bureaucracy Archives - Talking About Organizations Podcast

112: Hierarchies & Promotion – The “Peter Principle”

The diligent administrative assistant moves up to supervisor but fails. The assembly line worker is promoted to foreman but cannot do the job. A teacher earns a deputy principal position in a school but falls flat on their face. Why is that? Why does this seem to happen across organizations? In The Peter Principle, Lawrence J. Peter and Raymond Hull not only provides answers to these questions, they delve into all the possible implications. The Principle goes like this, “In a hierarchy, everyone rises to their level of incompetence.” How they derived this principle the subject of our conversation that explores one of the funniest but more insightful book on the perils of organizational life ever written.

48: Stratified Systems Theory — Elliott Jaques

October 11, 2018 Ralph Soule

Elliott Jaques

Gillian Stamp

As bureaucracies became more prevalent as a feature of organizations post-WWII, questions surfaced as to how they could be improved. Was there an optimal way to design them? What was the best role of individual members within a bureaucracy? Could individuals be developed to handle higher level roles?

Among those asking such questions was Elliott Jaques, co-founder of the Tavistock Institute and later the author of the renowned book Requisite Organization that combined social theories with theories of organization. As a scientific approach to organizational design, the “stratified systems theory” of requisite organization sought to optimize the hierarchical structure based on the time-span of decisions at echelon. Then, using methods for measuring individual capabilities and capacity for decision making, members could be assigned posts within the organization based on best fit. Stratified systems theory (SST) established a common schema for using time-span that could be applied to any organization.

Stratified systems theory found a home in the U.S. Army due to its immediate applicability in the Army’s large, complex hierarchical structures during the Cold War. The seven strata prescribed in the Theory were found to be analogous with various echelons in combat organizations, and the individual capabilities mirrored the duties and requirements of officers at particular ranks from lieutenant (lowest stratum or Stratum I) to general (highest or Stratum VII). For this reason, and because the report is in the public domain, we opted to read Jaques’ Army Research Institute Report Level and Type of Capability in Relation to Executive Organization, co-authored with Brunel University colleague Gillian Stamp in 1991. The report gives both a good summary of the theory and a thorough explication of its potential use in practice.

But as a scientific approach to organization, SST has been heavily criticized and largely shunned. Why, and whether or not this is fair is among the many topics we tackle in this episode.

Part 1. The Problem Stratified Systems Theory was to Solve

Part 2. Problems with the Theory -- Why is it Shunned?

Part 3. Approaches to Building a Better Stratified Systems Theory

You may also download the audio files here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Read With Us:

Jaques, E. & Stamp, G. (1991). Level and Type of Capability in Relation to Executive Organization. Alexandria, Virginia: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Public domain.

To Learn More:

Kleiner, A. (2001). Elliott Jaques Levels With You, Strategy + Business, 22

Jaques, E. (1997). Requisite Organization: Total System for Effective Managerial Organization and Managerial Leadership for the 21st Century. London: Gower.

Jacobs, T. O., & Jaques, E. (1990). Military executive leadership. In Clark, K. E. & Clark, M.. B. (Eds.) Measures of leadership (pp. 281-295). Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

________ (1991). Executive leadership. In Gal, R. & Mangelsdorff, A. D. (Eds.) The handbook of military psychology (pp. 431-448). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

6: Bureaucracy – Max Weber

February 16, 2016 Dmitrijs Kravcenko

Max Weber

Max Weber (1864-1920) was a Prussian/German sociologist and philosopher famous for being one of the three founders of sociology, alongside Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim. Being a firm anti-positivist Weber’s interest in the nature of power and authority, as well as his pervasive preoccupation with modern trends of rationalization, led him to concern himself with the operation of modern large-scale enterprises in the political, administrative, and economic realm. As this is also the realm of management and organization studies, Weber’s work on the subject has been readily absorbed into a more nuanced and specialized study of public and private organization.

Weber was most interested in bureaucracy. He believed that bureaucratic coordination of activities is a hallmark of the modern and civilized society. This was not least because bureaucracies are organized according to rational principles, and rationality is an ongoing intellectual effort that is subject to education and discipline. In a bureaucratic organization offices are ranked in a hierarchical order and their operations are characterized by impersonal rules. Office holders are non-individual and those individuals holding office are fully separated from their private affairs. Recruitment and responsibility is governed by methodical allocation of areas of jurisdiction and formal spheres of duty.

One would be hard-pressed to find anyone in our current society not familiar with bureaucracy of some kind. And for good reason too – bureaucratic coordination of work on a large scale has become the dominant structural feature of modern forms of organization. Weber saw no alternative to bureaucracy in so far as macro-organizing was concerned – the movement of goods and people on time and in a reliable and efficient way was best achieved by a bureaucratic organization governed by most technically educated people.