printBureaucratic Instruments in Management (towards the concept of bureaupathologies in education)
Оsipov А.М.
Dr. Sci. (Sociol.), Prof., Department of Sociology, A.I. Hertzen Russian State Pedagogical University, St.-Petersburg, Russia; Chief Researcher, Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University, Veliky Novgorod, Russia osipov.al58@gmail.com
Оsipov А.М. Bureaucratic Instruments in Management (towards the concept of bureaupathologies in education). Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2026. No 2. P. 16-25
The article summarizes the data on bureaucratic instruments in education. Those instruments include: concentration of privileges by bureaucrats; imitation of activity and usefulness; reliance on formal-legal regulation with the rejection of scientific management; evasion of responsibility with the depersonalization of management; pressure on lower levels to bring their personnel to obedience; blocking of state-public management; pressure on research that can illuminate alternatives to bureaucracy; introduction of the habitual perception of bureaupathologies; strategy of anticipatory initiative. They are used by bureaucrats for their dominance in education, contrary to public needs and interests of education. In sociological study the instruments can serve as empirical markers of bureaucrats and bureaucratic educational policy. Such a generalization is a necessary part of the developing concept of bureaupathologies as a priority to study education in contemporary Russia and an important theoretical guideline for sociological research of bureaucracy.
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