A Brief Tour of Public Organization Theory in the United States

Gary S. Marshall Public administrative organizations in the United States rest on the twin pillars of management and democracy. Because the management processes of public organizations are not solely instrumental but involve the public interest, public agencies have to be more than mechanisms of rationality. Public administrative action has both an instrumental quality, i.e., its capacity for optimal technical rationality (technique), and a social quality—an underlying connection to the social bond between self and other.

With this backdrop, we begin the focus of this chapter which recounts the sociology of organizations with an emphasis on key democratic moments in the history of American public administration. Before doing so, we might ask how the central terms used in our discussion will be defined. What are organizations? For the purposes of this chapter, organizations are the basic unit through which virtually all social relations are formed in post-traditional society. In that sense, all social life is understood as organizational life (Denhardt,1 1981). Management, coterminous with any definition of organization, refers to the regularized relations within organizations. As will be developed in the chapter, the rationalization of work led to formal and informal relations within public organizations, and the “management” of those relations is the primary way in which the term management is used here.

Democracy, literally “rule of the people,” is another term central to our discussion. As the book’s editor, Richard Box, noted in the Introduction, “The practice of public administration in the United States is set within the context of a .” On this point, our discussion of publicliberal-capitalist, representative democracy organization theory reflects the dynamics of administrative institutions and their role within the general processes of societal governance. The prevailing view of democracy in relation to twentieth- and twenty-first-century public organizations is one of (Redford, 1969). That is, bothoverhead democracy politicians and administrators are held accountable in a democratic society.2

A second important dimension in our discussion of democracy is the dramatic shift in the United States from an agrarian to an industrial society. Industrialism in western societies led to the rationalization of work and human relations with new forms of organization. Hence, the study of public administrative organizations is grounded in a tradition of industrial democracy.

A final point about democracy as it relates to this chapter is workplace democracy: the participatory dimension of internal organizational processes. Public organizations have been understood for the most part as administrative systems characterized by top-down legal-rational authority. This formal structure notwithstanding, the incorporation and practice of democratic principles and actions in the workplace have also been present within the public organizational setting, dating back to the anti-federalist ethos of the founding period of the U.S. Constitution.

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 0 7 . R o u t l e d g e .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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Publ i c Or gani zat i ons and t he For gi ng of t he Admi ni st r at i ve St at e

After the Civil War, American society transitioned to its modern form. The economy underwent a basic revision wherein regional monopolies disbanded and large corporate trusts developed. The political and social conditions of this period have been well documented (Bailyn et al., 1977; Hofstadter, 1955; Link & McCormick, 1983; McConnell, 1966; Wiebe 1967; Woll, 1977). The United States began to shift after 1830 from a predominantly agrarian society to an industrial society. By 1900, 40 percent of the American population was located in urban centers such as New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia (Bailyn et al., 1977).

In addition, the structure of work changed. Bailyn et al. (1977) note that industrial technology, with its emphasis on specialization and the division of labor, melded man into an instrument of the manufacturing process. On the farm, the harvester replaced the scythe, and in the cities, machines and the technological assembly line processes revolutionized whole industries, as the Bessemer process did for the steel industry. Industrial and economic expansion occurred on all fronts, including mining, railroads, and industries in the cities. The result of this economic expansion was that by the end of the century, the largest business interests in each arena—steel, oil, agriculture, rail transport, and manufacturing—consolidated their market share to the point of monopoly. Technological changes and developments signaled the end of the period of rural democracy. This period of industrial expansion and subsequent consolidation created a set of diverse political expectations and social conditions. On the one hand there were the unregulated interests and concentrated economic power of the industrialists, and on the other hand there were the interests and distributed wealth of individuals who were farmers, local merchants, and industrial workers.

Until the late 1880s, there was little movement for a national authority to regulate economic activity. Rather, government had played a role in fostering economic development and as a result had a stake in continuing to promote the interests of business. More important, the reigning assumption of the period was that a natural economic equilibrium would occur independently of regulation. However, the social and political conditions eventually put government in an awkward position. As Woll (1977, p. 39) notes: “Having fostered industries with subsidies of various kinds, both national and state governments had to contend with political and social problems such as economic instability, deceptive business practices, and the growth of monopolies that were directly attributed to the activities of groups that they originally supported.”

The Et hos of Techni que

The field of public administration responded to the material requirements of a modern administrative state required in the wake of industrial expansion. Between 1870 and 1930, the number of federal employees rose from 73,000 to 700,000 (Mosher, 1975). During the period spanning from the turn of the century to 1935, many changes and developments took place in the field. The Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency led the way for budget reform and an executive budget by 1921. The New York Bureau of Municipal Research became a clearinghouse for new research in public administration. Specialized knowledge about municipal governance was sought. The ideas generated from these reform efforts became known as the bureau movement and represented “the conviction that only through efficient government could progressive social welfare be achieved… . So long as government remained inefficient, volunteer, and detached, [any] effort to remove social handicaps would continue a hopeless task” (Mosher, 1981, p. 93).

The expanded role for public administrators was heralded by most because of their (1) subject matter expertise, (2) continuity as civil servants, and (3) commitment to the public interest. In addition, their application of scientific principles in the conduct of administration was seen as a positive step. It was assumed that the scientific method employed by the administrator would bring both impartiality and progress (better solutions through the ordered process of rationality) to an untenable situation. In their Papers on the

, Gulick and Urwick (1937, p. 49) wrote: “There are principles which can beScience of Administration arrived at inductively from the study of human organizations… . These principles can be studied as a

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technical question, irrespective of the enterprise.” In an essay entitled “Notes on the Theory of Organization,” Gulick articulated the principles of administration known by the acronym POSDCORB—Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, COrdinating, Reporting, and Budgeting.

The ethos of technique as evidenced by the above discussion dominated this period of research and theorizing about public organizations. This emphasis on the technical character of administration did not mean, however, that the democratic nature of public institutions had been foreclosed. Rather, it reflected the predominantly Wilsonian view at the time that there ought to be a clear separation between politics and administration. As Gulick wrote, the place of the administrator with his/her expertise is “on tap, not on top” (Gulick, in Harmon & Mayer, 1986, p. 127). The view was that the United States would thrive as a democracy if its strong political leadership was supported by administrative agencies with strong institutional capacity.

Sci ent i f i c Management and Ear l y Or gani zat i on Theor y

The specter of scientific management and its emphasis on the instrumental, in retrospect, haunts the twentieth century. But, in the first two decades of that century, efficiency was a word that portended apolitical social change, scientific progress, and increased material wealth. During this period of industrialization and modernization, bureaucracy and its corollary, scientific management, were understood as humane alternatives to the autocratic patterns of earlier decades wherein there was little regard to safety and systematization of work. The so-called rationalization of work allowed a heavy workload to be accomplished by the fewest people in the most efficient way possible. As Weber (1991, p. 214) noted: “The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization. The fully developed bureaucratic organization compares with other organizations exactly as the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production.”

Frederick Taylor, with his work at the Midvale and Bethlehem Steel companies, was the strongest proponent of these ideas. Taylor’s efforts all focused on strategies to limit worker autonomy and individual discretion in the production process in favor of a model that valued one best way to carry out a task as determined by scientific expertise. His view of human nature portended the behavioral revolution in social science. While one might not be able to fully explain people’s motives, one could direct their behavior through economic motives and scientific expertise. Taylor held that “man is an economic animal who responds directly to financial incentives within the limits of his physiological capabilities and the technical and work organization which is provided to him” (Silverman, 1971, p. 176). A famous conversation between Taylor and one of the Bethlehem workers found in the essay , gives onePrinciples of Scientific Management a flavor:

What I want to find out is whether you are a high-priced man or one of those cheap fellows here … whether you want to earn $1.85 a day or … are you satisfied with $1.15 just the same as all those cheap fellows. … Oh you’re aggravating me. Of course you want $1.85—everyone wants it… . Well if you are a high-priced man, you will do exactly as this man tells you to-morrow, from morning till night… . And what’s more, no back talk… . Do you understand that? (1947a, p. 45)

In Taylor’s view, man is not capable of accomplishing work without an expert to direct his/her behavior. Hence, he calls for the “one-best way of the scientific method.” This reflects, in spite of Taylor’s lionizing of the worker, a profound distrust in human beings. In his classic paper “Shop Management,” he wrote about the “social loafing” of workers. This loafing or soldiering proceeds from two causes. First, from the natural instinct and tendency of men to take it easy, which may be called natural soldiering. Second, from more intricate second thought and reasoning caused by their relations with other men, which may be called systematic soldiering (1947b, p. 30).

Not only did Taylor have disdain for subordinates, but for their superiors as well. He wrote extensively about the “indifference” of employers to the plight of good management. Taylor sought to shift authority from management to the expert, whose sphere of authority was legitimated through the planning departments of organizations. As satirized in Chaplin’s , work processes are analogous to the pieces of aModern Times mechanical clock. All the parts are discrete entities, some parts are more important than others, but in the

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final analysis all fit together to make it work. In this analogy, the scientific expert plays the role of the watchmaker.

Taylor’s legacy remains firmly in place today not only in his view of worker-management relations but also in the form of systems from managerial accounting, organizational form and function, artificial intelligence applications, and many other organizational systems. His approach required nothing less than a mental revolution. As his testimony before a House Special Committee investigating the union strikes at the Watertown Arsenal reflects:

Now, in essence, scientific management involves a complete mental revolution on the part of the working man engaged in any particular establishment or industry—a complete mental revolution on the part of these men as to their duties toward their work, toward their fellow men, and toward their employers. And it involves the equally complete mental revolution on the part of those on the management’s side—the foreman, the superintendent, the owner of the business, the board of directors—a complete mental revolution on their parts as to their duties toward their fellow workers in the management, toward their workmen, and toward all of their daily problems. And without this complete mental revolution on both sides scientific management does not exist. (1947c, p. 27)

To summarize, scientific management reflects these four elements: organizations exist to accomplish production-related and economic goals; there is one best way to organize for production, and that way can be found through systematic, scientific inquiry; production is maximized through specialization and division of labor; and people and organizations act in accordance with rational economic principles (Shafritz & Ott, 1996).

The Ear l y Human Rel at i ons Movement

“But scientific management has never studied the facts of human social organization, it has accepted the 19th century economic dictum that economic interest and logical capacity are the basis of the social order” (Henderson & Mayo, 2002, p. 311). This quotation, in an essay by L. J. Henderson and Elton Mayo, reflects the assessment of a group of researchers at Harvard University who, in part due to Henderson’s championing of Vifredo Pareto’s concept of social equilibrium (Heyl, 1968), wrote about organizations as social systems.

The work of Henderson, Mayo, Roethlisberger, and Dickson at General Electric’s Hawthorne Plant represents an important development in the history of organization theory. These so-called early human relationists sought to emphasize the interpersonal dimension of work life, i.e., the relationships that people form with one another in the workplace and the meaning made through those relationships and work experiences. The major point was that the underlying social bond between and among individuals is extremely powerful and not necessarily malleable to the rapid changes that the technical dimension of the organization projects upon it. A further quote from Henderson and Mayo makes this point quite well:

Now the social codes which define a worker’s relation to his work and to his fellows are not capable of rapid change. They are developed slowly and over long periods of time. They are not the product of logic, but of actual human association, they are based on deep rooted human sentiments. Constant interference with such codes is bound to lead to feelings of frustration, to irrational exasperation with technical change of any form. (2002, p. 311)

These researchers brought into stark relief the disjuncture between the technical demands of the organization and the rapidity of functional changes with regard to management processes within an organization on the one hand, and the informal long-term social and psychic relationships of one human being to another. This “social dimension” of human association had (has) a logic all its own that bears little relationship to the functional or formal organizational design that is configured according to the goals, objectives, and production processes of the organization. No doubt, the work itself is central to the group dynamics of those working in the organization, but the functional relationships are in some sense artificial as compared with the underlying social bond of those in the workplace. This social bond follows a psychological path rather than a functional path.

The “solution” offered by the Harvard group might be labeled a benignly corporatist one. As Harmon and Mayer note:

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The thrust of these interpretations [by the Harvard group] is clear: The dissatisfied individual (the source of the complaint) is to be manipulated by alterations in his or her position or status; this is achieved by manipulation, to the extent possible, of the social organization, etc… . Essentially, people are seen as socially motivated and controlled. Any increase in morale (and therefore in productivity) is, thus, necessarily related to change in the human and social conditions, not the physical or material condition. (1986, p. 101)

This perspective is more fully developed by Chester Barnard. Barnard’s book, The Functions of the , is considered a classic in the organization theory literature. It builds on insights about the socialExecutive

dimension of organizational life and presents organizations as systems of cooperation that must be well managed by the organization’s leaders. Barnard writes:

A part of the effort to determine individual behavior takes the form of altering the conditions of behavior, including a conditioning of the individual by training, by the inculcation of attitudes, by the construction of incentives. This constitutes a large part of the executive process… . Failure to recognize this position is among the most important sources of error in executive work. (1968, p. 15)

Thus for Barnard the executive must act as sea captain, ready at the helm to guide the human systems—formal and informal—to propel the organizational vessel in the appropriate direction. This view reinforced a top-down view of government institutions, wherein a responsive public executive ensured democratically accountable administrative practices.

Mar y Par ker Fol l et t

The pioneering work of Mary Parker Follett represents an alternative perspective on knowledge that human relationships are the central factor in organizational action. Although the compelling quality of Follett’s work went largely unheralded in her day, Follett is an important contributor to an understanding of the social dimension of organizational life (Drucker, 1995). She lectured and wrote extensively and was a compatriot of the members of the Harvard group. Like her colleagues, she saw social cooperation as an important and underdeveloped criterion in the study of group processes. Follett however, did not see social cooperation as merely a functional element of industrial organization. Rather, she saw it as evidence of the vital human bond between people. In a word, social process—the process of relating to others, an engagement of social experience—was a prerequisite to all human action. For Follett, relationship is the primary unit of analysis and the wellspring from which all else unfolds.

The social process is the interaction that occurs between human beings. It is in Follett’s language the having and digesting of social experience. This social process is the basis through which common agreement and common action can be undertaken. As she notes: “We have seen that the common idea and the common will are born together in the social process… . They complete themselves only through activity in the world of affairs, of work and of government” (Follett, 1995a, p. 247).

Writers who have championed Follett’s work emphasize the integrative dimension of her approach. The use of the term “integrative” refers to a key insight by Follett that human activity resists reduction to causal analysis. In the Pavlovian stimulus-response equation, the response “is not merely the activity resulting from a certain stimulus and that response in turn influencing that activity; it is because it is response that it influences that activity, that is part of what response means” (Follett, 1995b, p. 41). Social relations are never static. Rather, they are an evolving situation—a situation of constant interdependent reciprocal influence. As she notes:

In human relations … I never react to you but to you-plus-me; or to be more accurate, it is I-plus-you reacting to you-plus-me. “I” can never influence “you” because you have already influenced me; that is, in the very process of meeting, by the very process of meeting, we both become something different. (Follett, 1995b, p. 42)

Integration refers to the constant integrating of experience. Social process then is a platform under which all human process takes place, or more properly stated, evolves. Organizations are institutions of social process wherein goal-directed behavior on the part of leaders, managers, supervisors, and workers does not accurately account for the way in which events unfold. This basic approach serves as the grounding for all of

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Follett’s work, including her well-known analysis on the concept of power, the giving of orders, the law of the situation, and the quality of twentieth-century democracy.

Central to this chapter is the view of the self as understood by the management theories under review. Follett’s perspective represents a radical departure because she posits the self as constantly in process, constantly evolving. Such a view is diametrically opposed to the self as economic man: a rational calculating being who knows what he wants or whose wants can be predicted. For Taylor, the worker was motivated by a higher wage. For the early human relationists, workers were also social beings whose “sentiments” were to be afforded a certain degree of attention in service of organizational productivity.

This emphasis on the interpersonal dimensions of organizational life paved the way for an increased study of groups and group dynamics. Beginning with the work of Jacob Moreno, whose pioneering sociometric methods gave researchers a way to analyze the patterns of verbal and non-verbal behavior in small groups, group dynamics validated Follett’s insight of a live social process beneath the formal structure of the organization. More specifically, the insight of group dynamics is that groups are discrete entities that foster behavior that would not occur otherwise.

Kur t Lewi n

Kurt Lewin is the best-known writer on the study of groups and the contribution of group dynamics to organizational theory and organizational change. Why was his work so pivotal? First, like the early human relationists, he championed the human dimension in the workplace. In Lewin’s earliest work as a researcher at Berlin University, he demonstrated in his study of the work processes of Silesian textile workers that technique based on manual dexterity— the central claim of scientific management—was not the overriding factor in creating a productive workplace. Rather, when one considers total job demands, including the intrinsic value of the work itself, the worker’s self-perception, and motivation and commitment, scientific management’s rigid criterion of technical competence was too narrow (Weisbord, 2004, pp. 85–86).

In 1933, Lewin immigrated to the United States and began a fruitful period of research at the University of Iowa, where he worked with the sociologist Margaret Mead among others. One of their key findings was that organizational processes are more likely to succeed when the decision-making process is an inclusive one. Mead and Lewin determined that to get families to eat other kinds of meats than the types subject to severe rationing during World War II, so-called gatekeepers (typically moms in this case) needed to be a part of the decision-making process. As Mead so famously noted: “you cannot do things to people but only with them” (Mead, in Weisbord, 2004, p. 94). Their research demonstrated that meaningful inclusion in the decision-making process leads to sustained organizational commitment.

While the notion of the “group mind” can be attributed to the work of Gustave LeBon and his famous work (1982), Lewin pioneered the study of groups and the principleThe Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind that feedback and therefore participatory processes were requisites to organizational productivity and success. With the establishment of the National Training Laboratories (NTL) in Bethel, Maine, T-Groups or “training groups” became a vehicle by which the ideas of participative management were disseminated into the workplace. The current emphasis on teams in the workplace is a direct result of this work. Further, better insights into group dynamics were developed as a result of the T-Group phenomenon, e.g., the stages of group development.

Lewin’s legacy also lives on in the action research model of organizational analysis. Consistent with his famous dictum “there is nothing so practical as good theory,” the action research model incorporates worker feedback into its framework, particularly in the problem definition and clarification stages. Worker participation is also central to the joint problem-solving and implementation stages of action research. Lewin’s work is central to the sociology of organizations because he saw human beings as goal directed but profoundly affected by the context.

The concept of workplace democracy can most directly be attributed to Lewin. His research showed that democratic workplace processes, characterized by group goal setting and mutual feedback, led to stronger task completion, synchronicity, and innovation. While he advocated participation (workplace democracy), he

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was not an advocate of unstructured participation. Lewin’s field research showed that so-called laissez-faire management (wrongly assumed to be “democratic”) led to drops in productivity far lower than the drops demonstrated in long-terms studies of authoritarian management environments.

Her ber t Si mon and t he Rat i onal Model of Or gani zat i on

After World War II a refined discourse of rationalism and efficiency took hold in conjunction with the technological innovation occurring after the war. Early in the twentieth century, in the social sciences, science was essentially understood as a rationalizing technology, that is, making systems work more efficiently by ordering the processes to accomplish maximum output using the least resources. Technical solutions were very appealing given the scale of the changes that occurred in the wake of industrial expansion, the Great Depression, and two World Wars.

As gains in natural science took hold, there was a push by social scientists to effect the same rigor in the social sciences. As Denhardt notes:

In keeping with the general scientism of the period, many political scientists felt their earlier studies of government institutions lacked the rigor (and therefore, presumably the dignity) of work in such “real” sciences as physics and chemistry. To correct the situation, they argued on behalf of an approach to science based on the philosophical perspective of logical positivism. This approach held that regularities in human behavior, as in the behavior of physical objects, could be determined by the careful and objective observation of exhibited (or manifest) …

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