ABSTRACT

Corsica, according to Gibbon, is easier to deplore than describe. The same holds for “bureaucracy,” I suppose, which is strange indeed as very few of us have lived in Corsica, but all of us have lived in bureaucracies—for many years. Bureaucracy is a term invented by Max Weber to analyze the pervasive pyramidal form of human effort, as old as time itself. Since I attempt a brief definition in the first essay, I won’t belabor definitional problems now, except to say that I use “organization” and “bureaucracy” as synonyms for convenience, and throughout the book, this convention seems to hold up rather well. I should also say, by way of introduction, that the mystique and ambiguity emanating from bureaucracy can only be explained, in my view, in the same context as the old proverb, “Fish discover water the last.”