ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one aspect of bureaucratic behavior, the shedding or reduction of caseload, as a systematic strategy for coping with this organizational stress. Across modem societies, a wide variety of organizational structures have been developed in order to process myriad human problems. Bureaucracies often operate within work environments subject to drastic fluctuations in their case- or work load. These fluctuations frustrate efforts by the organization to plan and organize its routine activities to cope best or manage its work load. Coping with the ongoing organizational stress becomes a primary objective of the organization’s leadership. Outsiders can truly be from outside the organization’s boundaries or else be higher echelons within the larger organization. The envisioned reduction is to be done in such a manner as to make the organization in some overall sense more responsive in achieving its socially important goals.
