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Sharif Islam's avatar

isn't this the same argument from "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks (1975)? Brooks argues that adding more programmers to a project leads to increased communication overhead and makes it harder to coordinate efforts and thus resulting in a counterproductive effect.

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Making of a Historian's avatar

It's helpful to look at how bureaucracy evolved--what problems was it adopted to solve?

I see three. Size. Change. Diversity.

First two points are not controversial. First, size. "Bureaucracy" historically comes from oddly large orgs--military, church, shipbuilding--and was borrowed by other organizations. To get big, you need formal procedures that replace old customary or face-to-face procedures. Certain big organizations began to capture economies of scale and scope--in industry, government and social life--which led to the predominance of large orgs we see today.

Second point is change. The bureaucracy can work to bracket and in some ways mitigate changes in the modern economy. Its size in other words lets it provide insurance against unpredictable shocks. It can push its people and capital to smooth out short-term unpredictability and strategically navigate medium-term unpredictability. From the standpoint of the individual consumer the bureaucracy can provide a regular product or service even in the face of change. From the standpoint of the worker, the bureaucracy can offer a somewhat regular lifepath--with set daily activities, seasonal rituals, career progression, etc.

The final point, diversity, may be more controversial. I saw bureaucracies especially in social life arising to deal with exceptionally diverse groups of people. Cities exploded post 16 C--huge anonymous places filled with migrants. The experience of this diversity was uncomfortable. Bureaucracies helped to smooth this away. Instead of dealing with customary work relations you had written, explicit work relations backed up by formal supervision. Instead of dealing with willy-nilly social life, you had clubs with written rules and fines for breaking those rules. These let people (well, men) of different political, religious and geographic backgrounds come together temporarily.

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