Dysfunctional Bureaucracy : A Comparative and Historical Perspective

This book examines "dysborgs" (dysfunctional bureaucratic organizations) through the establishment of a theory of the dysborg and some of its theoretical antecedents, the study of conditions under which dysborgian elements recede in favor of functional bureaucracy, the reformulation of a theory of bureaucracy in academia, a study of the politics of bureaucracy in command economies, and an inquiry into the existence of convergence and divergence in the operation of the institution of bureaucracy in the East and West. Contents: The Theory of Dysfunctional Bureaucratic Organizations; Ibn Khaldun's Fourteenth-Century Views on Bureaucracy; The Bureaucratic East-West Synthesis; Bureaucracy, Politics, and Economics in Command Economies; The Bureaucratic Syndrome in Academia; An Analysis of the Uniqueness of the Japanese Public and Private Bureaucracy.

Bogdan Mieczkowski is Professor of Economics at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York.