Modernization and bureaucracy in France : assessing state administration by private-sector standards

Modernization and bureaucracy in France : assessing state administration by private-sector standards. State administration reformers have often claimed that the only real solution for the administration's presumed - ill bureaucracy - is to import private-sector management methods. Using the "Organizational change and computerization" survey, which inquires into management tools used by French businesses and administrations while questioning organization employees about pay incentives and work instruction and oversight procedures, the study examines work in state administrations by way of categories usually applied in research on work in the private-sector, finding that while pay policy in state administrations continues to follow the egalitarian French civil service model, work instructions and oversight - particularly in economic and financial ministries, which are likely to have heavily imported these new management tools - may be even more developed than in comparable private-sector areas. Rather than weakening bureaucracy, then, the use of private-sector management modes in public-sector administration has actually resulted in even more bureaucracy.