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Government reinvention advocates assert that less bureaucratic work environments will spark higher creativity, more risk taking, and greater productivity in public employees. Although government reinvention remains a topic of interest to scholars and practitioners alike, these particular arguments lack empirical support. In response, this article tests the relationship between different forms of bureaucratic control (formalization, red tape, and centralization) and reported employee perceptions and behavior in local governments. Analyzing mail survey data from a study of the employees of four cities in a Midwestern state, this article finds that employee responses to bureaucratic control are not as straightforward as reinventionists expect. Different types of bureaucratic control are related to distinct employee responses, and sometimes these responses are the very behaviors that reinventionists seek to trigger by reducing bureaucracy.

Akhil Gupta, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. 2012. 368 pages. ₹ 895.

'After Development: The Transformation of the Korean Presidency and Bureaucracy' by Sung Deuk Hahm and L. Christopher Plein is reviewed.

This special volume brings together leading scholars in the field of organisation studies to reflect on the universal phenomena of hierarchy (vertical organisation of tasks) and bureaucracy (rule-bound execution of tasks). The result is a colourful kaleidoscope of thought-provoking, critical and refreshingly non-mainstream analysis of hierarchy and bureaucracy. The chapters range from minute accounts of a single case to broader historical analysis, from the 'classical' journal paper to essay-style elaborations. The first section provides fundamentals and historical accounts of bureaucracy, highlighting negative and positive effects of bureaucracy and a differentiated picture with some future outlook. The second section focuses on the analysis of organisational, cultural and socio-psychological aspects of hierarchy and bureaucracy by interrogating hierarchy in contemporary work via a new framework, exploring the cultural fantasy of hierarchy and sovereignty, and examining subordinates' challenges to organisational hierarchy. The final section comprises two chapters which provide some alternative views on, and alternatives to hierarchy. One is alarming, the other is puzzling.

The literature on representative bureaucracy argues that bureaucrats who reflect the diversity of citizens are more likely to be responsive to the public. Although substantial research has supported the claim, most studies are conducted in Western countries such as the United States, and the evidence from other contexts is extremely limited. This raises two important questions: Does the relationship remain valid in a centralized Asian country? If so, under what conditions does representative bureaucracy matter more? This study investigates these questions by using a data set on secondary education in South Korea. Findings suggest that female students perform better when they are taught by female teachers, which strengthens the external validity of the theory. The positive link between female teachers and female student performance is greater when teachers have more discretion and interact more with each other. However, value consensus weakens the relationship between gender representation and student performance. Clientele diversity matters in gender representation at the managerial level, but sector differences are not statistically supported. These findings illustrate the need to take both national and organizational contexts seriously in representative bureaucracy theory.