From reorganizing to reinventing: sixty years and “we still don’t get it”

Sixty years ago the “Brownlow Committee Report” was written by some of the most prominent members of the emerging field of public administration. Its recommendations had serious consequences for the way both our democratic republic and the field of public administration have evolved. In developing principles in which to anchor the recommendations, Luther Gulick, who was both the intellectual and political force behind the committee, contributed to a confusion of the concepts of organizations and the polity and those of management and governance.

Some of the story of how the concepts promoted by Gulick and the Papers on the Science of Administration led to a misconception, which became public administration's living legacy is told in this article. We then discuss the Brownlow Committee Report as something which changed: our very conception of the Constitution; Gulick's rationale for cooperation with Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Report as a misplacement of organizational concepts upon a polity; the dimensions of constitutional change in the report; and the staying power of Gulick's and the Committee's ideas. In conclusion, we contend that if we are to move beyond Gulick's legacy, that the field must learn and act upon the distinctions between organizations and the polity and management and governance.

“The charge that the Brownlow Committee set in train the development of the “imperial presidency” can be advanced only by those who have not read the Committee's report.”

James Fesler, former staff member of the Brownlow Committee Public Administration Review (July/August, 1987)

“How interesting it is historically that we all assumed in the 1930s that all management, especially public management, flowed in a broad, strong stream of value-filled ethical performance. Were we blind or only naive until Nixon came along? Or were we so eager to ‘take politics out of administration’ that we threw the baby out with the bathwater?”

Luther Gulick, member of the Brownlow Committee From Stephen K. Blurnberg, “Seven Decades of Public Administration: A Tribute to Luther Gulick” Public Administration Review (March/April, 1981)

was as old in American politics as it was popular. Yet, before the end of his second term, Roosevelt, with the help of Charles Merriam, Herbert Brownlow, and Luther Gulick, would use such hoary symbolism towards ends that would fundamentally alter our perceptions of the constitutional order, the nature of the presidency, and public administration. How did this come to pass? Barry Karl says that “He (Roosevelt) had continued as President to look at reorganization through the eyes of those who saw in it a means of saving money, balancing the budget, and thereby giving security to the nation's economy.” But Karl adds, “By 1936, this viewpoint had undergone drastic revision.”⁽⁶⁾ The revision in his thinking replaced “saving money” with “managerial control” as the principal aim of reorganization. “Managerial control” by the president would enable him not only to manage New Deal programs but protect them against potential Republican counterattacks, i.e., in short, to strengthen his hand as president.

The impetus for this change apparently came directly from the President's experiences in seeking to administer the government's burgeoning and increasingly chaotic Executive Branch. Roosevelt was a skilled, intuitive, and flexible administrator. But, according to Karl, his experience in seeking to administer the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act with a loose arrangement, quickly dubbed “the five ring circus,” taught the President several lessons. First, “it demonstrated the growing dependence of the President on official staff, other than cabinet members, working exceedingly close to the President's own sphere of daily operation. “⁽⁷⁾ Second, the problems of administering the Act raised questions among the participants themselves as to whether or not the President could “administer and control so complex an operation as federal relief given the inadequate machinery in his possession.”⁽⁸⁾ In other words, the effort was not simply a “five ring circus” because of FDR's famed flexible and informal style, but also because of the inadequacy of the available structures. Karl notes that “despite the problems inherent in the fiscal machinery as it stood, a continued development of governments within governments could only lead to a dangerous chaos over which the President would have no control whatsoever.”⁽⁹⁾ The questions raised suggested to the President that perhaps there was some merit to the position of those urging that emergency agencies be absorbed into the existing framework. This could meet a very practical question by “placing agencies within the purview of budget and accounting procedures already in existence.”⁽¹⁰⁾

According to Gulick, FDR told Brownlow and him at a November 14, 1936, meeting “that, since the election, he had received a great many suggestions that he move for a constitutional convention for the United States” and observed that “with Coughlin and other crackpots about there was no way of keeping such an affair from getting out of hand. But,” he said, “there is more than one way of killing a cat, just as in this job I assigned you.”⁽¹¹⁾ Gulick also quotes FDR as specifically telling the Committee, “We have got to get over the notion that the purpose of reorganization is economy. . . . The reason for reorganization is good management.”⁽¹²⁾ Of course FDR meant management as in “presidential management.”

So it was that President Roosevelt by 1936 was prepared to do something quite beyond “abolishing useless offices” in the words of his 1932 speech--something significantly more constitutional in nature. His other aim was no doubt to strengthen his hand significantly to protect the New Deal programs from Republican counterattack. But whatever his aim, the practical effect was to treat the executive branch as a hierarchical organization headed by a chief executive of corporate or city management conception. In so doing, the delicate constitutional balance among branches was altered. Recommending the reorganization of the executive branch as they did inevitably led to reorganization of the larger whole, the government, which was not an organization, but something qualitatively different.⁽¹³⁾     

Leadership and innovation in the administrative state

The field of public administration, as well as the social science upon which it is based, has given little serious attention to the importance of vigorous leadership by career as well as non-career public administrators. The field tends to focus on the rigidities of political behavior and the obstacles to change. To reclaim an understanding of the importance of individual leadership the author suggests the use of biography and life history. The behavior and personality of the entrepreneur is an especially helpful perspective on the connection between leadership and organizational or institutional innovation. The case of Julius Henry Cohen, who played a pivotal role in the development of the New York Port Authority, is used to illustrate the connection between the entrepreneurial personality or perspective and innovation.

In the social sciences—and especially in the study of American political institutions—primary attention is given to the role of interest groups and to bureaucratic routines and other institutional processes that shape the behavior of executive agencies and legislative bodies. In view of the powerful and sustained pressures from these forces, the opportunities for leadership—to create new programs, to redirect individual agencies and broad policies, and to make a measurable impact in meeting social problems—are very limited. At least this is the message, implicit and often explicit, in the literature that shapes the common understanding of the professional scholar and the educated layperson in public affairs.⁽¹⁾ For administrative officials, captured (or cocooned) in the middle—or even at the top—of large bureaucratic agencies, the prospects for “making a difference” seem particularly unpromising. In his recent study of federal bureau chiefs, Herbert Kaufman expresses this view with clarity:… The chiefs did not pour out important decisions in a steady stream. Days sometimes went by without any choice of this kind emerging from their offices … If you need assurance that you labors will work enduring changes on policy of administrative behavior, you would do well to look elsewhere. ⁽²⁾

There are, of course, exceptions to these dominant patterns in the literature. In particular, political scientists and other scholars who study the American presidency or the behavior of other national leaders often treat these executives and their aides as highly significant actors in creating and reshaping public programs and social priorities. ⁽³⁾ However, based on a review of the literature and discussions with more than a dozen colleagues who teach in political science and related fields, the themes sketched out above represent with reasonable accuracy the dominant view in the social sciences.

The scholarly field of public administration is part of the social sciences, and the generalizations set forth above apply to writings in that field as well.⁽⁴⁾ (Indeed, Kaufman's book on federal bureau chiefs won the Brownlow Award, as the most significant volume in public administration in the year it was published.) Similarly, the argument regarding scholarly writing in the social sciences can be extended to the texts and books of reading used in courses in political science and public administration; what is in the scholarly works and the textbooks influences how we design our courses and what messages we convey in class. The provisional conclusion here, then, is that in courses as well as in writings the public administration field gives little attention to the importance of vigorous leadership—by career as well as noncareer administrators. Neither does it give much attention to the strategies of leadership that are available to overcome intellectual and political obstacles which impede the development and maintenance of coalitions which support innovative policies and programs.⁽⁵⁾

The further implication is that students learn from what we teach, directly and indirectly. Students who might otherwise respond enthusiastically to the opportunities and challenges of working on important social programs learn mainly from educators that there are many obstacles to change and that innovations tend to go awry.⁽⁶⁾ And there the education often stops, and the students go elsewhere, to the challenges of business or of law. Those students who remain to listen seem to be those more attracted to the stability of a career in budgeting or personnel management. Public administration needs these people, but not them alone. If career officials should have an active role in governance and if the general quality of the public service is to be raised, does it not require a wider range of young people entering the service—including those who are risk-takers, those who seek in working with others the exercise of “large powers”?

Taken as a class, or at least in small and middle-sized groups, scholars in the fields of public administration and political science tend to be optimistic in their outlook on the world. Informally, in talking with their colleagues, they tend to convey a sense that public agencies can do things better than the private sector, and they sometimes serve (even without pay) on task forces and advisory bodies that attempt to improve the “output” of specific programs and agencies and that at times make some modest steps in that direction. Why, then, do public administration writings and courses tend to dwell so heavily on the rigidities of political behavior and the obstacles to change?

One reason may be our interest, as social scientists, in being “scientific.” We look for recurring patterns in the complex data of political and administrative life, and these regularities are more readily found in the behavior of interest groups and in the structures of bureaucratic cultures and routines. The role of specific leaders, and perhaps the role of leadership generally, do not as easily lend themselves to generalization and prediction.

Perhaps at some deeper level we are attracted to pathology, inclined to dwell on the negative messages of political life and to emphasize weakness and failures when the messages are mixed. Here, perhaps more than elsewhere, the evidence is impressionistic. ⁽⁷⁾

Some of the concerns noted above—about the messages conveyed to students and to others—have been expressed by James March in a recent essay on the role of leadership. He doubts that the talents of specific individual managers are the controlling influences in the way organizations behave. He, however, questions whether we should embrace an alternative view—a perspective that describes administrative action in terms of “loose coupling, organized anarchy, and garbage-can decision processes.” That theory, March argues, “appears to be uncomfortably pessimistic about the significance of administrators. Indeed, it seems potentially pernicious even if correct.” Pernicious, because the administrator who accepts that theory would be less inclined to try to “make a difference” and would thereby lose some actual opportunities to take constructive action.⁽⁸⁾

March does not, however, conclude that the “organized anarchy” theory is correct. He is now inclined to believe that a third theory is closer to the truth. Administrators do affect the ways in which organizations function. The key variable in an organization that functions well is having a “density of administrative competence” rather than “having an unusually gifted individual at the top.” How does an organization come to have a cluster of very able administrators—a density of competence—so that the team can reach out vigorously and break free from the web of loose coupling and organized anarchy? Here March provides only hints at the answer. It happens, he suggests, by selection procedures that bring in able people and by a structure of motivation “that leads all managers to push themselves to the limit. “⁽⁹⁾     

Public contracting,policy preferences and minority business enterprises

About three years ago a Special Issue of the International Journal of Public Administration focused on the topic “Government Set-Asides, Minority Business Development, and Publi Contracting.”^(l) Much of the discussion in the issue addressed race conscious government set-aside programs in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. ⁽²⁾ The decision declared unconstitutional a local government minority business set-aside provision designed to help minority business enterprises (MBEs) obtain government contracts. At the time, the decision was applicable only to state and local governmental jurisdictions.⁽³⁾ Government set-asides involve the practice of providing minority contractors and subcontracting a certain percentage of a public jurisdiction's contract dollars.

In 1995 the Supreme Court in Adarand v. Pena ⁽⁴⁾ extended the Croson ruling to include set-aside programs in federal agencies. This Special Issues examines and discusses the Adarand decision and the developments that have followed. The first article by Mitchell F. Rice, “Federal Set-Asides Policy and Minority Business Contracting: Understanding the Adarand Decision,” reviews the Adarand decision and discusses the implications of the decision for minority business development. The next article by Audrey L. Mathews and Mitchell F. Rice, “Adarand v. Pena: Turning Challenges Into Opportunities,” uses a case study of two public preference programs to suggest how Adarand requirements may be successfully utilized to maintain set-aside preference programs.

The third article by Shelton Rhodes, “Mirmative Action Review ‘Report’ to the Presidents: Implications of Military Affirmative Actions Programs to Current and New Millennium Affirmative Action Programs,” reviews the Affirmative Action Review: Report to the President which was ordered by President Clinton soon after the Adarand decision. Rhodes considers the implications of the possible applicability of the successes of affirmative action and equal opportunity in the military, which is highlighted in the Report, to other public and private organizations. The final article by Wilbur C., Rich, “Presidents and Minority Set-Aside Policy: Race, Gender and Small Opportunities,” analyzes the impact of presidential leadership on minority set-asides policy and shows how politicians use set-asides to facilitate exchanges and cooperation with the business elites.     

Education and training in public administration: transference of segmenting organizational behavior

Organizations can survive, let alone progress, only if they carry out meaningful transactions with society at large. This process requires they differentiate their “organizational being” to respond to clientele needs and/or user demands. The inherent problem is that these differentiated structures may become segmented into tightly closed systems, being in effect organizations within organization characterized by self-serving vested interests. Expediency becomes the operating rule. Segmentation is common to all societies, but it is especially prevalent in situations of decline.

Advanced in this discussion is that the segmentation process may be accelerated and consolidated by in-house training and education, and especially by those of a public management character. A plea is made for universities to become more actively engaged in (a) the preparation and placement of “quality” educated persons and (b) the search/development of new public organization.     

Toward managerial artistry: Appreciating and designing organizations for the future

This article suggest that change be taken seriously; that we accept environmental change as ubiquitous, as more differentially defined perceptually. A classification of contextual changes is offered which, since it includes discontinuous change, goes beyond conventional thinking. For each type of contextual change the associated archetypical organizational forms and thematic managerial concerns and competencies are outlined. We suggest that organizations in the future should be configurations of forms because of multiple contextual circumstances, and that such configurations will require a mix of managerial competencies and the meta-competency be termed managerial artistry.

In general, the human mind is conservative. Long after an assumption is outmoded, people tend to apply it to novel situations. ---Daniel J. Isenberg

One should never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity. ---Neil Simon, Biloxi Blues

Change is thematic in the contemporary literature on organizing and management. This literature is anything if not prolific about the management of change. Until quite recently, research and advice about the management of organizations has reflected an ideology of gradualism. Effective organizational change was seen to proceed by small, incremental adjustments. The environments of organizations was presumed to be stable or growing. Lately, supposedly having entered what Drucker⁽¹⁾ termed the “age of discontinuity,” organizational change is seen as requiring managers to choose between organizational extinction or immediate and radical transformation.⁽²⁾ These two theses, incrementalism and transformation, however, no doubt oversimplify the circumstances facing contemporary and future managers. A somewhat more refined and encompassing model of change and its concomitants is surely needed so that more appropriate organizations are created and more responsive managerial competencies are developed.

We will not detail either the nature or the extent of change in the modern world for this has been done by so many others.^(3,4,5,6,7) Everything is supposedly changing more or less--globally, nationally, industries and organizations, people, everything! And as if that weren’t enough, we also hear repeatedly that the absolute rate of change in our world is likewise increasing. Of course, reflecting all of this change, the tasks and responsibilities of managers everywhere are also changing. For many of us, the constant drum beat of change, change, change has a numbing quality and it becomes difficult to retain the idea of change in our minds. For others of us the change refrain proves overwhelming and we retreat to the relative comfort of simplifying images and slogans. A certain amount of loose metaphorical talk prevails about “catching and riding the wave of change”⁽⁸⁾ or about having to cope with conditions of “permanent whitewater”⁽⁹⁾ or even “thriving on chaos” .⁽¹⁰⁾ Somehow the presumptions of stability has jump-shifted to quantum, revolutionary change.

What if we took change seriously? What if we believed that managing change really was at the core of management? These are the aims of this essay. We will argue that the simple, bipolar conceptions of environmental change are inadequate; that the environmental conditions in which organizations find themselves discontinuous change, and that they are neither homogenous nor absolutely objectively real. We will also argue that management's proclivity to believe there is a one best way to manage, once we know what we are up against, is even more fallacious than before, and that there are new as well as old ways of bundling managing. To take change seriously thus promotes managerial artistry, those competencies of appreciation and design and facilitation of appropriately refined organizational forms. Managerial artistry thus brings proactive choice to the forefront as executive become more aware of the possibilities in organizational environments and their associated structures and competencies.

This essay will proceed in four sections. In the first we will sketch the range and nature of four alternative organizational environments. Second, we will outline the organizational designs associated with each type of environmental circumstance. The third section then examines designs and the managerial competencies and concerns that seem to be needed for each environmental alternative. Last we will comment on the implications of what has been outlined for the managerial artistry of the future.     

CACOPHONIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY CHORUS ABOUT CHANGE AT PUBLIC WORKSITES,AS CONTRASTED WITH SOME STRAIGHT-TALK FROM A PLANNED CHANGE PERSPECTIVE

The New Public Management (henceforth NPM) has coalesced into a movement in a short period of time, virtually worldwide. Thus, inter alia, we hear about the allegedly-new focus on the “customers” of public services, which are to be provided by “public intrapreneurs” as well as by cadres of employees at all levels who are “empowered.” And so on and on—through the conventional organizational litany including cross-training, total quality, performance measurement, and eventuating in strategic planning. These emphases make for a pleasing, even convincing, organizational libretto.

If the “chorus” proclaiming the NPM libretto is both ubiquitous as well as insistent, however, the chanting is often loosely-coupled, curiously directed, and at times even contradictory—at times so much so as to alert one's native cunning about what forces are really at work. Hence, the reference here to the “chorus” and also the “cacophonies” this essay detects in NPM's ardent vocalizing. This reflects our judgment that, in equal measure, NPM combines ubiquity, too much of some useful things, unreconciled diversities, and issues at sixes-and-sevens.

But this essay also urges that NPM can “walk its talk.” In effect, several emphases will at once help explain how NPM was all-but-predestined to experience serious shortfalls, as well as prescribe how NPM can rise about these limitations. Particular attention gets directed at appropriate guidelines interaction and structural arrangements.

Four emphases relate to these critical-cum-constructive ambitions. In preview, NPM 1. seldom even attempted detailing a useful approach to applications;

2. typically neglected systemic or millieu characteristics within which applications occurred;

3. usually did not specify a useful front-load in designs: i.e., training in values, attitudes, and interaction skills that would facilitate developing a “cultural preparedness” for appropriate applications; and

4. seldom specified supportive structural/managerial arrangements.

This essay proposes to do better.

This essay takes a direct if dual approach to describing the New Public Management “chorus” and its “cacophonies.” To begin, introductory attention goes to NPM as a “liberation” of theory and practice beyond the classic conservatisms of Public Administration. Then, four limitations of this NPM “chorus” will be detailed, and this quartet of “cacophonies” also implies ways to enhance NPM applications, as well as urges a stark warning against overselling.     

Public administrators and policy legitimization: Policy analysis,politics and power

This article discusses the factors public administration faculty should incorporate into the curriculum in order to equip students to engage in the policy legitimization process. In order to produce leaders, public administration programs should emphasize the nature of the political system, an understanding of the legitimacy of subgovernments, the importance of coalition building and the psychological factors associated with policy choices.

Integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum requires that students be equipped with an in-depth understanding of both the political environment and the political process. This is true because public administrators are deeply involved in the stages of policy development, adoption, and implementation; activities which reach beyond the narrow confines of program management and into the realm of politics. Consequently, public administrators serve in a variety of capacities: as policy advocates, program champions, or as defenders of client interests. It is in these roles that public administrators move into the political arena. Policy analysis activities provide the discipline with the opportunity to move beyond an emphasis on a narrow concern with simply “managing” government and into the realm of policy choice, policy advocacy, political power and the exercise of leadership.

Public administration as a discipline, and teaching faculty in particular, face the challenge of increasing the relevance of the master's degree to policy leadership. Astrid Merget, past president of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, expressed this need for increased emphasis on policy leadership training quite eloquently in 1991:

“Our vision of the holder of a master's degree in our field is that of a leader, not merely a manager or an analyst. But we have not been marketing that vision.”⁽¹⁾

Merget attributes partial responsibility for the low public esteem of government service to the attitudes, teaching, and research activities of public administration faculty who have failed to link the “lofty” activities of government (environmental protection, health care, the promotion of citizen equality) with public administration. Accordingly, the academic standard of “neutrality” governing teaching and research acts as an obstacle to teaching the fundamentals of the goals of public policy. This professional commitment to neutrality places an emphasis on administrative efficiency at the expense of policy advocacy. The need, according to Merget, is to reestablish the linkage between policy formulation and policy management. Such a teaching strategy will enhance the purposefulness of public administration as a career. Failure to do so will relegate public administration programs to the continued production of governmental managers, not administrative leaders.

The integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum affords the discipline with the opportunity to focus on policy leadership and escape the limitation associated with an emphasis on program management. Teaching policy analysis skills cannot, and should not, be divorced from the study of politics and the exercise of political power. This is true because politics involves the struggle over the allocation of resources, and public policy is a manifestation of the outcome of that political struggle. Public policy choices reflect, to some degree, the political power of the “winners” and the relative lack of power by “losers.” The study of public policy involves the study of conflict and the exercise of power.

Teaching public administration students about the exercise of power cannot be limited to a discussion of partisan political activities. Public administrators serve in an environment steeped in the exercise of partisan and bureaucratic power.⁽²⁾ It is practitioners of public administration who formulate, modify and implement public policy choices. Such bureaucratic activity is appropriate, provided that it is legitimated by the political system. Legitimacy can be provided to public administrators only by political institutions through the political process.

Teaching public administration students about policy analysis and policy advocacy necessitates an understanding of the complexities associated with the concepts of policy legitimacy and policy legitimization.     

Building the Capacity of the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector: Challenges of Theory and Practice

Abstract

As voluntary and community organizations in the UK (VCOs) expand their role in the provision of public services, they are under increasing pressure from governmental funders to improve their management and organizational systems - to “build their capacity.” This paper considers the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the idea of “capacity building.” It also looks at the challenges for VCOs of meeting the capacity building agenda while simultaneously retaining organizational distinctiveness and independence. Action research is proposed as a means to meet the challenges.     

“Dieselgate:” How Different Approaches to Decentralization,the Role of NGOs,Tort Law and the Regulatory Process Affected Comparative U.S. and European Union Outcomes in the Biggest Scandal in Automotive History

ABSTRACT

The VW diesel emissions scandal (“dieselgate”) recounts how Volkswagen became ensnared in a self-inflicted and staggeringly costly cheating scandal that started in the U.S. and then spread to the European Union. This case study shows how fundamental differences in comparative public administration (CPA) between the U.S. and the European Union (EU) led to different consequences for one of the world’s largest and most highly-regarded European auto manufacturers with respect to four institutional variables: (a) approaches to decentralization, (b) the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), (c) civil (tort) law, and (d) regulatory environment.     

Public administration,executive power,and constitutional confusion

This article examines the ambiguity in the meaning of executive power in both the text of the U.S. Constitution and in subsequent judicial interpretations. This ambiguity has had a profound impact on the constitutional position of the public administration. In the recent independent counsel case, the U.S. Supreme Court offered a restrictive interpretation of the President's constitutional powers to remove subordinate officers. This new interpretation could lead to increased congressional control over administrative agencies.

The proper place and function of the public administration, unfortunately for the public administration, have been and remain inherently ambiguous because of the longstanding confusion about executive power in the Constitution of the United States. Richard Neustadt captured this ambiguity nicely when he noted that the two great themes that have characterized the American presidency have been “clerkship” and “leadership.”⁽¹⁾ There is no easy formula to bring clerks and leaders together to make them march in lock-step, and yet the President is clearly both. Today we may tend to emphasize his role as leader with imperial pretensions and Nixonian excesses still relatively fresh in our memories, but this is only a question of emphasis. No one denies that the President is a legally accountable officer who must do the bidding of the Congress. This is the clerkship side of the presidency.

Herbert Storing counsels against any effort to cut the Gordian knot and to try to determine once and for all just what it is our President is supposed to be: clerk or leader. “The beginning of wisdom about the American presidency,” Storing maintains, “is to see that it contains both principles and to reflect on their complex and subtle relation.”⁽²⁾ Following Storing's advice, this essay reflects on the inherent ambiguity of the executive power that provides the constitutional foundation of the public administration. First, we examine the text of the Constitution and the meaning of executive power at the time of the founding. Then we study the confusion that the Supreme Court has created in its efforts to draw practical conclusions for presidential personnel management from the constitutional grant of “the executive power” to the President in relation to the removal power. Third, we examine some of the recent problems of executive power that surfaced in Watergate and became salient in the important constitutional debate over the special prosecutors, those most unwelcome intruders into the inner precincts of the Reagan administration.     

Organizational development in the third world: values,closeness of fit and culture-boundedness(1)

This paper seeks to counterbalance some common arguments about the role of organization development (OD) in Third World settings. OD is a value-laden technology and this raises the issues of the closeness of fit of specific OD approaches or designs to different cultures, histories and settings. Most organizational theorists recommend a close fit, based upon an overall characterization of OD and estimates of the features of macro-cultures such as nations or regions. This paper urges a more differentiated perspective, based on evidence that OD works, on balance, in a broad range of contexts. Specifically, OD designs/approaches are not homogeneous, and neither are the nation-states or organizations in which OD is applied. The paper suggests a number of ways in which OD practitioners might become more sensitive to different contexts and thereby improve their judgments about the advisability of making OD interventions.

Since its earliest days, OD has been concerned with the issue of degree of fit. OD is a normative, re-educative strategy,⁽²⁾ and, for that reason, practitioners agree that “there” will be different from “here” in pervasive ways. Thus many ODers speak of “a new social order at work”⁽³⁾ and envision a new tomorrow, either in progressive steps, or via some frame-breaking effort. The key issue underlying how to get from “here” to “there” involves choices of designs for learning or change which are sensitive to beginning “here” and also capable of inducing systemic movement toward “there.”

Four emphases will carry this paper beyond these generalizations about why and how OD is concerned with the closeness of fit between its values and different sites of application. An initial section briefly describes OD as value laden, and hence as potentially at cross-purposes with other value laden aspects of sites of application -- national or organizational cultures, managerial climates, small work groups and so on. The second section describes three models of the relationship between OD and existing cultures, climates or styles. In addition, extended consideration is given to four generalizations about OD in Third World settings, in which closeness of fit and culture-boundedness are of special significance. The generalizations relate to success rates, the primacy of process and interaction in OD, the significance of a systems perspective, and an emphasis on specific OD sites and OD interventions. The final section presents my personal views as practitioner about closeness of fit and how to minimize cross-cultural blind spots.

Neither OD designs nor cultures are homogeneous; and change objectives can differ radically from case to case in their urgency and acceptable probabilities of success, with each case requiring judgments to be made about closeness of fit. The available literature tends to oversimplify in posing such questions as:

Is OD exclusively culturally appropriate to North America?

Does nation A have a culture that constitutes a close fit to OD values/interventions?

Are close fits preferable to distal-fits?     

Understanding chester I. Barnard

Chester I. Barnard is an example of a manager-participant-observer whose concepts and theories have a major impact on managerial thought and practice in both the public and private sectors.

I am greatly honored to be here and to participate in the first meeting of the Chester I. Barnard Society (U.S.A.). It seems only fitting that we make every effort to bring Barnard, the man, and Barnard's thinking to public attention. In this modern age where computers and rapidly advancing technology seem to be dominating our world, we need to find focus and balance in dealing with the eternal paradoxes and conflicts of a managerial society. Chester I. Barnard more than any other person in the field of management provides perspective for this challenge.

Accordingly, I wish to discuss my perception of Chester I. Barnard and some of the key concepts found in his philosophy and his theory of management. However, before doing so I wish to summarize comments about Chester I. Barnard by a few outstanding persons. These will serve to give a feel for the breadth of Barnard's activities and the significance of his work.

Barnard's thinking has been praised by outstanding men of science. Many see in the work of Herbert Simon, the Nobel Prize recipient, a significant shadow of Barnard. In Simon's book, Administrative Behavior, a number of ideas are traceable to Barnard: composite decision processes, bounded rationality, opportunism in decision processes, and so forth. Simon himself states that “The Functions of the Executive [Barnard's major publication]⁽¹⁾ was a major influence upon my thinking about administration.⁽²⁾ The eminent economist, Kenneth Boulding, states in his book, The Image, that one of the books which influenced him the most is the “pioneering work of Chester I. Barnard.”⁽³⁾

The famous American philosopher, John Dewey, stated: “In the main I believe the great value of Barnard's discussion is that it is one of those rare cases in which a man of affairs, an experienced executive, also has genuine intellectual curiosity and wisdom.”⁽⁴⁾

Bertrand de Jeuvenel, the distinguished French political scientist, wrote to Barnard: “Your thinking is political philosophy of the highest order...As one speaks of Keynesian revolution in economics, I feel one should speak of a Barnardian revolution in political science.”⁽⁵⁾

Fortune Magazine,one of the renown American business periodicals, states:

Chester I. Barnard possibly possesses the most capacious intellect of any business executive in the U.S.⁽⁶⁾     

Weberian Public Administration Versus New Public Management in Eastern Europe: The Case of Romania

As a recent member of the European Union (EU), Romania aligned its public policies to Westernized models of civil service reform. This article critically analyzes the impact of Human Resource Management (HRM) models as compared to a Weberian Easternized public administration culture, which continues to display strong hierarchical relationships, rather than the “networked” governance favored by some Western European countries.

The focus will be on the development of HRM policies and practices, taking as a set of case studies Romanian central government organizations. The key problem to be addressed is to understand why such organizations remain locked in ineffective systems of personnel administration. Yet, Romania, along with other Eastern European states, has been exposed to international reform movements in public management through policy transfer. The article will look for evidence of New Public Management (NPM)-type practices, in addition to HRM.

Moreover, the countries of Eastern Europe are far from homogeneous, and so an understanding of both the institutional and cultural context is crucial to ascertain the acceptability of NPM. In the case of Romania, this article considers HRM developments in a multi-culturally influenced state, which has also experienced Socialist regimes. However, policy innovations have started to appear, not only as a consequence of the international diffusion of “good practice” and “policy learning, ” but also stemming from the demands of European directives. Thus, the aim of this article will be to assess the role of policy learning in relation to HR reform in the public service.     

Teaching public management: the case for (and against) cases

This article calls for an increased and more rigorous use of the case method in public administration education. Cases yield generalizations, cases help students take ownership of knowledge, and cases can further repetition of behavioral characteristics important to students such as empathy and self-confidence.

The gradual expansion of public policy training into the area of public management has brought with it a marked increase in the use of cases and case teaching. Executive training programs, an ever more common feature of publicpolicy schools, rely even more heavily on case. Despite their prevalence and popularity, cases and case teaching have come in for considerable criticism. Social scientists in particular fault them for being atheoretical and, hence, lacking in intellectual rigor. Contemporary cases are also faulted for implicitly endorsing an “activist” or “heroic” view of public management. Whereas cases from the 1940s and 1950s portrayed a functional view of public managers, recent cases portray managers as people who actively shape their legal mandates and use administrative systems to promote political objectives--a questionable image to convey to students training for public service.⁽¹⁾

The first half of the paper describes in some detail a seminar, “Ethics and Public Management,” conducted at the Kennedy School by Mark Moore, Mark Lilla, and the author.     

The leadership environment of public sector executives

Olshfski uses critical incident methodology to describe the leadership environment of state cabinet officials. The rich data set offers insight into how state executives (1) learn about their jobs, (2) exercise discretion to determine their policy agenda, and (3) operate in the political environment of state administration. She concludes by pointing out discrepancies in our understanding of leadership and offers suggestions for leadership, research, and teaching.

Somerset Maugham is said to have begun all his lectures by saying there are only three things that one must know in order to be a good writer: the only problem being that no one knows what those three things are. The same might be said of leadership research. For example, Stogdill's survey of leadership research contains over 3,000 references and Bass's revision documents over 5,000 references.⁽¹⁾ The preface to Stogdill's survey assesses the status of leadership research: “four decades of research on leadership have produced a bewildering mass of findings…. The endless accumulation of empirical data has not produced an integrated understanding of leadership. “⁽²⁾ A more pithy evaluation is offered by Bennis and Nanus, “never have so many labored so long to say so little.”⁽³⁾ Yet, most people still vigorously believe in the importance of the leader and leadership research.⁽⁴⁾

Recognizing the confusion in the field of leadership research, this study attempts to describe the context within which public executives operate. It is assumed that the executive's operating environment determines the extent to which leadership is possible. Critical incident methodology is used to illustrate how public sector executives conceptualize their environment and how they operate based on that conceptualization. This research is driven by two questions: What is the leadership environment of the state cabinet executive? Secondly, how does the leadership literature facilitate the understanding and interpretation of executive leadership in the public sector?     

“A partnership in virtue among all citizens”:(1) the public service and the civic humanist tradition

It is argued that the Founders’ intentions are most correctly interpreted through the virtue-centered paradigm of civic humanism, with its attendant “ethics of character.” Such an interpretation has major implications for the civic obligations of public servants. Among them are obligations to encourage civic autonomy; to govern by persuasion; to transcend the corruptions of power; and to become civic exemplars. Because these vital civic responsibilities have been neglected in recent years, it is argued that public administration should take the lead in promoting them as standards of good government.

The future of fin de siecle America is not bright, as each day brings us closer to some geopolitical, economic, or environmental disaster that will pitch us into the garrison state.

Because of the legacy of Ronald Reagan, a banal self-seeking and “moral thoughtlessness, “⁽²⁾ we trail dispiritedly after leaders who have neither vision nor courage and who care only for the pomp, circumstance, and financial possibilities of their offices. Lost in the scramble for preferment and self-aggrandizement are the Founding values and the society they were to create.

A few call for a return to the ideals of the Founding, but who are to be the reformers? One area with real possibilities is public administration, for two reasons. First, it still respects the vestiges of the political philosophy of its tradition and, hence, does not automatically reject suggestions from moral philosophy as impractical. Second, many who joined the public service did so because of some sense, perhaps inchoate, of wanting to serve the “public interest.” We can build from this foundation.

In this spirit, then, what are the moral obligations of the public service? While public servants owe their organizations both efficient performance and compliance with the law, they also owe a great deal more because they are “public” employees. Publicness carries higher obligations than those entailed by private employment. To be of the public service is to accept moral obligations, bespoken in the oath of office, the basis of public accountability. At the base, the primary obligation is to know and to believe in the Founding values.

Second, public servants are obligated to embody those values intentionally in all their actions, whether with superiors, colleagues, subordinates, or the general public. Third is the obligation to secure the Founding values for the citizens of the Republic. The fourth obligation is that all are able to speak and write well in defense of the Founding values. These obligations are nonnegotiable.

The source of the problems of contemporary America is our collective loss of belief in and application of the Founding values. By loss, I do not mean to imply that we disbelieve, but rather that we are—following Hannah Arendt— “thoughtless” concerning them. They have become cliches, rather than the guiding principles for all individual and organizational actions. Even those who defend the Founding values are reluctant to deal with the difficult problems of belief, but knowledge of the Founding values must precede belief in them, and knowledge must be interpreted within a paradigm, of which there are at least two to which we may turn.