Bureaucracy as a Lens for Analyzing and Designing Algorithmic Systems

Scholarship on algorithms has drawn on the analogy between algorithmic systems and bureaucracies to diagnose shortcomings in algorithmic decision-making. We extend the analogy further by drawing on Michel Crozier’s theory of bureaucratic organizations to analyze the relationship between algorithmic and human decision-making power. We present algorithms as analogous to impartial bureaucratic rules for controlling action, and argue that discretionary decision-making power in algorithmic systems accumulates at locations where uncertainty about the operation of algorithms persists. This key point of our essay connects with Alkhatib and Bernstein’s theory of ’street-level algorithms’, and highlights that the role of human discretion in algorithmic systems is to accommodate uncertain situations which inflexible algorithms cannot handle. We conclude by discussing how the analysis and design of algorithmic systems could seek to identify and cultivate important sources of uncertainty, to enable the human discretionary work that enhances systemic resilience in the face of algorithmic errors.Peer reviewe

Development of Interllectual Capability

This paper is concerned with the subject of the ability of individuals to engage in goal-directed behavior in problem-solving and in everyday work. It concentrates upon one aspect only of this ability; namely, that of intellectual capability - or what tends currently to be referrred to as cognitive processes. It addresses a number of connected issues: first, what is the nature of cognitive processes, defined here as the processes by which individuals form or pattern the world which they construct and work with?; second, how is it possible to measure the scale or degree of complexity of cogrnitive processes - defined here as cognitive power - and by the same token, to measure the size of the world which a person can construct and live in?; and thirs, what is the pattern of development of the cognitive power of an individual - how does it mature and grow