introducing gerard coughlan LO14111

William O. Welsh III (wilycat@infi.net)
Thu, 26 Jun 1997 23:22:57 -0400

Replying to LO14094 --

gerard coughlan wrote:

> <SNIP>
> Ideally i wish to examine a bureaucracy where radical change has
> occured
> and see whether people at the bottom had an impact on the new
> direction.
> Bureaucracies are constructed to work from the top down, is it
> possible to
> work from the bottom up?
>
> Any comment or suggestions would be most welcome, as i have reached an
> stalemate situation.

I would suggest, Gerard, that it may be best to look where bureaucracy
isn't. If the change is as radical as you require, perhaps it is the
bureaucracy itself that does not survive. I'm not sure anyone actually
sets out to create a bureaucracy in the sense you describe (see Lawrence
M. Miller Barbarians to Bureaucrats: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies ).
So as long as the focus of the organization is to satisfy a genuine need,
I think bottom up is always possible. FWIW.

William.

-- 

"William O. Welsh III" <wilycat@infi.net>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>