BUREAUCRACY AND EFFICIENCY IN NIGERIAN PUBLIC ENTERPRISE CASE STUDY PORT HARCOURT DISTRIBUTION AUTHORITY (PHDA). UYO BRANCH
CHAPTER ONE
A bureaucracy is a body of non-elective government officials and or an administrative policy-making group. Historically, bureaucracy was government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution. Since being coined, the word “bureaucracy” has developed negative connotation. Bureaucracies have been criticized as being too complex, inefficient, or too inflexible. The dehumanizing effects of excessive bureaucracy became a major theme in the work of Franz Kafka, and were central to his novels, the castle and the trail. The elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy is a key concept in modern managerial theory and has been an issue in some political campaigns. Others have noted the necessity of bureaucracies in modern life. The German sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which one can organize human activity, and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies were necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency and eliminate favoritism. Weber also saw unfettered bureaucracy as a threat to individual freedom, in which an increase in the bureaucratization of human life can trap individuals in an impersonal “iron cage” of rule-based, rational control.
Etymology and usage
The term “bureaucracy” is French in origin and combines the French word bureau desk or office-with the Greek word kpertoc, Kato-rule or political power.
It was coined in the mid-18th century by the French economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay, never wrote the term down, but was later quoted at length in a letter from a contemporary:
“The late M.DE Gournay—-
Sometimes used to say:”we have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us; this illness is called bureau mania”. Sometimes he used to invent a fourth or fifth form of government under the heading of “bureaucracy” Baron Von Grimm”.
The first known English-language use date to 1818. Here, too the sense was pejorative, with Irish novelist lady Morgan referring to “the bureaucratic, or office tyranny, by which Ireland has so long been governed”. By the mid-19th century, the word was being used in a more neutral sense, referring to a system of public administration in which offices were held by unelected career officials. In this sense “bureaucracy” was seen as a distinct from of management, often subservient to a monarchy.
In the 1920s, the definition was expanded by the German sociologist Max Weber to include any system of administration conducted by trained professionals according to fixed roles. Weber saw the bureaucracy as a relatively positive development. However by 1944, the Austrian economist Ludwig von misses noted that the term bureaucracy was “always applied with an opprobrious connotation” and by 1957 the American sociologist Robert Merton noted that the term “bureaucrat” had become an epithet.
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The term “bureaucracy” was not coined until the mid 18th century, organized and consisted administrative system is much older. The development of writing and the use of documents were critical to the administration of this system, and the first definitive emergence of bureaucracy is in ancient summer, where an emergent class of scribes used clay tablets to administer the harvest and allocate its spoils. Ancient Egypt also had a hereditary class of scribes that administered the service bureaucracy.
The Roman Empire was administered by a hierarchy of regional proconsuls and their deputies. The reform of Diocletian doubted the number of administrative districts and led to a large-scale expansion in roman bureaucracy. The early Christian author laxatives claimed that Diocletian’s reforms led to widespread economic stagnation, since “the provinces where divided into minute portions, and many presidents and a multitude of interior officers lay heavy on each territory”. After the empire split, the Byzantine Empire developed a notoriously complicated administrative hierarchy, and in time the term a byzantine” came to refer to any complex bureaucratic structure.
In ancient china, the Han dynasty established a complicated bureaucracy based on the teachings of Confucius, who emphasized the importance of initial in family relationships and politics. With each subsequent dynasty, the bureaucracy evolved. During the song dynasty, the bureaucracy became meritocratic following the song reforms, competitive exams were held to determine who could hold which positions. The imperial examination system lasted until 1905, six years before the collapse of the Ding Dynasty, marketing the end of china’s traditional bureaucratic system. A modern form of bureaucracy evolved I n the expanding department of excise in the United Kingdom, during the 18th century. The relative efficiency and professionalism in this state in authority allowed the government to impose a very large tax burden on the population and raise great sums of money for war expenditure. According to Niall Ferguson, the bureaucracy was based on “recruitment by examination, trading, promotion on merit, regular salaries and pensions, and standardized procedures”. The system was subjected to a strict hierarchy and emphasis was placed on technical and efficient methods for tax collection.
Instead of the inefficient and often corrupt system of tax farming that farming that prevailed in absolutist states such as France, the exchequer was able to tax revenue and government expenditure. By the late 15th century, the ratio of fiscal bureaucracy to population in Britain was approximately 1 in 1300, almost four times larger than the second most heavily bureaucratized nation, France. The implementation of her majesty’s civil service as a systematic, meritocratic civil service bureaucracy followed the North cote-Trevelyan and report of 1854. Influenced by the ancient Chinese imperial examination, North Cote-Trevelyan report recommended that recruitment should be on the basis of merit determined through competitive examination, candidates should have a solid general education to enable inter-departmental transfers and promotion should be through achievement rather than preferment, patronage or purchase.
This system was modeled on the imperial minions system and bureaucracy of china based on the suggestion of North cote-Trevelyan report. Thomas Taylor Meadows, British’s consul in Guangzhou, china argued in his Desultory notes on the government and people of china, published in 1847, that “the long duration of the Chinese empire is solely and altogether owing to the good government which consist in the advancement of men of talent and merit only; and that the British must reform their civil service by making the institution meritocratic.
France also saw a rapid and dramatic expansion of government in the 16th century, accompanied by the rise of the French civil service; a phenomenon that became known as “bureau mania”. In which complex systems of bureaucracy emerged. With the translation of Confucian texts during the enlightenment, the concept of a meritocracy reached intellectuals in the west, who saw it as an alternative to the traditional ancient regime of Europe. Voltaire and François auxiliary denote favourably of the idea, with Voltaire claiming that the Chinese and “perfected moral science” and Quesnay advocating an economic and political system modeled after that of the diverse. Napoleonic France adopted this meritocracy system. In the early 17th century, Napoleon attempted to reform the bureau cries of France and other territories under his control by the imposition of the standardized Napoleonic code. But paradoxically, this led to even further growth of the bureaucracy.
By the mid-18th century, bureaucratic forms of administration were firmly in place across the industrialized world. Thinkers like John Stuart mill and Karl Max began to theorize about the economic functions and power structures of bureaucracy in contemporary life. Max Weber was the first to endorse bureaucracy as a necessary feature of modernity, and by the late 19th century bureaucratic forms hold began their spread from government to other large-scale institutions. The trend towards increased bureaucratization continued in the 20th century, with the public sector employing over 5% of the work force in many western countries. Within capitalist systems, informal bureaucratic structures began to appear in the form of corporate power hierarchies, as detailed in mid-century works like the organization man and the man in the gray flannel suit. Meanwhile, in the soviet union and eastern bloc, a powerful class of bureaucratic administrators termed nomenclature governed nearly all aspect of public life.
The 1980s brought a backlash against perceptions of “big government” and the associated bureaucracy. Politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan gained power by promising to eliminate government regulatory bureaucracies which they saw as overbearing, and return economic production to a more purely capitalistic mode which they saw as more efficient. In the business world, managers like Jack Welch gained fortune and renown by eliminating bureaucratic structures inside the corporation themselves.
Still in the modern world practically all organized institutions rely on bureaucratic systems to manage information, process records, and the widespread use of electronic databases is transforming the way bureaucracies’ functions.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Bureaucratic efficiency has now posed serious concern for all. It distorts the smooth operation of system of PHDA business unit Uyo and adversely affects the efficient delivery of public goods and services. The main problem of this research therefore revolves around some issues such as; the concept of bureaucracy, the good or bad state of the country’s socio-political climate, how sound and efficient is public bureaucracy.
In other to boost the research work, it will be important to rate the seriousness of the efforts of Nigerian government towards facing and eradicating bureaucratic in efficiency in her public administration, and it is also important to know the extent and the resects be to positive or negative the reform exercise has yielded and to know of it will be possible for Nigerian’s public administration or public enterprise to service without bureaucratic inefficiency.
This research is aim at;
- To find out the extent to which bureaucratic efficiency have undermined the smooth effective and efficient operation of Nigeria public administration.
- To identify, examine and analyze the remote causes of inefficiency in the country’s public services administration.
- To makes a well articulated recommendation that will to ensure sanity in our public service with a view to achieving efficiency and increase productivity.
- Has bureaucracy any significant impact in Nigeria public enterprise?
- What are the causes of inefficiency in Nigeria public service?
- Has delegation of powers enhanced efficiency in Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN)
For the purpose of evaluating or in order to efficiently
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