Beaurocracy; military chain of command

[sunspot]

Beaurocracies are based on a miltary chain of command. During wartime or during emergencies, beaurocracies are at their best, since they contain a feed-down chain of command, with a wide range of specialists at the lateral levels. But during peace time, one has this large standing army with too little to do. The solution, typically, to keep the troops sharp in case of an emergency, is to create a lot of busy work, usually paper work.

 

During the emergency, the paper work is often bi-passed for the sake of efficiency and speed of response. The forms can be filled out later when there is idle time and less to do. During the emergency there is often both a feed-down and feed-up system, where the leaders give the orders. This trickles down the chain of command to the people in the field doing the actual work. They report their progress, which works up the chain of command to create new feeddown. It is a very useful system.

 

During peace time, beaurocracies still work feed-down with the feed-up aspect bogged down by politics within the chain of command. Peace time is more a dog and pony show, with the chain of command trying to look pretty and therefore ressitant to anything that has even the slightest possibility of smudging their make-up job. Being cynical is the safest position because it prevents change. It is more complicated that, with all the marginally useful busywork of beaurocracy, taking up so much time and effort, while stunting free thinking. There are so many chefs arguing against that even making a simple soup becomes a major undertaken.

 

When I was in my early twenties, I was in the right place at the right time and inherited the position of the acting director of a graduate school program that was on location at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I had been the assistant to the director and his contract had expired. My job was to be a liason between the university and ORNL, gather projects for the fall sensester, and prepare student papers for publication, until they could find a more experinced replacement. At first, I went through the proper chanels at the lab, but was bogged down, via the feed-up chain of command. I was never good at bull.

 

One day, I got the naive idea, that since I was a director, of sorts, maybe I should deal with the Director of the Lab and skip all the middlemen, since we were both directors (dah). As it turned out, the Director was a very nice guy, who took a liking to me because of my naive optimism. After courting this relationship by discussing the historical relationship between the lab and university, the Director gave me the key the city, as well as a road map. This allowed me to go down the chain of command and after a few day I had everything I needed in the works.

 

After that I could never quite fit into the beaurocracy because my next jobs placed me closer to the bottom of the beginning of the tech ladder. I was fortunate, at first, because my new boss was a master of politics and innovation and he had the key to the sister city at the nuke weapons facility in Oak Ridge. I learned to become innovative from his open brain storming managment style but I never learn the art of politics, since I figured ingenuity would tips the scales. I did not fully understand the sterility of a beaurocartic environment and had to go it alone.

[Jim]

Beaurocracies are based on a miltary chain of command. During wartime or during emergencies, beaurocracies are at their best, since they contain a feed-down chain of command, with a wide range of specialists at the lateral levels. But during peace time, one has this large standing army with too little to do.

 

I'm not certain of your point but not all administrative agencies have emergency functions. Long ago I had some work before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission which, to my knowledge, doesn't have to mobilize for emergencies. The OCC engages in rate making and decides such issues as whether a utility consumer is entitled to a rebate and whether an abandoned oil well should be plugged. The OCC also inspects and permits gasoline tanks, etc., etc, etc. The body answers to three elected commissioners and has various functionaries which operate with varying levels of independence depending on their function. For example, although all administrative decisions can be appealed to to commissioners and then to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, deference is given to the lower level decision makers particularly with respect to ministerial activities or those which call for specialized expertise.

 

I'm not familiar with that many administrative agencies but I suspect all of them have unique complexities.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It would be nice if you could actually try to spark more discussion rather than just posting essays on various topics.

[Jim]

It would be nice if you could actually try to spark more discussion rather than just posting essays on various topics.

 

Yes, this was a more direct and brief way of getting to the obvious question: What the heck is your point Sunspot?