ORGANIZATIONAL RULES AND THE BUREAUCRATIC PERSONALITY

Theory: Theories of the bureaucratic personality by Victor Thompson an d Robert Merton hold that personal characteristics of certain bureaucr ats make them prefer elaborate rules and regulations, so this study te sts such a model. Yet some organizations really do need more rules, so the study also tests a bureaucratic organization model that predicts that characteristics of the organization determine members' preference s for rules. Prominent theories of bureaucracy also suggest that burea ucratic personalities should be more prevalent in public bureaucracies . Hypotheses: Personal characteristics of organizational managers dete rmine their preferences for more rules, so managers higher on alienati on and pessimism will perceive a need for more rules. Alternatively, o rganizational characteristics (such as layers of authority and number of records kept) determine managers' preferences for more rules, so th at where there are low levels of such structural characteristics (e.g. , few records kept), managers will perceive a need for more rules. Pub lic sector managers should show more of the bureaucratic personality r esponses than private managers, and prefer more rules. Methods: Correl ation and logistic regression analysis is used on data from the Nation al Administrative Studies Project, a mail survey of managers in a wide variety of public and private organizations. Results: Both personal c haracteristics, such as alienation, and organizational characteristics , such as the number of records kept, show relations to preferences fo r more rules. Contrary to expectations and to much of the literature, managers in private organizations (mostly business firms) were more li kely to prefer more rules than managers in public agencies.