From 'grey to green'- investigating the capabilities of the ... - lumes

and that the bureaucracy would conquer the world through scientific knowledge and lead to theinstrumental rationality that Weber found being very critical (Callinicos 1999:178). Weber’s perception ofbureaucracy must be taken into consideration when one discusses the ‘ideal type’; as Weber was criticaltowards the process and did not see it as an uncomplicated development within society.This ‘ideal type’ of bureaucratic organisation will be described more in detail in the next section.To evaluate organisational change one must therefore investigate the ins and outs of Weber’s theory,this section will highlight the major definitions of Weber’s ‘ideal type’ theory. The ‘ideal type’ that Weberpresents is a rational and goal oriented organisation and is questioned by many but serves as a good foundationfor discussion and understanding of the bureaucratic organisation. It is of importance to emphasise that Weber’smodel of an organisation is what an efficient organisation could look like and that if it is structured this way itmay reach highest efficiency (Abrahamsson 2001:104). Weber claims that this type of organisation if executedin a rational way will reach the highest level of organisational efficiency. The choice of Weber’s theory foranalysing the current setting of bureaucratic organisation is being used in this thesis as Weber’s description ofthe bureaucratic organisation has been the foundation of the prototype of most of today’s large organisationsand Sweden is no exception (Robbins 2002:42). Weber’s model therefore was based on making thebureaucracy as efficient in regards to solving problems in society, however the issue of dealing with SD andsolving the problems of un-sustainability has shown as being less effective in regards to bureaucratic actions inimplementing those policies. Organisational theory is a very diverse section of interdisciplinary definitions ofwhat an organisation consists of and how it acts. The different theories have developed different emphasis onwhat they explain and define as organisational behaviour. The next section will describe what a bureaucracy isand how that relates to policy implementation.2.1 Definition of current organisations and bureaucracyOne of the schools is the so-called Carnegie school of organisational theory developed during the 1950’sand 1960’s by James March and Herbert Simon (1958). Herbert Simons wrote in 1955 that the concept oflooking at the organisation as the ultimate solution for solving complex problems within society is autopia. Since then organisational theory has since long given up the idea that there is such an ultimatesolution that an organisation can reach to be able to solve the complex issues, still the discipline believesthat through using empirical research material and theoretical approaches one can develop the notion andconcept of organisations in a way that can improve the efficiency of the organisations to solve current andnew problems within society (Flaa et al 1998:12). The most efficient method to solve the current problemsin society has however changed in regards to the current setting of facing to solve the problems of an unsustainabilityin society. A policy concept and an approach that previously have not existed in this type ofbureaucratic setting. This evidently implicates that the current setting faces issues in solving the newconcepts, as the current setting is not designed to face such holistic problems.A bureaucracy is in many ways a questioned concept and indifference to democracy, bureaucracyis a term that many have a negative perception of. Bureaucracy is defined by being slow and anonymousand too much power concentrated to a few people (Premfors et al 2007:25). It has also been described in away of engineering the ecological as well as social problems in society away, in an over rational procedureof conduct. Weber himself called this type of process that the bureaucracy and capitalism would create arationalization and disenchantment of the world with its rational procedures (Eckersley 1992:102).Bureaucracy has therefore been very much contested not only by Weber himself, though it is still a fruitfuldefinition of an organisation within the public sphere in the Swedish system as these types of organisationsare the major actors in implementing society change such as SD. This thesis will apply the definition ofbureaucratic organisation as the term organisation has a less negative perception though it still refers to thesame structure as the definition of bureaucratic organisation. The next section will define what the socontested bureaucratic organisation consists of.14