Digitalization, Bureaucracy and Merit in Public Administration: The ÇAM Digital Bureaucracy-Merit Analytical Framework

This chapter examines how digital transformation reshapes the relationship between bureaucracy and merit in public organizations from the perspective of middle level managers. Drawing on a qualitative study of 12 public managers, the chapter uses semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis supported by MAXQDA. The dataset contains 430 coding instances distributed across digitalization (150), merit (143), and bureaucracy (137). The findings indicate that digitalization does not eliminate bureaucratic organization. Rather, rules, hierarchy, control, record-keeping, and administrative procedures are reconfigured through digital systems. At the same time, merit is interpreted more broadly than formal education or appointment criteria, encompassing competence, experience, performance, responsibility, managerial capability, ethical judgement, and the capacity to work effectively with digital systems. Complementary Pearson correlation indicators calculated from case-level coding measures show positive associations between digitalization and merit (r = .695, p = .0061), digitalization and bureaucracy (r = .642, p = .0122), and especially bureaucracy and merit (r = .991, p < .001). These coefficients are interpreted as complementary relational indicators that inform the analysis of joint meaning-making rather than as evidence of causality. Integrating functionalist and interpretive perspectives, the chapter argues that digital transformation is better understood as a reconfiguration of the bureaucracy-merit relationship than as a transition from bureaucracy to bureaucracy-free administration. The chapter’s distinctive contribution is the ÇAM Digital Bureaucracy-Merit Analytical Framework, which brings digitalization infrastructure, the integrated bureaucracy-merit dimension, algorithmic management, institutional outcomes, and environmental conditions into a single analytical field without treating these elements as a deterministic causal chain.