Public Administration Core Competency Final

Public Administration

Core Competency Final Exam

Many scholars have criticized the bureaucratic form of organization as originally outlined by Max Weber. Give an example of each of the key elements of bureaucracy as you see them reflected in contemporary organizations. Do you regard Weber as more as an advocate or opponent of bureaucracy or as a dispassionate describer of the social, political, and economic factors that made bureaucracy inevitable? How do Robert Merton, Anthony Downs, David Rosenbloom and Michael Lipsky qualify, extend, or criticize Weber's classic account?

Max Weber is well-known for his critical study of the bureaucratization of society, the rational ways in which formal social organizations apply the ideal type characteristics of a bureaucracy. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularization of this term (Sashkin, 2002).

The last century has seen the perfection of the bureaucracy which is a form of organization that has been enormously successful and is the result of thousands of years of trial and error evolution. Max Weber outlined the key characteristics of a bureaucracy to include:

1. The specification of jobs with detailed rights, obligations, responsibilities, and scope of authority

2. A system of supervision and subordination

3. A unity of command

4. An extensive use of written documents

5. A training in job requirements and skills

6. An application of consistent and complete rules

7. An assignment of work and the hiring of personnel based on competence and experience (Bureaucracy, 2002).

These characterizes can be seen throughout contemporary organizations. Most organizations have job specifications that are laid down in detail so that everyone knows what their obligations are along with what responsibilities they have. This can usually be found in a job description.

Most jobs are set up in a manner in which there is a system of supervision and subordination. Unless you own your own company and you are the only employee, everyone has to answer to someone. This may be an individual person such as a manager or director, or is could be on a broader scale, such as a board of directors.

Weber's third characteristic of unity of command can be seen in organizations in the fact that there is the division of labor between managers and workers. Each level of employee within the organization is united at their own level, but then have a chain of command in which the must adhere to.

Most contemporary organizations subscribe to Weber's fourth characteristic of employing extensive use of written documents. It is usually very important to leave a paper trail pertaining to things that are seen as being important. This can be very useful for not only historical value but in futuristic value as well. It is just as important to know how things were done in the past at it is to provide documentation for those who will come after you. This often keeps people from having to reinvent the wheel every time a problem arises.

It is very important for organizations to adhere to Weber's fifth characteristic of providing job training. Many people come to a company or a job with a particular set of job skills that are a basis from which the draw to perform their jobs. Company provided training helps to ensure that every one is on the same page and that they know how to perform their job functions to the best of their abilities.

The sixth characteristic of application of consistent and complete rules is usually done by having a company manual. This provides for effective and consistent policies to be constructed and followed. If all standard operating procedures are documented and kept in on place then no one in the company has an excuse of not knowing what they supposed to be doing and in what manner they are supposed to be doing it.

Weber's seventh characteristic has to do with assigning work and hiring personnel based on competence and experience. It is very important to have the right people dong the right jobs for them. This ensures that there is quality and efficiency across the organization. If people are not qualified to do the job in which they have been placed it will only cause problems for everyone in the end. Time and money will be wasted on training and retraining that will surely need to take place.

Robert Merton believed that society could develop alternatives to current institutions by analyzing their dysfunctions. Merton thought that, if the predominance of rational rules, and their close control of all actions, favors the reliability and predictability of the bureaucrat's behavior, as Weber believed, it could equally lead to his lack of flexibility and his tendency to turn means into ends. Instead of serving as means to an end, these rules become ends in and of themselves (Bureaucracy, 2008).

Anthony Downs felt that control operates by providing structural coordination and uniformity. But that control in bureaucratic structures is flawed in several respects. He explored several regularities which he called laws. The first was the Law of Hierarchy: which was the coordination of large-scale activities without markets requiring a hierarchical authority structure. The second was the Law of Imperfect Control in which no one can fully control the behavior of a large organization. The third was the Law of Diminishing Control in which the larger any organization becomes, the weaker is the control over its actions exercised by those at the top. The fourth was the Law of Decreasing Coordination in which the larger any organization becomes, the poorer is the coordination among its actions. The fifth law is the Power Shift Law which is unrestrained conflict shifts power upward. The sixth law is the Law of Progress through Imperialism in which the desire to aggrandize breads innovation and the seventh law being the Law of Counter Control in which the greater the effort made by a sovereign or top-level official to control the behavior of subordinate officials, the greater the efforts made by those subordinates to evade or counteract such control (Fall and rise of control, 2007). This theory goes completely against Weber's classic account.

Rosenbloom argues that three interrelated approaches to public administration make it difficult for the government to perform effectively. Specifically, he cites the legal approach, which relates to the judicial system; the managerial approach, which relates to the executive branch; and the political approach, which relates to the legislative branch. Tendencies associated with these three approaches make it extremely difficult for government to identify a problem, decide on a solution, and implement that solution (Introduction, n.d.). Rosenbloom's argument can be seen as an extension of Weber's theory applied to the arena of the government.

Lipsky reverses the long-term belief of the policy process that has been held by so many before him. He conveys two main messages that street-level bureaucrats are policy makers and that they confront a dilemma between getting on at work and fulfilling the organization's goals. He believes that the ambiguity and uncertainty of goals as well as the unavailability of effective performance measures in street-level bureaucracies will encourage workers to exercise their own discretion. As a result, in order to deal with difficult and complicated jobs, front-line workers develop routines and simplifications, which then becomes the actual policy of the organization (Tawee, 2007). Lipsky's theory can be seen as an extension of Max Weber's philosophy. Lipsky is basically saying that the ambiguity and uncertainty within an organization eventually forces them to develop the rules that Max Weber laid down.

Upon looking at all of the different theories pertaining to bureaucracy I thin that Max Weber was merely a proponent of the social, political, and economic factors that eventually made bureaucracy unavoidable. All these theorists talk about the same elements. Some take them a step farther that Weber did, while others show how their theory eventually led to Weber's theory.

All organizations are influenced by social, political and economic factors at some point during their existence. It is how each organization deals with this factor that determines how successful they are. If an organization has no set rules and regulations on which to rely they will eventually adopt these by merely adopting the policies and practices that employees find that work. This type of organization will not have much structure and things will change within it quite often and usually very easily.

On the other hand an organization that has a lot of structure from the top down with a lot of policies and procedures documented and set forth with tend to run efficiently and effectively until some change needs to occur for the betterment of the organization. And it will be at this point that the change will be hard to bring about because of all the policies and procedures that are already in place and the multi-levels of management that exist. It will be hard to push change up the corporate ladder with any speed and more often than not it will be diverted somewhere along the way and never make it to the point of becoming a new policy or procedure. This is what is affectionately known as cutting through the red tape.

Politics and Administration

2. Whether or not administration should be separate from politics is one of the abiding controversies of our field. Describe Woodrow Wilson's and Frank Goodnow's positions (and why they argue what they do) on the matter. Then compare and contrast their ideas with those of Luther Gulick and Leonard White. How does Jane Addams conceive the issue of "separation" in rather different terms? Where do you stand on this issue?

The idea that public administration should be separate from politics has been around for years. This idea has been argued and debated between many theorists. Some believe that they should be separate. While others feel that it is impossible to separate them. What is right or wrong is up to each individual as well as society as a whole to determine.

Woodrow Wilson is often considered to be the father of public administration in the United States. He first recognized public administration in an 1887 article entitled "The Study of Administration." He wrote that "it is the object of administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy." Wilson has been more influential to the science of public administration than most because of the following four concepts that he advocated in this article:

Separation of politics and administration

Comparative analysis of political and private organizations

Improving efficiency with business-like practices and attitudes toward daily operations

Improving the effectiveness of public service through management and by training civil servants, merit-based assessment

The separation of politics and administration has been the subject of a very long lasting debate. The different perspectives regarding this dichotomy contribute to differentiating characteristics of the suggested generations of public administration (the Study of Administration, 2008). Which way this debate should be decided seems to change over the years as new people come into power and ideological theories come and go.

Frank Goodnow's classic work aimed to express the separation of government authority beyond the traditional executive, legislative and judicial harmony. Goodnow distinguished and explained the dichotomy between elected legislators who enact the will of the state (politics) versus the officials and entities that are responsible for the execution of that will (administration). Goodnow outlined the separation of political and administrative authority in a comparative analysis between the United States and a number of European countries. His analysis and suggestions are predicated upon the efficient and legitimate formulation and exercise of the will of the people and the source of administrative legitimacy (Goodnow, 2003).

His theory was based on the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation that was solely based on a government by gentlemen and then showed one based on the spoils system. He showed how it developed into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators. Goodnow contends that the civil service reformers persuasively argued that the separation of administration from politics, far from destroying the democratic links with the people, actually served to enhance democracy (Goodnow, 2003).

Goodnow felt that the relation of politics to administration was one of separation and subordination. He argues that while politics can never be completely apart from administration. The executing authority should be one of centralized administration in contrast to decentralized or local administration and it should also not be overly controllable by the expressing authority for fear of impartial administration (Goodnow, 2003).

To Goodnow political parties were seen as central to the architecture of a popular government and efficient administration. His reasoning was that the role of powerful yet responsible political parties are a necessary means of expressing and executing the will of the state and that their power can be checked, as necessary. Having powerful political parties ensured that the will of the people was the will of the legislature, and thus through the subordinate relationship would result in the effective administration of the people's will (Goodnow, 2003).

Goodnow's theory of a separation between politics and administration has spread through the practice of public administration for many years. The spoils system was abandoned long ago and the civil service system has taken the power of administration out of the hands of the legislature (Goodnow, 2003).

Luther Gulick often argued that principles such as specialization of labor and hierarchical leadership structures among others were needed to achieve optimal organizational performance. In a time where the prevalent theme was the separation of politics and administration, Gulick advocated that it was impossible to separate the two from each other (Luther Gulick, 2008).

Leonard White, who authored the Study of Public Administration (1948), set a standard in the public administration field for years to come. In his book he argued that the study of public administration needed to be related to the broad generalizations of political theory as it was concerned with such matters as justice, liberty, obedience, and the role of the state in human affairs. Although he agreed with Wilson and Goodnow in principle, he had desire to restore a degree of reliability, merit, and workability to modern democracy with the continued division of politics and administration (Denhardt, 2000)

White's awareness of contemporary public administration shaped his approach to history in a number of ways. This provided him with a highly unusual vantage point from which to consider the various challenges that public administrators confronted. Contrasting most academics, White empathized with civil servants and shared their confidence in the administrative apparatus as an instrument of reform. White hoped to show the public administrators he knew so well that they had a heritage they could be proud of. He also sought, above all, to demonstrate that a permanent, nonpartisan civil service system could promote the cause of democracy (Denhardt, 2000)

Jane Addams was unlike most theorists during her time felt that the separation that needed to be addressed had nothing to do with public administration and politics. She felt that it had to do with that of the separation of the social classes. The accomplishments that Jane Addams made were remarkable under any circumstances, but especially so given that her achievements occurred at a time when the separation of private and public spheres gave few women social leadership opportunities (Hamington, n.d.). Addams felt that too much emphasis was being placed on the separation of politics and administration that people were missing the true issue was the separation of the social classes that was contributing more to the overall problems that the nation faced that did administration and politics.

Woodrow Wilson felt that if the government was to run in an effective and efficient manner then there had to be a separation of politics and administration. Goodnow also felt that this separation needed to exist in order for there to be a balance between the legislators of the country and the executive branch. He felt that this was the only true way that the will of the people was guaranteed to be carried out. Luther Gulick, who may have agreed with Wilson and Goodnow in theory, truly believed that it was impossible to separate administration from politics. He believed that the two were too ingrained in each other to ever be separated. Leonard White agreed with the theories of Wilson and Goodnow, but added his own twist to them. He empathized how civil servants with their shared confidence in the administrative apparatus as an instrument of reform could be the most useful.

The overall foundation of public administration lies in the development, implementation and study of the different branches of government policy. It also includes the pursuit of the public good. This is done by enhancing civil society, ensuring a well-run, fair, and effective public service. I believe that the separation of administration and politics is a must. There has to be a system of checks and balances in place to ensure that the people as a whole are represented fairly and that the needs and goals of society as a whole are carried out effectively and efficiently.

There have been many generation of theorists who have debated this subject over the years. It began with Woodrow Wilson and is still going on today. With each new administration that takes power the idea of how things should work change. Even though changes are made here and there, the basic fundamentals of administration and politics being separated with a checks and balances system in place still hold true today. Things will undoubtedly change in the years to come, but the basic fundamental ideas will always hold strong because they are so strongly felt in the basic foundations of what this nation was built on.

Management Perspectives

3. Compare the managerial philosophies of Frederick Taylor, Mary Parker Follett, Chester Barnard, and Warren Bennis. Focus your answer on the assumptions or beliefs you see these authors as agreeing on and those that you see these authors as disagreeing about. In other words, how do think that each writer would praise or, alternatively, criticize the others?

Managing is one of the most important human activities. From the time human beings began forming social organizations to accomplish aims and objectives they could not accomplish as individuals, managing has been essential to ensure the coordination of individual efforts. As society continuously relied on group effort, and as many organized groups have become large, the task of managers has been increasing in importance and complexity. Henceforth, managerial theory has become crucial in the way managers manage complex organizations (Olum, n.d.).

The variety of approaches to management analysis, the welter of research, and the number of differing views have resulted in much confusion as to what management is, what management theory and science is, and how managerial events should be analyzed. Over time new approaches have developed, and older approaches have taken some new meanings with some new words attached to them, but the developments of management science and theory still have the characteristics of being confusing (Olum, n.d.)

Managing as practice is art; organized knowledge about management is science. The development of management theory involves the development of concepts, principles, and techniques. There are many theories about management, and each contributes something to our knowledge of what managers do. Each approach or theory has its own characteristics and advantages as well as limitations (Olum, n.d.). Some of the best known theories that have contributed to how things are done today are discussed below.

Frederick Taylor was the first man on record to perceive how much additional production could be extracted from close regulation of labor. Taylor's managerial philosophy focused on:

A regimen of science, not rule of thumb

An emphasis on harmony, not the discord of competition

An insistence on cooperation, not individualism

A fixation on maximum output

The development of each man to his greatest productivity

It was thought that Frederick Taylor advanced a total system of management, one which he built from pieces taken from numerous others of whom he rarely would credit (Gatto, 2003)

Each task scientifically and rationally optimized to improve productivity. A good example is that of shoveling coal. In this example Taylor believed that it would be best to optimize the shovel size, provide the best surface, and have ideal coal size and type. He also believed that there should be monetary incentives for piece work. Ford Motor Company embraced Taylor's work and instituted production lines, high wages, lines that moved increasingly quicker, used workers that could stand the pace for only a couple of years and operated off the idea that there were many others ready to take their place (Scientific Management: Frederick W. Taylor, 1900s, 2001).

Taylor consistently wanted to overthrow the idea of management by rule of thumb and replace it with actual timed observations leading to a one best practice. He also supported the systematic training of workers in the one best practice approach rather than allowing them personal input in their tasks. He also believed that the workload should be evenly shared between the workers and management with management performing the science and instruction and the workers performing the labor, thus each group doing the work for which it was best suited (Olum, n.d.).

Mary Parker Follett was known for advocating for a human relations emphasis equal to a mechanical or operational emphasis in management. Her work contrasted with the scientific management approach of Frederick Taylor which stressed time and motion studies. She stressed the interactions of management and workers. She looked at management and leadership holistically, foreshadowing modern systems approaches. She identified a leader as someone who sees the whole rather than the particular. Follett was one of the first to integrate the idea of organizational conflict into management theory, and she is sometimes considered the mother of conflict resolution (Lewis, 2009).