What term refers to the specialized roles within a bureaucracy leading to blind spots?

The term that refers to the specialized roles within a bureaucracy leading to blind spots is "trained incapacity." This concept suggests that when individuals are highly specialized in their roles, they may become so focused on their specific tasks that they develop a limited perspective. This can result in an inability to think beyond their immediate responsibilities, ultimately leading to inefficiencies or oversight of broader issues within the organization.

The idea is that as individuals become more proficient in their specialized roles, they may overlook or fail to recognize important information or problems that fall outside their established routines or training. As a result, this can hinder the overall adaptability and responsiveness of the bureaucracy to changing circumstances or challenges.

Other terms, while related to various aspects of structure and thought processes in a workplace, do not encapsulate this specific phenomenon of limited perspective due to over-specialization. For example, job specialization refers more generally to the division of labor rather than the cognitive effects of that specialization. Career paralysis and functional fixedness describe different concepts related to decision-making and problem-solving, which do not directly address the idea of specialized roles creating blind spots in a bureaucratic context.