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Mar 24, 2014

The labor theory of red tape

People who make decisions in a medium-to-large size organization inevitably have assistants. The higher in the hierarchy, the more likely they are to have one. Despite all the wonderful things the assistants do, there is a downside to having one or two or three: they shield the boss from the bureaucratic realities of one’s own organization. Assistants file paperwork, collect receipts in the strictly prescribed order, do and re-do forms as many times as needed. They are not in a position to bring to the boss’s attention the little absurdities of the workflow, because their job is exactly the opposite – to relieve the boss from the mundane, boring, and often irrational paperwork. This desensitizes managers.

Let us not go too far – I cannot remember when I did my own trip reporting paperwork. At UNC, Karon did them all, at RIC – Paula, and now Anya does it for me. So when faculty grumble about some stupid piece of annoying paperwork, I may be less familiar with what exactly do they mean, because I have never done what they are complaining about. Besides, my job is to keep my head somewhat above water and see the bigger picture, so it is easy to ignore the little stuff. Yet the ultimate success of an organization depends on its rank-and-file members, and the little irritants make a big difference to their morale and therefore productivity.

Now, in Russia it is relatively easy to hire another assistant, because the labor pool of good administrative assistants is relatively large and inexpensive. So instead of dealing with inefficiencies of organizational practices, we tend to through more people between managers and their own organizations. Therefore, the level of bureaucratization is relatively higher in Russia than it is in the US. (Just to remind you, I do not buy into all the mentality theories. It has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with economics and politics).

The cheap assistants are, of course, not the only reason. A larger one is the inadequate quality of many Russian laws and regulations. In the US, state-level regulations, and many federal ones can be also very messy. Sometimes truly stupid things will creep in. But in America, there is a functioning civil society, and the irritants tends to work themselves out through professional and civic organizations, their lobbyist, through local representatives, etc. In Russia, the only people to have real lobbyists are large businesses. None of the professions and none of NGO’s have any kind of lobbying power. Therefore, the legislative acts tend to stay buggy for years.

One recent example: an admiral dying of cancer shot himself when his family was unable to obtain narcotics because of an absurd legislation (restricting prescriptions terms and requiring a number of signatures). The most bizarre, the most shocking fact was that legislators in the Duma did not know that was a problem. No one told them, because Russian oncologists do not have a professional organization strong enough to hire a lobbyist. No one had a stake at maintaining the old law; the Duma sort of recognized it was a mistake. They simply did not know, or no one was able to convince them it was important.

Why is that? Partly it is a general weakness of the Russian civil society. But in part, it is a feature of the labor practices. The professional class such as doctors, engineers, university faculty – all have a relatively low status within their own organizations, and have neither time, nor the means to organize professionally independently of managers. And managers, as we know, have administrative assistants…

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