Businesses are as likely as are governments to establish large bureaucracies, but bureaucracy is far more damaging to a business than it is to a government." - Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Few will disagree that bureaucracy and its long term affects are damaging to any organization. However, the center of this issue often starts from a country's government, and as such, I strongly beleive bureaucracy is just equally damaging to both government and businesses. In fact, this issue becomes severe due to such practices in the government level and can amplify the problem to cause further damage at all levels. Thus bureaucracy is equally, if not more damaging to government. I reason my understanding based on primary source of bureaucracy, competition from other countries, and internal affects of this issue.
The major basis for my logic is government bureaucracy almost always creates a chain reaction in private sectors. Businesses do not function entirely independently, and often require depending on government actions, approval, and policy changes. Every business is connected with government through factors like regulations, taxation, policy changes, and others. Bureaucracy in government level not only hampers public performance, but also slows down growth in business. For example, mobile operators like Telenor and NTTDoCoMO are trying hard to convince government in under developed countries to allow 3G transmission. However, bureaucracy has been delaying this process in these countries, whereas developed nations have already started working on 4G technolgy. This is creating two issues, first the govenment as a whole is getting behind, and the businesses are losing revenues.
In addition, the country's economy as a whole becomes less competitive for bureaucracy. To explain, we can look at Bangladesh, an underdeveloped nation that was once offered free connectivity to submarine cable for high speed access to the internet. Government bureaucracy did not allow the country to react timely and the nation missed out the opportunity. Almost 5 years later this country paid a full price for a similar connection. Large bureaucracies resulted in a loss of potential business growth. High speed internet at affordable price could also give millions of poor people of such a nation have the benefits of internet and therefore boost overall boost. These people will then have better skills and qualifications when working at business orgnizations and could also assist improved future growth. Not to say, a timely connection could give birth to thousands of startups five years ahead. Therefore, such bureaucracies not only impact the government but causes an overall damage to nation's businesses and economy, and hence the goverment as a whole is affected.
The internal effects in government caused by bureaucracies is also brutal. The goverment as a whole fails to meet promises on time and loses the hope of citizens. The employees in both government and private organization suffers from huge fustration in their work and the productivity is reduced.
To sum it up, bureaucracy is a curse that has damaged many nations for centuries. Its easy to recognize but harder to resolve. However, government level bureaucracy is the root cause of most economic damages and as such it is clearly as bad as it is to businesses, if not worse.
Few will disagree that bureaucracy and its long term affects are damaging to any organization. However, the center of this issue often starts from a country's government, and as such, I strongly beleive bureaucracy is just equally damaging to both government and businesses. In fact, this issue becomes severe due to such practices in the government level and can amplify the problem to cause further damage at all levels. Thus bureaucracy is equally, if not more damaging to government. I reason my understanding based on primary source of bureaucracy, competition from other countries, and internal affects of this issue.
The major basis for my logic is government bureaucracy almost always creates a chain reaction in private sectors. Businesses do not function entirely independently, and often require depending on government actions, approval, and policy changes. Every business is connected with government through factors like regulations, taxation, policy changes, and others. Bureaucracy in government level not only hampers public performance, but also slows down growth in business. For example, mobile operators like Telenor and NTTDoCoMO are trying hard to convince government in under developed countries to allow 3G transmission. However, bureaucracy has been delaying this process in these countries, whereas developed nations have already started working on 4G technolgy. This is creating two issues, first the govenment as a whole is getting behind, and the businesses are losing revenues.
In addition, the country's economy as a whole becomes less competitive for bureaucracy. To explain, we can look at Bangladesh, an underdeveloped nation that was once offered free connectivity to submarine cable for high speed access to the internet. Government bureaucracy did not allow the country to react timely and the nation missed out the opportunity. Almost 5 years later this country paid a full price for a similar connection. Large bureaucracies resulted in a loss of potential business growth. High speed internet at affordable price could also give millions of poor people of such a nation have the benefits of internet and therefore boost overall boost. These people will then have better skills and qualifications when working at business orgnizations and could also assist improved future growth. Not to say, a timely connection could give birth to thousands of startups five years ahead. Therefore, such bureaucracies not only impact the government but causes an overall damage to nation's businesses and economy, and hence the goverment as a whole is affected.
The internal effects in government caused by bureaucracies is also brutal. The goverment as a whole fails to meet promises on time and loses the hope of citizens. The employees in both government and private organization suffers from huge fustration in their work and the productivity is reduced.
To sum it up, bureaucracy is a curse that has damaged many nations for centuries. Its easy to recognize but harder to resolve. However, government level bureaucracy is the root cause of most economic damages and as such it is clearly as bad as it is to businesses, if not worse.
