Public Bureaucracy and Digital Transformation: Structures, Practices and Values

This book assesses how digitalization of public organizations affects their bureaucratic structure and features. Drawing on rich ethnographic data from two highly digitalized government agencies in Denmark, it analyses how digitalization both enhances and distorts fundamental characteristics of Weberian bureaucracy, including division of labour, hierarchy, rules and programmability, and bureaucratic discretion. The book also examines the ways in which digitalization influences demands on employees’ and managers’ expertise and relationships with other organizational actors, and demonstrates the implications of digitalization for the enactment of public bureaucratic values such as legality, transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. In doing so, it provides an analysis of the opportunities and challenges facing public bureaucracies in the digital age. Above all, the book offers a nuanced understanding of how digital transformation reshapes the public bureaucracy, and thereby one of the foundation stones on which our societies stand.

Caroline Howard Grøn is Associate Professor at the King Frederik Center for Public Leadership, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research centers on public leadership, public management, organization theory, and the digital transformation of public organizations.

Anne Mette Møller is Associate Professor at the Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Her research focuses on public management and leadership, policy implementation, frontline work, professional knowledge and practice, digitalization, and organizational ethnography.