Suchergebnisse

Max Weber's and Franz Kafka's respective understandings of bureaucracy are as different as night and day. Yet, Kafka's novel The Castle is best read with Max Weber at hand. In fact, Kafka relates systematically to all the dimensions in Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy and give us a much-contemplated parody, almost a counter-punctual ideal type, based on four key observations: bureaucratic excesses unfold in time and space; a "no error" ideology generates inescapable dilemmas; inscrutability is a life condition in bureaucracy; civil servants end up walking on the spot, just like the figures in Escher's painting: Ascending and Descending. Nevertheless, Weber and Kafka can both be right. While Kafka looks at the bureaucratic phenomenon through persons who are marginalized, Weber's perspective is historic-comparative and top-down. Are the observations of the one more correct than the other? The question is meaningless. As two opposite poles, Weber and Kafka "magnetize" each other. Adapted from the source document.

Accountability differs in its meaning, scope, and impact. Consequently, its expression as a value and an instrument of "good governance" differs across time within and between organizations. Through the prism of theories on public values, this article examines accountability as a value in the administration of the European Union, that is, the European Commission. The article presents a theoretical discussion of value hierarchies, causality, and conflicts. Theoretical suggestions are included in an empirical examination of value conflicts in the administrative reforms of the European executive. It is argued that organizational characteristics of the European Commission condition value implementation. The article finds that although accountability appears as the "good value per se," its applied period is brief and its status is contradicted by conflicting values.