“Bureaucracy Is an Outdated Organisational Structure Because It Is Too Controlling. in Contrast, Contemporary Organisational Structures Allow Employees More Freedom.” to What Extent Do You Agree with This Statement?

From the mainstream perspective, Bureaucracy is thought to be the most technically efficient and rational form of organization, which is based on rules, hierarchy, impersonality and a division of labour. Under bureaucratic organization, workers’ behaviour and bodily actions are controlled by management. Recently, there goes a saying that bureaucracy is outdated as it is too controllable and the contemporary organizational structure, namely the post-bureaucracy offers more freedom. However, in my opinion, I didn’t quite agree, since this is just on-sided and restricted idea. Hence, this essay will critically discuss the saying and pose the reasons why I didn’t agree. Firstly, we will analyze the control issues in bureaucracy in comparison with post-bureaucracy. Then we will illustrate the nature of post-bureaucracy to prove that post-bureaucracy is another kind of control.
Post-bureaucracy focuses on trust, empowerment, personal treatment and responsibility. Among the most famous mainstream theorists, Charles Hescher(1994),spoke highly of this structure, saying that it works as an organism, which lives, grows and changes entity with a mind of its own. Being more flexible and decentralized, it seems to bring employees more freedom. Additionally, employees are able to innovate and make their own decisions. In contrast, people in bureaucracies have to follow a number of disciplines and hardly have personal commitment to the organizations.
However, to consider in a critical way, post-bureaucracy is just offering another kind of control, which is more implicit. By saying this, what the critical approach means that post-bureaucracy poses control based upon some versions of culture management and trust. Just as Grey (2007) proposed that the bureaucracy is operating at the level of behaviour and bodily actions, while the post-bureaucracy is working at the level of belief and the mind. As a result, controlling in the post-bureaucracy is more deepened. As we have noticed