Author: Thomaz Wood Jr.

Source: Carta Capital, 06/04/2009

It is said that the origin dates back to 1665, when King Louis XIV appointed Jean-Baptiste Colbert controller-general of finance. Colbert reorganized commerce and industry and persecuted the corrupt. In order to guarantee the fair performance of the government, he demanded that employees follow strict rules, applied to all. Colbert's rigor and inflexibility led Jean-Claude Marie Vincent, administrator of commerce, to criticize the resolutions, which he considered impediments to commercial activity. To illustrate his criticism, Vincent coined the term bureaucratie, referring, in a pejorative way, to the design and application of rules, without considering the practical consequences.

Bureaucracy is based on the idea that all functions are performed by qualified professionals and guided by certain principles: the legal nature of rules and regulations, the formalization of communication and the rational division of labor. The system was born to be the materialization of rationality. However, at the hands of bureaucrats, it has become a monster that we all learn to fear and abhor.

The list of dysfunctions and addictions associated with bureaucracy is long. The bureaucracy says that, before it, we are all equal. However, equal treatment is often accompanied by impersonality, neglect and inefficiency. Bureaucracy sacralizes rules, which go from means to ends. Between solving a problem and following a rule, the bureaucrat commonly chooses to follow the rule. Screw the citizen. Bureaucracy changes only slowly, when it does. The environment can be radically transformed, but bureaucracy does not adapt. It tends to become anachronistic. Bureaucracy is organized as a neutral and fair system. However, its complexity and size facilitate nepotism, abuse of power and corruption. The result is a central system in our lives, which we cannot escape, but which we tend to hate. Bureaucracy manages to add inefficiency to threatening power, the incompetence of slow amanuenses to the self-serving manipulation of corrupt officials.

Within the system, bureaucrats are constantly seeking “geographic and demographic expansion”. Bloated pictures mean more people to coordinate, more service to control and more power to exercise. Thus, bureaucracy combines negligence in serving the citizen with the ability to invent work for itself. John Kenneth Galbraith recorded for posterity: "The tendency of bureaucracy is to find objective in whatever is being done".

In public or private bureaucracy, bureaucrats procreate incessantly. Donald Keough, former CEO of Coca-Cola and author of The Ten Commandments for Business Failure, commented in reference to the multinational itself: “Having spent my first years in my father's cattle business, I found that if we put the right mix of males and females, we will end up getting many more animals. Bureaucracies are multiplying in the same way. Here's how they work: a manager is put in one place and, after eighteen months, he has an assistant. The assistant becomes a junior manager and what is observed? Another assistant. The rhythm continues ”.

In bureaucracies, the rules originally established to ensure clarity and efficiency are no longer means and become ends. In turn, bureaucrats control the system as if to protect their own lives, as they feel that changes can reduce their power or authority. Over time, bureaucrats become isolated in their castles, abuses become commonplace and eventual changes face insurmountable barriers.

In Pindorama, many companies and public agencies maintain unacceptable standards of service and relationships with citizens. From the Judiciary to the State, from the health care system to the education system, we see glaring cases of waste of resources and disrespect for taxpayers. We all have horror stories to tell. The situation is no different in some private companies. In addition to victimizing customers and employees, these organizations also victimize themselves. In the clash between forces for change and established interests, the latter continue to win.