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

International Journal of Public Administration

Volumn 21, Issue 2-4, 1998, Pages 323-374

  Wamsley, Gary L ^a   Dudley, Larkin S ^a  

^a VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0041033988     PISSN: 01900692     EISSN: 15324265     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01900699808525308     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. The Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency of 1912 involved some prominent scholars, most notably, W. F. Willoughby, but as far as we know, this is the first involvement of public administration scholars until the Brownlow Commission.
2. Fitch, Lyle. “ Making Democracy Work: Luther Gulick ”. Berkeley, California: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California. working paper, 91-25
3. Beaumaster, Suzanne, Evans, Karen G., Hadbavny, Michael T., Murthi, Monisha, Schroeder, Aaron D., Snead, John D., Wamsley, Gary L., and Ward, Robert C., Deconstructing the Conventional Wisdom of Public Management: Revitalizing the Practice of Public Administration. unpublished paper
4. Wamsley, Gary L., Organizational Design and Government Reorganization from the New Deal to the New World Order: Sixty Years and We ‘Still Don’t Get It. paper presented to ASPA conference.
5. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. 1938. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 1, 652New York: Random House.
6. Karl, Barry D., 1963. Executive Reorganization and Reform in the New Deal, 196Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
7. Gulick, Luther, and Urwick, L., 1937. “ Notes on the Theory of Organization ”. In Papers on the Science of Administration, Edited by: Gulick, Luther, and Urwick, L., 44–45. New York: Columbia University, Institute of Public Administration.
8. Gulick, Luther. 1933. Politics, Administration, and the ‘New Deal. Annals, 169 September
9. Fry, Brian R., 1989. Mastering Public Administration: From Max Weber to Dwight Waldo, Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, Inc.
10. Gulick, Luther. 1937. “ Science, Values and Public Administration ”. In Papers on the Science of Administration, Edited by: Gulick, Luther, and Urwick, L., 193New York: Institute of Public Administration.
11. Newland, Chester. 1984. Public Administration and Community Realism in the Practice of Ideals, Virginia: McLean. Public Administration Service Gulick had been Director of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research and President of the Institute for Public Administration. Charles Merriam was chairman of the Department of Political Science of Chicago University and had been on the Chicago City Council. Louis Brownlow had been city manager of Petersburg, Virginia and Knoxville, Tennessee
12. Conversation with the author (Wamsley).
13. Kauffman, Herber. 1990. The Literary Gulick: A Bibliographic Appreciation. PAR, Nov/Dec: 611 Van Riper, Paul. See his chapter in this volume which makes a strong case that the Committee's conception of a chief executive came as much from the concept of a city manager as it did the business corporation. And Van Riper is emphatic in his conclusion that the city manager concept did not come from the corporation. quoted in Van Riper, Paul. Certainly some of the founders favored a high-energy executive (Hamilton), but in our opinion the emphasis was on coequal powers (Madison)
14. Martin, Daniel W., The Other ‘Papers’ on the Science of Administration: A Search for Common Themes, in these essays
15. United States. President's Committee on Administrative Management. January 1937. “ Administrative Management in the Government of the United States ”. January, 5Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. In light of the gargantuan growth of the executive office of the President of the White House staff, this statement seems the height of naiveté. It seems impossible to believe that the committee could have been doing anything but wishful thinking or propagandizing on this point. See also their preemptive statement that the executive assistants would have no power to make decisions, no power to interpose themselves between the president and the heads of his departments and they would not be assistant presidents. For a discussion of the growth of White House Staff, see Kernell, Samuel. “The Evaluation of White House Staff” in Chubb, John E. And Peterson, Paul (eds.). Can the Government Govern?, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1989; also M. Charles Walcott and Hult, Karen. Governing the White House: From Hoover through LBJ, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1995. Walcott and Hult detail the basics for the quantum leap in growth during the Nixon administration.
16. Richard, Eels. 1962. The Government of Corporations, Glencoe, NY: Free Press. Questions about the advisability of centralizing authority were raised early in regard to corporations and Adolf Augustus Berle. The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1991
17. Scott, W.R., 1992. Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, 3rd, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Whether or not organizations can be said to have goals is a debate in organizational theory since at least the 1950s. Here, we have chosen to view organizations as social constructs with goals as symbols or as values expressed in dialogue. By the mid-1990s, metaphors of social science reflected ideas of quantum physics, systems, interpretism, and postmodernism opening up again the debate around ontologies surrounding organizational concepts
18. Hacker, Andrew. 1961. Political Theory: Philosophy, Ideology, Science, New York: The MacMillan Company. Hacker emphasizes the organic and natural condition of the polis in his analysis of Aristotle's Politics. He contends that the polis differs from the state in being something that is a natural association of men and women and “not an artificial device which was consciously created by a group of citizens at a particular time in order to suit particular purposes.” We might approximate Aristotle's meaning if we think of the polis as that entity called “the body politic,” or perhaps as Easton's political system. In any event in our mind it encompasses the institutions and actors involved in governing a nation-state: ruling elites, governing elites, informed or attentive public, and the mass of citizenry.
19. Bradack, Jeffrey L., and Eccles, Robert G., 1991. “ Price, Authority, and Trust: From Ideal to Plural Form ”. In Markets, Hierarchies, and Networks: The Coordination of Social Life, Edited by: Thompson, Grahame, Frances, Jennifer, Levacic, Rosalind, and Mitchell, Jeremy. London: Sage Publications.
20. Gore, Al., 1993. From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less, Washington, DC: Report of the National Performance Review.
21. Waldo, Dwight. 1984. The Administrative State: A Study of the Political Theory of American Public Administration, 2nd, New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers.
22. Green, Richard T., and Hubbell, Lawrence. 1996. “ On Governance and Reinventing Government ”. In Refounding Democratic Public Administration: Modern Paradoxes, Postmodern Challenges, Edited by: Wamsley, Gary L., and Wolf, James F., Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
23. Arnold, Peri E., 1980. Leviathian Domesticated: An Exploration into the Relationship between Administrative Theory and the Positive State. paper presented to National Conference of the American Society for Public Administration in San Francisco. April 13-161980. California
24. Newland, Chester A., 1984. Public Administration and Community: Realism in the Practice of Ideals, 21Virginia: McLean. Public Administration Service
25. Arnold, Peri E., 1980. Leviathan Domesticated: An Exploration into the Relationship between Administrative Theory and the Positive State. paper presented to National Conference of the American Society for Public Administration in San Francisco. April 13-161980. California The Brownlow report, of course, set in place the managerial president and we think that it also set in motion forces leading to the “plebiscitary” and “political” presidency. (For a discussion of these presidencies see Lane and Wamsley's chapter in this volume.) We have enormous respect for James Fesler (see his quote in this chapter's beginning). We cannot understand how he can say that it “did not ‘set in train’ the Imperial Presidency” that emerged under Richard Nixon. It seems to us the imperial presidency followed inevitably from making the executive branch primus inter pares and the president the chief executive officer—not “chief” as in foremost, but “chief” as in chief executive of a corporation or a council-manager city. It may take particular circumstances and a particular presidential personality to bring the imperial presidency to full flower, but surely the Brownlow Committee unwittingly provided the concepts and the means to make it possible. This is close to “setting in train
26. Wamsley, Gary L., 1996. “ A Public Philosophy and Ontological Disclosure as the Basis for Normatively Grounded Theorizing in Public Administration ”. In Refounding Democratic Public Administration: Modern Paradoxes and Postmodern Challenges, Edited by: Wamsley, Gary L., and Wolf, James F., Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
27. Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government. 1949. Hoover Commission Report, Macmillan and Company.
28. Moe, Ronald C., 1994. The Reinventing Government Exercises: Misinterpreting the Problem, Misjudging the Consequences. PAR, Mar/April: 112
29. The six reorganizations we consider are: (1) the Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Executive Agencies of the Government, 1936 chaired by Senator H. R. Byrd; (2) the U.S. Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of Government (First Hoover Commission), 1947-49, chaired by Herbert Hoover; (3) the Second Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch (Second Hoover Commission), 1953-55, chaired by Herbert Hoover; (4) the President's Advisory Committee on Government Organization, 1953-61, chaired by Nelson Rockefeller, 1953-58 and by Don Price, 1958-61; (5) the Price Task Force, 1964, chaired by Ben Heineman, Sr.; (6) the President's Advisory Council on Executive Organization (Ash Council), 1969-71, chaired by Roy Ash. We have not included the efforts under Carter, Reagan, or Clinton because it seems to us they approach issues of reorganization at an organizational and management processes level. Although the management ontologies, “three E approach,” or economic rationality are the same, these efforts are not directed toward a full-scale reorganizing of the government. For a fuller discussion of these other efforts, please see March and Olsen, p. 173.
30. Pfiffner and Presthus's. 1967. “ The Integrationist Model ”. In Public Administration, 5th, New York: Ronald Press. For an excellent summary of the administration management school of thought see chapter 10in their text
31. Arnold, Peri E., “ Reform's Changing Role: The National Performance Review in Historical Context ”. Charlottesville, Virginia: The Miller Center, University of Virginia. Occasional paper 01/94, March, James G. And Olsen, Johan. “Organizing Political Life: What Administrative Reorganization Tells Us about Government.” American Political Science Review 77 (1983): 281-296
32. Milkis, Sidney M., 1987. The New Deal, Administrative Reform, and the Transcendence of Partisan Politics. Administration and Society, 18 (4) February: 433–472. Along with the works cited by Arnold Peri March and Olsen, and Moe Caiden, Gerald E. “Administrative Reform-American Style”; Arnold, Peri E. “Reorganization and Politics: A Reflection on the Adequacy of Administrative Theory.” Public Administration Review 34 (1974): 205-211. For a good review of reorganizations in general, see Craig, Thomas W. “Reorganizing Public Organizations: Alternatives, Objectives, and Evidence.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 3, 4 (1993): 457-86. For recent articles interpreting. reorganizations, see Sayb, Ron. “The Death and Rebirth of Reorganization Planning: Symbolic Action, Divided Government, and Orthodox Administrative Theory's Enduring Appeal.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 24 (Fall 1994): 725-44; Kravchuk, Robert G. “The ‘New Connecticut’: Lowell Weicker and the Process of Administrative Reform.” Public Administration Review 53 (July/August 1993): 328-30; Chi, Keon S. “Trends in Executive Reorganization.” The Journal of State Government 65 (April/June 1992): 33-40
33. March, James G., and Olsen, Johan. 1989. Rediscovering Institutions, New York: The Free Press.
34. Lance, B. Foreword. Federal Reorganization: The Executive Branch, Edited by: Fain, T. G., ixNew York: Bowker.
35. Salamon, Lester M., 1981. “ The Question of Goals ”. In Federal Reorganization: What Have We Learned?, Edited by: Szanton, P., 60Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House.
36. Edelman, Murray. 1971. Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence, Chicago, Illinois: Marlsham Publishing. See the work of and Terry, Larry B. “Public Administration and the Theater Metaphor: The Public Administration as Villain, Hero, and Innocent Victim,” unpublished paper, October, 1995
37. O'Toole, Laurence J., Jr. 1984. American Public Administration and the Idea of Reform. Administration & Society, 16 (2) August: 141–66.
38. Caiden, Gerald E., 1994. Administrative Reform—American Style. Public Administration Review, 54 (2) March/April: 123–28.
39. Lowi, Theodore. 1979. The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, 2nd, New York: W. W. Norton.
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41. Selznick, Philip. 1949. TVA and the Grass Roots, Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
42. Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Berkeley, California: University of California Press. W. Richard Scott (Institutions and Organizations, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 1995) explains that the different emphases in contemporary institutional theory give different weight to regulative, cognitive, and normative elements. He defines institutions as having “cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior” (p. 33), a definition compatible with the usage here
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44. Cook, Brian. 1995. At the Crossroads of the Real and the Ideal: Woodrow Wilson's Theory of Administration. Administrative Theory and Praxis, 17 (2): 17
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46. Evans, Karen, and Wamsley, Gary L., 1995. Where's the Institution?. paper delivered at the Third National Conference on Research in Public Management. October1995, Lawrence. Kansas
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48. Lynn, Lawrence. 1996. Art, Science and Professional Public Management, Chatham House. There are a number of reasons for the fad. None of these in our estimation is very edifying. See Stokes, Donald For a somewhat more benign perspective
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50. Wamsley, Gary L., 1991. Public Management, Public Administration and the Concept of Governance: Watching the Doughnut Not the Hole. the First National Conference on Public Management Research. September1991. Syracuse University. unpublished paper delivered
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