The Guide!

Title

The Guide!

Description

First photo: In this cartoon we see a Mertonian bureaucratic personality emerge as a result of overemphasizing the importance of rules in sustaining the need for reliability, predictability and discipline in organizational processes and procedures. Such bureaucrats in time tend to “forget the initial reason for the rules, and, in a ‘displacement of goals,’ enforcement of the rules surpasses in importance in a bureaucrat’s mind what the organization is trying ultimately to achieve” (Goodsell, 1994, p. 116). “An extreme product of this process of displacement of goals is the bureaucratic virtuoso, who never forgets a single rule binding his action and hence is unable to assist many of his clients” (Merton, 1940, pp. 560-568).

Second photo: Poet: Tumarinson, G. “The Fighting Pencil” group, 1969

Whenever bureaucrat decides to take a sweeping action,
Any endeavor’s doomed to end in failure and frustration!"

Creator

Rabinovich, Y. - First photo; Tsvetkov, A. - Second photo

Date

1969 - first photo; 1965 - second photo

Source

Rutgers, Chatham House, & Harcourt Brace

Rights

Source: Holzer, M., Illiash, I., Gabrielian, V., & Kuznestsova, L. (2010). Red Tape from Red Square:Bureaucratic Commentary in Soviet Graphic Satirical Art. Poughkeepsie, NY: NetPublicaions

Goodsell, Ch. T. (1994). The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic. 3rd Ed. Chatham, NJ: ChathamHouse Publishers, Inc.

Merton, R.K. (1940). Bureaucratic Structure and Personality. In: Shafritz, J. M., and A. C. Hyde (Eds.) (1997). Classics of Public Administration. FortWorth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Publisher

Rutgers, Chatham House, & Harcourt Brace

Contributor

Rutgers, Chatham House, & Harcourt Brace

Format

Medium: Poster

Language

Russian

Type

Artwork

Identifier

Art, Satire, Cartoons, Rules, Organizations, Bureaucracy, The Fighting Pencil

Coverage

Russia

Files

guide1.jpg
guide2.jpg

Reference

Rabinovich, Y. - First photo; Tsvetkov, A. - Second photo, The Guide!, Rutgers, Chatham House, & Harcourt Brace, 1969 - first photo; 1965 - second photo

Cite As

Rabinovich, Y. - First photo; Tsvetkov, A. - Second photo, “The Guide!,” Virtual Museum of Public Service, accessed March 28, 2024, https://vmps.omeka.net/items/show/481.