Affiliation:
1. Beijing Normal University, China
Abstract
The wide-scale application of information and communication technology in public organizations is reshaping the structure of public organizations. This chapter expounds the impact of information and communication technology on the power structure of bureaucracy through two specific cases from China. The cases show that information and communication technology strengthens the vertical control of bureaucracy, which is mainly manifested in two aspects: first, it weakens the power of grassroots civil servants, especially the power of agenda setting; second, it strengthens the point-to-point control ability of middle and high-level managers over grassroots civil servants. Next, this chapter analyzes the possible negative impacts of these two changes.