The Reverse Flow of Documents:When the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy Encounters the Iron Wall of Professional Skills
The top-down efforts to enhance societal governance have witnessed gradual expansion of bureaucracy to community committees.Pundits also predicted that the expansion of bureaucracy into the non-bureaucratic organization is unstoppable due to its advantage in efficiency.However,is the expansion of bureaucracy really unstoppable?Case study on a Beijing community shows otherwise.In handling a case for the high-profile"Processing Public Complaints without Delay"program,community committee and subdistrict office witness a phenomenon we dubbed as"the Reverse Flow of Documents",i.e.the paperwork that should have been completed by the community committee according to the principle of bureaucratic division of labor has to be returned to the subdistrict office for completion because the former lacks the proper professional skills in documenting.The expansion of bureaucracy was obstructed.The phenomenon indicates that expansion of bureaucratic iron cage may encounter the iron wall of professional skills.The lack of professional skills,or the iron wall,is rooted in the contradiction between the characteristics of non-bureaucratic grassroots organizations and the principle of bureaucracy.
bureaucratizationProcessing Public Complaints without Delaygrassroots governancesocietal governance
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