ODU Organization Critique Of Playstation Summary

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UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING
PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS
FIFTH EDITION
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Instructor Resources
Comprehensive instructor resources to accompany this fifth edition of
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations are available online at
www.wiley.com/college/rainey. Materials are organized by chapter and include
the following:
• Two sample syllabi. Both are intended for graduate-level courses and are
intended to provide students with a solid grounding in the concepts, topics, and research in public management and organization theory.
• PowerPoint slides for each chapter. These follow the organization of the text
and highlight the chapter themes and main subparts.
• Key terms for each chapter. A list of key terms is provided for each chapter.
• Discussion questions for each chapter. These questions can be used in class to
prompt discussion on key themes or assigned to students as homework.
The typical discussion question can be answered in one or two paragraphs.
• Writing assignments and reports. These are intended to be take-home writing
assignments, as they require more thorough consideration of topics and, in
some instances, additional research. The typical question can be answered
in as few as two pages or developed further into a more lengthy report.
• Case studies. Nine case studies can be found at the end of this document,
with suggestions for their use.
• Class exercise. All class exercises can be completed in less than forty-five minutes of class time. These are designed to reinforce chapter lessons while
encouraging collaborative learning among students.
Essential Texts for Public and Nonprofit Leadership
and Management
The Handbook of Nonprofit Governance, by BoardSource
Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 5th Edition,
by John M. Bryson
The Effective Public Manager: Achieving Success in Government Organizations,
5th Edition, by Steven Cohen, William Eimicke, and Tanya Heikkila
Handbook of Human Resources Management in Government, 3rd Edition,
by Stephen E. Condrey (ed.)
The Responsible Administrator, 6th Edition, by Terry L. Cooper
The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management, 3rd Edition,
by David O. Renz, Robert D. Herman, and Associates (eds.)
Benchmarking in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors, 2nd Edition,
by Patricia Keehley, and Others
The Ethics Challenge in Public Service, 3rd Edition, by Carol W. Lewis, and
Others
Managing Nonprofit Organizations, by Mary Tschirhart and
Wolfgang Bielefeld
Social Media in the Public Sector: Participation, Collaboration, and Transparency
in the Networked World, by Ines Mergel
Meta-Analysis for Public Management and Policy, by Evan Ringquist
The Practitioner’s Guide to Governance as Leadership: Building High-Performing
Nonprofit Boards, by Cathy A. Trower
Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations,
by Theodore H. Poister
Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Strategic
Approach, 4th Edition, by Joan E. Pynes
Fundraising Principles and Practice, by Adrian Sargeant, Jen Shang, and
Associates
Hank Rosso’s Achieving Excellence in Fundraising, 3rd Edition,
by Eugene R. Tempel, Timothy Seiler, and Eva Aldrich (eds.)
Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation, 3rd Edition, by Joseph S. Wholey,
and Others (eds.)
UNDERSTANDING
AND MANAGING PUBLIC
ORGANIZATIONS
FIFTH EDITION
Hal G. Rainey
Cover design by Michael Cook
Cover image © Scibak/Getty
Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rainey, Hal G. (Hal Griffin).
Understanding and managing public organizations / Hal G. Rainey. —5th Edition.
pages cm. — (Essential texts for public and nonprofit and public leadership and
management)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-58371-5 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-58449-1 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-58446-0 (ebk)
1. Public administration. I. Title.
JF1351.R27 2014
351–dc23
2013044990
Printed in the United States of America
fifth edition
PB Printing
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Figures, Tables, and Exhibits
ix
Preface xi
The Author
xix
PART ONE THE DYNAMIC CONTEXT OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS
1
1 The Challenge of Effective Public Organization and
Management 3
2 Understanding the Study of Organizations: A Historical Review
3 What Makes Public Organizations Distinctive
53
4 Analyzing the Environment of Public Organizations
5 The Impact of Political Power and Public Policy
86
109
PART TWO KEY DIMENSIONS OF ORGANIZING AND MANAGING
6 Organizational Goals and Effectiveness
16
145
147
vii
viii
Contents
7 Formulating and Achieving Purpose: Power, Decision Making, and
Strategy 173
8 Organizational Structure, Design, Technology, Information
Technology, and Social Media 208
9 Understanding People in Public Organizations: Motivation and
Motivation Theory 257
10 Understanding People in Public Organizations: Values, Incentives,
and Work-Related Attitudes 297
11 Leadership, Managerial Roles, and Organizational Culture
335
12 Teamwork: Understanding Communication and
Conflict in Groups 382
PART THREE STRATEGIES FOR MANAGING AND IMPROVING PUBLIC
ORGANIZATIONS 407
13 Managing Organizational Change and Development
409
14 Advancing Effective Management in the Public Sector
449
References 487
Additional Reference Materials 533
Name Index
539
Subject Index
555
FIGURES, TABLES, AND EXHIBITS
Figures
1.1
1.2
3.1
3.2
3.3
6.1
6.2
9.1
A Framework for Organizational Analysis 11
A Framework for Organizational Analysis (Elaboration
of Figure 1.1) 12
Agencies, Enterprises, and Hybrid Organizations 71
Public and Private Ownership and Funding 72
“Publicness”: Political and Economic Authority 74
Conceptual Framework of the Government Performance
Project 161
The Competing Values Framework 166
Formulations of Expectancy Theory 279
Tables
3.1
6.1
10.1
10.2
10.3
Typology of Organizations Created by Cross-Classifying Ownership,
Funding, and Mode of Social Control 75
Effectiveness Dimensions for Educational Institutions 164
The Complexity of Human Needs and Values 300
Types of Incentives 301
Perry’s Dimensions and Questionnaire Measures of Public Service
Motivation 315
ix
x
Figures, Tables, and Exhibits
13.1
14.1
Organizational Decline and Cutback Management: Tactics for
Responding to Decline and Funding Cuts 415
Characteristics of High-Performance Government Organizations 460
Exhibits
2.1
3.1
4.1
4.2
4.3
5.1
5.2
6.1
9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
11.1
11.2
11.3
12.1
13.1
13.2
13.3
13.4
13.5
13.6
14.1
14.2
14.3
14.4
Major Developments in Organization and Management Theory in
the Twentieth Century 46
Distinctive Characteristics of Public Management and Public
Organizations: A Summary of Common Assertions and Research
Findings 79
General Environmental Conditions 88
Descriptive and Analytical Dimensions of Organizational
Environments 93
Major Environmental Components for Public Organizations 99
Sources of Political Authority and Influence of Institutions,
Entities, and Actors in the Political System 112
Guidelines for Managing Relations with the News Media 119
Organizational Effectiveness: Dimensions and Measures 163
Questionnaire Items Used to Measure Work Motivation 264
Categories of Needs and Values Employed in Selected Content
Theories 269
Concepts and Principles of Operant Conditioning 283
Methods Commonly Used to Enhance Work Motivation in
Organizations 291
Managerial Roles and Skills 347
Conceptions and Dimensions of Culture 356
Background References for Assessing Organizational Culture 358
Communication Problems and Distortions 393
Attributes of Innovations That Affect Their Implementation 419
Phases of an Action Research Model for Organizational
Development 428
Patterns of Successful Organizational Change 435
Steps for Successful Organizational Transformation 436
Determinants of Successful Implementation of Organizational
Change in the Public Sector 437
Conditions for a Successful Change in a Federal Agency 446
Propositions About Effective Public Organizations 462
Osborne and Gaebler’s Strategies for Reinventing Government 467
The National Performance Review: Major Priorities and
Initiatives 470
Conditions for Successful Privatization and Contracting Out 481
PREFACE
T
he previous editions of Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
reviewed the literature on management and organization theory and
suggested applications to the public sector grounded in evidence from
research on public organizations and the people in them. The book has
served primarily as a text in courses for master of public administration students and in seminars for doctoral students in public administration and
public affairs programs. It has also served the needs of scholars, and it has
a high number of citations in the Social Science Citation Index for a book
of this type, in this field. The revisions in this fifth edition seek to enhance
the book’s usefulness to students and scholars. The book also seeks to meet
certain needs of practicing managers and professionals.
Reviewers of earlier editions suggested greater integration among the
chapters and the addition of an organizing framework for the material.
The first chapter now includes a conceptual framework that links the chapters and topics in the book. This framework emphasizes a fundamental
challenge for leaders and members of organizations: that of integrating
and coordinating the components and domains of the organization. These
include the organization’s environment, strategy- and decision-making
processes, goals and values, culture, structure, power relationships, tasks,
and communication processes. This integration, of course, must also
include the people—the organization’s leaders, teams, and groups, and
xi
xii
Preface
their motivations, work attitudes, and behaviors. As the book illustrates, the
field of management and organizational theory has developed no comprehensive theory or scientific solution that achieves this integration. Without
wanting to slight or offend my fellow authors, I assert that no existing text
on organizations and their management achieves a highly effective integration of the topics any more than this one does. Nevertheless, the book’s
chapters describe concepts and insights from the organization and management literature that support leaders’ and managers’ efforts to think
and act comprehensively, and to integrate the topics and issues they face.
The final chapter illustrates how to use the framework to approach management challenges—such as privatization of public services—in an integrative, comprehensive fashion. In addition, an online instructor’s guide
is available, which includes cases and exercises that instructors can use to
challenge students to consider how to bring multiple topics and concepts
to bear on the same case.
The book’s chapters flesh out the conceptual framework by reviewing the theories, research, and practices associated with major topics in
the field of organizations and their management. As described in Chapter
One, the field of public management and leadership has continued to
develop rapidly since publication of the previous editions. Accordingly,
many chapters and topics in this edition have been expanded to cover new
material and new developments. This includes research on such topics as
how public managers lead and behave, effective performance in government agencies, organizational commitment in public organizations, differences between public and private managers’ perceptions of the personnel
systems with which they work, organizational culture in public organizations, and many other topics. This edition includes expanded coverage of
developments on the topic of “public values,” of research on public service
motivation, and of recent research on strategic decision making in public
organizations. It includes much more coverage than in previous editions
of the rapidly developing topic of networks and collaboration in the public
service delivery and governance. This edition generally updates the reviews
of research on the many topics in the book, such as the Meier-O’Toole
model of public management. The chapters on the major topics of the
book show that researchers have published a profusion of studies on these
and other topics since the fourth edition appeared, thus raising a major
challenge for those who seek to review and interpret them all.
In addition, previous editions of this book have analyzed, as does this
one, the distinctions between public organizations and their members, on
the one hand, and other types of organizations, leaders, and employees,
Preface
xiii
such as those in the business sector, on the other. Chapter Three presents
a conceptual analysis of these distinctions: What do we mean when we refer
to these different types of organizations and the people who work for them?
How do we define them and study their differences? Subsequent chapters
describe research articles and other forms of evidence that compare public
and private organizations in terms of the topics that these chapters cover.
Many studies of this type have appeared in recent years. Assembling these
studies, describing them, and interpreting them for the reader has posed
another serious challenge, but a welcome one, because one of the book’s
objectives is to provide the most comprehensive compilation and review
possible of such research-based comparisons of public and private (and
public and nonprofit) organizations.
Another goal and challenge of the previous editions of the book was
to cover important developments in the practice and contemporary context of general management and public management. Previous editions
covered such topics as Total Quality Management (TQM); the influence of
the best-selling book Reinventing Government (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992)
and the REGO movement it spawned, including the federal government’s
National Performance Review; and the management of privatization and
contracting-out programs, among others. Some of these developments
have become dated and less prominent over time, but reviewers and colleagues advised against deleting them. The review of such developments in
Chapter Fourteen provides a history of many of the management improvement initiatives in recent decades. The review illustrates how ideas move
through government and other domains over time, and the interplay
between academic scholarship and theory, on the one hand, and the practice of management, on the other. This edition reports on research evaluating the influence of these developments on governments at all levels in
the United States and in other nations. It also covers more recent developments such as the New Public Management movement around the world,
the George W. Bush administration’s President’s Management Agenda and its
Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), and the human capital movement in government.
The book provides such coverage in part to make this edition more
useful than the previous editions for practicing managers and professionals and for students interested in such roles. It also offers many suggestions for those faced with practical leadership and management challenges,
including managing relations with the media (Chapter Five), enhancing
one’s power and authority (Chapter Seven), conducting strategic decisionmaking processes (Chapter Seven), motivating employees (Chapter Ten),
xiv
Preface
managing and leading organizational culture (Chapter Eleven), managing conflict (Chapter Twelve), leading organizational change (Chapter
Thirteen), and other topics. In addition, it gives examples of how these
insights and concepts are used in the field. For instance, Chapter Eight
begins with a description of the major structural reform that the U.S.
Internal Revenue Service underwent, and of the structural changes made
at a national laboratory in response to public concerns about its safety.
Chapter Nine points out that many of the efforts to reform pay systems
in government would have been much more effective if they had been
informed by a clear understanding of a number of motivation theories.
Chapter Thirteen shows how strategies for leading organizational change
have led to successful large-scale change in government agencies, and how
not applying such strategies has led to failure in other instances. Chapter
Thirteen provides a summary of points of expert consensus about successful management of large-scale organizational change. When my coauthor,
Sergio Fernandez, and I published this summary in Public Administration
Review (PAR) and on the PAR website, we received very positive comments
from government officials about the usefulness of the summary.
Ultimately, the book pursues the theme that effective leadership
involves the well-informed, thoughtful, integrative use of a variety of management concepts and points rather than the hot pursuit of catchy phrases
and glib advice. As an illustration of this theme, consider that many students of military strategy and history express great admiration for Carl Von
Clausewitz’s classic treatise On War (1986). Clausewitz took the position
that he could not advise an individual commander on how to conduct a
specific campaign because such situations are so highly varied and contingent. Rather, he aimed to provide general perspective and insight on how
to conceive of the nature and enterprise of war. Even persons who loathe
military force and military analogies might accept the point that people
facing practical challenges often profit from general understanding and
insight as much as from detailed prescriptions.
Audience
The primary audience for previous editions of Understanding and Managing
Public Organizations included graduate students and scholars interested in
public management and applications of organization theory to the public
sector. The difference between the needs of doctoral students and those
of master of public administration (M.P.A.) students and undergraduate
Preface
xv
students presents a challenge for this book. Faculty colleagues at other
universities who have used the book in their classes have sometimes mentioned that their M.P.A. students do not see the need for the many citations
to academic research articles and reviews of such academic materials. They
also mention, however, that their doctoral students value and appreciate
the reviews of academic literature and research, and the citation of such
work. For this fifth edition, this raised the question of whether I should
reduce the reviews and citations of academic research to meet the needs
and preferences of some M.P.A. students, or to keep this coverage and even
extend it by updating it. Faculty colleagues with whom I discussed this matter, as well as anonymous reviewers of the proposal for this edition, mostly
advised the latter approach—keeping the coverage of academic research.
One reviewer emphatically insisted that this coverage represents a distinctive contribution of the book, and that I should avoid “dumbing down”
the book.
This edition does try to accommodate, in certain ways, the preferences
of students who do not see the need for the academic citations. In Chapters
One and Fourteen, long lists of parenthetic references citing multiple
books and articles have been moved to endnotes, to enable an uninterrupted flow of the text. In addition, as mentioned earlier, an instructor’s
guide is now available. It includes key terms, examples, potential writing
assignments, and case discussion exercises. The instructor’s guide also
includes and illustrates suggestions and alternatives for using the materials and approaching the topics of a course using the book. These materials
can enliven the topics and make them more accessible for M.P.A. students.
Microsoft PowerPoint presentations are also available for each chapter;
they provide many rich illustrations and graphics that can enliven a discussion and coverage of the topics. These resources are available at www.wiley
.com/college/rainey.
Reviewers of the previous editions said that practitioners would be
unlikely to delve into the detailed reviews of research and theory the
book provides. I concede this point, but grudgingly. This assumption
underestimates many practicing leaders and managers who are thoughtful and reflective students of leadership and management. They may dislike abstruse academic discourse because they are inclined to action and
strive for practical results. They may also find quick advice and bright ideas
attractive. When practicing managers enroll in courses in academic settings, however, they often lead their classes in insight and in showing an
interest in new concepts and broad perspectives. They often spurn “war
stories” and how-to manuals.
xvi
Preface
Thus the lines between practicing managers, students, and management scholars often blur. Sometimes practicing managers seek degrees in
long-term academic programs and play the role of student. Often they
teach or help to teach courses. Therefore, although the primary goal of
this book is to serve students and scholars interested in research and theory, it can also serve practicing managers and leaders. This book can serve
as a reference for busy managers who want a review of basic topics in the
field and who might find the conceptual framework and some of the suggestions and examples useful.
Organization
The best overview of the organization of the book can be obtained by
reviewing the table of contents. Part One covers the dynamic context of
public organizations. Its five chapters introduce the basic objectives and
assumptions of the book and the conceptual framework mentioned earlier. Chapter One discusses the current context of public management
in practice and in scholarship, and the challenges this context raises for
applying organization and management theory to public organizations.
Chapter Two summarizes the history of organization and management theory, describing the development of some of the most important concepts
and issues in the field, which are discussed further in later chapters. In
addition, this historical review shows that most of the prominent organization and management theorists have been concerned with developing the
general theory of organizations and have not been particularly interested
in public organizations as a category. Their lack of interest in public organizations justifies the effort made in this book to apply organization theory to
public organizations, and it also indicates the challenges involved. Chapter
Three defines public organizations and distinguishes them from private
ones. It also provides an introductory overview of the assertions about the
nature of public organizations made in later chapters. Chapters Four and
Five review the literature on organizational environments, particularly the
political and institutional environments of public organizations.
Part Two focuses on key dimensions of organizing and managing.
These seven chapters concentrate on major topics in organization theory
and management, including goals and effectiveness, power, strategy, decision making, structure and design, and the people in organizations (including discussions of values, motivation, work-related behaviors and attitudes,
leadership, organizational culture, teams and groups, communication, and
Preface
xvii
conflict). They describe current research on these topics and discuss how
it applies to public organizations.
Part Three covers strategies for managing and improving public organizations. Chapter Thirteen addresses organizational change and development. Chapter Fourteen, the last chapter of the book, presents ideas
for achieving organizational excellence in the public sector. Finally, the
chapter illustrates how the conceptual framework may be used to pursue
a comprehensive management strategy that addresses both new initiatives
and long-standing challenges.
Acknowledgments
I still owe thanks to all the people mentioned in the first four editions,
and the list has grown even longer. It defies enumeration here. Despite my
concern about leaving out anyone, I must leave out a great many people
anyway. I offer thanks to all those who have discussed the book with me
and made suggestions, including Craig Boardman, Barry Bozeman, Delmer
Dunn, Patricia Ingraham, Ed Kellough, Ken Meier, Larry O’Toole, Sanjay
Pandey, and many others, including anonymous reviewers for this and previous editions. As were the previous editions, this book is dedicated primarily to my son, Willis, my daughter, Nancy, and my wife, Lucy.
Doctoral students in the School of Public and International Affairs
at the University of Georgia provided invaluable assistance with this edition and previous ones. These include Meriem Hodge and Harin Woo,
who provided reviews of current research and suggestions about how to
use them, as well as assistance in editing and revising the content. This
edition also benefits from contributions to past editions by former doctoral students. These include Professor Young Han Chun of Seoul National
University, Professor Jay Eungha Ryu of Ohio University, Professor Sergio
Fernandez of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental
Affairs, Professor Chan Su Jung of the City University of Hong Kong,
Professor John Ronquillo of DePaul University, Professor Jung Wook Lee of
Yonsei University, and Mike Koehler of the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security.
I refer to another of our doctoral graduates, Professor Deanna
Malatesta of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs of Indiana
University, Purdue University at Indianapolis, as my coauthor on the
instructor’s guide and PowerPoint presentations. This claim is presumptuous on my part, because Deanna did so much of the work—with such
xviii
Preface
energy, initiative, and creativity—that she would be justified in refusing to
list me as coauthor. Seldom have I felt so indebted to a colleague.
I owe gratitude to representatives of Jossey-Bass publishers who have
helped and supported the work on this and previous editions. For this edition, it has been a pleasure to work with Alison Hankey, with her combined
high levels of competence, soundness of judgment, efficiency, encouragement, and helpfulness.
The assumptions and arguments made in each edition of this book
amount to acknowledgment of the contributions of numerous authors,
both those I have cited and those I was unable to incorporate due to time
and space limitations. These arguments include the assertion that public organizations are important institutions that provide crucial services.
They currently face a measure of public scorn, pressures to perform better
with less money, and increasing demands to provide an elaborate array of
functions and services. These pressures are aggravated by misunderstandings, oversimplifications, myths, and outright lies about the nature and
performance of public organizations and employees in the United States
and many other countries. Public organizations are often highly effective,
well-managed entities with hardworking, high-performing employees, yet
they face distinctive pressures and constraints in addition to the typical
challenges all organizations face, and these constraints can lead to dysfunction and poor performance. The review of insights and concepts about
organizations and management provided in this book seeks to support
those who strive to maintain and advance the effective management of
public organizations. The book thus acknowledges all those who strive with
sincerity to provide public, social, and altruistic service.
Hal G. Rainey
Athens, Georgia
February 2014
THE AUTHOR
Hal G. Rainey is Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor in the
Department of Public Administration and Policy, in the School of Public
and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. He conducts
research on management in the public sector, with an emphasis on leadership, incentives, organizational change, organizational culture and performance, and the comparison of organization and management in the
public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
The first edition of Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
won the Best Book Award of the Public and Nonprofit Sectors Division of
the Academy of Management in 1992. The book has been published in
Chinese- and Russian-language editions.
In 1995, Rainey received the Charles H. Levine Award for Excellence
in Research, Teaching, and Service, conferred jointly by the American
Society for Public Administration and the National Association of Schools
of Public Affairs and Administration. In 2003, he was elected as a fellow of
the National Academy of Public Administration. Rainey received the 2009
Dwight Waldo Award for excellence in scholarship in public administration across an extended career. In 2011, he received the John Gaus Award
from the American Political Science Association and delivered the Gaus
lecture at the annual meeting of the Association. The Gaus Award honors
“the recipient’s lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of
xix
xx
The Author
political science and public administration.” He has served as chair of the
Public and Nonprofit Sectors Division of the Academy of Management
and as chair of the Public Administration Section of the American Political
Science Association. He received his B.A. degree (1968) in English from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his M.A. degree (1973)
in psychology and Ph.D. degree (1977) in public administration from the
Ohio State University.
Rainey has served on governmental commissions and task forces and
in applied research and teaching roles at the three levels of government in
the United States, and in service to governments in other nations. Before
entering university teaching and research, Rainey served as an officer in
the U.S. Navy and as a VISTA volunteer.
PART ONE
THE DYNAMIC CONTEXT
OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER ONE
THE CHALLENGE OF EFFECTIVE PUBLIC
ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
A
s this book heads for publication, the president of the United States
and his political opponents in Congress have entered into a dispute
over sequestration of federal funds. Previous legislation required that
funding for federal programs be sequestered, or withheld, if by a certain
date the president and Congress could not agree on cuts in federal funding to reduce the federal deficit. The date passed and the sequestration
began. Executives and managers in U.S. federal agencies had to decide
how to make the funding reductions. They announced plans to reduce
numerous federal programs and to reduce the services those programs
delivered. These reductions would have serious adverse effects on government services at the state and local levels. Leaders of federal agencies
announced plans to furlough tens of thousands of federal employees. An
agreement between the president and Congress was still possible, rendering it unclear whether or not these furloughs and service reductions would
actually take place. By the time readers devote attention to this book, they
will know the outcomes of this sequestration episode. Whatever the outcomes, the situation illustrates an important characteristic of public or
governmental organizations and the people in them. They are very heavily
influenced by developments in the political and governmental context in
which they operate. Even government employees who may never encounter an elected official in their day-to-day activities have their working lives
influenced by the political system under whose auspices they operate.
3
4
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
During the same period of time, the news media and professional publications provided generally similar examples each day. A major storm caused
immense damage in northeastern states. Soon after, stories in the news
media described sharp criticisms of the public works department of a major
city. Critics castigated the department’s management and leadership, alleging that weak management had led to an inadequate response to the storm
that had aggravated the damage from it. In still another example, a major
newspaper carried a front-page story claiming that excessive bureaucracy
and poor management were causing inadequate and delayed services for veterans and their beneficiaries. Again and again, such reports illustrated similar points. Government organizations, which this book will usually call public
organizations, deliver important services and discharge functions that many
citizens consider crucial. Inadequate organization and management of those
functions and services creates problems for citizens, from small irritations to
severe and life-threatening damages. The organizations and the people in
them have to carry out their services and functions under the auspices and
influence of other governmental authorities. Hence they operate directly
or indirectly in what David Aberbach and Bert Rockman call “the web of
politics” (Aberbach and Rockman, 2000). The examples generally apply as
well to governments in the other nations and the organizations within those
governments. Nations around the world have followed a continuing pattern of organizing, reorganizing, reforming, and striving to improve government agencies’ management and performance (Kettl, 2002, 2009; Kickert,
2007, 2008; Light, 1997, 2008; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). As in the United
States, governmental or public organizations in all nations operate within a
context of constitutional provisions, laws, and political authorities and processes that heavily influence their organization and management.
Toward Improved Understanding and Management
of Public Organizations
All nations face decisions about the roles of their government and private
institutions in their society. The pattern of reorganization and reform mentioned in the preceding section spawned a movement in many countries
either to curtail government authority and replace it with greater private
activity or to make government operations more like those of private business firms (Christensen and Laegreid, 2007; Pollitt and Bouckeart, 2011).
This skepticism about government implies that there are sharp differences between government and privately managed organizations. During
this same period, however, numerous writers argued that we had too little
sound analysis of such differences and too little attention to management
The Challenge of Effective Public Organization and Management
5
in the public sector. A large body of scholarship in political science and
economics that focused on government bureaucracy had too little to say
about managing that bureaucracy. This critique elicited a wave of research
and writing on public management and public organization theory, in
which experts and researchers have been working to provide more careful
analyses of organizational and managerial issues in government.
This chapter elaborates on these points to develop another central
theme of this book: we face a dilemma in combining our legitimate concerns about the performance of public organizations with the recognition that they play indispensable roles in society. We need to maintain and
improve their effectiveness. We can profit by studying major topics from
general management and organization theory and examining the rapidly
increasing evidence of their successful application in the public sector. That
evidence indicates that the governmental context strongly influences organization and management, sometimes constraining performance. Just as
often, however, governmental organizations and managers perform much
better than is commonly acknowledged. Examples of effective public management abound. These examples usually reflect the efforts of managers in
government who combine managerial skill with effective knowledge of the
public sector context. Experts continue to research and debate the nature of
this combination, however, as more evidence appears rapidly and in diverse
places. This book seeks to base its analysis of public management and organizations on the most careful and current review of this evidence to date.
General Management and Public Management
This book proceeds on the argument that a review and explanation of the
literature on organizations and their management, integrated with a review
of the research on public organizations, supports understanding and
improved management of public organizations. As this implies, these two
bodies of research and thought are related but separate, and their integration imposes a major challenge for those interested in public management.
The character of these fields and of their separation needs clarification. We
can begin that process by noting that scholars in sociology, psychology, and
business administration have developed an elaborate body of knowledge in
the fields of organizational behavior and organization theory.
Organizational Behavior, Organization Theory, and Management
The study of organizational behavior had its primary origins in industrial
and social psychology. Researchers of organizational behavior typically
6
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
concentrate on individual and group behaviors in organizations, analyzing
motivation, work satisfaction, leadership, work-group dynamics, and the
attitudes and behaviors of the members of organizations. Organization theory, on the other hand, is based more in sociology. It focuses on topics that
concern the organization as a whole, such as organizational environments,
goals and effectiveness, strategy and decision making, change and innovation, and structure and design. Some writers treat organizational behavior
as a subfield of organization theory. The distinction is primarily a matter
of specialization among researchers; it is reflected in the relative emphasis
each topic receives in specific textbooks (Daft, 2013; Schermerhorn, 2011)
and in divisions of professional associations.
Organization theory and organizational behavior are covered in every
reputable, accredited program of business administration, public administration, educational administration, or other form of administration,
because they are considered relevant to management. The term management
is used in widely diverse ways, and the study of this field includes the use
of sources outside typical academic research, such as government reports,
books on applied management, and observations of practicing managers
about their work. While many elements play crucial roles in effective
management—finance, information systems, inventory, purchasing,
production processes, and others—this book concentrates on organizational behavior and theory. We can further define this concentration as
the analysis and practice of such functions as leading, organizing, motivating,
planning and strategy making, evaluating effectiveness, and communicating.
A strong tradition, hereafter called the “generic tradition,” pervades
organization theory, organizational behavior, and general management.
As discussed in Chapters Two and Three, most of the major figures in this
field, both classical and contemporary, apply their theories and insights
to all types of organizations. They have worked to build a general body of
knowledge about organizations and management. Some pointedly reject
any distinctions between public and private organizations as crude stereotypes. Many current texts on organization theory and management contain
applications to public, private, and nonprofit organizations (for example,
Daft, 2013).
In addition, management researchers and consultants frequently work
with public organizations and use the same concepts and techniques they
use with private businesses. They argue that their theories and frameworks
apply to public organizations and managers since management and organization in government, nonprofit, and private business settings face similar
challenges and follow generally similar patterns.
The Challenge of Effective Public Organization and Management
7
Public Administration, Economics, and Political Science
The generic tradition offers many valuable insights and concepts, as this
book will illustrate repeatedly. Nevertheless, we do have a body of knowledge specific to public organizations and management. We have a huge
government, and it entails an immense amount of managerial activity. City
managers, for example, have become highly professionalized. We have
a huge body of literature and knowledge about public administration.
Economists have developed theories of public bureaucracy (Downs, 1967).
Political scientists have written extensively about it (Meier and Bothe, 2007;
Stillman, 2004). These political scientists and economists usually depict
the public bureaucracy as quite different from private business. Political
scientists concentrate on the political role of public organizations and their
relationships with legislators, courts, chief executives, and interest groups.
Economists analyzing the public bureaucracy emphasize the absence of
economic markets for its outputs. They have usually concluded that this
absence of markets makes public organizations more bureaucratic, inefficient, change-resistant, and susceptible to political influence than private firms (Barton, 1980; Breton and Wintrobe, 1982; Dahl and Lindblom,
1953; Downs, 1967; Niskanen, 1971; Tullock, 1965).
In the 1970s, authors began to point out the divergence between the
generic management literature and that on the public bureaucracy and to
call for better integration of these topics.1 These authors noted that organization theory and the organizational behavior literature offer elaborate
models and concepts for analyzing organizational structure, change, decisions, strategy, environments, motivation, leadership, and other important
topics. In addition, researchers had tested these frameworks in empirical
research. Because of their generic approach, however, they paid too little
attention to the issues raised by political scientists and economists concerning public organizations. For instance, they virtually ignored the internationally significant issue of whether government ownership and economic
market exposure make a difference for management and organization.
Critics also faulted the writings in political science and public administration for too much anecdotal description and too little theory and systematic research (Perry and Kraemer, 1983; Pitt and Smith, 1981). Scholars
in public administration generally disparaged as inadequate the research
and theory in that field (Kraemer and Perry, 1989; McCurdy and Cleary,
1984; White and Adams, 1994). In a national survey of research projects on
public management, Garson and Overman (1981, 1982) found relatively
little funded research on general public management and concluded that
the research that did exist was highly fragmented and diverse.
8
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
Neither the political science nor the economics literature on public
bureaucracy paid as much attention to internal management—designing
the structure of the organization, motivating and leading employees, developing internal communications and teamwork—as did the organization
theory and general management literature. From the perspective of organization theory, many of the general observations of political scientists and
economists about motivation, structure, and other aspects of the public
bureaucracy appeared oversimplified.
Issues in Education and Research
Concerns about the way we educate people for public management also
fueled the debate about the topic. In the wake of the upsurge in government activity during the 1960s, graduate programs in public administration
spread among universities around the country. The National Association of
Schools of Public Affairs and Administration began to accredit these programs. Among other criteria, this process required master of public administration (M.P.A.) programs to emphasize management skills and technical
knowledge rather than to provide a modified master’s program in political
science. This implied the importance of identifying how M.P.A. programs
compare to master of business administration (M.B.A.) programs in preparing people for management positions. At the same time, it raised the
question of how public management differs from business management.
These developments coincided with expressions of concern about
the adequacy of our knowledge of public management. In 1979 the U.S. Office
of Personnel Management (1980) organized a prestigious conference at
the Brookings Institution. The conference featured statements by prominent academics and government officials about the need for research on
public management. It sought to address a widespread concern among
both practitioners and researchers about “the lack of depth of knowledge
in this field” (p. 7). At around the same time, various authors produced
a stream of articles and books arguing that public sector management
involves relatively distinct issues and approaches. They also complained,
however, that too little research and theory and too few case exercises
directly addressed the practice of active, effective public management
(Allison, 1983; Chase and Reveal, 1983; Lynn, 1981, 1987). More recently,
this concern with building research and theory on public management
has developed into something of a movement, as more researchers have
converged on the topic. Beginning in 1990, a network of scholars have
come together for a series of five National Public Management Research
Conferences. These conferences have led to the publication of books
The Challenge of Effective Public Organization and Management
9
containing research reported at the conferences (Bozeman, 1993; Brudney,
O’Toole, and Rainey, 2000; Frederickson and Johnston, 1999; Kettl and
Milward, 1996) and of many professional journal articles. In 2000, the
group formed a professional association, the Public Management Research
Association, to promote research on the topic. Later chapters will cover
many of the products and results of their research.
Ineffective Public Management?
On a less positive note, recurrent complaints about inadequacies in the
practice of public management have also fueled interest in the field, in an
intellectual version of the ambivalence about public organizations and their
management that the public and political officials tend to show. We generally
recognize that large bureaucracies—especially government bureaucracies—
have a pervasive influence on our lives. They often blunder, and they
can harm and oppress people, both inside the organizations and without
(Adams and Balfour, 2009). We face severe challenges in ensuring both
their effective operation and our control over them through democratic
processes. Some analysts contend that our efforts to maintain this balance
of effective operation and democratic control often create disincentives
and constraints that prevent many public administrators from assuming
the managerial roles that managers in industry typically play (Gore, 1993;
Lynn, 1981; National Academy of Public Administration, 1986; Warwick,
1975). Some of these authors argue that too many public managers fail to
seriously engage the challenges of motivating their subordinates, effectively
designing their organizations and work processes, and otherwise actively
managing their responsibilities. Both elected and politically appointed officials face short terms in office, complex laws and rules that constrain the
changes they can make, intense external political pressures, and sometimes
their own amateurishness. Many concentrate on pressing public policy
issues and, at their worst, exhibit political showmanship and pay little attention to the internal management of agencies and programs under their
authority. Middle managers and career civil servants, constrained by central
rules, have little authority or incentive to manage. Experts also complain
that too often elected officials charged with overseeing public organizations show too little concern with effectively managing them. Elected officials have little political incentive to attend to “good government” issues,
such as effective management of agencies. Some have little managerial
background, and some tend to interpret managerial issues in ways that
would be considered outmoded by management experts.
10
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
Effective Public Management
In contrast with criticisms of government agencies and employees, other
authors contend that public bureaucracies perform better than is commonly
acknowledged (Doig and Hargrove, 1987; Downs and Larkey, 1986; Goodsell,
2003, 2011; Milward and Rainey, 1983; Rainey and Steinbauer, 1999).
Others described successful governmental innovations and policies (Borins,
2008; Holzer and Callahan, 1998). Wamsley and his colleagues (1990)
called for increasing recognition that the administrative branches of governments in the United States play as essential and legitimate a role as
the other branches of government. Many of these authors pointed to evidence of excellent performance by many government organizations and
officials and the difficulty of proving that the private sector performs better.
In response to this concern about the need for better analysis about
effective public management, the literature continued to burgeon in the
1990s and into the new century. As later chapters will show, a genre has
developed that includes numerous books and articles about effective leadership, management, and organizational practices in government agencies.2 These contributions tend to assert that government organizations
can and do perform well, and that we need continued inquiry into when
they do, and why.
The Challenge of Sustained Attention and Analysis
The controversies described in the previous sections reflect fundamental
complexities of the American political and economic systems. Those systems have always subjected the administrative branch of government to
conflicting pressures over who should control and how, whose interests
should be served, and what values should predominate (Waldo, [1947]
1984). Management involves paradoxes that require organizations and
managers to balance conflicting objectives and priorities. Public management often involves particularly complex objectives and especially difficult
conflicts among them.
In this debate over the performance of the public bureaucracy and
whether the public sector represents a unique or a generic management
context, both sides are correct, in a sense. General management and organizational concepts can have valuable applications in government; however,
unique aspects of the government context must often be taken into account.
In fact, the examples of effective public management given in later chapters show the need for both. Managers in public agencies can effectively
The Challenge of Effective Public Organization and Management
11
apply generic management procedures, but they must also skillfully negotiate external political pressures and administrative constraints to create a
context in which they can manage effectively. The real challenge involves
identifying how much we know about this process and when, where, how,
and why it applies. We need researchers, practitioners, officials, and citizens
to devote sustained, serious attention to developing our knowledge of and
support for effective public management and effective public organizations.
Organizations: A Definition and a Conceptual Framework
As we move toward a review and analysis of research relevant to public
organizations and their management, it becomes useful to clarify the meaning of basic concepts about organizations and to develop a framework to
guide the sustained analysis this book will provide. Figure 1.1 presents a
framework for this purpose. Figure 1.2 elaborates on some of the basic
components of this framework, providing more detail about organizational
structures, processes, and people.
FIGURE 1.1. A FRAMEWORK FOR ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
Goals & Values
(Chapters 6, 11)
Leadership & Strategy
(Chapters 7, 11)
Culture
(Chapter 11)
Environments
(Chapters 4, 5)
Structures
(Chapter 8)
Processes
(Chapters 7, 12, 13)
Tasks & Technology
(Chapter 8)
Incentives
(Chapters 9, 10)
People
Groups
(Chapter 12)
Individuals
(Chapters 9, 10)
Organizational
Performance &
Effectiveness
(Chapters 6, 14)
12
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
FIGURE 1.2. A FRAMEWORK FOR ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
(ELABORATION OF FIGURE 1.1)
Goals & Values
(Chapters 6, 11)
Auspices:
Public or Private
Nonprofit, Hybrid
(Chapter 3)
Leadership & Strategy
(Chapters 7, 11)
Culture
(Chapter 11)
Structures
Specialization or Division
of Responsibility
Environments
(Chapters 4, 5)
Processes
Power Relationships
Decision Making
Departmentalization
or Subunits
Communications
Hierarchy or Centralization
Change & Innovation
Formalization or Rules
and Regulations
(Chapters 7, 12, 13)
Organizational
Performance &
Effectiveness
(Chapters 6, 14)
(Chapter 8)
Incentives
(Chapters 9, 10)
Tasks & Technology
(Chapter 8)
People
Groups
Cohesion
Individuals
Values & Motives
Teamwork
Perception & Attributions
(Chapter 12)
Motivation
Job Satisfaction
Organizational Commitment
(Chapters 9, 10)
Writers on organization theory and management have argued for a
long time over how best to define organization, reaching little consensus.
It is not a good use of time to worry over a precise definition, so here is a
provisional one that employs elements of Figure 1.1. This statement goes
The Challenge of Effective Public Organization and Management
13
on too long to serve as a precise definition; it actually amounts to more of
a perspective on organizations:
An organization is a group of people who work together to pursue a goal. They do so by attaining resources from their environment. They seek to transform those resources by accomplishing
tasks and applying technologies to achieve effective performance of
their goals, thereby attaining additional resources. They deal
with the many uncertainties and vagaries associated with these
processes by organizing their activities. Organizing involves leadership processes, through which leaders guide the development
of strategies for achieving goals and the establishment of structures and processes to support those strategies. Structures are
the relatively stable, observable assignments and divisions of
responsibility within the organization, achieved through such
means as hierarchies of authority, rules and regulations, and
specialization of individuals, groups, and subunits. The division
of responsibility determined by the organizational structure
divides the organization’s goals into components that the different groups and individuals can concentrate on—hence the term
organization, referring to the set of organs that make up the
whole. This division of responsibility requires that the individual
activities and units be coordinated. Structures such as rules and
regulations and hierarchies of authority can aid coordination.
Processes are less physically observable, more dynamic activities
that also play a major role in the response to this imperative
for coordination. They include such activities as determining
power relationships, decision making, evaluation, communication, conflict resolution, and change and innovation. Within
these structures and processes, groups and individuals respond
to incentives presented to them, making the contributions and
producing the products and services that ultimately result in
effective performance.
While this perspective on organizations and the framework depicted
in the figures seem very general and uncontroversial, they have a number of serious implications that could be debated at length. Mainly, however, they simply set forth the topics that the chapters of this book cover
and indicate their importance as components of an effective organization. Management consultants working with all types of organizations
14
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
claim great value and great successes for frameworks about as general
as this one, as ways of guiding decision makers through important topics
and issues. Leaders, managers, and participants in organizations need
to develop a sense of what it means to organize effectively, and of the
most important aspects of an organization that they should think about
in trying to improve the organization or to organize some part of it or
some new undertaking. The framework offers one of many approaches
to organizing one’s thinking about organizing, and the chapters to come
elaborate its components.
After that, the final chapter provides an example of applying the framework to organizing for and managing a major trend, the contracting out
of public services.
As this chapter has discussed, this book proceeds on certain assertions
and assumptions. Government organizations perform crucial functions.
We can improve public management and the performance of public agencies by learning about the literature on organization theory, organizational
behavior, and general management and applying it to government agencies and activities.
The literature on organizations and management has not paid enough
attention to distinctive characteristics of public sector organizations and
managers. This book integrates research and thought on the public sector
context with the more general organizational and management theories
and research. This integration has important implications for the debates
over whether public management is basically ineffective or often excellent
and over how to reform and improve public management and education
for people who pursue it. A sustained, careful analysis, drawing on available
concepts, theories, and research and organized around the general framework presented here, can contribute usefully to advancing our knowledge
of these topics.
Instructor’s Guide Resources for Chapter One
• Key terms
• Discussion questions
• Topics for writing assignments or reports
Available at www.wiley.com/college/rainey.
The Challenge of Effective Public Organization and Management
15
Notes
1. Authors who address the divergence between the generic management literature
and that on the public bureaucracy and who call for better integration of these
topics include Allison, 1983; Bozeman, 1987; Hood and Dunsire, 1981; Lynn, 1981;
Meyer, 1979; Perry and Kraemer, 1983; Pitt and Smith, 1981; Rainey, Backoff, and
Levine, 1976; Wamsley and Zald, 1973; Warwick, 1975.
2. Books and articles about effective leadership, organization, and management in
government include Barzelay, 1992; Behn, 1994; Borins, 2008; Cohen and Eimicke,
1998; Cooper and Wright, 1992; Denhardt, 2000; Doig and Hargrove, 1987;
Hargrove and Glidewell, 1990; Holzer and Callahan, 1998; Ingraham, Thompson,
and Sanders, 1998; Jones and Thompson, 1999; Light, 1998; Linden, 1994; Meier and
O’Toole, 2006; Morse, Buss, and Kinghorn, 2007; Newell, Reeher, and Ronayne,
2012; Osborne and Gaebler, 1992; O’Toole and Meier, 2011; Popovich, 1998; Rainey
and Steinbauer, 1999; Riccucci, 1995, 2005; Thompson and Jones, 1994; Wolf, 1997.
Books that defend the value and performance of government in general include
Esman, 2000; Glazer and Rothenberg, 2001; Neiman, 2000.
CHAPTER TWO
UNDERSTANDING THE STUDY OF
ORGANIZATIONS
A Historical Review
L
arge, complex organizations and literature about them have existed
for many centuries, but within the past two centuries in particular they
have proliferated tremendously. Most of the large body of research and
writing available today appeared fairly recently. This chapter reviews major
developments in the research, theory, and thinking about organizations
and management over the past century. Exhibit 2.1 (at the end of the
chapter) provides a summary of the developments reviewed in this chapter.
This book’s analysis of public organizations begins with this review for
a number of reasons. It illustrates the generic theme mentioned in the
previous chapter. It shows that the major contributors to this field have
usually treated organizations and management as generally similar in all
contexts, not drawing much of a distinction between the public and private sectors. The generic emphasis has much value, and this book draws
upon it. It also sets the stage for exploring the controversy over whether
public organizations can be treated as a reasonably distinct category. Later
chapters present evidence supporting the claim that they are distinctive
in important ways.
Managers need to be aware of the historical developments summarized in
this chapter. The review covers terms, ideas, and names that serve as part of the
vocabulary of management; well-prepared managers need to develop a sound
16
Understanding the Study of Organizations
17
understanding of these. For example, managers regularly refer to Theory X
and Theory Y, span of control, and other concepts that the review covers.
In addition, this historical overview illustrates a central theme in the
study and practice of management: the important role of theory and
expert opinion. The review provided here shows that the different bodies
of theory about how to organize and manage have strongly influenced, and
been influenced by, the way managers and organizations behave. Some of
the general trends involve profoundly important beliefs about the nature
of human motivation and of successful organizations. The review shows
that management theory and practice have evolved over the past century.
Theories about the motives, values, and capacities of people in organizations have evolved, and this evolution has in turn prompted additional
theories about how organizations must look and behave in response to the
increasing complexity of—and rapid changes in—the contexts in which
they operate. Theories and expert opinion have moved away from emphasis on highly bureaucratized organizations with strong chains of command,
very specific and unchanging job responsibilities, and strong controls over
the people in them, and toward more flexible, “organic” organizations;
horizontal communications; and a virtual crescendo of calls for participation, empowerment, teamwork, and other versions of more decentralized,
adaptive organizations. The description in Chapter One of presidents and
governors calling for more flexibility in managing people in government
reflects this general trend in some ways, but it also raises the question of
how government organizations can respond to this trend.
The review thus shows that theories are not impractical abstractions
but frameworks of ideas that often play a major role in management practice. It illustrates why the framework in Figures 1.1 and 1.2 looks as it does,
and it shows that the framework actually reflects many of the major developments in the field over the century.
The Systems Metaphor
Figures 1.1 and 1.2 and the accompanying definition of organization in
Chapter One implicitly reflect one major organizing theme for the past
century’s major developments in the field: how the field has moved from
early approaches (now considered “classical” views) that emphasized a single appropriate form of organization and management, toward more recent
approaches that reject this “one best way” concept. Recent perspectives
18
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
emphasize the variety of organizational forms that can be effective under
the different contingencies, or conditions, that organizations face.
This trend in organization theory borrows from the literature on
general systems theory. This body of theory has developed the idea that
there are various types of systems in nature that have much in common.
Analyzing these systems, according to systems theorists, provides insights
about diverse entities and a common language for specialists in different
fields (Daft, 2013, p. 33; Kast and Rosenzweig, 1973, pp. 37–56; Katz and
Kahn, 1966, pp. 19–29).
A system is an ongoing process that transforms certain specified inputs
into outputs; these in turn influence subsequent inputs into the system in
a way that supports the continuing operation of the process. One can think
of an organization as a system that takes in various resources and transforms them in ways that lead to attaining additional supplies of resources
(the definition in Chapter One includes this idea). Systems have subsystems, such as communications systems or production systems within organizations, and throughput processes, which are sets of internal linkages
and processes that make up the transformation process. The outputs of the
system lead to feedback—that is, the influences that the outputs have on
subsequent inputs. The systems theorists, then, deserve credit (or blame)
for making terms such as input and feedback part of our everyday jargon.
Management analysts have used systems concepts—usually elaborated far
beyond the simple description given here—to examine management systems and problems.
A major trend among organizational theorists in the past century has
been to distinguish between closed systems and open or adaptive systems.
Some systems are closed to their environment; the internal processes
remain the same regardless of environmental changes. A thermostat is part
of a closed system that transforms inputs, in the form of room temperature,
into outputs, in the form of responses from heating or air conditioning
units. These outputs feed back into the system by changing the room temperature. The system’s processes are stable and machinelike. They respond
consistently in a programmed pattern.
One can think of a human being as an open or adaptive system.
Humans transform their behaviors to adapt to their environment when
there are environmental changes for which the system is not programmed.
Thus the human being’s internal processes are open to the environment
and able to adapt to shifts in it.
Some organization theorists have expressed skepticism about the usefulness of the systems approach (Meyer, 1979), but others have found it
Understanding the Study of Organizations
19
helpful as a metaphor for describing how organization theory has evolved
during the past century. These theorists say that the earliest, “classical”
theories treated organizations and employees as if they were closed systems.
Classical Approaches to Understanding Organizations
The earliest classical theories, and the advice they gave to managers,
emphasized stable, clearly defined structures and processes, as if organizational goals were always clear and managers’ main challenge was to design
the most efficient, repetitive, machinelike procedures to maximize attainment of the organization’s goals. Some organization theorists also characterize this view as the “one best way” approach to organization.
Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management
In a New Yorker cartoon published in 1990, a woman has walked into an
office where a man is kneeling on top of filing cabinets and reaching
down into the drawers of the cabinet and filing papers. The woman says,
“According to our time-and-motion studies, you handle your time very well,
but a lot of your motion is wasted.” The cartoon assumes that at the end of
the twentieth century any intelligent person would know the meaning of a
time-and-motion study. This technique became well-known because of the
scientific management school.
Frederick Taylor (1919) is usually cited as one of the pioneers of managerial analysis. He was the major figure in the scientific management
school, which in Taylor’s own words involved the systematic analysis of
“every little act” in tasks to be performed by workers. Taylor asserted that
scientific management involved a division of labor that was relatively new
in historical terms. Whereas for centuries work processes had been left to
the discretion of skilled craftspeople and artisans, scientific management
recognized a division of responsibility between a managerial group and a
group that performed the work. The role of management was to gather
detailed information on work processes, analyze it, and derive rules and
guidelines for the most efficient way to perform the required tasks. Workers
were then to be selected and trained in these procedures so they could
maximize their output, the quality of their work, and their own earnings.
The procedures that Taylor and others developed for analyzing and
designing tasks are still in use today. They conducted time-motion studies, which involved the detailed measurement and analysis of physical
20
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
characteristics of the workplace, such as the placement of tools and machinery in relation to the worker and the movements and time that the worker
had to devote to using them. The objective was to achieve the most efficient
physical layout for the performance of a specified task. Analytical procedures of this sort are still widely used in government and industry.
Taylor’s determination to find the “one best way” to perform a task was
such that he even devoted himself to finding the best way to design golf
greens and golf clubs. He designed a putter that the golfer stabilized by
cradling the club in his or her elbows. The putter proved so accurate that
the U.S. Golf Association banned it (Hansen, 1999).
Taylor’s emphasis on the efficient programming of tasks and workers
provoked controversy even in its heyday. In later years critics attacked his
work for its apparent inhumanity and its underestimation of psychological and social influences on worker morale and productivity. Some of this
criticism is overdrawn and fails to give Taylor credit for the positive aspects
of his pioneering work. Taylor actually felt that his methods would benefit
workers by allowing them to increase their earnings and the quality of their
work. In his own accounts of his work he said that he originally became
interested in ways of encouraging workers without supervisors’ having to
place pressure on them. As a manager, he had been involved in a very
unpleasant dispute with workers, which he attributed to the obligation to
put them under pressure (Burrell and Morgan, 1980, p. 126). He wanted
to find alternatives to such situations.
Yet Taylor did emphasize pay as the primary reward for work. He
stressed minute specialization of worker activities, as if the worker were a
rather mindless component of a mechanistic process. He did not improve
his image with later organizational analysts when he used as an illustration
of his techniques a description of his efforts to train a Scandinavian worker,
whom he said was as dumb as an ox, in the most efficient procedures for
shoveling pig iron. Though the value of his contribution is undeniable,
as a guiding conception of organizational analysis scientific management
severely oversimplified the complexity of the needs of humans in the
workplace.
Max Weber: Bureaucracy as an Ideal Construct
Also in the early decades of the past century, Max Weber’s writings became
influential, in a related but distinct way. Organization theorists often treat
Weber as the founder of organizational sociology—the analysis of complex
organizations. His investigations of bureaucracy as a social phenomenon
Understanding the Study of Organizations
21
provided the most influential early analysis of the topic (Gerth and Mills,
1946).
The proliferation of organizations with authority formally distributed among bureaus or subunits is actually a fairly recent development in
human history. Weber undertook to specify the defining characteristics of
the bureaucratic form of organization, which he saw as a relatively new and
desirable form in society. He saw the spread of such organizations as part
of a movement toward more legal and rational forms of authority and away
from authority based on tradition (such as monarchical power) or charisma
(such as that possessed by a ruler like Napoleon). The bureaucratic form
was distinct even from the administrative systems of the ancient Orient
(such as in Mandarin China) and from other systems regarded as similar
to modern systems. In traditional feudal or aristocratic systems, Weber said,
people’s functions were assigned by personal trustees or appointees of the
ruler. Further, their offices were more like avocations than modern-day
jobs; authority was discharged as a matter of privilege and the bestowing
of a favor.
The bureaucratic form was distinct in its legalistic specification of the
authorities and obligations of office. Weber wrote that the fully developed
version of bureaucracy had the following characteristics:
1. Fixed, official jurisdictional areas are established by means of rules.
The rules distribute the regular activities required by the organization
among these fixed positions or offices, prescribing official duties for
each. The rules distribute and fix the authority to discharge the duties,
and they also establish specified qualifications required for each office.
2. There is a hierarchy of authority, involving supervision of lower offices
by higher ones.
3. Administrative positions in the bureaucracy usually require expert
training and the full working capacity of the official.
4. Management of subunits follows relatively stable and exhaustive rules,
and knowledge of these rules and procedures is the special expertise
of the official.
5. The management position serves as a full-time vocation, or career, for
the official.
Weber regarded this bureaucratic form of organization as having technical advantages compared with administrative systems in which the officials regarded their service as an avocation, often gained by birthright or
through the favor of a ruler, to be discharged at the official’s personal
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Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
discretion. In Weber’s view, the existence of qualified career officials, a
structured hierarchy, and clear, rule-based specifications of duties and procedures made for precision, speed, clarity, consistency, and reduction of
costs. In addition, the strict delimiting of the duties and authority of career
officials and the specification of organizational procedures in rules supported the principle of the objective performance of duties. Duties were
performed consistently, and clients were treated without favoritism; the
organization was freed from the effect of purely personal motives. With
officials placed in positions on the basis of merit rather than birthright or
political favoritism, constrained by rules defining their duties, and serving
as career experts, bureaucracies represented the most efficient organizational form yet developed, from Weber’s perspective.
Weber did express concern that bureaucratic routines could oppress
individual freedom (Fry, 1989) and that problems could arise from placing
bureaucratic experts in control of major societal functions. Nevertheless,
he described bureaucracy as a desirable form of organization, especially for
efficiency and the fair and equitable treatment of clients and employees.
He thus emphasized a model of organization involving clear and consistent
rules, a hierarchy of authority, and role descriptions. For this reason, Weber
is often grouped with the other classic figures as a proponent of what would
later be characterized as the closed-system view of organizations.
The Administrative Management School: Principles of Administration
Also in the first half of the twentieth century, a number of writers began to
develop the first management theories that encompassed a broad range of
administrative functions that we now include under the topic of management, and the proper means of discharging those functions. They sought to
develop principles of administration to guide managers in such functions
as planning, organizing, supervising, controlling, and delegating authority. This group became known as the administrative management school
(March and Simon, 1958).
The members of the administrative management school emphatically espoused one proper mode of organizing. They either implied or
directly stated that their principles would provide effective organization.
The flavor of their work and their principles are illustrated in prominent papers by two of the leading figures in this group, Luther Gulick
and James Mooney. In “Notes on the Theory of Organization,”
Gulick (1937) discussed two fundamental functions of management: the
division of work and the coordination of work. Concerning the division
Understanding the Study of Organizations
23
of work, he discussed the need to create clearly defined specializations.
Specialization, he said, allows the matching of skills to tasks and the clear,
consistent delineation of tasks. He noted certain limits on specialization.
No job should be so narrowly specialized that it does not take up a full work
day, leaving the worker idle. Certain technological conditions, or traditions
or customs, may constrain the assignment of tasks; and there are certain
tasks, such as licking an envelope, that involve steps so organically interrelated that they cannot be divided.
Once a task has been properly divided, coordinating the work then
becomes imperative. On this matter, Gulick proposed principles that were
much clearer than his general points about specialization. Work can be
coordinated through organization or through a dominant idea or purpose that unites efforts. Coordination through organization should be
guided by several principles. First is the span of control—the number of
subordinates reporting to one supervisor. The span of control should be
kept narrow, limited to between six and ten subordinates per supervisor.
Effective supervision requires that the supervisor’s attention not be divided
among too many subordinates. Gulick also proposed the principle of one
master—each subordinate should have only one superior. There should
be no confusion as to who the supervisor is. A third principle is technical
efficiency through the principle of homogeneity—tasks must be grouped
into units on the basis of their homogeneity. Dissimilar tasks should not
be grouped together. In addition, a specialized unit must be supervised
by a homogeneous specialist. Gulick gave examples of problems resulting
from violation of this principle in government agencies: in an agricultural
agency, for instance, the supervisor of the pest control division must not be
given supervisory responsibility over the agricultural development division.
In the same paper, Gulick sought to define the job of management
and administration through what became one of the most widely cited and
influential acronyms in general management and public administration:
POSDCORB. The letters stand for planning, organizing, staffing, directing,
coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. These are the functions, he said,
for which principles needed to be developed in subsequent work.
In “The Scalar Principle,” Mooney (1930) presented a generally similar
picture of the effort to develop principles. He said that an organization
must be like a scale, a graded series of steps, in terms of levels of authority
and corresponding responsibilities. The principle involved several component principles. The first of these was leadership. Under this principle,
Mooney said, a “supreme coordinating authority” at the top must project
itself through the entire “scalar chain” to coordinate the entire structure.
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Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
This was to be accomplished through the principle of delegation, under
which higher levels assign authority and responsibility to lower levels.
These processes accomplished the third principle of functional definition,
under which each person is assigned a specific task.
These two papers reflect the characteristics of the administrative management school. If certain of the principles seem vague, that was typical, as
critics would later point out. In addition, these two authors clearly emphasize formal structure in the organization and the hierarchical authority of
administrators. Although some of the principles are only vaguely discussed,
others are quite clear. Tasks should be highly specialized. Lines of hierarchical authority must be very clear, with clear delegation down from the top
and clear accountability and supervisory relations. Span of control should
be narrow. There should be unity of command; a subordinate should be
directly accountable to one superior. Like Weber and Taylor, these authors
tended to emphasize consistency, rationality, and machinelike efficiency.
They wrote about organizations as if they could operate most effectively as
closed systems, designed according to the one proper form of organization.
The historical contribution of this group is undeniable; the tables of
contents of many contemporary management texts reflect the influence
of these theorists’ early efforts to conceive the role of management and
administration. In some highly successful corporations, top executives have
made this literature required reading for subordinates (Perrow, 1970b).
Gulick identified very strongly with public administration. He and
other members of the administrative management school played important roles in the work of various committees and commissions on reorganizing the federal government, such as the Brownlow Committee in 1937
and the Hoover Commission in 1947. The reforms these groups proposed
reflected the views of the administrative management school; they were
aimed at such objectives as grouping federal agencies according to similar
functions, strengthening the hierarchical authority of the chief executive,
and narrowing the executive’s span of control.
The immediate influence of these proposals on the structure of the
federal government was complicated by political conflicts between the president and Congress (Arnold, 1995). They had a strong influence, however,
especially on the development of an orthodox view of how administrative
management should be designed in government. Some scholars argued
that the influence has continued across the years. They contended that
structural developments in public agencies and the attitudes of government officials about such issues still reflect an orthodox administrative
management school perspective (Golembiewski, 1962; Knott and Miller,
Understanding the Study of Organizations
25
1987; Warwick, 1975, pp. 69–71). The influence of the administrative management school on these reform efforts can be considered the most significant direct influence on practical events in government that organization
theorists have ever had. Nevertheless, critics later attacked the views of
the administrative management theorists as too limited for organizational
analysis. As described later, researchers began to find that many successful
contemporary organizations violate the school’s principles drastically and
enthusiastically.
Before turning to the reaction against the administrative management perspective, however, we should note the context in which the
administrative management theorists as well as the preceding early theorists worked. The administrative management theorists’ work was related
to the broad progressive reform movement earlier in that century (Knott
and Miller, 1987). Those reformers sought to eradicate corruption in
government, especially on the part of urban political machines and their
leaders. They sought to institute more professional forms of administration through such means as establishing the role of the city manager. In
addition, the growth of government over the earlier part of the century
had led to a great deal of sprawling disorganization among the agencies
and programs of government; there was a need for better organization.
In this context, the administrative management theorists’ emphasis on
basic organizational principles appears not only well justified but absolutely necessary.
It is also important to acknowledge that these early theorists did not
advance their ideas as simple mindedly as some later critics depict it.
Although Luther Gulick came to be characterized in many organization
theory texts as one of the foremost proponents of highly bureaucratized
organizations, he wrote a reflection on administrative issues from World
War II in which he drew conclusions about the efficiency of democracy.
He argued that the democratic system of the United States actually gave
it advantages over the seemingly more authoritarian and hierarchical
axis powers. The more democratic process required more participation
and cooperation in problem solving and thus led to better planning and
implementation of plans than in the authoritarian regimes (Van Riper,
1998). Gulick thus suggested that more democratic processes may look
less efficient than more authoritarian ones, even though they can produce
more efficient and effective results. It will be evident in later sections that
Gulick’s thinking thus foreshadowed much of contemporary management
theory. (Gulick also played an important role in the development of park
and recreational programs, and reportedly suggested to James Naismith
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Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
that he invent an indoor game to keep young people in condition during
cold weather. Naismith then invented basketball.)
Another very original thinker, Mary Parker Follett, wrote very approvingly of the effort to develop administrative principles, and scholars sometimes classify her as a member of this school. She wrote, however, a classic
essay on “the giving of orders” (Follett, [1926] 1989) that had very original
and forward-looking implications. In the essay, she proposed a cooperative,
participative process for giving orders, in which superiors and subordinates
develop a shared understanding of the particular situation and what it
requires. They then follow the “law” of the situation rather than having
a superior impose an order on a subordinate. Follett’s perspective both
foreshadowed later movements and influenced them in the direction of
the kind of participatory and egalitarian management described later. It
also foreshadowed contemporary developments in feminist organization
theory (Guy, 1995; Hult, 1995; Morton and Lindquist, 1997).
Still, the several contributions covered so far concentrated on a relatively limited portion of the framework for organizational analysis given
in Figures 1.1 and 1.2 and the definition of organization in Chapter One.
They emphasized the middle and lower parts of the framework, particularly organizational structure. They paid some attention to tasks and to
incentives and motivation, but they were quite limited in comparison with
the work of later authors. Additional developments would rapidly begin to
expand the analysis of organizations, with increasing attention paid to the
other components in Figures 1.1 and 1.2.
Reactions, Critiques, and New Developments
Developments in the emerging field of industrial psychology led to a sharp
reaction against Taylor’s ideas about scientific management and the principles of the administrative management school. These developments also
led to a dramatic change in the way organizational and managerial analysts
viewed the people in organizations. Researchers studying behavior and
psychology in industry began to develop more insight into psychological
factors in work settings. They analyzed the relationships between such factors as fatigue, monotony, and worker productivity. They studied working
conditions, analyzing variables such as rest periods, hours of work, methods
of payment, routineness of work, and the influence of social groups in the
workplace (Burrell and Morgan, 1980, p. 129).
Understanding the Study of Organizations
27
The Hawthorne Studies: The Discovery of Human Beings in the Workplace
A series of experiments beginning in the mid-1920s at the Hawthorne
plant of the Western Electric Company provided a more subtle view of
the psychology of the workplace than previous theorists had produced. The
Hawthorne studies involved a complex series of experiments and academic
and popular reports of their results over a number of years. Controversy
continues over the interpretation and value of these studies (Burrell and
Morgan, 1980, pp. 120–143); however, most organization theorists describe
them as pathbreaking illustrations of the influence of social and psychological factors on work behavior—conditions that often have stronger
effects than factors such as pay or the physical conditions of the workplace.
An employee’s work-group experiences, a sense of the importance of the
employee’s work, and attention and concern on the part of supervisors
are among a number of important social and psychological influences on
workers.
The leaders of the project identified several major experiments and
observations as the most significant in the study (Roethlisberger and
Dickson, 1939). In one experiment, the researchers lowered the level of
illumination in the workplace and found that productivity nevertheless
increased, because the workers responded to the attention of the researchers. In another study, they improved the working conditions in a small unit
through numerous alterations in rest periods and working hours. Increases
in output were at first taken as evidence that the changes were influencing
productivity. When the researchers tested that conclusion by withdrawing
the improved conditions, however, they found that, rather than falling off,
output remained high. In the course of the experiment, the researchers
had consulted the workers about their opinions and reactions, questioned
them sympathetically, and displayed concern for their physical well-being.
Their experiment on the physical conditions of the workplace had actually
altered the social situation in the workplace, and that appeared to account
for the continued high output.
In observing another work group, the researchers found that it enforced
strict norms regarding group members’ productivity. To be a socially
accepted member of the group, a worker had to avoid being a “rate buster,”
who turns out too much work; a “chiseler,” who turns out too little; or a
“squealer,” who says something to a supervisor that could be detrimental to
another worker. This suggested to the researchers a distinction between
the formal organization, as it is officially presented in organization charts
and rules, and the informal organization. The informal organization
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Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
develops through unofficial social processes within the organization, but it
can involve norms and standards that are equally as forceful an influence
on the worker as formal requirements.
The Hawthorne studies were widely regarded as the most significant
demonstration of the importance of social and psychological factors in the
workplace up to that time, and they contributed to a major shift in research
on management and organizations. The emphasis on social influences,
informal processes, and the motivating power of attention from others
and a sense of significance for one’s work constituted a major counterpoint against the principles of administrative management and scientific
management.
Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon: The Inducements-Contributions
Equilibrium and the Limits of Rationality
A successful business executive turned organization theorist and an academic who would become a Nobel laureate provided additional major contributions that weighed against the administrative management school and
moved research in new directions. These contributions added substantially
to the attention that organization theorists paid to organizational processes
(especially decision making), people, environments, leadership, and goals
and values.
Encouraged by the members of the Harvard group who were responsible for the Hawthorne studies and related work (Burrell and Morgan,
1980, p. 148), Chester Barnard wrote The Functions of the Executive (1938).
It became one of the most influential books in the history of the field.
Barnard’s definition of an organization—“a system of consciously
coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons” (1938, p. 73)—
illustrates the sharp difference between his perspective and that of the
classical theorists. Barnard focused on how leaders induce and coordinate
the cooperative activities fundamental to an organization. He characterized an organization as an “economy of incentives,” in which individuals
contribute their participation and effort in exchange for incentives that
the organization provides. The executive cadre in an organization must
ensure the smooth operation of this economy. The executive must keep
the economy in equilibrium by ensuring the availability of the incentives
to induce the contributions from members that earn the resources for
continuing incentives, and so on. (Notice that the definition of organization in Chapter One speaks of leaders and organizations seeking to gain
Understanding the Study of Organizations
29
resources from the environment to translate into incentives. This reflects
the influence of Barnard’s perspective.)
Barnard offered a rich typology of incentives, including not just money
and physical and social factors but also power, prestige, fulfillment of ideals
and altruistic motives, participation in effective or useful organizations, and
many others. (Table 10.2 in Chapter Ten provides a complete listing of the
possible incentives he named.)
Barnard also saw the economy of incentives as being interrelated with
other key functions of the executive—specifically, communication and persuasion. The executive must use communication and persuasion to influence workers’ subjective valuations of various incentives. The executive
can, for example, raise the salience of major organizational values. The
persuasion process requires a communication process, and Barnard discussed both at length. He also distinguished between formal and informal
organizations, but he saw them as interrelated and necessary to each other’s success. He thought of the informal organization as the embodiment
of the communication, persuasion, and inducement processes that were
essential to the cooperative activity he saw as the essence of organization.
Some authors now cite Barnard’s ideas on these topics as an early recognition of the importance of organizational culture, a topic that has received
a lot of attention in management in recent years (see, for example, Peters
and Waterman, 1982).
Barnard’s divergence from the classical approaches is obvious. Rather
than stating prescriptive principles, he sought to describe the empirical
reality of organizations. He treated the role of the executive as central, but
he deemphasized formal authority and formal organizational structures,
suggesting that those factors are not particularly important to understanding how organizations really operate. Compared with other authors up to
that time, Barnard offered a more comprehensive analysis of the organization as an operating system, to be analyzed as such rather than bound by
a set of artificial principles. His approach was apparently exhilarating to
many researchers, including one of the preeminent social scientists of the
century, Herbert Simon.
Simon attacked the administrative management school much
more directly than Barnard had. In an article titled “The Proverbs of
Administration” in Public Administration Review (1946), he criticized the
administrative management school’s principles of administration as vague
and contradictory. He compared them to proverbs because he saw them
as prescriptive platitudes, such as “Look before you leap,” that are useless because they are unclear and are often countered by a contradictory
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Understanding and Managing Public Organizations
proverb: “He who hesitates is lost.” The principle of specialization, for
example, never specified whether one should specialize by function, clientele, or place. Specialization also contradicts the principle of unity of
command, which requires that a subordinate report to a superior within his
or her specialization. But if a school has an accountant, who is obviously a
specialist, that accountant must report to an educator. The two principles
conflict.
Similarly, the principle of span of control also conflicts with unity of
command. In a large organization, narrow spans of control require many
hierarchical levels. There must be many small work units, with a supervisor for each. Then there must be many supervisors above those supervisors to keep the span of control narrow at that level, and so on up. This
makes communication up, down, and across the organization very cumbersome, and it makes it difficult to maintain clear, direct hierarchical lines
of authority.
Simon called for a more systematic examination of administrative processes to dev…