Structural sources of overconformity
Such inadequacies in orientation which involve trained incapacity clearly derive from structural sources. The process may he briefly recapitulated. (1) An effective bureaucracy demands reliability of response and strict devotion to regulations. (2) Such devotion to the rules leads to their transformation into absolutes; they are no longer conceived as relative to a set of purposes. (3) This interferes with ready adaptation under special conditions not clearly envisaged by those who drew up the general rules. (4) Thus, the very elements which conduce toward efficiency in general produce inefficiency in specific instances. Full realization of the inadequacy is seldom attained by members of the group who have not divorced themselves from the meanings which the rules have for them. These rules in time become symbolic in cast, rather than strictly utilitarian.
Thus far, we have treated the ingrained sentiments making for rigorous discipline simply as data, as given. However, definite features of the bureaucratic structure may be seen to conduce to these sentiments. The bureaucrat’s official life is planned for him in terms of a graded career through the organizational devices of promotion by seniority, pensions incremental salaries, etc., all of which are designed to provide incentives for disciplined action and conformity to the official regulations. (15) The official is tacitly expected to and largely does adapt his thoughts, feelings and actions to the prospect of this career. But these very devices which increase the probability of conformance also lead to an over-concern with strict adherence to regulations which induces timidity, conservatism, and technicism. Displacement of sentiments from goals onto means is fostered by the tremendous symbolic significance of the means (rules).
Another feature of the bureaucratic structure tends to produce much the same result. Functionaries have the sense of a common destiny for all those who work together. They share the same interests, especially since there is relatively little competition in so far as promotion is in terms of seniority. In-group aggression is thus minimized and this arrangement is therefore conceived to be positively functional for the bureaucracy. However, the esprit de corps and informal social organization which typically develops in such situations often leads the personnel to defend their entrenched interests rather than to assist their clientele and elected higher officials. As President Lowell reports, if the bureaucrats believe that their status is not adequately recognized by an incoming elected official, detailed information will be withheld from him, leading him to errors for which he is held responsible. Or, if he seeks to dominate fully, and thus violates the sentiment of self-integrity of the bureaucrats, he may have documents brought to him in such numbers that he cannot manage to sign them all, let alone read them. (16) This illustrates the defensive informal organization which tends to arise whenever there is an apparent threat to the integrity of the group. (17)
It would be much too facile and partly erroneous to attribute such resistance by bureaucrats simply to vested interests. Vested interests oppose any new order which either eliminates or at least makes uncertain their differential advantage deriving from the current arrangements. This is undoubtedly involved in part in bureaucratic resistance to change but another process is perhaps more significant. As we have seen, bureaucratic officials affectively identify themselves with their way of life. They have a pride of craft which leads them to resist change in established routines, at least, those changes which are felt to be imposed by others. This non logical pride of craft is a familiar pattern found even, to judge from Sutherland's Professional Thief, among pickpockets who, despite the risk, delight in mastering the prestige-bearing feat of “beating a left breech’ (picking the left front trousers pocket).
In a stimulating paper, Hughes has applied the concepts of “secular” and “sacred” to various types of division of labor; “the sacredness” of caste and Stande prerogatives contrasts sharply with the increasing secularism of occupational differentiation in our society. (18) However, as our discussion suggests, there may ensue, in particular vocations and in particular types of organization, the process of sanctification (viewed as the counterpart of the process of secularization). This is to say that through sentiment-formation, emotional dependence upon bureaucratic symbols and status, and affective involvement in spheres of competence and authority, there develop prerogatives involving attitudes of moral legitimacy which are established as values in their own right, and are no longer viewed as merely technical means for expediting administration. One may note a tendency for certain bureaucratic norms, originally introduced for technical reasons, to become rigidified and sacred, although, as Durkheim would say, they are laique en apparence. (19) Durkheim has touched on this general process in his description of the attitudes and values which persist in the organic solidarity of a highly differentiated society.