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Synonyms

Bureaucratic control; Clan control; Cultural control; Organizational culture

Definition

Bureaucracy refers to the way of organizing people characterized by functional specialization, formal rules, laws, regulations and hierarchical relationships.

Culture refers to the way of organizing people characterized by group work, socialization, informal norms, shared assumptions and values, dispersed authority, and codependence.

Introduction

Bureaucracy and culture are two vast research topics each with a rich tradition and abundant academic literature. Although these two concepts do not come into mind as an obvious association, in the existing literature, particularly in the context of organizational control (Jaeger and Baliga 1985) and new public management (Osborne and Plastrik 1997), they were often positioned at the opposite extremes. A more in-depth reflection on the nature of these two concepts (Du Gay 2005), particularly from a dynamic perspective of organizational life cycles...

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Centre for Research and Development under Grant number 611/L-4/2012.

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Correspondence to Tomasz Olejniczak .

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Olejniczak, T. (2017). Bureaucracy and Culture. 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_631-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_631-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

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