Charles Perrow, 1986. But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. When Corporations Rule the World.
Bureaucracies are central to the lives of most all modern people.
To provide an enhanced understanding of how bureaucracies came to dominate modern life and what this means to us as individuals, this course will cover the classical and contemporary views of complex organizations from a critical perspective. After an introduction to the concept of bureaucracy, we will look at case studies of the classic works. Then we will turn to an analysis of the different schools of thought regarding bureaucracies. Finally we will investigate issues of control and power in, and alternatives to, bureaucracies. There is a possible 400 points during the semester.