Abstract: Screen bureaucrats have long been studied in contrast to street-level bureaucrats, yet their intrinsic operational logic has rarely been examined independently. As a result, available research on screen bureaucrats remains largely confined to perspectives such as decision-making and implementation. With the increasing personalization and diversification of management information systems (MIS), more administrative tasks are now being completed through screen-based interactions. Consequently, the traditional role of screen bureaucrats as virtual pipeline managers has been overshadowed by other functions, leading to conceptual ambiguity. By revisiting the narrative characteristics inherent to screen bureaucrats, this study reveals that, while they remain embedded within administrative systems, they now assume roles distinct from traditional bureaucrats: a personalized role with neither purely organizational rationality nor individual behavior within the system; an active role playing neither as traditional bureaucrat nor as street-level entrepreneur in multi-source information contexts; a mediating role subject to neither command-and-obedience nor discretionary judgment in discursive arbitration.

Key words: screen bureaucrats, management information system, role reconstruction, street-level bureaucrats