We live in a dense jungle of rules that can be irksome and ineffective, when what we need is more authority, argues Auckland University Professor Natasha Hamilton-Hart in her new book Stupid Rules: Reducing Red Tape and Making Organisations More Effective and Accountable. “Rules are stupid when they prevent us from delivering what we are supposed to get done.”
Auckland University Professor Natasha Hamilton-Hart
All too often, Hamilton-Hart says, modern organisations are structured along lines of responsibility and reporting, where those higher up actually lack the authority to get the important things done.
It may be an odd time to be arguing for fewer rules and more authority, admits the Business School academic, but, she says, as strange as it may seem, authority is what we need more of.
“Nobody wants to be governed by a deranged dictator or to work for a tyrannical boss and rules beckon as a safeguard, a way of holding the powerful to account. The problem is that rules themselves don’t hold anyone to account.
“Authority is what allows us to get rid of stupid rules and have more autonomy.”
“If leaders can’t make decisions about who is part of their work team, for example, or about how they will do their work –- if they lack the authority to assess work performance according to their own estimation of what is or is not adequate – then they lack crucial authority.”
The book argues authority is necessary if good rules are to work.
Authority is also necessary, Hamilton-Hart writes, if we want people to have accountability for their decisions.
“A person hemmed in by rules acquires immunity from real accountability. This explains why, despite often grumbling about excessive rules, people sometimes resist initiatives that give them greater decision-making authority.”
For more than 20 years, Hamilton-Hart mostly studied systems of government and business in Southeast Asia: from bureaucracies to patrimonial systems.
After returning to New Zealand, she began looking into “supposedly developed countries” and how their rules and laws operated. She says despite scoring highly on measures of the rule of law and democracy, countries such as New Zealand seemed to be visibly struggling.
“After some years of living in God’s own country, it dawned on me that we had evolved rulebooks to provide legal cover for practices that were widely recognised as corrupt in the countries of Southeast Asia.
“But we didn’t call it corruption, because it was all perfectly legal,” she says.
