The Evolution of Public Administration in United States

Introduction

Public administration refers to two distinguishable but intimately related activities: (1) a professional practice (profession, occupation, field of activity), and (2) an academic field which seeks to understand, extend, criticize, and improve that professional practice as well as to train individuals for that practice.

The simple meaning of the term is quite direct: it refers on the one hand to the administration or management of matters which have mainly to do with the society, polity, and its subparts which are not fundamentally private, familial, commercial, or characteristic, and on the other hand to the well-organized study of such matters. In this simplest meaning, public administration has to do with supervision the realm of governmental and other public activities. This simple description conveys the core of public administration and perhaps covers the vast majority of activities and concerns of modern public administration.

This paper has a series of smooth-flowing, contiguous topics on the history of thought in the field of public administration. I tried to cover a block of time in the past till present. But each era had virtually complete sovereignty on the subject matter. Thus, to a major extent, each essay is an independent contribution that could stand by itself, associated with the others only loosely by the threads of time.

The conclusions almost inexorably drawn from this overview of the development and growth of public administration is the extent to which it has been dependent upon and receptive to its immediate social and intellectual environment. This is not to suggest that there were not connections between and amongst the periods, or that each period did not leave imprints that affected those that followed it. But the way in which this paper is structured encouraged a centre on the period in time, leaving the major accountability for interconnecting the themes to the reader.

Industrial revolution (C18th)

During eighteenth century, the mainstream approach toward the issue of motivation in Administration. Public and private in this respect are conflicting sides of the same coin, interest. It is usually assumed that the public sector administrator must be motivated by a wish to provide the public interest: “Uphold these principles, ever conscious that public office is a public trust.” (CODE OF ETHICS FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICE available at: http://www.house.gov/ethics/Ethicforward.html )

This is a congressional endorsement of the public interest motivation. At least four provisions of the Code of Ethics for Government Service, propagated by Congress for the public service, provide injunctions against acting for private interest: “Never discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favours or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not; and never accept for himself or his family, favours or benefits under circumstances which might be construed by reasonable persons as influencing the performance of his governmental duties” (principle 5); “Make no private promises of any kind binding upon the duties of office, since a Government employee has no private word which can be binding on private duty” (principle 6);

“Never use any information coming to him confidentially in the performance of governmental duties as a means for making private profit” (principle 8); and “Put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to government persons, party or department” (principle 1). (CODE OF ETHICS FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICE available at: http://www.house.gov/ethics/Ethicforward.html )

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher or the baker that we get our dinner—it is from his self-interest,” as Adam Smith writes in 1776 (Adam Smith, 1993).

The butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker give us what we desire neither because they are liberal nor because they consider that we deserve, require, or are entitled to their products; they do it for self-interest. Self-interest has always been, and remains, a central postulation of typical economic theory.

The pro of Adam Smith view was that the private entrepreneur must pursue his or her own self interest. Several entrepreneurs may in practice reveal altruism, but as Smith notes, “I have never known much good done by those who involved trading for the public good.”(Smith, Wealth of Nations).

The bifurcated way that normal public administration theory looks at public and private sector motivation is normative.

The con of the Adam Smith was that there was no difference between the normative and the evocative that should be recognized. The congressional standard for public administrators refers to what ought to be, and the standard would not have been issued if it were not for the apparent fact that several public administrators in fact do not meet the standard.

Max Weber – bureaucratic organizations

Max Weber, a German sociologist, was neither much read nor often noted in this America until significantly after the beginnings of the field of public administration as an object of self-conscious study. Moreover, administration was not the major focus of Weber’s analysis. The reason for believing Weber is that he places public administration, together with public administration in the United States (of which he was quite conscious), in a broad chronological context and sees the processes of public administration as part of the more general progression of rationalization in Western societies (Reinhard Bendix, 1960, 3).

In spite of his general admiration for bureaucracy, Weber there was also its flaws. As an organizational form, bureaucracy subjects the individual to a domineering routine, limits individual freedom, and favours the “crippled personality” of the specialist. As a potential political force, bureaucracy becomes a peril while it oversteps its proper function and attempts to manage the rule of law rather than be subject to it. Weber argues that the bureaucrat must stay out of politics and limit himself to the “impartial administration of his office” and that he must subordinate his personal opinion on matters of policy to his sense of duty (Gerth and Wright Mills, 1946).

Pendleton Act in 1883

“The Act introduced the merit system to the federal government. The Pendleton Act sought to eliminate political influence in hiring practices by employing only the most competent personnel”. http://gwweb.jica.go.jp/km/FSubjectAll.nsf/de8ecf4912a21d384925711d002d6eb3/4925714d002e6dd849257141002fb4d2/$FILE/_eadak4j9i220michh755k4441d8_.pdf.

To promote geographical representation, positions in Washington were to be apportioned amongst the states. Finally, President Chester A. Arthur was given the authority to expand the Act beyond the 10 percent of the federal employees that were covered. Proceeding to the Pendleton Act, public employment was mainly regulated by legislatures. Some public employees were requisite to put in to political campaigns as a price for keeping their jobs. Immigrants in the North used government jobs as a means to achieve upward social mobility. Former slaves in the South were given partial but significant opportunities to work in all phases of state and local government. Frauds against the government, mainly in the awarding of contracts, formed a cry for reform.

Woodrow Wilson 1880s – “service of citizens”

Commitment to constitutional norms is of particular disquiet in the American system of government in view of the strong emphasis on individual interest, liability to citizens, sovereignty issues, division of powers between the federal and state governments, and the system of checks and balances. In this regard Woodrow Wilson posed a sequence of questions in an 1887 essay:

“The question for us is how shall our series of governments within governments be so administered it should always be to the interest of the public officer to serve, not only his superior alone but the citizen with the best efforts of his service and his talents and the soberest service of his conscience? How shall such service be made to his commonest interest by contributing abundantly to his substance, to his highest interest by furthering his ambition, and to his highest interest by advancing his honour and establishing his character?” (Woodrow Wilson, 1987 p. 29).

The Constitution does not permit a politics-administration dichotomy. The Weberian neutral capable administrator who executes his or her duties without emotion or compassion, severely following the orders of superiors, is contradictory with the Founding Fathers’ concept of the legitimate system. Administrators cannot and ought not to be guided only by superiors. Who did the Founders expect to give guidance and evaluate public administrators’ actions? In a democratic republic, the Founders believed that public opinion must play a role.

Though Woodrow Wilson believed that the government must be run by highly professionalized civil servants with considerable discretion, he believed that administrators must always be mindful of public opinion but they must never be allowed to be meddlesome. He observed:

Wilson never intended the training of the highly professionalized civil service to be narrow, technical, and instrumental. He recognized the role politics plays in public administration. Thus, to be sensitive and responsive to the democratic environment in which they operate, public servants should follow a curriculum that includes constitutional principles, history, comparative government, politics, public law, and management (Dwight Waldo, “The Perdurability of the Politic-Administration Dichotomy, p. 231).

It was in this context that Wilson stated:

“The ideal focus is a civil service cultured and self-sufficient enough to act with a sense of vigour, and yet so immensely connected with the popular thought, by means of elections and constant public counsel, as to find arbitrariness or class spirit quite out of the question” (Wilson “The Study of Administration,” p. 27).

Tie between Woodrow Wilson and Appleby

Paul Appleby (1952: 145) proclaimed, “Perhaps there is no single problem in public administration of moment equal to the reconciliation of the increasing dependence upon experts with an enduring democratic reality.”

The administration of the contemporary service state places a premium upon administrative officials with thoughts and insight; yet students with elegance for the broad and capable with a faculty for assimilating the general will view suspiciously the study of administration. There is a very real apprehension amongst many administrators regarding the supply of younger administrators—men with broad vision and understanding. Mr. Paul Appleby, Undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture, stressing the significance for higher administrative work of broad training, thoughts, and capability for abstract thinking.

The second ill-fated tendency which has its origin in the view of administration as a tool which can be used for the effectuation of any strategy is the (again logical) expansion of this idea to comprise the belief that administrative machinery can be transplanted from one system of government to another; if it works well in the one, it will work well in the other. Wilson has stated this belief succinctly:

If I see a murderous fellow sharpening a knife cleverly, I can borrow his way of sharpening the knife without borrowing his probable intention to commit murder with it; and so, if I see a monarchist dyed in the wool managing a public bureau well, I can learn his business methods without changing one of my republican spots.

The dangerous misleading notion implicit in this view needs to be obviously understood so as to avoid transplanting into this country from other governments administrative techniques essentially incompatible with the fundamental philosophy of democratic government.

It must be pointed out that the men who were accountable for the development of the institutional approach them recognized the significance of the relation between the administration and the broad primary philosophy of a government. The emphasis on administration as apprehensive with techniques and means rather than with ends has been so immense that sight is often lost of an evenly definite aspect of their philosophy of administration. Wilson, after stating the value of a virtual study of techniques of administration, illustrated that he completely realized the dangers intrinsic in transmitting systems of administration lacking regard to the local philosophy:

By keeping this distinction in view—that is, by studying administration as a means of putting our own politics into convenient practice, as a means of making what is democratically politic towards all administratively possible towards each—we are on perfectly safe ground, and can learn without error what foreign systems have to teach us. (Woodrow Wilson, November 1, 1886 http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=465 )

Henri Fayol – 14 principles of management

Theorists quickly established bureaucratic characteristics as standards to be followed in making-up large-scale organizations. They developed elaborate systems of elements “necessary” for competent operation of their organizations. Typical of this effort is the work of Henri Fayol (1916), the French scientific manager who recognized 14 principles of organization to make sure efficient organizational performance.

It can be suggested that, while the special staff functions and relations which have been described are pertinent to armies where discipline is enforceable, they are not functional in business or other forms of civil administration. No doubt a substantial educational effort is essential before any new idea of organization can be introduced into an environment where individuals are uncommon to it. But, there is no fundamental reason to validate the assumption that the principle is not evenly applicable, and likely to prove beneficial to, other forms of undertaking, once it is established and understood.

To take an instance from an industrialist of wide experience, Fayol has analyzed the functions of administration, of the commandant, under five heads: to plan, organize command, organize and control. But these functions, since they are a fundamental part of the duty of the leader, cannot in any case be broken up wholly from his personality. A planning room can safe that the routine operations of manufacturing are methodically performed and that all minor obstructions or misfortunes are dealt with. It cannot settle the policy of a business, forecast its credible lines of future development, or make major decisions. The responsibility for preplanning in this larger sense (Fayol’s word was “prévoyance”) must stay with the highest authority.

Mary Parker Follett

Mary Parker Follett-a truly inspired, strongly vital mind, which found its way to the basic problems first of the community and State, and later of industrial organization and administration, through a eager insight into human nature and tireless commitment to the task of arriving at a practical application of the social sciences in government and in industry.

According to Metcalf and Urwick (1940): The Follett philosophy is that any enduring society, any continuously productive industrial organization, must be grounded upon recognition of the motivating desires of the individual and of the group. Consistently, Miss Follett sought to force home a realization of the fact that the democratic way of life, implemented by intelligent organization and administration of government and of industry, is to work toward an honest integration of all points of view, to the end that every individuality may be mobilized and made to count both as a person and as an effective part of his group and of society as a whole (p 9).

Lots of people are now getting ahead of the consent-of-the-governed stage in their thinking; so far there are political scientists who are still supporting it. And, certainly, it is much better to have the assent of the governed than not to have it. In the case of what are called the diffident countries that are what we are asking for, for we distinguish it as a first step. But we are also distinguishing to-day that it is only a first step; that not consent but participation is the right base for all social relations.

If participation means everybody taking part, according to his capacity, in a unit collected of related activities, we then ask how we can obtain participation. In three ways: by an organization which provides for it, by a daily management which distinguishes and acts on the principle of participation, and by a means of settling differences, or a method of dealing with the diverse offerings of men very diverse in temperament, training, and attainments.

One of the main contributions of scientific management: it leans to depersonalize orders.

“From one point of view, one might call the essence of scientific management the attempt to find the law of the situation. With scientific management the managers are as much under orders as the workers, for both obey the law of the situation. Our job is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise methods by which we can best discover the order integral to a particular situation. When that is found, the employee can issue it to the employer, as well as employer to employee” (Mary Parker Follett, Dynamic Administration, 1941).

“If the situation is never stationary, then the order should never be stationary, so to speak; how to prevent it from being so is our problem. The situation is changing while orders are being carried out, because, by and through orders being carried out. How is the order to keep up with the situation? External orders never can, only those drawn fresh from the situation”. Mary Parker Follett, “The Giving of Orders” (pg. 152-157)

Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management Theory

Taylorism had originated in the same social and rational environment as corporatism, and paradoxically the greatest single prophet of corporatism was Taylor himself. He required provoking class harmony and usual that jobs designed by experts would be healthy for individual and firm. Besides, his plea for a “mental revolution” often drew on corporative language, particularly when he called for management based on “cooperation, not individualism” F. W. Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, and p. 140.

But his idea of the scientific manager was indistinct enough to motivate disciples with conflicting interpretations. And they often took paths away from him and from one another. Their search for consistency and harmony rapidly led to a schism, and partisans were divided into two theoretical schools, post-Taylorite bureaucrats and post-Mayoist corporatists.

The bureaucrats stayed on convinced that the most reasonable government came from hierarchical controls, focused tasks, and professional managers. In these respects, they were latter-day Taylorites who remained true to the essential premises of scientific management, particularly its contempt for the judgment of the unprofessional and its positivist dream of the manager as a scientist.

Yet in looking for the harmony that their mentor had promised but did not carry, they were trying to go beyond Taylorism and were searching for new theories and methods of bureaucratic governance that could eradicate its dysfunctions. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, their positivism was leading them toward what they believed were value-free disciplines that could give way principles and tools for a more effectual science of management; they turned toward methods of mathematics that could eradicate politics from decision making, models of economics that could explicate the virtues of bureaucracy, and metaphors and machines of cybernetics and computer science that could ease communication and control.

Hawthorne Studies of 1932

Hawthorne was the humanistic reaction to both labour militancy and atrocious working conditions of the factory system based on scientific management. Hawthorne recognized the tradition of social science research into the behavioural and motivational roots of high performance production, but, for a half century or more, unfocused that research onto the digression of worker satisfaction as the supposed foundation of high performance. The conflict between Ford’s version of scientific management and ideological advocates of improved worker satisfaction caught up the progress of high performance systems creation for most of the twentieth century (Carey, 1967).

On the threshold of the twenty-first century, competitive renaissance of American as well as of much world industry depends on breakthrough of new high performance systems that rupture the old impasse of scientific management under blockade by advocates of labour humanism. The history of past high performance systems and experience with promising high performance output in global competition may proffer useful clues as to the basics of those new systems.

Hawthorne researchers can have distorted their scientific judgment and thereby unfocused the best research energy of social scientists from more substantive issues for as long as fifty years. Hawthorne can have introduced an ill-fated detour for management science on its road to improved knowledge.

Chester Barnard 1940

With the works of Chester Barnard we attain the culmination of the drift noted in the writings of Follett and Mayo in which authority is measured to be cumulative in nature (i.e., it arises from below) rather than originating from the peak of the organizational pyramid.

The allegation that authority is collective in nature is similarly derived from Barnard’s conceptualization of the organization as a coordination of exchange. Barnard takes the argument a step further by emphasizing that the individual’s response to organizational directions is a function of incentives in the organization. In brief, he asserts that the greater the professed balance of inducements over obligatory contributions, the more expected it is that the individual will accept organizational directives. And, once again, that balance is an issue of personal and subjective evaluation. This, in turn, leads Barnard to define authority as “the character of a communication (order) in a formal organization by virtue of which it is accepted by a contributor to, or member of, the organization as governing the action he contributes.” (1971: 163)

This definition suggests that ability resides, not in a position, but in a relationship between a superior and a subordinate and that power is not exercised on issuance of a command but on its acceptance. Thus authority eventually arises from the bottom; it does not descend from the top. This formulation helped set up one of the basic items on the research agenda of the Behavioural approach: the problem of securing fulfilment to organizational authority.

There are at least two other main contributions from Barnard. One is his allegation that organizations are, by their nature, supportive social systems. Barnard derives this offer from a series of assumptions concerning human nature and the reasons for alliance in formal organizations. A second is Barnard’s requirement of the functions of the leader. In a literature in which leadership would quickly come to be defined as little more than supervision, Barnard charges the leader with responsibilities of more heroic dimensions. Amongst these is the accountability for establishing and observing a moral code in the organization and arbitrating disputes arising there from.

Even these items fail to tire out the list of Barnard’s contributions to the study of organizations. Others would comprise the systems idea of the organization, the focus on informal organizations, the stress on decision making, the attention given to non-logical thought processes, and the centre on executive organization as a communication system. This is, certainly, an impressive list, and Barnard’s works remain amongst the most extensively cited in the literature.

1940`s Group dynamics – Lewin and Bion

At mid-century, as it were, in those exhilarating decades (the 1930s through the 1970s) while group psychotherapy and group dynamics came into their own as different and innovative disciplines, theories were observed from the standpoint of ‘objective’ science as large-scale plan incorporating working models which could engender hypotheses to be tested in the somewhat systematically controlled settings of therapy groups, training groups and organizational and training conferences.

Some of the influential and empowering mentor figures who engendered global theoretical and practical frameworks about groups and the members who include them included Bion and Lewin. Each of these pioneers sired a school of thought, in some illustrations fostered the concern of training institutes, and inspired one or more generations of followers, dissenters and practitioners.

Bion elaborated on Freud’s Group Psychology, but more significantly invoked the object-relations frame of reference of Melanie Klein (Bion, 1956). Bion made object-relations theory and its insights into the paranoid-schizoid and depressive ‘psychotic-like’ levels of mentation the base of understanding regressive group phenomenon. He thus opened to analysis deeper layers of group dynamics, the primordial, pre-oedipal, ‘part-object’ phenomena of unspecified action, fusion and primitive phantasy. He recognized the significant importance for group formation of prehistoric defences such as splitting and projective identification, and he discussed how unconscious phantasy put in to the group members’ transference relations with the leader and the ‘group-as-a-whole’.

The work of Kurt Lewin (1952) in the United States provided transatlantic parallel frameworks for an unexpected expansion of research, training and psychotherapy based on the group-as-a-whole. It can be recalled that Lewin vigorously eschewed the psychoanalytic stress on the past, arguing that the sum total of the forces acting on the individual in the group were in the here-and-now.

Lewin’s work has had a particularly significant collision on the work of one of our own contributors, Yvonne Agazarian, and it is significant to see her efforts against the backdrop of Lewinian field theory, although she has gone well beyond Lewin in her current systems theorizing.

Organizational Management Theory – “father of organizational development” Lewin

Kurt Lewin (1951), the father of organizational development, “saw change as a three-pronged process: unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Unfreezing involves loosening or melting ways of thought, behaviours, or sets of often unconscious behaviours that work against productivity in solving social problems and conflict. Once the ices of thought patterns or behaviours inhibiting productivity are melted, they flow into more natural channels until cooled enough to refreeze in more functional and congruent patterns. The new patterns remain until they are once again challenged by the perception of the need to change again. Lewin’s formula for change is elegantly simple but fearsomely difficult to put into practice”. http://www.ncsall.net/?id=396

Socio-technical Systems Theory of 1949

According to socio-technical systems theory, the personnel and technological subsystems are equally subjected to environmental influences and, therefore, an organization’s structure must be designed as a function of the joint design of the personnel and technological subsystems. In numerous cases, including those reported by Kleiner and Drury (1999), main changes in the environmental subsystem occur throughout interventions. A strictly micro ergonomic approach might have wrecked intervention at the start of such events.

It is hypothesized that the staged results achieved through macro ergonomics are attained because macro-ergonomists ease the interface between stakeholders in the environmental subsystems (i.e., sub environments) and other subsystems. In the cases reported by Kleiner and Drury (1999), the environmental subsystem consists of mechanism such as the regional, political, legal, and educational resources. By working with state officials and institutions, organized labour, and corporate headquarters, involvements with centre personnel focused on the political edge with local organizations.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, industrial technology was budding rapidly in America and Europe, and labour was becoming extremely specialized. As a result, engineers were being called on to assist design work systems and optimize efficiency. One of these engineers, Frederick W. Taylor (1911), developed the idea of Scientific Management, which had a major collision on the shaping of classical organizational theory. Taylor’s concepts of work system structure are implied in his four basic principles of management (Szilagyi & Wallace, 1990, p. 662).

First. Develop a science for each element of man’s work that replaces the old rule-of-thumb method.

Second. Systematically select and train, teach, and develop the workman. In the past he chose his own work and trained himself as best he could.

Third. Hardily assist with the men in order to ensure all of the work is being done in accordance with the principles of the science that has been developed.

Fourth. Give equal division of work and accountability between the management and the workmen. The management takes over all work for which they are more capable than the workmen. In the past, almost all the work and the greater part of the accountability were thrown upon the men.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – 1954

The implication of the hierarchy of needs lies in understanding the motivating factors for individuals. Once a particular level of needs has been pleased, different or higher types of motivators are requisite if the organizational goals are to be achieved. This means that the manager should be constantly aware of workers’ changing wants. According to Maslow, “humans are a perpetually wanting animal” (Maslow, 1943: 370).

Many of the ideas linked with the psychological humanist Abraham H. Maslow have been found to be helpful in explaining worker motivation (Abraham Maslow, 1970 pp. 35-58).

The basic physiological needs for food, warmth, shelter, and sexual completion are at the base of the hierarchy. These lean to take precedence over other needs as they relate to physical survival. The subsequently level of needs pertains to a feeling of safety from physical and emotional injury, such as having a secure job and a firm income. As these are achieved, the individual focuses attention on the requirement for friendship, belonging, and love. The need for esteem refers to achievement, respect, and fame. The final need, at the top of the hierarchy, is for self-actualization, or the fullest use of the individual’s inspired abilities.

Drucker – “Leadership/Management”

Peter Drucker has put Taylor in a lofty position. Drucker asserts that Taylor, not Karl Marx, deserves to be in the trinity with Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud as the most significant forces that shaped the thought and practice of the modern world. Thompson’s contribution considerably helped to make scientific management what it has become; but, he has been outshined and virtually forgotten.

Frederick Herzberg – “Hygiene and Motivational Factors”

Herzberg developed notions dealing with “motivators” that could be openly correlated with job satisfaction. The factors distressing motivation fall into two categories. The first (“hygiene” factors, consisting of company policy and administration, salary, supervision, interpersonal relations, and working conditions) depict ways in which the workers relate to their working environment. As the hygiene factors (due to mismanagement) rarely motivate workers, Herzberg called them “dissatisfiers.” The second category, relating to “intrinsic” factors such as acknowledgment, the nature of the work, responsibility, and support or advancement, are known as the “satisfiers” and are directly job-related. These motivating factors encourage an enduring sense of motivation because they give an opportunity for growth and self-actualization (Frederick Herzberg, Bernard Mausner, and Barbara Snyderman, 1959).

The research carried out by Herzberg, in testing hypotheses concerning motivations has almost generally reported a positive association with participative, or democratic, decision-making. Such decision-making puts in to meaningful work and job satisfaction, which in turn encourage better job performance. in spite of these claims, a review of the literature by Edward E. Lawler and Lyman W. Porter indicates that the reverse may be true (Edward E. Lawler and Lyman W. Porter, 1967).

The reward system for higher performance that is viewed as a dis-satisfier may certainly be the significant factor in increasing employee satisfaction. The conclusion was thus made that management can find it more useful to recognize better reward systems than to agonize itself concerning maximizing the satisfaction of its employees. Finally, the basic denigration of the Herzberg theory is that it has not always been simulated by research as it is too general and ignores differences between individual expectations. Additionally, it has typically been impossible to differentiate differences between dissatisfiers and motivators, as the same factors are mentioned in both categories (Marvin D. Dunnette, John P. Campbell and Milton D. Hakal, 1967, 143-74). Despite these verification problems, the work of Maslow has had a progressing impact.

Theory X and Theory Y by McGregor

McGregor’s greatest contribution was a straightforward theory of motivation that he outlined in his influential work The Human Side off Enterprise. His theory has had a huge impact on the way people think concerning leading, managing and designing successful organizations. His theory became generally known as Theory X and Theory Y.

Clearly, Theory Y assumptions reflect a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature. It sees unlimited impending in people for personal and organizational growth. In contrast, Theory X represents a static and negative view of individuals. They have to be driven hard to perform.

The motivating forces restricted in the assumptions of Theory Y are those similar to the rewards that are portrayed in Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy off Needs. In other words, Theory Y management aims to assimilate individual goals with those of the organization making a job the principal means through which people can increase their competence, self-control and sense of achievement. In such an atmosphere, Theory Y holds that people are more expected to identify with the goals of an organization as the organization identifies with their goals. Control then becomes within directed by the individual rather than externally, as is implicit by Theory X. In Theory X external control is essential and it usually comes from strong and directive management supervision, accompanied by the obligation of rules and constraints.

According to him, Theory X and Y does not explain human nature, instead it merely illustrates what happens to people and production as a result of a leader’s actions. So what of his contribution to the field of leadership?

Well, it is clear that while numerous companies articulate ideals involving empowerment and growing individuals, numerous continue to operate a fundamentally carrot and stick approach to influence behaviour. Fundamentally, we might argue that the foundation of McGregor’s work is the notion of ‘trust’ and the capability of a leader to invest in it.

Management Grid by Blake and Mouton – 1964

Blake and Mouton provide an outstanding example of this with their use of the “management grid” (Blake, Mouton & McCanse, 1989) in a diversity of settings including corporations and universities (Blake, Mouton & Williams, 1981).

Blake and Mouton (from the Ohio State leadership research group) found from their research that as initiating structure and idea development are distinct orientations in theory, persons in life demonstrate some of every characteristic. They devised a managerial grid (1964) to display these two dimensions of leader behaviour.

Blake and Mouton modified this theory with apprehension for task and concern for people, and expanded it from a 4-phase model to an 81-phase (infinite) model. The Blake and Mouton model has become a focus in leadership development training. Its predictive reliability is weak, although it is built on sound theoretical foundations.

Mintzberg – 1970

Mintzberg (1973) presents ten major roles that are gathered under three categories: interpersonal, informational, and decisional. The ten roles were plagiaristic by interviewing high-level managers and observing their every day activities. The list includes leader, entrepreneur, disseminator, resource allocator, negotiator, monitor, spokesperson, annoyance handler, figurehead, and liaison. Which roles are characteristically fulfilled by production managers, by directorial and staffing, and by sales managers ought to be delineated, just because these are expected to differ.

The main criticism is that the ten managerial roles in each of the categories may not have class membership simply in those categories. The categories themselves overlap to a certain degree as perceived by managers and non-managerial employees.

Using scaling theory to divide the roles into categories, Shapira and Dunbar (1980) found two categories: (1) roles concerned with the generation and giving out of information, and (2) roles that involve decisions. The decisional roles had higher correlations with each other than the informational roles. Thus there is proof that the ten roles may not be professed to be distinct and uncorrelated by respondents.

Thus Mintzberg also presents Characteristics: the manager at work

Performs a great quantity of work at an unrelenting pace

Undertakes activities marked by variety, brevity and fragmentation

Has a preference for issues that are current, specific and non-routine

Prefers verbal rather than written means of communication

Acts within a web of internal and external contacts

Is subject to heavy constraints but can exert some control over his work. One Minute Summary: 1973 – The Nature of Managerial Work – Mintzberg http://blueoceanstrategy.typepad.com/creatingblueoceans/2005/12/one_minute_summ.html

In general, Mintzberg presented the results of his analysis in a means that suggested that the realism of managerial work was acutely at odds with the classical view. Furthermore, managerial work, as it could be pragmatic in practice, did not even square with managers’ own beliefs about it. Whilst they seemed to subscribe to the classical view, their behaviour belied its force, so that: ‘If you ask a manager what he does, he will generally likely tell you that he plans, organizes, co-ordinates, controls. Then watch what he does. Don’t be astonished if you can’t relate what you see to those four words.’ Managers seemed to have been sold a mistaken view of management which could not be submissive with what they actually did.

Performance Technology in 1978 and Gilbert

Performance technology (of which instructional technology can be considered a subset) assumes that performance requirements can be generated from a diversity of factors. Diverse types of causes entail different types of intervention. Mainly performance problems have multiple causes, and performance engineering proposes that we should use appropriate solutions to lessen or eliminate the primary causes.

Gilbert (1978) differentiated between performance problems caused by a lack of skills and knowledge and those caused by a lack of motivation.

Gilbert (1978) contends that firms fanatical with controlling or improving behaviours will have complexity improving both individual and organizational performance. In essence, employees can reveal desired behaviours yet not achieve desired outcomes.

Tom Peters Spawns “management guru business”

Management gurus have had a significant impact upon my thinking and practice in all three of the roles—manager, educator and researcher.

“We’re the only society in the world that believes it can keep on getting better and better. So we keep on getting suckered by people like Ben Franklin, Emerson and Drucker and me”. (Tom Peters quoted in Fortune, 1996:33)

“Excellence” movement enthused by Tom Peters with his imperative appeal for direct and impulsive action, the breaking down of bureaucratic walls and the general sense of destiny that it instilled in me. As writers like Peters portrayed it, management was not simply the right thing to be doing but it could also be tremendous fun.

A number of critics have also determined their attention upon the performance gap between what is promised by the management guru and what in fact happens when the management fashion that he or she is intending is implemented. Perhaps the best-known example of this gap was the succeeding performance of many of the companies that were singled out by Peters and Waterman for their “excellence”.

Johnson et al. (1985) expressed apprehension that the six performance indices used by Peter’s measure only a firm’s financial performance whereas the return to shareholders is a much truer determine of “excellence”.

While Peters work obviously attracted substantial academic scrutiny, there is a remarkable drought of studies that have tried to assess to what degree various management fashions have in fact been able to deliver on their economic promises. Several consultant-sponsored studies have concluded that, in the mainstream of instances, they do not deliver at all.

Tom Peters himself is significant of the organizations that have followed him. In an interview he is quoted to have said that

“The difference today is that middle management and even the rank-and-file have read the books. They’re committed and enthusiastic about the programs, but they have come to the realization that the senior level really hasn’t bought into it and doesn’t want to give up control”. (Stuller, 1992:21)

As the assessment of the management guru and fashion incident has been largely negative, a few commentators have been more positive in their assessment of its contribution to managerial thought and practice. For instance, while critical of the scientific soundness of the gurus’ work, Maidique (1983) argues that academics have a lot to find out from writers such as Peters and Waterman. Unlike numerous academics, they reveal the importance of being in touch with business realities and priorities. Moreover, they write in such a way that they “engage the reader in the same way they were engaged by their subjects” (Maidique, 1983:156).

Learning Organziation – Peter Senge 1990

A leading author has certainly been Peter Senge, from the United States. His book, The Fifth Discipline (Senge, 1990), subtitled The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, almost certainly more than any other has brought the idea of the learning organization to popular attention globally.

Senge does not set out to describe a learning organization as such. Rather he draws attention to the implication of learning in organizations and its consequences for organizational success. He says, for example:

The most accurate word in Western culture to describe what happens in a learning organization is one that hasn’t had much currency for the past several hundred years… The word is ‘metanoia’ and it means a shift of mind… To grasp the meaning of ‘metanoia’ is to grasp the deeper meaning of ‘learning’, for learning also involves a fundamental shift or movement of mind. (1990:13)

In Senge’s view, the essence of the learning organization lies in the presence of five ‘disciplines’. These are:

Personal mastery;

Mental models;

Shared vision;

Team learning;

Systems thinking.

Like Pedler et al, Senge’s outlook on the learning organization also draws upon numerous influences. The ‘discipline’ that accepts most attention is ‘systems thinking’, is derived from cybernetics. It is of the same family of ideas as Argyris’ learning loops. Senge underlines other disciplines too. These include ‘personal mastery’, which ‘goes beyond competence and skills… [And] …goes beyond spiritual unfolding or opening, although it requires spiritual growth’ (1990:141). This emphasizes a connection between the personal development of employees and the capability for organizational learning.

Ethics in 1995 – the fire at Malden Mills

Commitment concerns the fact that behaviour often precedes understanding. Throughout crisis, critical and irrevocable decisions often should be initiated without time to fully believe the implications. Decisions that are public, volitional, and final are often followed by retrospective explanations or tenacious justifications. Often, initial actions give a necessary initial structure or interpretation to permit for subsequent, crisis-reducing action (Weick, 1988, p. 310). while Aaron Feuerstein, chief executive officer (CEO) of Malden Mills, announced instantly following a devastating plant fire that he would rebuild and continue to pay workers, the force of the crisis was reduced and participants began planning for rebuilding (Seeger & Ulmer, 2001).

Malden Mills was capable to learn from earlier crises and pertain those lessons to a fire that devastated the organization’s manufacturing facility. One explanation for the comparatively thriving evacuation of the World Trade Center following the 9/11 terrorists attack was the experience of the 1994 car bombing of the centre. Occupants had learned from this experience how to relinquish the facility. These learning processes are all grounded in the assumption that crises of particular types will have common characteristics and pursue established patterns.

New Public Management

New Public Management (NPM) is noticeably international trend in public administration observable from the mid-1970s onwards. The durable and extensive nature of the new public management agenda entails that it has more staying power than the usual managerial fad. Hood (1991) sees the rise of the new public management as linked with increased attempts to restrain the rise of government and a shift towards privatization. Gray and Jenkins (1995) point to the international dissemination of the new public management model, aided by growing popular and rational disenchantment with the role of government and with high levels of taxation.

Yet Osborne and Gaebler view (1992) that there is universal junction on an agreed new public management model is basic and over determinist. They may indeed be guilty of a crude Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism. As Dunleavy and Hood (1994) argue, politicians and citizens still have the authority to choose between ranges of alternative future prototypes of organization of the public services.

Political success of NPR was due to more than just the popular application of downsizing the federal government. First, the administration did not form a new bureaucracy to run NPR. The “reinventing government” effort was planned as a project in the vice president’s office, staffed primarily by career officials on loan from their home agencies. Second, the administration was practised in its use of the media to define the issue of public management reform. An of cited example is a late-night appearance by Vice President Al Gore on a television talk show throughout which he used a hammer to smash an ashtray in an attempt to condemn federal procurement practices.

Third, the administration headed off opposition to downsizing from labour union leaders representing organized federal employees. The actuality that unions supported NPR is mainly attributed to the administration’s eagerness to make structural and informal changes to labour-management relations within the federal government. A National Partnership Council composed of top union leaders and selected cabinet members was established, one of whose tasks was to assist the administration in intending new legislation troubled with labour-management relations.

Conclusion

In conclusion I must say that we must recognize that organizations function fundamentally in the realm of values. The traditional values of public administration have served us well. There are different phases of the evolution of Administration in United States. The fact of this evolution is that from each expert besides some flaws we gain and learn something.

 In Adam Smith view there was that the private entrepreneur that according to him should. According to Weber clearly saw administration in general and bureaucracy in particular, vital to these processes. Moreover, the act passed in 1883 ‘The Pendleton Act’ sought to eliminate political influence in hiring practices by employing only the most competent personnel. Whereas, Woodrow Wilson believed that the government must be run by highly professionalized civil servants with significant prudence, he believed that administrators should always be careful of public opinion but they must never be allowed to be meddlesome.

Fayol always insisted that his success was due, not to any personal qualities, but to the methods he employed. The Follett philosophy is that any continuing society, any continuously productive industrial organization, should be grounded upon a recognition of the motivating desires of the individual and of the group. Though, Taylorism wanted to engender class harmony and usual that jobs designed by experts would be healthy for individual and firm. Thus, management from the age of Hawthorne was think by unions as a ploy to undercut labourers’ rights and dignities.

While according to Barnard the idea that subordinates’ needs should be satisfied as they perceive them is derived openly from Barnard’s idea that the relationship between the individual and the organization constitutes a free contractual arrangement. Bion and Lewin has made a momentous development in group therapists’ understanding and exploitation of theoretical constructs over the past several decades, a change which reflects a move in cultural patterns and intellectual trends.

Maslow’s has implication of the hierarchy of needs lies in understanding the motivating factors for individuals. Where as Herzberg developed concepts dealing with “motivators” that could be openly correlated with job satisfaction.

The work of many other administrators like Douglas McGregor, Tom Peters and Senge have been cited that how they contributed to the evolution of Public Administration.

Thus these theories related to the evolution of United States. It can definitely improve the skills actors require in order to face the challenges of an environment undergoing accelerated and, in numerous cases, permanent change. Probably the most decisive challenge faced by leaders for democratic governability is exactly that of catalyzing the actions of social actors to make sure that such revaluation occurs continually, as it is truly the basis of any learning process.

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