بوروکراسی، بی نظمی مدیریتی، و شکست اداری در سازمان های عدالت کیفری

This article presents a novel way to explain managerial collapse in criminal justice agencies by analyzing traditional organizational perspectives. While recognizing the advances of human relations and contingency management theories, most criminal justice agencies in the twenty-first century remain hierarchical Weberian organizations characterized by mechanistic and formalistic operations, with specialized tasks and division of labor that create a narrow range of duties. Along with Weber, Fayol, and more recently, DiIulio and Wilson have argued that managerial quality determines organizational performance. This article extends that focus by using the theoretical perspective called managerial disorganization and administrative breakdown, hypothesizing that management is responsible for well-functioning and/or dysfunctional organizations. Through a series of examples from case studies where criminal justice agencies have failed, the article concludes that agencies experiencing administrative breakdown and managerial disorganization are not implementing their basic mission and inappropriately utilizing the organizational principles of division of labor, unity of command, span of control, accountability, hierarchy of authority, and communication.

With the ascendancy of science, Taylor (1911/1947) merged managerial concepts and the application of empirical methods to organizational control of factory workers. Taylor advocated for efficient managers to analyze, predict, and control behavior of employees in complex organizations. Efficacious managers define laws, rules, and principles that incorporate first-class workers within the organizational framework (Freedman, 1992). Another theorist from the traditional school, Max Weber (1946/1992) argued that bureaucracy was “the core of modern government” (Stillman, 1992, p. 37). From an idealistic organizational perspective, pure bureaucracy relates to Weber's functional, impersonal, and hierarchical system based on legal authority that operates under a system of abstract rules and pursues legitimate organizational goals (Albrow, 1970). Weber saw rationalization of bureaucratic structures as essential to social process and embraced rationality as the central ideal of organizational life (Maier, 1991). Weber's bureaucratic organization follows a structured chain of command, which facilitates accomplishment of organizational objectives (Wren, 1994), with a rigid hierarchy of offices, and formal rules that govern agency action (Stojkovic, Kalinich, & Klofas, 2003). Weberian organizations are characterized as mechanistic and formalistic, with specialized tasks, and division of labor that creates a narrow range of duties. Organization matters because bureaucratic success is related to implementation of efficient and effective organizational systems (Wilson, 1989). In the Weberian tradition, organizational systems are important because they define performance standards, outline a proper chain of command, specify the hierarchy of authority, and establish lines of communication. Breakdown/disorganization theory was developed from numerous managerial and organizational theories and concepts. Elton Mayo's (1945) human relations school and the contextual approaches of situational leadership (Hersey & Blanchard, 1969) and contingency management (Blake and Mouton, 1964 and Fielder, 1998) have made considerable scientific improvements over the basic traditional theories of Taylor and Weber. Absence of these modern theoretical perspectives within modern criminal justice agencies reflects more on the intransigent institutional nature within criminal justice institutions, rather than on the efficaciousness of contingency and situational management. Most criminal justice agencies are rigid, old-fashion, bureaucratic, paramilitaristic organizations that stick to the traditional views of DiIulio, Fayol, Taylor, Weber, and Wilson. For better or worse, criminal justice agencies remain hierarchical organizations, which is the primary focus on this article. While there is no perfect organizational system, bureaucratic organizations can function appropriately. Fayol (1949), for example, identified several essential elements of organizations that are necessary for operational success. Well-run organizations effectuate these elements, including possession of explicit rules that control the behavior of front-line personnel, a hierarchical system of authority resulting in a chain of command, a system for delegation of authority, coupled with a proper span of control to ensure that procedures are consistently and absolutely followed, maintenance of employee expertise through continual in-service training, and a system of communication that specifies organizational roles and enumerates tasks and duties. Failure among paramilitaristic criminal justice agencies can be traced to failure to implement human relations and/or contingency management perspectives, failure to follow Fayol's organizational elements, failure to apply the functional aspects of Taylor's scientific management, and failure to adopt Weber's legitimate bureaucratic model. Dysfunction within criminal justice agencies occurs because managers do not adhere to the traditional elements of the organization, resulting in administrative breakdown and managerial disorganization. Not surprisingly, managers do not consider leadership the major cause of organizational breakdown and disorganization (Kappeler, 2001 and Tuchman, 1984). Supervisors routinely underestimate their contribution to organizational failure (Kraska, 2004). Mundane situational factors are often overlooked by management as a cause of organizational collapse as dysfunction becomes systemic and results from years of neglect, routinization, and normalization of deviance within organizational subcultures (D. Vaughn, 1996). Many criminal justice managers reject research that shows the benefits of human relations management and situational leadership in criminal justice organizations, while sticking to the outdated and heavy-handed leadership of tradition. Too often critics of bureaucracy confuse unworkable, bloated organizational dysfunction and collapse with bureaucracy per se (Mieczkowski, 1991). The real problem resides with poor managers within criminal justice agencies that foster a dysfunctional organizational system that is rigid and reluctant to change (Bayley, 1994), with vague and inconsistent goals, broken lines of communication (DiIulio, 1994a), and a wide span of control with an undefined hierarchy of authority (Wilson, 1989). While an extensive literature on organizational failure and collapse existed (Anheier, 1999), it had not been applied to the criminal justice workplace. Criminal justice had an abundance of case studies, however, from which the dysfunctional organizational literature was applicable (Casamayou, 1993). By analyzing over a dozen case study examples in criminal justice, this article enhances a novel theoretical perspective by combining several traditional theories of administration. What emerges is the perspective of managerial disorganization and administrative breakdown, which molds preexisting organizational perspectives into a new integrative theoretical entity. Although the word bureaucracy is reviled in the popular culture as representing the epitome of inefficiency, red tape, turf-battles, excessive government entanglement, and waste (Johnston, 1993), properly implemented bureaucratic agencies have theoretical legitimacy (Crouch and Marquart, 1989, DiIulio, 1991 and Wilson, 1989) and can function exceedingly well in post-modernistic society (Hassard & Parker, 1993). Despite the negative characteristics of bureaucratic organizations, bureaucracy remains the rule rather than the exception within criminal justice organizations. According to Johnston (1993, p. xvi), “the bureaucratic organizing model is the most common organizing model for private and public sector organizations throughout the world.” When properly implemented, bureaucracy provides a positive organizational framework from which to organize criminal justice agencies. Within an open systems perspective, the agency's structure should be centered on Weber's (1994) principles and Fayol's (1949) elements of the organization. In short, bureaucracy plays a functional role, and it is indispensable even in the era of the learning organization (Drucker, 1999). This article explains managerial collapse in criminal justice agencies from an organizational perspective. Administrative breakdown and managerial disorganization theory is used to explain organizational failure, placing success and failure of criminal justice agencies on the shoulders of criminal justice managers. Mismanagement is analyzed within criminal justice agencies, focusing on the elements of organizational life. Managers are responsible for organizational performance and outcomes, thus, both inside and outside of the agency (Mintzberg, 1989 and Rosenberg, 1999), managers that treat criminal justice agencies as closed systems, run the risk of administrative breakdown. In organizations experiencing administrative breakdown, there is no crisis management plan in place and no flexible channels of communication have been established, and no procedures have been developed to tap into feedback mechanisms external to the organization, resulting in supervisors being incapable of recognizing the signs of imminent breakdown (M.S. Vaughn, 1996), which leads to organizational chaos and lack of resiliency in times of crises (Sheffi, 2005

This article offers a novel theoretical approach to explain managerial disorganization and administrative breakdown in criminal justice agencies. Explaining organizational failure through breakdown and disorganization theory, which assesses agency success on criminal justice managers, this article joins the call for a return to the study of management as a key variable in criminal justice scholarship (DiIulio, 1990a, DiIulio, 1990b, DiIulio, 1991, DiIulio, 1994a, DiIulio, 1994b and Wilson, 1989). Successful bureaucratic agencies are exemplified by managers with effective communication skills who implement a functional span of control within the hierarchy of authority, practice strict accountability, rely on a mix of formal written and informal verbal communication, operate with clear goals and objectives, and delegate appropriate tasks to subordinates. While outside the scope of this current article, successful criminal justice agencies may also use elements of Elton Mayo's human relations theory and the contextual approaches of situational and contingency management (for a detailed discussion, see Houston, 1995). Poor management results in breakdown and disorganization within criminal justice agencies. Managers who ignore warning signs (Boin & Van Duin, 1995)–lack of task specialization and divisionalization, unclear goals, inappropriate delegation of authority that shifts accountability (O'Loughlin, 1990), distorted lines of communication (Garret, 2001), and a malfunctioning unity of command–fail to anticipate risk and demonstrate inability to recover quickly in response to threat (Comfort et al., 2001). Managers fail organizationally when they mismanage Fayol and Weber's elements of the organization, which can lead to breakdown and disorganization of the entire system. Agencies experiencing managerial breakdown and administrative disorganization are frequently plagued with systemic patterns of normalized deviance (Weick, 1993). Structural dysfunction fosters subordinates' isolation from legitimate authority. Managers construe an environment that can lead subordinates to ignore organizational goals and objectives. Operational dysfunction is the result or absence of supervisors, consequently no one to report to, undefined chain of command, and ambiguous unity of command, which results in no one from which to receive orders (Weick, 1993). Organizations are dysfunctional because managers are not accountable. Dysfunctional agencies lack the structure or operational capacity to deal with problem behavior or organizational collapse, so there is no bureaucratic management structure in place to respond appropriately to a problem (Weick, 1976). During crisis situations, organizations experiencing breakdown and disorganization are incapable of being managed effectively. Dysfunctional agencies have no unity of command, little hierarchy of authority, a great deal of employee autonomy, enhanced individual employee discretion, little supervision and accountability, planned unresponsiveness to society problems, and operate with a wide span of control. Dysfunctional agencies do not focus on data driven activities; subordinates within dysfunctional agencies do not operate with unity of direction or a set of coherent agency goals (Maguire & Katz, 2002). The way public organizations are managed has a significant bearing on the quality of system performance (DiIulio, 1989). DiIulio (1987) posits that the quality of prison life depends mainly on the quality of management. He asserts that prisons managed by a strong and stable team of like-minded executives, structured in a paramilitary, security-driven, bureaucratic fashion, and coordinated proactively in conjunction with the demands of relevant outside actors including legislators, judges, and community leaders had higher levels of order, safety, security, and service than prisons managed in the absence of performance indicators. Similarly, Useem and Kimball's (1989) analysis of prison riots found that breakdown in security procedures contributed to riots, including the absence of routine counting and frisking of inmates, the lack of a system to control contraband, and the failure of guards to routinely search prisoners' cells. Useem and Kimball (1989) concluded that conditions of confinement may lead to prison riots, but administrative breakdown and disorganization makes their frequency and intensity more severe. Well-functioning organizations exist within bureaucratic structures as long as managers effectively implement Weber and Fayol's organizational principles. Managers of bureaucratic agencies are successful as long as they create specifically defined meaningful work opportunities for their employees, train their subordinates in detail, and establish goals and objectives to clarify the unity of direction. Successful bureaucracies create a well-defined hierarchy of authority, operate a well-functioned unity of command, and appropriately delegate tasks so as to maintain accountability for actions taken. Future research should focus on the extent to which bureaucratic criminal justice organizations operate within a human relations framework (Miller & Braswell, 1997). Researchers should explore the degree to which an organizations' bureaucratic structure fosters change or serves to be an impediment to change. Conventional wisdom has decried bureaucratic agencies as relics of the past, completely inefficient and useless in today's modern world. Even so, bureaucratic management systems are the norm, not the exception, in criminal justice agencies in the twenty-first century. Given the paramilitaristic nature of most criminal justice agencies, more criminal justice research needs to focus on management as an explanation for organizational failure and dysfunction. This perspective needs to be applied to a variety of criminal justice agencies, including law enforcement, community and institutional corrections, juvenile justice, as well as the criminal and civil courts.