The Bureaucratic Experience: The Post-Modern Challenge

Abstract

Everyone has trouble with bureaucracy. Citizens and politicians have trouble controlling the runaway bureaucratic machine. Managers have trouble managing it. Employees dislike working in it. Clients can't get the goods from it. Teachers have difficulty getting a grip on it. Optimists argue that soon all of this will be fixed. The new Fifth Edition of Ralph P. Hummel's classic text maintains just the opposite - that despite all the current rhetoric from proponents of total quality management, corporate reengineering, and the new public management, it's still "business as usual" for bureaucracies. The persistent reality of organizational structure remains resilient in the face of feel-good trends and values. For this edition the book has been thoroughly revised and updated, with two key changes: each of the six core chapters has been trimmed and edited to consolidate and streamline the important organizational theory developments since the book's initial publication; and, each chapter contains newly added critiques of the postmodern theory of modern organizations, pursuing the theme that postmodernism covers up the persistent reality of organizational structure.

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