CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF BUREAUCRACY: EMPIRICAL FINDINGS FROM THE UNIVERSITY

Abstract

There is a large body of literature detailing how modern bureaucracy is hostile to entrepreneurial thinking and creative behavior. Individuals in large bureaucratic organizations may have chosen to work there because they were bureaucratically-minded to begin with, or became bureaucratically-minded after a time of being subjected to the bureaucratic organization’s culture. Universities have been studied in-depth with this regard. College campuses have a complex dual organization: with a bureaucratic administration and a presumably more creative non-bureaucratic faculty. It is also presumed that students would not be as bureaucratic-minded as administrators. Previous research, using a culture survey instrument, measured and compared culture dimension scores of bank management and family-firm management: finding that bank managers had a more bureaucratic culture profile while family-firm management had a more entrepreneurial profile. This study extends this research to university administrators, faculty, art students and business students. All campus respondents were from California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), a campus in Los Angeles. Findings show that all CSUDH campus segments, with small exceptions for student groups, share essentially the same campus culture. The campus culture, in all of its parts, is significantly more bureaucratic than bank management culture; with family-firm management culture being much more entrepreneurial than all other groups.