This article comes from WeChat public account: Collegiate Workshop (ID: ClecChina) , author: Xiao Zhixing
Discuss self-organization (Previous: “Only self-organization is the real organizational ability” ) , without the bureaucracy (bureaucracy)
No matter how powerful self-organization is, can you play bureaucracy? At first glance, self-organization is like a militia, a guerrilla, a dozen people, seven or eight guns; the bureaucracy is a regular army with well-trained, uniformed, and sturdy military songs. How can a guerrilla be an opponent of the regular army?
This is actually a typical imaginary histology imagination. The conclusion of academic research is completely contrary to the intuition of ordinary people.
Bureaucracy is a concept put forward by German sociologist Weber at the end of the nineteenth century. It refers to the management method and organization system for selecting officials according to their abilities, dividing functions and stratifying positions, and relying on formal rules for daily operations. , Widely used in government, military, enterprise, religion, social organization and other fields.
The introduction of the bureaucracy is the inevitable product of the development of capitalism and the industrial revolution to a certain stage. The pursuit of high efficiency by human beings has finally locked human beings as the spirit of all things into the iron cage of instrumental rationality.
The vast universe of the entire modern economic order has become an iron cage, a kind of ruthless order like steel. Until the last meal of coal in fossil form is burned out. “ (Weber) .
Several variants of bureaucracy
The concept of bureaucracy was first proposed by a German, perhaps because this system to some extent implied the unique collectivist temperament of relatively late Germans.
Because of this, this expressionless and rationalized tool is the first to show its huge power in Germany:
In World War I and World War II, the Germans quickly established a huge political-economic-military system by virtue of a strong bureaucracy. The instrumental attributes and value neutrality of the bureaucracy also gave extreme ideological madmen a very Good chance to get their hands on. Under their control, this system brought huge disaster to the world.
The bureaucratic logic comes out, like the devil coming out of a glass bottle, and can’t be taken back anymore. People in other countries must come up with their own way to deal with it. There is no other choice.
The temperament of people in different countries and the background of different national cultures determine the uniqueness of their coping style. Here I quote the study of French Michel Crozier to see how the French, the Soviets, the Chinese, and the Americans responded to this modern “devil.”
French Loose Coupling
Compared with Germans, French people are lazy and their personal space and personal freedom are more important than life.A typical loosely coupled (loosely coupling) .
They first separated formal and informal, work and life, and then in the field of formal and work, in the spirit of a philosopher and mathematician (The French traditionally value and are good at philosophy and mathematics) , with great wisdom and patience, construct a bureaucratic rule system that is complicated enough to make outsiders dizzy.
On the other hand, in the field of informality and life, they strive to exclude the formal system and protect their personal freedom with an artist and hedonistic temperament.
Typical methods include: alienation between French individuals, isolation and contention between levels within the organization, French aversion and avoidance of power relations, and so on.
▲ French bureaucracy often faces an intermittent crisis period
Another point is the infamous French bureaucracy. You have no other way than to act according to regulations.
After the accumulation of the entire huge system has reached a certain level, we will rely on the intermittent crisis period to achieve the overall adjustment.
Private relations of the Soviets
The bureaucracy faced by the Soviets may be darker than the bureaucracy in Germany and France for some reasons.
The orthodox personality of the Orthodox Church makes it easy for ordinary Soviets to accept all kinds of arbitrary interference in power. What is more frightening is that this bureaucratic system will slowly grow into a huge omnipresent intelligence gathering agency.