Organizational theory researcher here, so here's a tangential rabbit hole... Categorically, the institutional models are all vertical power structures that variously attempt to map out their ideal-type bureaucracy. IMHO, the problem with ideal-type bureaucracy is that it is trying to solve chaotic, complex, and/or complicated issues with simplistic non-solutions. Organizational charts can't solve our long-term issues (and let's never forget that these designs intend to promote and maintain power inequities rarely for anything but exploitive reasons). Moreover, history demonstrates institutions may only temporarily try to be success-driven strategic enterprises but quickly degrade into power-driven exploitive empires... probably without exception. The OPs question of the "most efficient" bureaucratic form implies the industrial-age thinking of scientific management.I study and practice both post-industrial and emergent ways of organizing, but one quip I can offer in an infographic level of detail is to offer a thought experiment."Imagine that we live in a different world, maybe a colony in the first century, and ask yourself how we might educate our children in this environment, pretending that for some reason, schools are the one thing we cannot build. As we think about this, we must not assume that what we teach in schools now needs to be taught in some other way. We simply need to ask what should one teach children, without assuming that what we have been teaching today is the right thing. To put this another way, the right question to ask is – what do we need to be able to do in order to function in the world we inhabit? The next question is, of course, how would we teach children to do those things?" Schank, Roger. Education Outrage (p. 6).Likewise, how could we go about our business if the one thing we cannot build is vertical (thinly-veiled power-driven) institutional businesses?
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Organizational theory researcher here, so here's a tangential rabbit hole... Categorically, the institutional models are all vertical power structures that variously attempt to map out their ideal-type bureaucracy. IMHO, the problem with ideal-type bureaucracy is that it is trying to solve chaotic, complex, and/or complicated issues with simplistic non-solutions. Organizational charts can't solve our long-term issues (and let's never forget that these designs intend to promote and maintain power inequities rarely for anything but exploitive reasons). Moreover, history demonstrates institutions may only temporarily try to be success-driven strategic enterprises but quickly degrade into power-driven exploitive empires... probably without exception. The OPs question of the "most efficient" bureaucratic form implies the industrial-age thinking of scientific management.I study and practice both post-industrial and emergent ways of organizing, but one quip I can offer in an infographic level of detail is to offer a thought experiment."Imagine that we live in a different world, maybe a colony in the first century, and ask yourself how we might educate our children in this environment, pretending that for some reason, schools are the one thing we cannot build. As we think about this, we must not assume that what we teach in schools now needs to be taught in some other way. We simply need to ask what should one teach children, without assuming that what we have been teaching today is the right thing. To put this another way, the right question to ask is – what do we need to be able to do in order to function in the world we inhabit? The next question is, of course, how would we teach children to do those things?" Schank, Roger. Education Outrage (p. 6).Likewise, how could we go about our business if the one thing we cannot build is vertical (thinly-veiled power-driven) institutional businesses?
- No location available
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