I think you gave good examples in your original post, but since you asked the question...

My personal understanding of bureaucracy is a hierarchical structure that values "job justification", not "value creation". Bureaucracy finds its home in the organization's culture. Organizational culture comes directly from leadership or lack of leadership. The goal of organizations, or all but a few organizations, is to provide some form of value to society or a selected portion of society. Records are the necessary by-product of those efforts to create value, since any activities that create value must conform to a set of laws, rules, norms and best practices. Records establish that evidence. 

If the organization's leadership insists on the pursuit of excellence and outstanding service to clients/customers/the public and backs up this rhetoric with real actions that include the necessary investment in infrastructure and establishment of priorities to work toward this goal, employees throughout the organization will begin to align themselves accordingly out of self-interest, if for no other reason. You are right that a bureaucracy could still and often does evolve, depending on the organizations depth of commitment to self-improvement and renewal. The implementation of management-trends-du-jour would be a classic example of ineffective change management. However, when there is a deep commitment on the part of the leadership to create a different kind of culture focused on value creation consistent with the public's interest, a bureaucracy would have a tough time staying entrenched - regardless of the regulatory environment. The reason being, regulatory bodies and their regulations are focused on maintaining public safety and security, which is the "supreme law" according to Marcus Aurelius. Organizations that strive to innovate in directions that are consistent with the public's interest probably already meet or exceed regulatory requirements, which are minimum levels of compliance.

For example, public companies are required to comply with SOX, but they are not required to stop at the compliance level required by law. Rather, they are welcome to provide even more substantial controls if this aligns properly with their business model and value creation. They can go even further to create more substantial organizational transparency at the governance level, etc. Some organizations have taken this pathway as a means of differentiating themselves from competitors (I am thinking of 1970s Volvo commercials or post-incident Tylenol packaging announcements). There were regulatory requirements in both cases, which were far exceeded by the actions of those organizations. 

In my opinion, the difference between having a bureaucratic and streamlined organization rests with how individual employees understand their particular role in fulfilling the larger vision of the organization. If the information management professionals are working toward supporting the mission of the organization by creating and maintaining the most meaningful and accurate information management system possible, that doesn't strike me as the slightest bit bureaucratic.

Best wishes,

Jim

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