Is hierarchy good for bureaucracy or organization in the age of technology?

Mohammad Hossain
Deconstructing Public Administration
3 min readNov 17, 2018

I have no clear idea about bureaucracy, as we have a course called Public Administration, so we learn about bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy may have good side or bad side, but I am not going to discuss it.
We know about the Max Weber’s ideal bureaucracy. As there are rules and regulations,hierarchy, emphasis the division of labor, Impersonal relationship between bureaucrats and general man,Basic principle of bureaucracy, there is be accountability etc. If we talk about hierarchy here, we see that there is a specific chain in the hierarchy, from the up level to the lower level of the officials work. In fact, those people who take service through these hierarchy are actually being benefitted or are they facing more problems? And those who are giving the service they ever think of as a service provider? Of course, there is no time to think about it, at least in most of our country there is no awareness among these bureaucrats, and there is no one here to ask them for accountability at a place like Bangladesh. Now,
with a little incident we will try to compare it. One of my cousins, he was admitted to college in the year 2017, stopped studying for 5–6 months after going to college, because of the huge amount of monthly fee in the college and the travel arrangements as well as the college were far from his house. And he decided that in the next year Admission will change. For this reason, he want to meet with the principal of his college, for which he tells to the office Assistant. afterwards he can not easily meet the Principal, than he meet the Principal through a Political Leader, and he talks with Sir about the issue of changing college. During this time, Sir told him to go to the upazila education office and he went to the upazila education office. After going there, he sent him to college and said that it is possible to solve this problem only through the college! When he went to college, the principal told him to go to the Education Office with necessary documents and fixed fees than he did it. After going to the board office, the office assistant at that office told the four different officers and assistant officers to be certified in those papers. Now he goes from one desk to another desk. The first day he could not work. On the second day he did it again to sign his papers from one desk to another desk and he signed it later. Now he get his permission to change his admission.
In the meantime, his work was completed in a long-term processing, and in the long run a work could have been possible.
How logical is the hierarchy’s work in this situation? Many harassment goes through the bureaucracy of certain Bangladeshi organizations, where one does not need to be accountable. Finally the service receivers suffer. But if there was a relative of bureaucrats in this place, then it would not have been so much trouble.
In this era of technology, going to the office, going from one desk to another desk, it’s very boring for this generation.
I think in this era of technology, such a hierarchy is possible with any particular office or specific person to do any such work in such a short time and it will be more rewarding. We saw the problem like hierarchical or responsible in all of the administrative place.

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