The Future, Now
Time is experienced in complex and nuanced ways, as shown in the previous section of this Report.
‘Bureaucracy is Under Attack’
So claims Stewart Clegg, in his inquiring paper on ‘The Futures of Bureaucracy?’ which appears in the IAS Insightsjournal.
One such complexity is that although the future is by definition ahead, changes and developments in society and technology must be made in the immediate present in order to prepare for likely eventualities.
For example, democratic worlds exist in a state of perpetual ‘emergency,’ as they anticipate military threats, ecological crises and terrorism. Ben Anderson’s high profile paper on ‘Facing the Future Enemy: US Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Pre-Insurgent’ aimed to convey the ways in which the rhetoric of future emergency might be shaping democracy in different ways in the present. His work on this, and other papers, was stimulated by the diverse ways in which present and future are linked in the different disciplines represented by IAS Fellows.
The rise of the state of ‘emergency’ has been one negative outcome of globalisation and multi-culturalism. As a visiting professor at numerous universities around the world, Roland Robertson brought his international expertise to bear on these pertinent subjects. He developed a variety of articles on international relations, cosmopolitanism, racial discrimination, and religion. Robertson also forged new links with the Faith and Globalization programme run by the School of Government and International Affairs and by the Department of Theology and Religion. The programme focuses on the cultural impact of religious groups, movements, and organisations on a range of issues of global relevance, such as identity, science and economics.
In the wake of the global financial crisis, traditional models of the public sector and big business are necessarily being reformed. However, the current changes are only the latest wave of rethinking that has taken place over the past 30 years. From the market view of the public sector of the 1980s, to the ‘networked’ organisation of the 1990s, each age has been dominated by a particular belief about how bureaucracies should be structured.
Clegg argues that we have now entered a post- bureaucratic era, in which no single view of the ideal organisation will prevail. From ‘virtual’ companies to individual enterprises, Clegg predicts that bureaucracies of the future will need to become ‘liquidly modern.’
Stewart Clegg’s Insights paper on the future of bureaucracy is freely available at:
www.durham.ac.uk/ias/insights/volume4/article1/
20 | 21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64