Public Administration

Herbert Simon, Donald Smithburg, Victor Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351495783
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

At the time of its initial publication, Public Administration helped to define this field of study and practice by introducing two major new emphases: an orientation toward human behavior and human relations in organizations, and an emphasis on the interaction between administration, politics, and policy. Without neglecting more traditional concerns with organization structure, Simon, Thompson, and Smithburg viewed administration in its behavioral and political contexts. The viewpoints they express still are at the center of public administration's concerns.

Chapter One
What Is Public Administration?

WHEN two men cooperate to roll a stone that neither could have moved alone, the rudiments of administration have appeared. This simple act has the two basic characteristics of what has come to be called administration. There is a purpose—moving the stone—and there is cooperative action—several persons using combined strength to accomplish something that could not have been done without such a combination. In its broadest sense, administration can be defined as the activities of groups cooperating to accomplish common goals.

The scope of this book will of course be much narrower than the scope of administration defined in this very broad sense. The following pages of this chapter are designed to give the reader a view of the subject matter that we propose to treat and of our general approach to it. After exploring further the nature of administration, we shall delimit the specific field of public administration and point out some of the similarities and differences between public and business administration.

Next, we will survey briefly the growth of governmental organizations and the resulting demand for expert and efficient governmental service. We will see how this led, in turn, to programs of research and training in public administration.

The final section of the chapter will set forth some fundamental distinctions between the "scientific" and the "practical" (i.e., "advice-giving") approaches to administrative theory. It will explain why this book emphasizes the underlying sociological and psychological phenomena involved in administrative behavior rather than specific rules and "know-how" for manipulating human beings in organizational situations.

The Nature of Administration

We have defined administration as cooperative group behavior. The term administration is also used in a narrower sense to refer to those patterns of behavior that are common to many kinds of cooperating groups and that do not depend upon either the specific goals toward which they are cooperating or the specific technological methods used to reach these goals. For example, the two men rolling the stone could have used various techniques in accomplishing their purpose. They might have merely pulled and shoved the stone in some manner. Or they could have used a pole or a steel bar as a lever. They might have fastened a rope to it, with a pulley attached to the nearest tree. They might have broken the stone with sledge hammers and then carried away the fragments. The methods of moving the stone are legion.

However, administration in the more restricted sense is not basically concerned with the technological methods selected. It is concerned with such questions as how the method was chosen, how the two men moving the stone were selected and induced to cooperate in carrying out such a task, how the task was divided between them, how each one learned what his particular job was in the total pattern, how he learned to perform it, how his efforts are coordinated with the efforts of the other.

With respect to selecting the method for moving the stone and communicating it to the two men, for example, the coordination of the two stone-movers could have been achieved in many ways. There might have been a simple, perhaps even unspoken, common recognition that the stone had to be moved and a recognition of the type of activity necessary to move it. Or the problem might have been talked over and a common agreement reached as to the best method. There might have been an employer-employee relationship between the men, so that one of them decided on the technique and then ordered the other to assist in a given way. These alternative methods might be considered in organizing almost any other kind of cooperative task—fighting a fire, paving streets, processing claims for unemployment compensation, or sorting letters in the post office. Hence, they are a part of administration in the narrower sense. It is this narrower area of administration—the patterns of behavior that are common to human cooperation in organizations —that will form the subject matter of this book.

The Nature of Formal Organization

Any activity involving the conscious cooperation of two or more persons can be called organized activity. However, in modern society cooperative activity is carried on within a much more formal structure than the one just described. Participants have tasks assigned to them; the relationships between participants are ordered in such ways as to achieve the final product with a minimum expenditure of human effort and material resources. Thus, by formal organization we mean a planned system of cooperative effort in which each participant has a recognized role to play and duties or tasks to perform. These duties are assigned in order to achieve the organization purpose rather than to satisfy individual preferences, although the two often coincide.

Although the illustration of the two men and the stone expresses the basic characteristics of administration, the complexity of modern life requires organized activity much more involved and specialized. To build and market an automobile, for example, calls for a complex system of interrelationships. Specialists of a bewildering variety must bring their competences to bear on the problem at exactly the right time and the right place. Raw materials must be bought, processed, and transported to the place of assembly. The factory must be planned and built. Thousands of men with exactly the right tools and skills must be on hand at an appropriate time. Thousands of independent parts must be put together in a certain sequence. After the automobile is completed it must be transported and sold—a task requiring the aid of still another group of persons. In all of this activity, every step is essential to the completion of the next step and any failure to cooperate at any one point may disrupt the whole pattern and make the accomplishment of the goal impossible. If the steel makers fail to provide the steel; if the wheel maker fails to produce the wheels; if the dealers fail to sell the cars; the factory will close. The key to the whole process is effective cooperation among the persons engaged in the operation.

Since the problems are complex, the work has to be carefully planned. Estimates must be made as to what materials and persons will be needed at a given place and at a given time. The participants must be induced to cooperate. And because resources are limited, the amount of materials and the amount of human energy used to accomplish the task must be held to a minimum. The employment of ten clerks to accomplish a task that one clerk could do is inefficient—it brings more energy to bear on a task than is necessary for its accomplishment.

The Universality of Administration

Since administration is concerned with all patterns of cooperative behavior, it is obvious that any person engaged in an activity in cooperation with other persons is engaged in administration. Further, since everyone has cooperated with others throughout his life, he has some basic familiarity with administration and some of its problems. The boys' club, the fraternity, the church, the political party, the school, and even the family require administration to achieve their goals.

Much of this administration is unconscious—that is, not deliberately or formally planned—but it is administration nevertheless. The father is often considered the head of the household, but he is not consciously selected as such by a formal vote. Unless he is completely henpecked, he certainly performs administrative functions, making decisions for the family and assigning tasks to its members.

Most persons, while they are engaged in administration every day of their lives, seldom think formally about the process. That is, they seldom deliberately set out to consider the ways in which the cooperative activities of groups are actually arranged; how the cooperation could be made more effective or satisfying; what the requirements are for the continuance of the cooperative activity. In most of the simpler organizational situations in life—the family, for example—there are traditional and accepted ways of behaving that are gradually acquired during childhood and that are seldom the objects of conscious attention or planning. Like Molière's hero who had talked prose all his life without knowing it, most persons administer all their lives without knowing it.

The governmental organizations whose administration is the subject of this book are more complex than these everyday administrative situations we are all familiar with. The difficulties of securing effective cooperative action in performing large and intricate tasks become so great that they force themselves upon the attention. Traditional, customary ways of behaving no longer suffice, and cooperation becomes conscious and requires planning. The "rules of the road" that govern family life and the relations among family members are informal, carried around in the heads of parents and children. The rules of the road that govern the relations among the employees of a government agency may fill ten volumes of a looseleaf "Administrative Manual."

If large-scale organizations are to accomplish their purposes; if the extremely complex interrelationships of an industrial era are not to break down, organizational life—its anatomy and its pathology—needs to be understood. Those who participate in and operate the formal organizations through which so much of our society's activity is channeled must know what makes cooperation effective and what hampers it. Either through experience or through formal education, or both, they must study administration. Our concern is with the formal study of public administration.

Public Administration

For purposes of study, administration can be divided into certain problem areas. The problem area to be studied in this book is that of public administration. By public administration is meant, in common usage, the activities of the executive branches of national, state, and local governments; independent boards and commissions set up by Congress and state legislatures; government corporations; and certain other agencies of a specialized character. Specifically excluded are judicial and legislative agencies within the government and non-governmental administration.

The selection of the problem area is an arbitrary one, made partly because of a traditional academic breakdown of specialties; partly because of the necessity of limiting our attention to an area that can be mastered within a relatively limited period of time; and partly because there are certain problems and practices in government agencies that differ from those in other organizations.

Exclusion of Legislative and Judicial Administration

Legislative and judicial agencies are excluded from books on public administration, but not because they do not have administrative problems. They do. Handling a bill in Congress often requires administration of a very delicate character; the proper presentation and consideration of a case in court requires administration of a high order. But because legislative and judicial bodies have problems peculiar to their structures, and because those problems require extensive treatment, legislative and judicial administration are not included in this book.

Legislatures and courts are, however, a part of the environment within which public administration must be carried on. The activities, attitudes, and methods of these agencies will often powerfully influence the process of administration in the organizations with which we are concerned. And so, while the operations of legislatures and courts will not be examined here directly or systematically, their effect upon public administration will have to be considered as the discussion progresses.

Governmental and Non-Governmental Administration

It has been customary in this country to make a sharp distinction between governmental and non-governmental administration. In the popular imagination, governmental administration is "bureaucratic"; private administration is "business-like"; governmental administration is political; private administration is non-political; governmental administration is characterized by "red-tape"; private administration is not. Actually, the distinction is much too sharp to fit the facts. As we shall see in the course of this book, large-scale public and private organizations have many more similarities than they have differences. It is possible, therefore, in examining the activities of public administration to use the results of research carried on in private business. In actual administration there is often a greater difference between small and large organizations than there is between public and private ones. For example, the differences in organization and in administrative problems between a hospital with 1000 beds and one with 50 beds will be far greater than the differences that result from the fact that one hospital is privately owned and the other publicly owned.¹

Similarities Between Public and Private Administration. The similarities between the problems of administration in public and private organizations can be readily observed when a private organization is taken over by the government. Not long ago the elevated railways and the surface lines in Chicago were transferred to public ownership. To the observer, the difference is imperceptible. The same tracks are there; the same cars are used; the same fare is charged (or was, until inflation caused an increase); the same time schedule is followed; the same employees do the same tasks and work for the same immediate bosses. Only in the financial organization of the company and in the replacement of a few top-level persons is there a change. The change in the financial organization changed the identity of the persons to whom interest on bonds is paid. It also allowed the company to raise capital for the installation of new equipment. The influence of the changes in top personnel is not yet observable. Both changes, however, could have been accomplished without a change in ownership. If the city of Chicago had sufficiently desired that the lines be left in the hands of private owners, provision could have been made for a subsidy to make new equipment possible. The private owners might have made the identical changes in personnel. Owned by LaSalle Street or City Hall, the transit system's major administrative problems remain the same.

Many of the same skills are required in public and private administration. A statistician might transfer from a large insurance company to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington and find his tasks almost identical. He possesses skills that can be used by a great many organizations, public or private. Similarly, a doctor performing an appendectomy will use the same technique whether he is employed in an Army hospital or in private practice. General Dwight Eisenhower left the Army to become President of Columbia University. Two more different organizations would be hard to imagine. Yet it is likely that the administrative problems of the two organizations are sufficiently similar so that he had little difficulty in making an adjustment to this new position.

Differences Between Public and Private Administration. While the similarities between governmental and non-governmental organizations are greater than is generally supposed, some differences nevertheless exist. Most often these are differences in degree rather than in kind.

For example, both governmental and non-governmental organizations are usually based on law. Activities of a government agency are usually authorized by statute or executive order based on statutory or constitutional authority. All corporations and a good many other non-governmental organizations operate under a legal charter. The officers of both types of organizations are legally required to carry out their activities within the law. However, the duties and responsibilities of the public administrator will usually be described by law in much greater detail than those of his private counterpart, and there will usually be greater possibilities for holding him accountable in the courts for the discharge of thes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Appendix to the Transaction Edition
• Foreword
• 1. What Is Public Administration?
• 2. How Governmental Organizations Originate
• 3. Human Behavior and Organization
• 4. Building Blocks of Organization: Formation of Groups
• 5. Building Blocks of Organization: Group Values
• 6. Dividing the Work: Assigning Jobs to Individuals
• 7. Dividing the Work: Specialization Among Organization Units
• 8. Securing Teamwork: Authority
• 9. Securing Teamwork: The Structure of Authority and Status
• 10. Securing Teamwork: The Communication Process
• 11. Securing Teamwork: The Organization of Communication
• 12. Large-Scale Organization: The Trend Toward Centralization
• 13. Large-Scale Organizations: The Consequences of Centralization
• 14. Large-Scale Organizations: Intergroup Relations
• 15. Selection of the Team: Civil Service and Recruitment
• 16. Selection of the Team: Careers in Government
• 17. Selection of the Team: Personnel Processes
• 18. The Struggle for Existence: Organizational Equilibrium
• 19. The Struggle for Existence: The Tactics of Survival
• 20. The Strategy of Planning
• 21. The Tactics of Execution: Reducing the Costs of Change
• 22. The Tactics of Execution: Securing Compliance
• 23. Evaluating Administration Efficiency
• 24. Administrative Responsibility: Formal Controls
• 25. Administrative Responsibility: Informal Controls
• Bibliographical Notes
• Index