The bureaucratization of organisational action in Tunisia

The instruments and the organisation of charity work in Sfax

Abstract

The analysis stems from the case of two charitable associations in the city of Sfax, Tunisia, and focuses on three instruments – accounting books, organisational charts, and databases of beneficiaries – to highlight the tensions and ambiguities within the bureaucratic form of organisational action. Such tensions and ambiguities demonstrate how the instruments of organisational action increase the margins of manoeuvre of charities’ managers. In such a context, the adherence of organisational procedures to State norms, and thus the legitimacy of these organisations, rests on the appropriation of State logics by charities’ managers, rather than on a real will to collaborate with the State. These managers come to play an increasingly central role, becoming at the same time the managers of their charities and the guarantors of the whole charity sector. The bureaucratic form of organisational action thus reveals a shift in the role of organisations, from serving the function of ideological mediation and the mediation of clienteles, to embodying a form of personalised government, based on the managers-guarantors of organisations.