About ecology

Every large organization is a bureaucracy in that it consists of a body of employees who perform its regular operations. They are the long-term personnel who carry out the established activities of the government, business, or military organization. "Their purpose is to stabilize and routinize operations so that they can be carried out regularly and consistently. Also, to act as brakes allowing time for the desirability and feasibility of proposed changes to be tested or for their gradual absorption into the bureaucratic system to take place without severe disruption." Major mistakes are minimized by successive review and actions conducted in accordance with formal procedures established gradually over the life of the organization. The knowledge concerning operations accumulated by bureaucrats over the years is passed on to their successors.

The term "bureaucracy" is associated today almost exclusively with government, disregarding the bureaucracies of business and those of the military services as distinct from civil government. Business and military organizations share most of the bureaucratic features of civil governmental bodies. But business bureaucracies functioning under capitalistic conditions are subject to competitive challenge in the commercial marketplace. Higher salaries and other forms of payment, bonuses, and stock options are probably greater incentives to self-improvement and better performance than government titles and military rank. Business also can relate advancement to sales or production quotas and other specific measures of performance not available in government. Perquisites and retirement benefits are available to both. Institutionally, government, business, and military bureaucracies have many more common characteristics than differences.