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Bureaucratic Reform

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  • First Online:
Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance

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Synonyms

Administrative reform; Civil service reform; Organizational change; Public management reform

Definition

A structured set of institutional changes to processes, values, personnel, and technologies in the public sector. These changes are designed to address perceived weaknesses or dysfunctions in existing systems.

Introduction

Bureaucratic reform is a planned approach to improving the work of public agencies through reorganization of structures, basic processes, and tools. It normally, though not necessarily, also involves changing or integrating new organizational values, objectives, and philosophies of government. The study of bureaucratic reform has deep roots in public administration and public policy theory. Classical public administration concerned itself with the problem of how to redesign bureaucracy to work better. Woodrow Wilson (1887) argued that, while administrative tools had been used to justify overreaches of government authority in history, the same tools could...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Alex Ingrams

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  1. Alex Ingrams
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Correspondence to Alex Ingrams .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA

    Ali Farazmand

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Ingrams, A. (2018). Bureaucratic Reform. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_626-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_626-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

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