Journal of Public Administration and Governance ISSN 2161-7104 2017, Vol. 7, No. 3 http://jpag.macrothink.org 88 Bureaucracy Reform Deficit in Indonesia: A Cultural Theory Perspective Arif Budy Pratama Department of Public Administration, Tidar University, Indonesia E-mail: kk177c@gmail.com Received: July 10, 2017 Accepted: July 27, 2017 Online published: August 7, 2017 doi:10.5296/jpag.v7i3.11519 URL: https://doi.org/10.5296/jpag.v7i3.11519 Abstract The motivation of this paper is to identify the possible unintended consequences of reform program to modernize public administration in Indonesia through cultural theory looking glass. The cultural perspective matters to understand the context of reform-based implementation and the setting of society where public sector reform occurred. Applying cultural theory perspective, four patterns of unintended consequences in Indonesia’s bureaucracy reform are proposed to aid the analysis of reform deficit pattern. I name reform inertia for fatalist, formalistic reform for hierarchies, benefit-based reform for individualist, and conformity-based reform for egalitarian typed-organisations. This framework gives an alternative outlook to address potential negative effects as well as unintended consequences of bureaucracy reform in which reform advocates or public administrators could consider to anticipate in the process of reform. Keywords: Bureaucracy, Reform, Reform Deficit, Grid-group Cultural Theory 1. Introduction The greater attention on public sector reform in developing countries has emerged (Conteh & Huque, 2014; Haque, 2013). The western-based conceptual reform in public sector especially New Public Management (NPM) and its variants are widely adopted in many developing countries to modernise their public administration. However, there is a cautious reminder for adopters, due to its ubiquities, might affects some paradoxes and incompatibilities. The ignorance of context sometimes yields some negative effects which are counter-productive on the reform program. As a developing country, Indonesia is not the exception in joining the trend of administrative reform program which simply called bureaucracy reform agenda. Context does matter in adopting ideas of reform which mainly entrenched either in the socio-cultural area or political-jurisdiction system (Common, 2001; Massey, 2009; Vries,