Digital Weberianism: Bureaucracy, Information, and the Techno-rationality of Neoliberal Capitalism

Abstract

The social infrastructures that constitute both public and private administration are increasingly entangled with digital code, big data, and algorithms. While some argue these technologies have blown apart the strictures of bureaucratic order, we see more subtle changes at work. We suggest that far from a radical rupture, in today's digitizing society, there are strong traces of the logic and techniques of Max Weber's bureau; a foundational concept in his account of the symbiotic relationship between modernity, capitalism, and social order. We suggest the manner through which these techniques have shaped contemporary systems of social administration helps explain the remarkable legitimacy digital governance has acquired. We do this by exploring how digital technologies draw from, and give new substance to, the three key principles of Weber's theory of the bureau-efficiency, objectivity, and rationality. We argue that neoliberalism, or the widespread economization of politics, has conditioned the digital versions of these principles, not least by subordinating social ends to technical means. At the same time we argue that digitalism engenders the privatization of authority, not least through its "elective affinity" with market logics. I. NEW ORDERAt the heart of our digitally mediated world is a social paradox that arcs between order and emancipation. On the one hand, digital technologies appear to have contributed to a new era of  Acknowledgements: We are grateful to European Union's FP7 Marie Curie Actions via the Universities in the Knowledge Economy (UNIKE) Initial Training Network for funding parts of this research. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the University of Illinois at Chicago's April 2015 symposium on "The Crowd, The Cloud, and Urban Governance," as well as the 4 th Institutional Transformation in European Political Economy Conference at the Copenhagen Business School in December of 2015. We thank the organizers and participants of both events for engaging reactions and discussion. We also thank Eva Hartmann, Poul Kjaer, David Bassens, and David Clarke for helpful suggestions on previous drafts. Any remaining errors or omissions are the authors' responsibility. ** Chris Muellerleile is an Assistant Professorof Urban and Economic Geography at Swansea University in the United Kingdom. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chris's research focuses on the intersection of the political economy of finance with information and knowledge economies.

Institutional Divergence of Digital Item Bank Management in Bureaucratic Hybridization: An Application of SSM Based Multi-Method

“…The leader of item bank initiates an organizational overhaul to digitize item bank into an application. Digitizing the item bank is not only a mere shift from paper-based to computer-based, but also a shift from professionals to data scientists (Muellerleile and Robertson 2018 ). Bureaucrats are faced with big data of item bank that have certain characteristics and management to select authors/revisers in addition to the right items.…”

“… This study aims to analyze institutional divergence of Beckert ( 2010 ) by measuring the reframing of three constitutive principles of Digital Weberian Bureaucracy (DWB). In contrast to the studies by Gaus et al ( 2017 ), Sofyani et al ( 2018 ), Muellerleile and Robertson ( 2018 ), Turner et al ( 2019 ), and Meilani and Hardjosoekarto ( 2020 ), this study explores normative and mimetic mechanisms resulting in the mixed pattern of public administration (Traditional Public Administration (TPA), New Public Management (NPM), and Post NPM), focusing on the transformation of Digital Era Governance (DEG). Employing Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) by Reynolds and Holwell ( 2010 ), combined with Text Network Analysis (TNA) by Segev ( 2020 ) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) by Borgatti et al ( 2014 ), this study shows the micro dynamics of relationships between actors, the meso dynamics of organizations, and the absence of regulations at the macro level, all of which lead to institutional divergence in the form of fully hybrid governance (as proposed by De Waele et al ( 2015 )) that is also caused by normative and mimetic mechanisms.…”

Re-assembling knowledge production with(out) the university

“…As a range of social theorists and philosophers have pointed out, efficiency, or the reduction of costs with the same outcomes, is hardly an end in itself (Muellerleile and Robertson 2018). Among other things, the gradual expulsion of social, ethical and political criteria to judge the success of a university has created the space for competitive metrics and other quantitative benchmarks that increasingly judge winners and losers in the higher education game.…”

Gendered labour process

“…While all the four organizing themes constitute the gendered labour process, the theme of "work design and organization" forms the heart of the organizational logic (Acker, 1990;Dye and Mills, 2012;Williams, 2013). The organizational logic highlights the transformations in the labour process, utilizing multiple ideological contexts of production (Adkins, 2017;Barber, 2016;Federici, 2012;Gordon, 2018;Hatton, 2015;Jarrett, 2014;Mears, 2015;Muellerleile and Robertson, 2018;Otis, 2016;Peng, 2011;Stokes, 2017;Yea and Chok, 2018).…”