A: Agency administrators can consult with committee chairs to minimize conflict and gain a sense of what might provoke a hostile response on the part of a committee overseeing an agency. The courts can punish an agency by cutting budgets, altering a key program, or holding a confirmation of a nominee to a top agency.

the president

Both Congress and the president exercise direct oversight over the bureaucracy by holding hearings, making appointments, and setting budget allowances. Citizens exercise their oversight powers through their use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and by voting.

Congress uses public hearings to monitor bureaucratic behavior. Under some circumstances, Congress can also control the bureaucracy by re-writing legislation and altering appropriations to provide greater direction to those who must implement its policies.

How Congress Influences the Federal Bureaucracy. Congress makes laws fixing the functions, jurisdictions, and goals of agencies. It sets agency budgets and conditions for how funds must be used. It can demote, merge, or abolish any agency it finds wanting; longevity does not guarantee survival (Lewis, 2002).

Bureaucracy can be reduced in a number of ways, although success is often limited.

• Appointment power and presidential persuasion.
• Reorganization.
• Privatization and deregulation.
• The power of the budget.
• Sunset laws.
• Executive branch reviews of the federal bureaucracy.

10 Steps to Take Action and Eliminate Bureaucracy

1. Know what you want to get done.
2. Know your priorities.
3. Eliminate paperwork whenever possible.
4. Cut out processes.
5. Empower people.
6. Don’t put off decisions.
7. Have the information you need ready.
8. Keep “Action” at your forefront.

It permits the president to divide, consolidate, abolish, or create agencies of the U.S. federal government by presidential directive, subject to limited legislative oversight. First granted in 1932, presidential reorganization authority has been extended to nine presidents on 16 separate occasions.

In these three ways, then – appointments, reorganization, and monitoring by the Office of Management and Budget – the president helps rein in those big bureaucratic Clydesdales and holds the bureaucracy accountable for its actions.

Formal and informal powers of Congress, the president, and the courts over the bureaucracy are used to maintain its accountability. The system of divided supervision creates checks and balances while at the same time often encouraging agencies to play one branch of government against the other.

Judicial Rulings Although the judicial branch power is limited, it can exercise control by making rulings, overturning or supporting acts taken under an agency’s rule-making, or by rule-adjudication authority.

The study found that about one-quarter of the respondents mentioned red-tapism as the major negative effect of bureaucracy. The workers complained of lack of discretionary power in decision-making as work was too centralized. In fact, others complained that it could lead to loss of interest in the job.

Disadvantages of Bureaucracy

• Rigidity: Rules and regulations in a bureaucracy are often rigid and inflexible.
• Goal Displacement: Rules framed to achieve organizational objectives at each level become an end to themselves.
• Impersonality: A bureaucratic organization stresses a mechanical way of doing things.

Bureaucratic structure provides the resource basis for governments to govern broadly speaking, and also the cement of modern political order and civilized political life (Fredrickson 2005; Fukuyama 2014; Kristof 2016; March and Olsen 2006).

How a Bureaucracy Works. Labels such as “bureaucrat,” “bureaucratic,” and “bureaucracy” often have negative connotations. Bureaucrats imply government personnel, and the term bureaucratic implies that set methods are more important than efficiency. The bureaucratic process lends itself to criticism.

Although the vices of bureaucracy are evident (and are discussed in the next section), this form of organization is not totally bad. Bureaucracy also discourages favoritism, meaning that in a well‐run organization, friendships and political clout should have no effect on access to funding.

Just like autocracy, bureaucracy is manifested in the management of Amazon based on some of the existing guidelines for employees. Moreover, Amazon’s bureaucracy can be seen in the ‘leadership principles’ drafted by the founder which dictates how employees should act.

Building In Customer Metrics From The Beginning Budgeting at Amazon is a subset of an exhaustive planning process known as OP1 in which every activity is reviewed in terms of its contribution to value for customers.

Amazon’s two-pizza team and STO organizational structures (i.e., agile structures) are designed so that employees stay close to Amazon customers, make high-velocity decisions, and avoid distractions and competing priorities. Multiple studies have supported that smaller, agile teams quickly produce more innovation.

They say that the secret sauce that makes up Amazon’s culture is made up of four ingredients: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and taking pride in operational excellence. “Amazon has never wavered in its commitment to these four core principles,” according to Carr and Bryar.

Our Leadership Principles

• Customer Obsession. Leaders start with the customer and work backwards.
• Ownership. Leaders are owners.
• Invent and Simplify.
• Are Right, A Lot.
• Learn and Be Curious.
• Hire and Develop the Best.
• Insist on the Highest Standards.
• Think Big.

Work Hard. Have Fun

The founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, had summed it up as one of Amazon’s core values: Customer Obsessed.

Google’s refusal to cut ties with the US military led to the resignation of around a dozen employees from the company, who cited ethical concerns and warned that autonomous weapons directly contradicted the firm’s famous ‘Don’t be evil’ motto.

Amazon Company Values

• First is customer obsession. Customers are at the top of the company’s interests.
• Invent and simplify. Amazon wants to make everything as simple as it is possible.
• Ownership.
• Insist on the highest standards.
• Frugality.
• Earn trust.
• Deliver results.