In Praise of Bureaucracy? A Dissent From Australia

This article explores whether bureaucracy creates alienation, through a case study of the Australian Public Service. By examining the structural determinants of seven job characteristics, it shows that alienation is generated by six features of bureaucracy: its clerical work, control imperative, organizational structures, impersonality, instrumental rationality, and language. The author argues that by de-bureaucratizing and closely aligning individual and organizational goals we can reduce alienation and increase worker productivity. The author concludes that by enabling civil servants to be efficient, equitable, nonpartisan, and accountable, bureaucracy does safeguard liberal democracy, but that in so doing it also generates alienation or “psychic entropy.”