PA Classics Flashcards
(33 cards)
Woodrow Wilson 1887 “The Study of Administration”
What can and should government do, and do it in the most efficient way possible. Science of administration. Administration of government is outside of politics. Public administration is detailed and systematic execution of public law. Call for a professional civil service for the administration of government.
Frank J. Goodnow 1900 “Politics and Administration”
Politics has to do with policies or expressions of the state will. Administration has to do with the execution of these policies. Politics has to have some form of control over the administration of government.
Frederick W. Taylor 1912 “Scientific Management”
Four Principles of Scientific Management 1. Management has “great mass of traditional knowledge” 2. Scientific selection of the “workmen”; employees 3. Bringing the scientific workmen together 4. Equal division of labor between management and workmen
Max Weber “Bureaucracy”
“Characteristics of Bureaucracy” Bureaucratic Authority “principle of fixed and official jurisdictional areas” ordered by rules, laws, or administrative regulations” Principles of Office Hierarchy and levels of graded authority super- and subordinate supervision Written documents (policies, procedures, regulations) Expert training and full commitment by officials “Office holding is a vocation” Officials have “distinct social esteem” Trained experts Officials derive authority “from below” Career public service
Leonard D. White 1955 “Introduction to the Study of Public Administration”
4 Assumptions 1. Administration is a single process substantially uniform whether local, state, federal, etc. 2.The study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law 3. Administration is primarily an art but attaches importance to the significant tendency to transform it into a science. 4. Administration has become, and will continue to be, the heart of the problem of government.
Public Administration in the 1880s to 1920s Jay Shafritz and Albert Hyde (eds) 2012
Major Themes in PA: Civil Service Reform Merit in Government Service New Discipline in Running a Government The Case for a Politics Administration Dichotomy Self-Government and the Problem of Municipal Administration Scientific Management Budgeting Reform PA & New Role of Gov’t - Organization and control to promote accountability and efficiency Theory of Bureaucracy Leonard White publishes first PA Textbook in 1926 “Introduction to the Study of Public Administration” Critical thinking about Individuals and Behavior
Public Administration The New Deal to Mid-Century 1930s - 1950s Jay Shafritz and Albert Hyde (eds)
Initial efforts towards a science of administration Understanding organizations and human behavior Growth of government and the reform movement Brownlow Report (January 1937) proposed major gov’t reorganization based on its view of gov’t from a managerial perspective. Early debates about accountability, ethics, and administrative responsibility Questions about managing gov’t resources Rejecting politics-administration dichotomy Emergent theories of decision making in PA Mid-century (1950) gov’t had changed. WWI, the Depression & New Deal, and WWII “radically altered the size, scope, and reach of gov’t”
Luther Gulick 1937 “Notes on the Theory of Organization”
Division of labor to account for the growth in gov’t and the need for more specialization and expertise Coordination of work through organization Streamline supervision POSDCORB - Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting
Brownlow Commission Report January 8, 1937
Proposed Reorganization: 1. Expand White House staff 2. Strengthen gov’t agencies, particularly those charged with budget, efficiency research, personnel, and planning 3. Expand merit system 4. Reorganize 100 gov’t agencies under a few large departments 5. Adopt “private sector” practices for budgeting to include financial records, audits, and accountability
Chester Barnard 1938 “Informal Organizations and Their Relation to Formal Organizations”
Informal organizations establish certain attitudes, understandings, customs, habits, institutions, and it creates the condition under which formal organizations may arise. Outcomes are customs, mores, folklore, institutions, social norms and ideals. In formal organizations, informal organizations promote communication, cohesion, willingness to serve, self respect, and independent choice.
Robert K. Merton 1957 “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality”
Bureaucratic Structure is its “technical efficiency, with a premium placed on precision, speed, expert control, continuity, discretion, and optimal returns on input” Bureaucratic dysfunction = trained incapacity
A.H. Maslow 1943 “A Theory of Human Motivation”
Psychological Needs Safety Needs Love Needs Esteem Needs The Need for Self-Actualization
Paul Appleby 1945 “Government is Different”
Government understood by way of public employees, conceptions of their positions, and public attitudes towards them Business men are better suited for gov’t work than self-made variety Gov’t different from all other institutions and activities; breadth and scope; impact, and consideration, and public accountability, and political character. Gov’t less efficient than private business due to its public character.
Herbert Simon 1946 “The Proverbs of Administration”
Specialization Unity of Command Span of Control Organization by Purpose, Process, Clientele and Place Administrative Theory: Define administrative situation with established criteria Assigning weights to the criteria
Dwight Waldo 1948 “The Administrative State: Conclusion”
Calls into question whether there is a study of administration as such, at least whether there is a function of administration in which training or specialization is possible. “The situation of [PA} is this: there is a large core of orthodox public administration ideology, but also a considerable measure of doubt and even iconoclasm; an increasing disposition to engage in empirical or functional studies in which theoretical postulates are obscure”
Douglas Murray McGregor 1957 “The Human Side of Enterprise”
Theory X: Conventional View 1.Management is responsible for organizing enterprise 2. With respect to people, this is a process of directing their efforts, motivating them, controlling their actions, modifying their behavior to fit the needs of the organization. 3. Without this active intervention by management, people will be passive. They must be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled. New Theory of Management; “Theory Y” 1. Management is responsible for organizing materials and resources in the interest of economic ends. 2. People are not inherently passive. They have become this way as a result of their experience in the organization. 3. Management is responsible for making it possible for people to develop professionally. 4. “The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operation so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives”
Charles E. Lindblom 1959 “The Science of Muddling Through”
Root or Branch to Solve Complex Problems
From JFK to Civil Service Reform
The 1960s and 1970s
Shafritz and Hyde 2012
New perspectives on organizations and bureacracy emerge. Budgeting and systems theories for governmental growth and decline. Rediscovering federalism, and uncovering intergovernmental organizations. The advance of policy analysis and program evaluation. Public administratin was in a quandary, due to the Vietnam War, social movements/protest, militancy of public employees and students, and the forthcoming equal employment opportunity, and representative bureaucracy. Watergate spurred debate and inquiry calling for a rediscovery of public service ethics. Discussions or represtentative bureaucracy called into question if governments represent all levels of society. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1948 overhauled federal employment creating OPM, Merit System Protection Board, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn 1966
“Organizations and the System Concept”
Understanding organizations requires knowing its “location and Identification”, and it is to regard the organization as “simply the epitome of the purposes of the designer, its leaders, or its key members. Social systems are combinations of “energy exchange or activity of people”, and “how the output is translated into energy which reactivates the pattern.” Open systems are characterized by (1) Importation of energy; (2) the “Through-Put”; (3) the “Output”; (4) Systems as Cycles of Events; (5) Negative Entropy; (6) Information Input, Negative Feedback, and Coding Processes; (7) The Steady State and Dynamic Homeostasis; (8) Differentiation; and, (9) Equifinality. “Open systems are not at rest but tend toward differentiation and elaboration, both because of subsystem dynamics and because of their relationship between growth and survival.”
Anthony Downs 1967
“The Life Cycle of Bureaus”
A bureau is formed by way of “routinization of charisma”; “may be created almost out of nothing by one or more groups in society in order to carry out a specific function or perceived need”; or, a new bureau may split off from an existing bureau. Bureau’s have an initial survival threshold achieved when the bureau is providing useful services, and routinized relations with major clients. Bureaus inherently seek to expand for the following reasons: acquire capable personnel, leaders receive increased power/income, reduces internal conflict, and, improves quality of its performance. Aging bureaus become more formalized, refocus on survival rather than performance, modify original goals, increase the number of administrators, and differentiate tasks/outputs. Bureaus rarely “die”, because they are often large and, as a result, have high survival rates; but, when they do it is because there service has become unimportant, the tasks remain important but the organization fails to perform adequately, or, important tasks are being done better by another bureau.
Herbert Kaufmann 1969
“Administrative Power and Political Power”
Large-scale organizations have contributed to “the sensation of individual helplessness”, a “sense of alienation on the part of many people, to a feeling that they as individuals cannot effectively register their own preferences on the decisions” of gov’t organizations. Existing gov’t agencies give general administrative mandates, yet day-to-day decisions/actions of lower officials and employees impact citizen perception of policies. Change in gov’t occurs slowly due to representative gov’t that allows vetos. The scale of gov’t organizations has increased leaving the public feeling helpless. “It takes a bureacrat to control a bureaucrat.” Posited outcome by Kaufmann is decentralization that places decision making at lower levels, and territorial “field personnel.” Kaufmann asserts, “Take administration out of politics and politics out of administration.”
H. George Fredrickson 1971
“Toward a New Public Administration”
Historical PA is “efficient, economical, and coordinated services” by public agencies. NPM adds to this definition by inclusion of the following: social equity to mitigate gov’t providing services to a limited clientele (i.e. poverty, unemployment, disease, ignorance, etc. still persist thus the need for the inclusion of social equity.” NPM Administrators are not “neutral” and should be “committed to both good management and social equity as values to be achieved.” NPM seeks to change policies that promote social inequities. NPM encourages changeable structures in the form of decentralization, devolution, client involvement, projects/contracts, clientele served, etc. NPM seeks to carry out legislative mandates, but also to influence or generally improve the quality of life. NPM and Organizational Theory posits a cost v. benefit analysis (distributive process);an Integrative Process on public employee coordination; boundary-exhance process between gov’t and citizens; and, a socio-emotional process.
Frederick C. Mosher, et al. 1974
“Watergate: Implications for Responsible Government”
Watergate was a “product of a system which shaped and guided the behavior of its participants.” The lead up to Watergate was shaped by practices occuring gradually in the prior decades. These include, the use of gov’t powers for friends and against opponents/enemies; politicization of career services; political espionage of Americans; use of gov’t resources/personnel for partisan purposes; solicitation of political support with express or implied reciprocity assurances; and, “dirty tricks.” “Ultimately, the assurance of high standards of ethical behavior depends upon the people who aspire to and gain public office, and more particularly upon the system of values they have internalized.”
Samuel Krislov 1974
“Representative Bureucracy”
Representative bureuacracy was designed for a “less elite, less class based civil service.” However, the US gov’t bureaucracy has grown in both prestige and power. This has contributed to other divisions among class, sex, race, etc.
