Organizational Theory
Now that everyone has had time to begin the study of organizational theory, it is appropriate to explain what it means and why it is important. Write a two page,
double spaced paper in APA format/style with a cover sheet and reference page that puts forth your understanding of what organizational theory means, what it is about,
how it can be helpful or not, why it is important or not to know, etc.
Week 3: Overview – The Public Administration Context (Environment)
Let’s now turn our attention to the issue of public versus private sector organizations. To do so, we must first understand the defining characteristics of each sector
so that we are able to accurately compare them. While the below list is not comprehensive and only provides an overview of the defining characteristics of each sector
(or environment), it provides a foundational understanding of the distinctly different environments within which public and private organizations function. Consider
the following:
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Public Sector Organizations
Political Environment (elected and appointed public officials with positional authority/power)
Administer the Law (public officials/administrators administer public law)
Provide Public Goods and Services (public interest/common good mandate)
Public Accountability and oversight (resource dependent-taxes-with congressional oversight)
Governmental Powers (public agencies possess executive, judicial and legislative power)
Responsiveness Mandate (to all citizens- equity, fairness, access, due process)
Efficiency/Effectiveness Mandate (inflexible in a political environment)
Bureaucracy (rule of law, agency policy/procedure, bureaucratic politics)
Private Sector Organizations
Market Environment (competition, market share, profit)
Profit Motive Focus (bottom-line orientation)
Provide Private Goods and Services (not public goods/ services)
Stockholder Accountability (privately owned, stockholder oversight)
Peripheral Legal Restraints (do not administer law, but must comply with public laws)
Flexible to Market Change (adherence to federal, state, and local statutes, but otherwise flexible)
Ability to Shift Resources Quickly (not hindered by a required lengthy political process)
Restructure Quickly Based on Market Share (not hindered by a required lengthy political process)
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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVES ON ORGANIZATIONS (Definitions from Organization Theory For Public Administration, Harmon, Michael M. and Richard T. Mayer, Little
Brown and Company: Boston: 1986):
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Consider the following definitions of organizations from the discipline of public administration. Note how very different they are from one another. This clearly tells
us that even within a specific academic discipline or field, people do not view organizations in the same way, or agree on how they are constituted. This is partially
due to the various levels of analysis scholars use to examine and investigate public and private organizations. (Note: This is not a comprehensive list, but is
representative of some of the top public administration scholars.)
I. Max Weber:
A circle of people who are accustomed to obedience to the orders of leaders and who have a personal interest in the continuance of the domination by virtue of their
own participation and the resulting benefits, have divided among themselves the exercise of those functions which will serve ready for their exercise. This is what is
meant by organization.
B Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vol 2, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, eds. (CA: University of California Press, 1978), p. 52.
II. Dwight Waldo:
…organization may be defined as the structure of authoritative and habitual personal interrelations in an administrative system.
B Dwight Waldo, The Study of Public Administration (NY: Random House, 1955), p. 6.
III. Chester Barnard:
A formal organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons.
B Chester Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938).
IV. Philip Selznick:
…formal organization is the structural expression of rational action.
B Philip Selznick, AFoundations of the Theory of Organizations,@ American Sociological Review 13:1 (1948): 25.
V. Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn:
Our theoretical model for the understanding of organizations is that of an energetic input-output system in which the energic return from the output reactivates the
system. Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of output into further energic input consists of
transactions between the organization and its environment.
B Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations, 2ed. (NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1978), p. 20.
VI. David Silverman:
Organisations…are social institutions with certain special characteristics: they are consciously created at an ascertainable point in time; their founders have given
them goals which are usually important chiefly as legitimating symbols; the relationship between their members and the source of legitimate authority is relatively
clearly defined, although frequently the subject of discussion and planned change (by members who seek to coordinate or control).
B David Silverman, The Theory of Organisations (NY: Basic Books, 1971), p. 147.
VII. Karl Weick:
…organizing (in contrast to organization)…is defined as a consensually validated grammar for reducing equivocality by means of sensible interlocked behaviors.
B Karl Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2ed. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1979), p. 3.
VIII. Michael Cohen, James March, and Johan Olsen:
An Organization is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues, and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking
for issue to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work.
B Michael D. Cohen, James G. March, and Johan P. Olsen, AA Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,@Administrative Science Quarterly 17:1 (1972): 2.
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THEORIES OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATION (by Robert B. Denhardt, 3ed. TX: Harcourt Brace, 2000)
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Robert Denhardt (2000) noted that there have been a number of significant developments in the field of public administration in the recent past that have changed the
way we tend to think about public administration and organizations. One has been the current debate about the differences between what is called the New Public
Service and The New Public Management. The New Public Management represents a view of public administration augmented by market models and public choice economics
(the economic man model) concerned with “reducing red tape and increasing governmental efficiency and productivity” (p. iii). The New Public Service, on the other
hand, comes from the democratic humanist tradition in public administration and focuses on issues of community and citizenship (participation). Denhardt correctly
pointed out that there has been a separation between theory and practice due to a public administration theory focus on “rationality,” or the “rational model of public
administration” (p. iv). He suggested that it is now important to consider and pursue how public organizations can “should be governed in such a way as to seriously
maintain our commitments to freedom, justice, and equality among persons….how they might aid in expressing the values of our society” (p. iv). In other words, he
argued, “[i]f democracy is to survive in our society, it must not be overriden by the false promises of hierarchy and authoritarian rule. Democratic outcomes require
democratic processes” (p.v).
Denhardt’s (2000) discussion about the New Public Management and Service demonstrate that there has been a bit of a blur in what constitutes public administration; as
well as how public organizations should be structured and operated. Much of this is evident in the “reinventing and reegineering government” reform movement postulated
by David Osborne and Ted Gabler in their book titled Reinventing Government, How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector (1993). It is argued, in
short, the public sector should mimick the private sector by: a. Steering Rather Than Rowing; b. Empowering Rather Than Serving; c. Injecting Competition into Service
Delivery; d. Transforming Rule-Driven Organizations; e. Funding Outcomes, Not Inputs; f. Meeting the Needs of the Customer, Not the Bureaucracy; g. Earning Rather Than
Spending; h. Prevention Rather Than Cure; i. From Hierarchy to Participation and Teamwork; and, finally, j. Leveraging Change Through the Market (p. ix-x).
As a result of this reform movement, public organizations at every level of goverment in the United States have begun to implement private sector practices and
procedures such as the privatization of services or “contracting out” public goods and services, as well as modified many of their policies and procedures to mimick
private sector policies and procedures. This has become a major controversy because, as previously discussed briefly above, the public sector is fundamentally
different than the private sector because public administrators “administer public law,” deliver public goods and services in the public interest, and must ensure
fairness, equity, due process, etc.
Nonetheless, public administrators are subject to public laws, and therefore, there is a controversy about models of public organizaton around 4 important
perspectives: a. Law and Legal Authority; b. Efficiency and Rationality; c. Psychology and Social Relations; and d. Politics and Power (chapter 3 in the GMN text).
An understanding of these “pivotal controversies” is an important foundation to our understanding of the study of public organizations.
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