MGW1010 Essay: Bureaucracy and Building a Sustainable Workforce

This essay evaluates the effectiveness of bureaucracy in building a sustainable workforce in contemporary organizations. It begins by addressing the common negative perceptions of bureaucracy, such as inefficiency, while acknowledging that some large bureaucratic organizations have successfully fostered employee wellbeing and sustainable workforce practices. The essay emphasizes the importance of a sustainable workforce for authentic business results and long-term success, discussing change management, organizational structure, and the need for employee buy-in during organizational changes. It then explores the bureaucratic theory of management, highlighting the significance of clear labor divisions and honest communication from top leaders. The essay also examines examples of how companies like Haier have adapted bureaucratic structures to promote innovation and address market challenges. The essay concludes by summarizing the contributions and barriers of bureaucracy in building a sustainable workforce and recommends alternative management approaches for fostering employee wellbeing and driving future success.

Running Head: ESSAY
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The main purpose of this essay is to evaluate the effectiveness of bureaucracy towards
building a sustainable workforce in today’s organizations. The word bureaucracy conjures
images of sloth, inefficiency and states quiet mindset (Jensen, 2018). However, it is the case that
some large organizational structures despite being bureaucratic managed to continue in building
a sustainable workforce, an environment supporting employee wellbeing. Members of the
workforce are not seen as primary resources that can be deployed to serve employers economic
needs. When human resources are used in a sustainable way, workers are not only able to
perform in the role or requisite job demands, but also to flourish, be creative and innovate.
Focusing on building a sustainable workforce is must if a company aims to connect and produce
results authentically and successfully (Manginas, Manoli & Nathanail, 2017). While retention is
a cornerstone of success and healthy work culture, the cultivation of sustainable employees
protects the longevity of business while driving it toward future success. “Bureaucracy emerged
in response to organizational chaos and confusion so as to maintain uniformity and controls
within an organization.” Continual development and growth matter to an organization and that
includes an individual's personal development. Company sustainability typically looks at its
impact on the community locally and globally, but it starts with the people behind the scenes. It
unites them to create a better work culture, work-life balance and contributions to customers and
the world. In this article, we will see how bureaucracy can help in developing a sustainable
workforce within an organization.
According to Anglin (2017), the structure of a bureaucratic organization is the key to
implementing change management, and the way in which it is designed often becomes the
differentiating factor between success and failure. The arteries of the bureaucratic companies
tend to get clogged with time leading to a change in the institutional resistance. The way in
which the business imperatives are defined is crucial in making the employees buy into the
change initiative. For instance, if the employees feel that change is being driven because of the
personalities of the leaders and not necessarily because of the need to make more profits or
respond to competition better is a major put off when change initiatives are launched. Therefore
the bottom line is that the structure as well as the people making up the parts of the organization
needs to be changed first if the lasting and permanent change is to be achieved in the work field.

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At the end of 19th century, Max Weber was the first theorist to use and explain the term
bureaucracy and came to be popularly known as bureaucratic theory of management. According
to the theory, bureaucracy is perceived as better organizational structure than traditional structure
and states that everyone in a workplace should be treated equal and the labor division must be
clearly described for each employees. Tunwall & Stutzman (2017) added the way in which
change is communicated internally within the employees makes a lot of difference in
determining the success or otherwise of the initiative. The top leaders must be honest and truthful
in their communication with the employees while telling them about the business drivers for
change. In most cases, top leadership talks about change as it is their pet project driven solely by
ego and personal interests. Only when employees believe that the change program is needed
because of valid and relevant business factors can there be an acceptance and buy-in of the
initiative.
Lee, Jeong & Hong (2018) mentioned many times large companies consist of few
dominant businesses, each of them run by their own strategy, customers and technology. These
are the tightly integrated companies with their monocultures which make them vulnerable to the
other companies and blind towards new types of opportunities. To avoid this problem, the
company names Haier has divided into 4000 microenterprises, the majority of which consists of
10 to 15 employees (Fernandez, Koma & Lee, 2018). In the majority of the organizations, there
is only an as small percentage which supports in the works of both thinkings as well as doing.
The old assumption of an organization faces challenges only when it has hit a hurdle. But this is
not the case as Haier. Every microenterprise is ready to pursue ambitious goals to promote
development and growth. These are known as internal targets. Most of the organizations suffer
from the problem of insult of employees form market forces. Functions that they work in are
internal monopolies, such as research and development, human resource, financing,
manufacturing, legal affairs and information technology. At Haier, all the MEs are free to
purchase services from other employees of Haier. According to Anglin (2017), bureaucracies are
insular. They make sharp differences among insiders and outsiders which are characterized as
secrecy and reluctance tap outside partners in case of mission-critical tasks. Every new services
or product developed at Haier is in open. As an example, when building a new air conditioner is

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planned by the company, the social media of Baidu is used by it to ask the potential consumer
about their preferences and needs. Responses more than 30 million was received by them.
Frequent outmaneuvering of big companies by new companies has a big reason. An
instinct of bureaucracy is that it is conservative. Status id defended by it quo long time it has lost
its status. Outposts in Silicon Valley has been set up by many companies to defend themselves
from this reverence of precedence. Haier has changed its full organization into a start-up factory.
There are 3 ways to launch a new business at Haier. The most common case is an entrepreneur
proposes an idea online and sends an invitation to others to help him out with the freshly planned
idea. Secondly, the platform leader can send invitations to outsiders and insiders to submit their
proposals to exploit a white space community. Thirdly, upcoming entrepreneurs can uphold their
ideas at the Haier's shows throughout China, which forms a connection between platform leader
and local innovators. In the starting people used to think and act like the owners, often they used
to have equity in the ventures and some had also risked their capital in the hopes that they would
score big amounts. Start-up teams had a huge degree of autonomy and no one was there to blame
if the incurred losses (Jensen, 2018). In the combination of freedom, accountability and upside
gave the start-ups their chance to flourish. It turns out that no gain sharing nor did autonomy on
its own have a significant impact on the turnover.
Concentrating on the sustainable workforce is necessary for an organization to interface
and produce results effectively. While maintenance is a foundation of progress and solid work
culture, the development of supportable representatives ensures the life span of business while
driving it toward future achievement. For example, if the representatives feel that change is being
driven in view of the identities of the pioneers and not really due to the need to make more
benefits or react to rivalry better is a noteworthy put off when change activities are propelled.
Bureaucrats make sharp contrasts which are described as mystery and hesitance tap outside
accomplices if there should be an occurrence of mission basic undertakings. When workforce are
used in a sustainable way, workers are not only able to perform in the role or requisite job
demands, but also to flourish, be creative and innovate.

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References
Anglin, R. V. (2017). Promoting sustainable local and community economic development.
Routledge.
Fernandez, S., Koma, S., & Lee, H. (2018). Establishing the link between representative
bureaucracy and performance: The South African case. Governance, 31(3), 535-553.
Jensen, P. R. (2018). ‘People Can’t Believe We exist!’: Social Sustainability and Alternative
Nonprofit Organizing. Critical Sociology, 44(2), 375-388.
Lee, J. H., Jeong, H., & Hong, S. C. (2018). Accumulating human capital for sustainable
development. In Human Capital and Development. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Manginas, V., Manoli, S., & Nathanail, E. (2017). Enhancing sustainable mobility: A business
model for the Port of Volos. Transportation research procedia, 24, 275-279.
Tunwall, T. K., & Stutzman, M. L. (2017). Sustainability of the workforce human resource
influence. GSTF Journal of Law and Social Sciences (JLSS), 1(1).