PA Classics

Question 1

Woodrow Wilson 1887 “The Study of Administration”

Answer 1

What can and should government do, and do it in the most efficient way possible. Science of administration. Administration of government is outside of politics. Public administration is detailed and systematic execution of public law. Call for a professional civil service for the administration of government.

Question 2

Frank J. Goodnow 1900 “Politics and Administration”

Answer 2

Politics has to do with policies or expressions of the state will. Administration has to do with the execution of these policies. Politics has to have some form of control over the administration of government.

Question 3

Frederick W. Taylor 1912 “Scientific Management”

Answer 3

Four Principles of Scientific Management 1. Management has “great mass of traditional knowledge” 2. Scientific selection of the “workmen”; employees 3. Bringing the scientific workmen together 4. Equal division of labor between management and workmen

Question 4

Max Weber “Bureaucracy”

Answer 4

“Characteristics of Bureaucracy” Bureaucratic Authority “principle of fixed and official jurisdictional areas” ordered by rules, laws, or administrative regulations” Principles of Office Hierarchy and levels of graded authority super- and subordinate supervision Written documents (policies, procedures, regulations) Expert training and full commitment by officials “Office holding is a vocation” Officials have “distinct social esteem” Trained experts Officials derive authority “from below” Career public service

Question 5

Leonard D. White 1955 “Introduction to the Study of Public Administration”

Answer 5

4 Assumptions 1. Administration is a single process substantially uniform whether local, state, federal, etc. 2.The study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law 3. Administration is primarily an art but attaches importance to the significant tendency to transform it into a science. 4. Administration has become, and will continue to be, the heart of the problem of government.

Question 6

Public Administration in the 1880s to 1920s Jay Shafritz and Albert Hyde (eds) 2012

Answer 6

Major Themes in PA: Civil Service Reform Merit in Government Service New Discipline in Running a Government The Case for a Politics Administration Dichotomy Self-Government and the Problem of Municipal Administration Scientific Management Budgeting Reform PA & New Role of Gov’t - Organization and control to promote accountability and efficiency Theory of Bureaucracy Leonard White publishes first PA Textbook in 1926 “Introduction to the Study of Public Administration” Critical thinking about Individuals and Behavior

Question 7

Public Administration The New Deal to Mid-Century 1930s - 1950s Jay Shafritz and Albert Hyde (eds)

Answer 7

Initial efforts towards a science of administration Understanding organizations and human behavior Growth of government and the reform movement Brownlow Report (January 1937) proposed major gov’t reorganization based on its view of gov’t from a managerial perspective. Early debates about accountability, ethics, and administrative responsibility Questions about managing gov’t resources Rejecting politics-administration dichotomy Emergent theories of decision making in PA Mid-century (1950) gov’t had changed. WWI, the Depression & New Deal, and WWII “radically altered the size, scope, and reach of gov’t”

Question 8

Luther Gulick 1937 “Notes on the Theory of Organization”

Answer 8

Division of labor to account for the growth in gov’t and the need for more specialization and expertise Coordination of work through organization Streamline supervision POSDCORB - Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting

Question 9

Brownlow Commission Report January 8, 1937

Answer 9

Proposed Reorganization: 1. Expand White House staff 2. Strengthen gov’t agencies, particularly those charged with budget, efficiency research, personnel, and planning 3. Expand merit system 4. Reorganize 100 gov’t agencies under a few large departments 5. Adopt “private sector” practices for budgeting to include financial records, audits, and accountability

Question 10

Chester Barnard 1938 “Informal Organizations and Their Relation to Formal Organizations”

Answer 10

Informal organizations establish certain attitudes, understandings, customs, habits, institutions, and it creates the condition under which formal organizations may arise. Outcomes are customs, mores, folklore, institutions, social norms and ideals. In formal organizations, informal organizations promote communication, cohesion, willingness to serve, self respect, and independent choice.

Question 11

Robert K. Merton 1957 “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality”

Answer 11

Bureaucratic Structure is its “technical efficiency, with a premium placed on precision, speed, expert control, continuity, discretion, and optimal returns on input” Bureaucratic dysfunction = trained incapacity

Question 12

A.H. Maslow 1943 “A Theory of Human Motivation”

Answer 12

Psychological Needs Safety Needs Love Needs Esteem Needs The Need for Self-Actualization

Question 13

Paul Appleby 1945 “Government is Different”

Answer 13

Government understood by way of public employees, conceptions of their positions, and public attitudes towards them Business men are better suited for gov’t work than self-made variety Gov’t different from all other institutions and activities; breadth and scope; impact, and consideration, and public accountability, and political character. Gov’t less efficient than private business due to its public character.

Question 14

Herbert Simon 1946 “The Proverbs of Administration”

Answer 14

Specialization Unity of Command Span of Control Organization by Purpose, Process, Clientele and Place Administrative Theory: Define administrative situation with established criteria Assigning weights to the criteria

Question 15

Dwight Waldo 1948 “The Administrative State: Conclusion”

Answer 15

Calls into question whether there is a study of administration as such, at least whether there is a function of administration in which training or specialization is possible. “The situation of [PA} is this: there is a large core of orthodox public administration ideology, but also a considerable measure of doubt and even iconoclasm; an increasing disposition to engage in empirical or functional studies in which theoretical postulates are obscure”

Question 16

Douglas Murray McGregor 1957 “The Human Side of Enterprise”

Answer 16

Theory X: Conventional View 1.Management is responsible for organizing enterprise 2. With respect to people, this is a process of directing their efforts, motivating them, controlling their actions, modifying their behavior to fit the needs of the organization. 3. Without this active intervention by management, people will be passive. They must be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled. New Theory of Management; “Theory Y” 1. Management is responsible for organizing materials and resources in the interest of economic ends. 2. People are not inherently passive. They have become this way as a result of their experience in the organization. 3. Management is responsible for making it possible for people to develop professionally. 4. “The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operation so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives”

Question 17

Charles E. Lindblom 1959 “The Science of Muddling Through”

Answer 17

Root or Branch to Solve Complex Problems

Question 18

From JFK to Civil Service Reform

The 1960s and 1970s

Shafritz and Hyde 2012

Answer 18

New perspectives on organizations and bureacracy emerge. Budgeting and systems theories for governmental growth and decline. Rediscovering federalism, and uncovering intergovernmental organizations. The advance of policy analysis and program evaluation. Public administratin was in a quandary, due to the Vietnam War, social movements/protest, militancy of public employees and students, and the forthcoming equal employment opportunity, and representative bureaucracy. Watergate spurred debate and inquiry calling for a rediscovery of public service ethics. Discussions or represtentative bureaucracy called into question if governments represent all levels of society. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1948 overhauled federal employment creating OPM, Merit System Protection Board, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

Question 19

Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn 1966

“Organizations and the System Concept”

Answer 19

Understanding organizations requires knowing its “location and Identification”, and it is to regard the organization as “simply the epitome of the purposes of the designer, its leaders, or its key members. Social systems are combinations of “energy exchange or activity of people”, and “how the output is translated into energy which reactivates the pattern.” Open systems are characterized by (1) Importation of energy; (2) the “Through-Put”; (3) the “Output”; (4) Systems as Cycles of Events; (5) Negative Entropy; (6) Information Input, Negative Feedback, and Coding Processes; (7) The Steady State and Dynamic Homeostasis; (8) Differentiation; and, (9) Equifinality. “Open systems are not at rest but tend toward differentiation and elaboration, both because of subsystem dynamics and because of their relationship between growth and survival.”

Question 20

Anthony Downs 1967

“The Life Cycle of Bureaus”

Answer 20

A bureau is formed by way of “routinization of charisma”; “may be created almost out of nothing by one or more groups in society in order to carry out a specific function or perceived need”; or, a new bureau may split off from an existing bureau. Bureau’s have an initial survival threshold achieved when the bureau is providing useful services, and routinized relations with major clients. Bureaus inherently seek to expand for the following reasons: acquire capable personnel, leaders receive increased power/income, reduces internal conflict, and, improves quality of its performance. Aging bureaus become more formalized, refocus on survival rather than performance, modify original goals, increase the number of administrators, and differentiate tasks/outputs. Bureaus rarely “die”, because they are often large and, as a result, have high survival rates; but, when they do it is because there service has become unimportant, the tasks remain important but the organization fails to perform adequately, or, important tasks are being done better by another bureau.

Question 21

Herbert Kaufmann 1969

“Administrative Power and Political Power”

Answer 21

Large-scale organizations have contributed to “the sensation of individual helplessness”, a “sense of alienation on the part of many people, to a feeling that they as individuals cannot effectively register their own preferences on the decisions” of gov’t organizations. Existing gov’t agencies give general administrative mandates, yet day-to-day decisions/actions of lower officials and employees impact citizen perception of policies. Change in gov’t occurs slowly due to representative gov’t that allows vetos. The scale of gov’t organizations has increased leaving the public feeling helpless. “It takes a bureacrat to control a bureaucrat.” Posited outcome by Kaufmann is decentralization that places decision making at lower levels, and territorial “field personnel.” Kaufmann asserts, “Take administration out of politics and politics out of administration.”

Question 22

H. George Fredrickson 1971

“Toward a New Public Administration”

Answer 22

Historical PA is “efficient, economical, and coordinated services” by public agencies. NPM adds to this definition by inclusion of the following: social equity to mitigate gov’t providing services to a limited clientele (i.e. poverty, unemployment, disease, ignorance, etc. still persist thus the need for the inclusion of social equity.” NPM Administrators are not “neutral” and should be “committed to both good management and social equity as values to be achieved.” NPM seeks to change policies that promote social inequities. NPM encourages changeable structures in the form of decentralization, devolution, client involvement, projects/contracts, clientele served, etc. NPM seeks to carry out legislative mandates, but also to influence or generally improve the quality of life. NPM and Organizational Theory posits a cost v. benefit analysis (distributive process);an Integrative Process on public employee coordination; boundary-exhance process between gov’t and citizens; and, a socio-emotional process.

Question 23

Frederick C. Mosher, et al. 1974

“Watergate: Implications for Responsible Government”

Answer 23

Watergate was a “product of a system which shaped and guided the behavior of its participants.” The lead up to Watergate was shaped by practices occuring gradually in the prior decades. These include, the use of gov’t powers for friends and against opponents/enemies; politicization of career services; political espionage of Americans; use of gov’t resources/personnel for partisan purposes; solicitation of political support with express or implied reciprocity assurances; and, “dirty tricks.” “Ultimately, the assurance of high standards of ethical behavior depends upon the people who aspire to and gain public office, and more particularly upon the system of values they have internalized.”

Question 24

Samuel Krislov 1974

“Representative Bureucracy”

Answer 24

Representative bureuacracy was designed for a “less elite, less class based civil service.” However, the US gov’t bureaucracy has grown in both prestige and power. This has contributed to other divisions among class, sex, race, etc.

Question 25

Deil S. Wright 1974

“Intergovernmental Relations: An Analytical Overview”

Answer 25

Features of IGR

1. All Units (Nation, State, Countries, Cities, Special Districts, School Districts)
2. interactions (Behavior, Beliefs, Perceptions, and Preferences)
3. Continuous/Cumulative Regularities ( Day-to-day contacts, working relationships, cummulative patterns)
4. All Public Officials (elected, executives, judges, appointed administrators)
5. Policy Emphasis (financial, anchored in politics, suffused with policy)

Question 26

Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde 2012

“From Reagn to Reinvention”

Answer 26

Rethinking the Role and Size of Government

Reassessing the Politics of Budgeting

Change & Conflict in Personnel - Challenges in Labor Relations and Equal Opportunity

Rediscovering PA’s Legal Foundation and Ethics

The Rise of Public Policy Analysis and IGR

New Perspectives on Organizations

Burueacratic Reform and Public Management

The Challenge of Reinvention

Question 27

Graham T. Allison 1979

“Public and Private Management: Are They Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects”

Answer 27

Public Management has three components: Policy Management, Resource Management, Program Management.

Private Management is characterized by Gulick’s POSDCORB.

Distinctions can be made between Public and Private in the following: Time perspective, duration, measurement of performance, personnel constraints, equity and efficiency, public vs. private processes, role of press and media, persuasion and direction, legislative and judicial impact, and bottom line.

Six implication of this analysis: (1) demand for efficient gov’t performance is right; (2) public management can be improved substantially; (3) private management practices can be adapted to public management; (4) gov’t must create performance benchmarks; (5) competency measures for managers; (6) “the effort to develop public management as a field of knowledge should start from problems faced by practicing public managers”

Question 28

Michael Lipsky 1980

“Street Level Bureaucracy: The Critical Role of the Street Level Bureuacrat”

Answer 28

SLB defined: “Public service workers who interact directly with citizens in the course of their jobs, and who have substantial discretion in the execution of their work.” SLBs play a substantial role in delivering “benefits and sanctions structure and delimit people’s lives and opportunitites.”

SLBs “represent the hopes of citizens for fair and effective treatment by government even as they are positioned to see clearly the limitation on effective intervention and the constraints on representativeness engendered by mass processing.”

Question 29

Dennis F. Thompson 1985

“The Possibility of Administrative Ethics”

Answer 29

“Administrative ethics involves the application of moral principles to the conduct of officials in organizations.” Moral principles specify the rights and duties that individuals should respect when they act in ways that seriously affect the well being of other individuals and society; and, the conditions that collective practices and policies should satisfy when they similarly affect the well being of individuals and society.

• The Ethic of Neutrality* asserts administrators should carry out the orders of their superiors and the policies of the agency/gov’t they serve. This stifles discretion, dissent, and limits courses of action.
• The Ethic of Structure* holds that the object of moral judgment must be the organization or the government as a whole. However, no individual is “a necessary and sufficient cause of any organizational outcome.” Also, there is gap between individual action and organizational outcome. And, individual actions, which may seem harmless or in some sense obligatory, may combine to produce harmful decisions and policies by the organization.

Question 30

J. Steven Ott nd

“Understanding Organizational Culture”

Answer 30

Culture is defined in two inter-related ways. 1) Culture consists of shared values, beliefs, norms, artifacts, and patterns of behavior. 2) Is a way of looking at and thinking about behavior of an in organizations. Organizational culture is a challenge to systems and structuralist theories. OC assumes behaviors/decisions are almost predetermined by the patterns of basic assumptions existing in the organization. OC may not hold from one orgnanization to another. Societal culture (i.e. tehcnologies, markets, competition, and leadership) in which OC resides will impact the OC. People in organizations need culture for identity, purpose, feelings of belongingness, communication, stability, and cognitive efficiency. Systems/structuralist theories assume: 1) A self-correcting system of interdependent people 2) Consensus on objectives/methods 3) Coordination is achieved through sharing information 4) Organizational problems and solutions must be predictable.

Question 31

Michael Barzelay and Babak J. Armjani 1992

“Breaking Through Bureacracy”

Answer 31

Bureacratic paragidm holds: 1) Specific delgations of authority 2) Officials apply rules/procedures in exercising authority 3) Experts assigned to line agencies include social service workers, LEOs, engineers, while experts on budget, accounting, HR, and purchasing are centralized staff functions. The executive branch will operate honestly and efficiently as long as centralized staff functions exercise unilateral control over line agencies. Challenges to the bureaucratic paradigm include: 1) Emergent concept that gov’t should be service and customer driven. Thus, “bureacratic reform vision” asserts: 1) focus on customer needs 2) organization functions as a team 3) agency is defined by results it achieves for customers 4) creates value at net cost 5) modifies/changes due to customer demand 5) Competes for business not turf 6) Allows choice in its operating systems 7) two way communication with customers/clients 8) empowers front line employees to make decisions and judgments to improve customer service.

Question 32

Jay M. Shafritz and Albert C. Hyde 2012

“Public Administration in the 21st Century”

Answer 32

Transforming PA from Government to Governance

Ongoing debates about public budgeting and deficits

Development in Law and Ethics

Public Policy Networks (think PE and ACF) to include non-profit organizations and private enterprises

Globalization, technological innovations, and marketization are all having significant impacts on the future of PA

Question 33

Robert Agranoff 2006

“Inside Collaborative Networks: Ten Lessons for Public Managers”

Answer 33

1. The network is not the only vehicle of collaborative management. Networking is social networking and collaborative endeavors. 2. Managers continue to do the bulk of their work within the hierarchy. 3. Newtork involvement brings several advantages that keep busy administrators involved. 4. Networks are different from organizations but not completely different. 5. Not all networks make the types of policy and program adjustments ascribed to them in the literature. 6. Collaborative decisisons or agreements are the products of a particular type of mutual learning and adjustment. 7. The most distinctive collaborative activity of all of the networks proved to be their work in public sector knowledge management. 8. Despite the cooperative spirit and aura of accommodation in collaborative efforts, networks are not without conflicts and power issues. 9. Networks have their collaborative costs as well as their benefits. 10. Networks alter the boundaries of the state only in the most marginal ways, they do not appear to be replacing public bureaucracies in any way.