Abstract
Why is it so difficult to implement Western reform programs in Asian bureaucracies? To address this question, this study explores cultural aspects of national bureaucracies. A government bureaucracy is shaped by its cultural and historical context, and this paper specifically focuses on contrasting models of government bureaucracy in the USA, Korea, and Germany. Differences between the models are explained by examining both internal operations as well as the relative relationships of the state to society. Based on this, the incompatible assumptions of Korean reformers are examined. This study is useful for developing countries engaged in Western-style bureaucratic reform.
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Notes
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Highlights are mine
This is probably reinforced by the tendency of Asian people that understand the causal relations of an event by considering its context, while Westerners tend to associate direct causal relation(s) found in the events themselves.
U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Introduction to the Position Classification Standards
This is the reason why people use the journalistic expression ‘iron bowl’ in the negative sense, which signifies that there is little chance to be fired.
This stands for steps in the administrative process: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting and Budgeting (Gulick and Urwick 1937).
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This study was supported by a grant from the Asia Development Institute as well as the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2011-330-B00195).
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Im, T. Bureaucracy in Three Different Worlds: The Assumptions of Failed Public Sector Reforms in Korea. Public Organiz Rev 14, 577–596 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-013-0246-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-013-0246-7