The strengths and weaknesses of administrative burden on bureaucratic perception of policies

¶ … public sector or private the process of policy implementation is a responsibility of a particular individual or individuals, in other words there has to be someone to take responsibility, a person to oversee policy implementation. The burden of implementation of policies is evident in the ongoing day-to-day to do list of the person responsible (implementer). Understanding bureaucratic preferences gives a better insight in the experience of administrators who take it that policy implementation is onerous.

In this context administrative burden is see as a personal experience of policy implementation as onerous, since every public official experience some level of administration burden in their work, sometimes a policy may turn out to be burdensome prompting an individual o respond with what they perceive as high level resources to tackle the problem.

To some extreme all together an individual administrator may seek to shift the burdensome tasks to other actors or n the end shift completely from their current assignment to another different level of jurisdiction, either in government or the private sector.

To address this issue therefore the author of this article proposal to suggest that shirking will be of benefit is commendable. In proposing that senior administrators shaping of tasks towards functions that are of interest to them and shifting less interesting work elsewhere gives an insight to the classic version theory of agency which portrays bureaucrats as shirkers seeking to avoid hard work this perception however varies among different employees, thus therefore giving administrators time to seek structural solutions to the perceived burdens by shifting the tasks to others. (Barry C. Burden., et al.).

Another hypothesis the researcher explored is that as individuals perceive of burden as highly administrative. They will become less supportive of those specific tasks. The experience exhibited by such administrative burdens creates a negative mindset which influences how other aspects of the policy are perceived. As a result of this Framing effect the policy may appear to be more flawed because of it's emphasize on the negative elements rather than the benefits. In a wider view, administrators who perceive a policy as Burdensome may also see it as simply not being worth the burden, regardless of its importance and Philosophical pre-dispositions that might influence an employee to support or oppose a policy in Principle.