The operator may refer to some of the standard works on industrial relations and personnel administration for those techniques, which are peripheral to the interests of this manual. Capacity to act. Indicators of the capacity of the bureaucracy to act under different situations such as are presented by new policies, emergence of new elite membership in some other part of the elite, crisis or war, are useful. For example, the bureaucracy of the German social democratic party in the twenties and early thirties was quite competent to amass funds, organize the trade unions, conduct party warfare, and run a fairly stable bureaucratic government, but it was incapable of decisive hostilities against a group of Nazis who began weakly but became progressively stronger all the while, giving unmistakable evidences of planning the total destruction of the social democrats. One should ask and seek the same kind of answer for the bureaucracy of the government and of the elite institutions outside the government.
Some bureaucratic organizations are very slow to act.
Others can act rapidly. It would be presumptuous to declare what the particular structure is that invariably results in decisive action. Rigidity has been mentioned in several other suggested analysis. This is essentially what is meant by compulsiveness. Certain actions must be preformed in a habitual sequence, no matter what the external circumstances are, and not matter what the demand for a change may be.