Bureaucracies exist inside larger firms as well, and share a lot of elements with public bureaucracies. Much of the “this is stupid, but nobody knows how to make it better” (aka “bwuh?”) feeling applies equally.
I think a reasonable model for it is “mission motive”—somewhat like any other motive, but with a very weak or missing feedback mechanism. Without being able to track results, and with no market discipline (failure → bankruptcy when the motive is aligned with existence), you get weird behaviors based on individual humans with unrefined models.
Bureaucracies exist inside larger firms as well, and share a lot of elements with public bureaucracies. Much of the “this is stupid, but nobody knows how to make it better” (aka “bwuh?”) feeling applies equally.
I think a reasonable model for it is “mission motive”—somewhat like any other motive, but with a very weak or missing feedback mechanism. Without being able to track results, and with no market discipline (failure → bankruptcy when the motive is aligned with existence), you get weird behaviors based on individual humans with unrefined models.