When management becomes separated from both the people at the coalface (the people actually doing the jobs the organisation needs to do) and the founders/president/CEO, then behaviour changes. In most organisations, this is at 3 layers of management (not including the actual workers and the top management layer, so 5 layers deep for the whole organisation). After this point, presentation and political acumen outweigh all other factors for the middle management layer, because all other factors can always be "spun" to look good, or blamed on a scapegoat, etc. - there's no direct link between what the middle-manager did and what the result was, so presentation matters more.

Once that happens, the organisation will promote people who do politics well. It's only a matter of time before the entire organisation is focused on internal politics (apart from the people actually doing the work, who become pawns in political moves). As the organisation grows and the layers expand and more layers of management become disconnected, it gets worse.

In a company, eventually the company will get disrupted and die off. In a government that's not a thing, and it'll just keep expanding and playing politics. This gets worse for government departments headed by a politician, because the politician is very focused on getting something they can boast about to their electorate in the few years they have in the department. And they're usually very familiar with the kinds of political games being played.

Source: We studied this in my MBA, it's a known thing. If I still had my textbooks I could dig out a reference.

Would be interested in hearin' more ...

Think of it in terms of thermodynamics. The first group requires extra energy relative to the second group to perform roles of leadership, since those are secondary goals. The second group is instead naturally drawn to the roles of direction of the group. Thus, the lowest energy state will be one where the second group is in charge. Over time, things will gravitate to that state as it is the global minimum.

> But is there empirical evidence for it? And a rational explanation behind it?

I don't have empirical evidence for it, but I can take a stab at a rational explanation.

The second group faces no opposition in their pursuit for control of the organization and its processes.

At best, members of that group will fight among themselves, but certainly won't find resistance from the first group.

Control over various parts of the organization is therefore slowly given to one or more members of the second group.

Shouldn't the senior leadership team be providing resistance against the bureaucrats? This doesn't always happen, but I think it does sometimes.

Eventually the bureaucrats become the senior leadership and then they protect themselves.

This grows like a cancer: it starts from the bottom of the pool with people with no much skills, but looking for promotions while people with skills are looking for work results. In some very large companies I worked in (or with), techies focus on work while less competent people become managers; techies regard managers initially as admins that do work techies don't want to, but then the managers take over the organization and make it rot. This is initially far from senior leadership's sight, when it becomes visible it means most of the organization is already affected and it is too late. In most cases HR is helping with this because HR is completely disconnected and not understanding techies and the power dynamics ("those geeks nobody understands") and side with the bureaucrats because HR is also a form of bureaucracy (you don't get in HR is you are a brilliant STEM graduate).

Workers may, indeed, offer resistance against the second group.

They may offer resistance to the control of the second group but they don't fight as hard to take that control (because they focus on doing the work) so are eventually overpowered

By the time when the administration takes hold(due to legal, management or investor requirements) - workers are less than likely to care.

I work in one of those organizations (US legal requirements make it a nightmare)... I even have stock incentives, and I couldn't care less.

There will be a lot of datapoints supporting that “law”... the problem is that it’s subjective.

Everyone hates “education bureaucrats”, but if the mission is educating children, at some level the state of the institution is critical to that mission.

I don’t really believe you could do such a thing empirically. I mean it just depends on scale as you indicated. I have never been a fan of ‘social’ sciences either.

Just like Christensen’s Dilemma books are mostly just anecdotes combined with patterns in history. As many such business books are.

But in my short time on this planet I’ve seen it in countless forms where I strongly believe it deserves such a title as “iron law”.

I don't have empirical evidence, but it mirrors the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy always increasing). Most "concentrated" things tend to dissipate away.

> Are we doomed by bureaucracy?

When empires collapse, you get small offshoots starting up somewhere nearby. If you search "tree life cycle" on google images you will see the analogy I'm trying to get at :)

Yes. This is why Moon, Mars, etc colonies are important - it is like small startups wrt. BigCo which is our Earth civilization reaching the state of disfunction.