.
academically, it will help other
researchers in further research
1.6 Scope
of the Study
Since
in large organization bureaucracy is eminent and inevitable for the success of
such organization, the study shall focus on the public service in Ivo LGA in
Ebonyi state due to its structural
largeness the study shall be narrowed down to the administrative sections.
1.7 Limitation
of the Study
In
the study the researcher encouraged certain constraints that impede the
academic work. These are:
i.
time constraints
ii.
unwillingness of staff to give out
information
iii.
funding
iv.
Other academic workload.
Time Constraint: This
posed as a limitation to the study, as the time framework constructed by the
department for the kickoff of the study was incompatible with our academic work
and session bread
Unwillingness: the
researcher could not gather as much information and facts due to noncompliance
and non-challant attitude of
respondents that workers against the study
Funding; this is
another are of constraint the researcher faced. Finance was not available for
mobilization of the work
Other
Academic Workload: the researchers department semester
course load was numerous and cumbersome and thus acted as a limitation factor
of the study.
1.8 Definition
of Terms
a.
Bureaucracy:
is the official rules and ways of doing things that a government or an
organization has with positions an authority will defined hierarchically so as
to facilitate the attainment of organization goals.
b.
Administration;
a systematic ordering of affairs and the calculated use of resources. Aimed at
making those things which we went to happen (F.M. mac 1984:4)
c.
Objectives:
something that one tries to achieve, it is also the aim o goals an organization or government
seek to achieve
For clarity sake most of the key concepts used in this
research, need the definition.
Bureaucracy: consists of a form functions of the government the
bureaucratic organization are concerned with administrative functions the
execution of policies, and recording of goods and services.