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Alienation, servility, and amorality: relating Gogol’s portrayal of bureaupathology to an accountability era

Alienation, servility, and amorality: relating Gogol’s portrayal of bureaupathology to an accountability era
Alienation, servility, and amorality: relating Gogol’s portrayal of bureaupathology to an accountability era
This paper explores the insights literature can bring to administrative and bureaucratic critique, focusing on the work of Nikolai Gogol. Gogol's satire of bureaucracy presages many subsequent social science analyses. These encompass the fundamental ruptures in society caused by a surfeit of bureaucracy in ‘The Nose’ and, on a more psychological level, the effects of bureaucratisation on the individual in ‘The Overcoat’. His stories portray the alienation, futile activity, and servility caused in lower level functionaries through problems of loss of identity, the absence of meaningful work, and a lack of separation between public and private life. This paper uses Gogol's work to intensify and sharpen an exploration of the pathological responses of educational administrators and policy makers to an accountability era of burgeoning bureaucracy that has a profound negative impact on performance.


Educational administration, leadership, bureaucracy, aesthetic critique, bureaupathology
0263-211X
360-373
Samier, Eugenie
f1d5fe15-7a87-4a99-986b-5b866b4017df
Lumby, Jacky
Samier, Eugenie
f1d5fe15-7a87-4a99-986b-5b866b4017df
Lumby, Jacky

Samier, Eugenie and Lumby, Jacky (2010) Alienation, servility, and amorality: relating Gogol’s portrayal of bureaupathology to an accountability era. Educational Management and Administration, 38 (3), 360-373.

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper explores the insights literature can bring to administrative and bureaucratic critique, focusing on the work of Nikolai Gogol. Gogol's satire of bureaucracy presages many subsequent social science analyses. These encompass the fundamental ruptures in society caused by a surfeit of bureaucracy in ‘The Nose’ and, on a more psychological level, the effects of bureaucratisation on the individual in ‘The Overcoat’. His stories portray the alienation, futile activity, and servility caused in lower level functionaries through problems of loss of identity, the absence of meaningful work, and a lack of separation between public and private life. This paper uses Gogol's work to intensify and sharpen an exploration of the pathological responses of educational administrators and policy makers to an accountability era of burgeoning bureaucracy that has a profound negative impact on performance.


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More information

Published date: 12 January 2010
Keywords: Educational administration, leadership, bureaucracy, aesthetic critique, bureaupathology

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 71927
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/71927
ISSN: 0263-211X
PURE UUID: 485413ce-e1d4-47df-ab16-bd5b196d04fb

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Date deposited: 12 Jan 2010
Last modified: 13 Mar 2024 20:53

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Contributors

Author: Eugenie Samier
Author: Jacky Lumby

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