Modernization and Bureaucracy in France: Assessing State Administration by Private Sector Standards

Abstract

State administration reformers have often claimed that the only real solution for the administration's presumed ill-bureaucracy-is to import private sector management methods.Using the "Changement Organisationnel et Informatisation" ("Organizational Change and Computerization") survey, which inquires into management tools used by French businesses and administrations while questioning organization employees about pay incentives and work instruction and control procedures, the study examines work in state administrations by way of categories usually applied in research on work in the private sector, finding that while pay policy in state administrations continues to follow the egalitarian French civil service model, work instructions and control-particularly in economic and financial ministries, which have implemented many of these new management tools-may be even more developed than in comparable private sector areas.Rather than weakening bureaucracy, therefore, the use of private sector management practices in public sector administration has actually resulted in even more bureaucracy.

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