Limits to Bureaucratic Growth: The Density Dependence of Organizational Rule Births

Abstract

I thank the following people for help, suggestions, and encouragement: James G. March, Richard B. Peterson, Xueguang Zhou (for providing the time series of academic rule births and some of the covariates), Alfred Kieser, Paul D. Collins, Heather Haveman, Lloyd A. Jobe, and three anonymous ASQ reviewers. The study reported here uses a population ecology approach to examine whether bureaucratic rules breed more rules. Hypotheses about the birth rate of bureaucratic rules are derived and tested with time series data on rule production in a large U.S. research university. Results show that the rate of rule production declines with the number of rules in a rule population over time. The results support organizational learning theories: by expanding the number of rules, organizations increasingly respond to environmental challenges in a programmed way, reducing organizational experiences with new situations, inhibiting organizational learning, and thereby eliminating a main impetus for making more rules. Radical bureaucratization theories, however, are not supported.'