Bureaucracy and Innovation

TLDR

The study examines how bureaucratic structures influence innovation by contrasting them with psychological conditions that foster individual creativity. The paper aims to increase bureaucratic innovativeness through proposed structural changes. The authors recommend reforms such as increased professionalization, decentralization, freer communication, project organization, rotating assignments, group processes, continual restructuring, and incentive modifications. The study finds that bureaucratic conditions prioritize productivity and control, hindering creativity, but notes that organizations are gradually evolving toward more innovative structures.

Abstract

The relationship between bureaucratic structure and innovative behavior is examined by comparing the conditions within the bureaucratic structure with the conditions found by psychologists to be most conducive to individual creativity. The conditions within bureaucracy are found to be determined by a drive for productivity and control, and inappropriate for creativity. Suggestions are made for alterations in bureaucratic structure to increase innovativeness, such as, increased professionalization, a looser and more untidy structure, decentralization, freer communications, project organization when possible, rotation of assignments, greater reliance on group processes, attempts at continual restructuring, modification of the incentive system, and changes in many management practices. It is suggested that bureaucratic organizations are actually evolving in this direction. Victor A. Thompson is professor of political science at the Maxwell Graduate School, Syracuse University.