CORPOCRACY

noun (Business World) Corporate bureaucracy: bureaucratic organization in large companies (or in a particular company), especially when excessively hierarchical structures lead to overstaffing and inefficiency. Such companies are described as corpocratic; a director of one is a corpocrat. Etymology: Formed by combining the first two syllables of corporate with the last two of bureaucracy to make a blend. History and Usage: The word was coined by American economist Robert Heller in his book The Common Millionaire (1974), but was still sufficiently unfamiliar in the mid eighties for John S. Berry and Mark Green to present it as a new coinage in The Challenge of Hidden Profits: Reducing Corporate Bureaucracy and Waste (1985). In the UK the word--although not the phenomenon--was popularized by financier Sir James Goldsmith. Corpocracy was presented as an important reason for the uncompetitiveness of British and American businesses during the eighties. It doesn't believe much in hierarchy, rule books, dress codes, company cars, executive dining rooms, lofty titles, country club memberships or most other trappings of corpocracy. Forbes 23 Mar. 1987, p. 154 Such a complete change of direction is not likely to be welcomed by directors who I would describe as complacent or entrenched in their current 'corpocratic' culture. Sir James Goldsmith in First, 3.3 (1989), p. 18