Don't Conflate Process and Bureaucracy
Highlighting the sophistry of confusing process and bureaucracy helps us define bureaucracy with more precision.
Organizations evolve to solve important problems. We identify something that needs addressing, we figure out a way to fix the issue, and then we take steps to optimize the implementation of the solution, especially if it’s something we will repeat multiple times. Optimization means expending the least amount of resources or taking the smallest amount of time to obtain what we want.
For example, we may want to manufacture cars. This is a complex endeavor. We’ll develop processes and systems for making sure that we build cars of consistent quality in a predictable manner. This is called industrial engineering.
‘Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integumentary systems of people, money, knowledge, information and equipment. Industrial engineering is central to manufacturing operations.
Engineering ethics is vital in developing, implementing, operating, and maintaining systems and processes.
Here are some of the key ethical requirements from the Code of Ethics of the American Society of Civil Engineers:
· “first and foremost, protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public”
· “mitigate adverse societal, environmental, and economic effects …”
· “use resources wisely while minimizing resource depletion”
· “uphold the honor, integrity, and dignity of the profession”
· “represent their professional qualifications and experience truthfully”
· “act as faithful agents of their clients and employers with integrity and professionalism”
· “make clear to clients and employers any real, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest”
· “perform services only in areas of their competence”
· “only take credit for professional work they have personally completed”
· “provide attribution for the work of others”
· “act with honesty and fairness on collaborative work efforts”
· “comment only in a professional manner on the work, professional reputation, and personal character of other engineers”
· “report violations of the Code of Ethics to the American Society of Civil Engineers”
It’s not just engineers. The CFA Institute has its own very detailed ethical framework, replete with reporting (at least at the annual renewal window). Professions do these things to get people to trust them. Professions have the ability to police themselves, at least to some extent, because they have the faith of the public. Doctors, accountants, lawyers are all members of self-governing entities.
The people perceive these professions as acting in the greater interest of their clients. Lose that faith and things unravel.
Not everything that appears to be professional makes the grade, though.
People spend a tremendous amount of time trying to define bureaucracy. But an important aspect that we need to understand is that bureaucracies do not possess the engineer’s ethical dimension, even though their clients may assume otherwise. This may be the critical distinguishing characteristic of the bureaucracy.
Bureaucracies act in their own interests; professions have a duty of care to others. You can sue a professional for negligence. Good luck going after a bureaucracy.
Bureaucrats may be indifferent to optimizing systems and processes; the efficient way of doing things is an afterthought. The most important thing is advancing the organization’s interests. For a good example of this, here’s a story on the US Department of Transportation rollout of chargers for electric vehicles. The government has spent $7.5 billion since 2021 leading to the build-out of “only seven or eight” charging stations. They don’t even know with accuracy how many have been built. It’s not like there are thousands. Seven or eight.
We’ve seen previous examples of conflicts of interest or expansion into areas beyond their specific expertise or competence.
We can distinguish between processes that carry no prospect of personal political advancement and bureaucracies in which individual agents can and do subrogate the natural authority of the organizations.
We shouldn’t reject process with an automatic antipathy. We should be skeptical of bureaucratic motivation, however.
Our primary interest is to understand bureaucracy in order to be able to predict what it will do and how it will act.