Sub-project “Post-bureaucratic Organization and Decision-making in Administration”

Over the past two years, it has become evident that public administration organizations are grappling with a diverse array of disruptive changes in their environment. The imperative for prompt and effective decision-making has become increasingly pronounced. While numerous initiatives within the public administration are rising to meet this challenge, the attainment of faster decision-making remains a considerable obstacle, especially within larger organizations. Post-bureaucratic organizational forms such as agile methods from project work and product development, e.g. design thinking methods, seem to offer a solution. As a result, a growing number of initiatives, including those within administrative realms, are actively striving to enhance the agility of governance structures. However, reconciling existing bureaucratic structures, which have evolved over centuries, with these new post-bureaucratic processes presents a significant challenge. What interactions are present between traditional structures and post-bureaucratic initiatives, and how can these interfaces be successfully managed? What obstacles do stakeholders encounter when attempting to implement agile initiatives, and what strategies can they employ to overcome them?

The project aims to address precisely these questions and offer a nuanced analysis of innovative projects within public administration dedicated to post-bureaucratic organization. This will shed light not only on the problems these initiatives are addressing, their approaches to these issues, and the kinds of changes they can bring about, but also on the typical effects of post-bureaucratic initiatives in administration. Furthermore, it will examine the common hurdles and effects that are evident across the board. To ensure that these findings can be effectively applied in practice, another objective is to develop options and recommendations for action that will enable administrative personnel to actively and sustainably carry forward the initiated change.

By employing document analyses, exploratory discussions, qualitative expert interviews, workshops, and participant observations, the team will compile a comprehensive database that will serve as the foundation for an initial analysis and, subsequently, a comparison of the various initiatives. The research project is structured to be iterative, with results continually incorporated back into the research field and discussed in workshops.