Australian Journal of Public Administration
Counterfactuals: Does bureaucracy produce unfair workplaces?
Abstract Bureaucracy is often used as a metaphor for organisations that place machine‐like functioning above human needs. In this paper, a mixed‐methods approach is used to investigate the relationship between bureaucracy and fairness in public administration. The research is based on an interview study with 60 employees for the generation of hypotheses and an online survey with 1632 participating employees of the German Federal Criminal Police Office. The qualitative results indicate that aspects of skill underuti …