The Iron Law of Bureaucracy: RIP Jerry Pournelle
I write a lot about LBOs, Large Bureaucratic Organizations. I also often think, but don’t write, about an explanation (or theory, if you like) of what makes such organizations such a force for evil in the world.
In my recent gadding about the internet, I came upon something called Pournelle’s Law, which has convinced me that I need not trouble myself to come up with Al’s Theory of LBO Evil. This guy figured it out some time ago:
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Pournelle is one Jerry Pournelle, who wikipedia tells me “was an American scientist in the area of operations research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers.” He died in 2017, but I want to say – I think Jerry had something there. His Iron Law does put in a nutshell much of what I have been thinking about LBOs.
That definition of the Iron Law above I got from Pournelle’s blog, which is inactive, since he is, but which you can still find in all its glorious primitivity here. You can also still navigate around it, but only verrrry slooowly.
Now, while I happily acknowledge that Pournelle got there first, I am going to presume that I can update and perhaps even improve on his excellent Law.
First, a minor point. The example of someone working for the organization in that paragraph above – the ‘org type’ I will call them – should be that of a school district administrator rather than a union representative. You know, like those whiz-bang senior administrators who drove the local school board here in London to a $32 million deficit last year, in no small part by hiring more and more administrators. (The teachers’ union played its part also, as one of the big expenses was pay to teachers filling in for regular teachers who don’t show up.)
The existence of a teachers’ union instead means that for teachers there are two LBOs working to make it difficult for them to educate children. That was certainly the case in my career, where it was a toss-up on any given day as to whether I would be more pissed off at the U’s administrators or the union that was ‘representing’ me.
More substantively, I want to also add a dynamic element to P’s Law (as I will now briefly refer to it). At any given time it is correct that there are the two kinds of people mentioned in any LBO. However, because those who work for the org (rather than the org’s stated goals) end up making all the rules, as P’s Law states, and they also typically make the higher salaries, there is movement over time from the ‘goal’ group to the ‘org’ group – but not the reverse. Because of this net people movement, the proportion of those in the LBO that belong to the org group rises over time, and hence the LBO itself becomes more and more an org whose primary goal is to perpetuate itself. The stated goals of the org – educating people, for example – become secondary to the goal of perpetuating the org itself, and hence maintaining the positions of the org types.
I’ll call this Al’s Dynamic Law of Bureaucracy. Cool, eh? I’ve always wanted there to be some kind of Al’s Law[i].
Think about it. We could educate people just by having school principals hire teachers and leaving them alone, with no school boards, administrators or unions. Indeed, that was the case in the rather distant past. But then the org types would have no jobs. That would be better for students and teachers, I am convinced, but the org types are, as P’s Law says, in charge. They make the rules. There is a quote attributed to Peter Drucker, often called the ‘father’ of management theory, which says that:
‘Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.’
I can’t find a reliable attribution – to Drucker or anyone else – for that quote, but it is certainly an accurate description of the contribution of almost all university administrators to my career. The Iron Law explains why this is so. The org types who manage the org are not trying to further the goals of the organization, which were, in my case, educating young people and doing research. They are trying to make sure the org and their cushy jobs survive.
Now any good theory, to be useful, must help to explain why the world looks the way it does. Well, Al’s dynamic version of P’s law explains the well-documented fact that the number of administrators in universities across North America has grown faster than the number of faculty and students. Indeed, in a previous post I unearthed a number of US universities in which the number of administrative staff was greater than the number of faculty or students.
This happens through a couple of processes in a University LBO. First, some folks who are hired as faculty – as ‘goal types’, that is – switch to becoming administrators at some point in their careers. They become Chairs then Deans or Associate Deans and then embark on a career of climbing the administrative ladder, perhaps with a goal of becoming a Provost or President at some point. Almost no one who gets as far as being a Dean on that ladder ever goes back to being a faculty member.
However the more important mechanism through which the dynamic law works is that administrators hire more administrators, and the senior administrators have the ability to prevent the hiring of more faculty. As an example, my old employer is claiming to be in financial trouble these days, and so my old department hired only one faculty member last year, despite the resignation of two faculty, the death of another, the pending resignation of two more, and another retirement after my own. The admins have also instituted a policy that no class can be taught with a student enrollment of less than 15. I have heard of no plans to lay off or to not replace any retiring associate vice-presidents.
Thus, the org types have direct control over the ratio of org to goal types in the LBO, and so it is hardly a surprise that the ratio moves in favour of the org types over time.
I think P’s Law and its Slivinski elaborations have great potential for understanding our world. You can expect to read more about this here in the future.
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[i] When I was a young faculty member and spent a good deal of time talking and arguing with graduate students in the Grad Pub, I did formulate Slivinski’s 2nd Law, which had a pretty good run among the students. It stated ‘The distribution of assholes across the known universe is approximately uniform.’ I know, you’re wondering – what was Slivinski’s 1st Law? No one remembers. Including Slivinski.