A prikaz was an administrative, judicial, territorial, or executive office functioning on behalf of palace, civil, military, or church authorities in the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Tsardom of Russia from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The term usually suggests the functionality of a modern "ministry", "office", "department", or "bureau"; however, in practice prikaz was historically applied to most governmental organizations regardless of their function or authority. In modern Russian, prikaz literally means an 'order' in the meaning of 'directive' or 'command'.

Bureaucracy is a system of organisation where decisions are made by a body of non-elected officials. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution, whether publicly owned or privately owned. The public administration in many jurisdictions is an example of bureaucracy, as is any centralized hierarchical structure of an institution, including corporations, societies, nonprofit organisations, and clubs.