6 Foundations of Public Administration

Public administration is founded on six assumptions. Bit by bit, they have come from the research and work of many social scientists and of course, public agencies. Despite this, some have questioned about their true existence. And those who see them work know that these assumptions are not set in stone. Majority of the public administration materials are actually focused on either renovating or eliminating them because of their weaknesses. No matter what the objection is, these assumptions do get the job done and thus, have turned into a worldwide craze. It would be pretty difficult to find any government completely free of them. Because of this and more, they must be understood thoroughly.

1. Purpose/Instrumental rationality: Max Weber was one of the theorists to first explain it. The work of instrumental rationality is to emphasize the result a specific available or a concept based effort can produce. It ignores the fundamental question of the real world aftermath forming from the use of that effort. Scientific method, experts and power flowing from top to bottom are all expressions of this rationality.
Weakness: It has a tendency to leave the lower level public servants in the dilemma of ethics, for not every instruction can be converted into words flowing from top to bottom.

2. Efficiency: This means that any program to be approved and started must show result and adhere to the common ideology of the country. Anything that does not work must be eliminated. In short, the depiction of performance measurement is very important.
Weakness: Performance measurement has always been an issue. There is no way to measure every work of the government. For instance, certain environment programs can take years to show signs of result. Hence, the idea of efficiency for them is blurry.

3. Professionalism: This refers to all the factors that the public employees must abide by while doing their work.Values are the examples of this. For instance, to prevent fraud and biases, the government has rules promoting transparency and fairness. Anyone failing to abide by them can be penalized. Professionalism also takes into account the knowledge of the employees connected to their work. What this means is that not just anyone is allowed to make laws or handle criminals. Such tasks are given to lawyers, judges, cops and the military. All of them must abide by procedural policies.
Weakness: Professionalism certainly is necessary in all organizations. However, its weakness is in how the professionals are perceived as all knowing which unfortunately is not always true.

Theories of Mary Parker Follett Made Simple

Born on September 3rd 1868, Mary Parker Follett was the eldest child in her family. They lived in Quincy of Massachusetts. Before giving into alcoholism, her father worked at a shoe factory. He eventually became sober, but his new permanent job was not enough to feed the entire family, forcing them to go live with his father. In 1885, both passed away, but it did not have financial effect on Mary and her family. There was a good amount of property which helped them lead a good life as well as pay for her education.

She got into Cambridge University, England, but before she could graduate, she was called back to United States because of her mother’s illness. She finally received Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe, a part of Harvard University made mainly for women. Later she went onto finishing her postgraduate study in France.

Her first profession was in social work which helped her gain management experience. As a social worker, she tried to solve the political and financial problems related to establishment of evening centers for public schools situated in Boston. This allowed her to gain popularity nationwide. She also brought about innovation in other community centers of the region, making them an example for the nearest and farthest cities.

In 1925, a new career came into her life. She chose to become an industrial management lecturer. Psychology and political science were always of great interest to her, but her management experience combined with them brought about organizational theories no one could think of at the time. They are found in her three books: Speaker of the House of Representatives, The New State and Creative Experience. Her papers and lectures were later published in two books titled as Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett and Freedom and Coordination: Lecture in Business Organization. Now let’s take a look at some of those theories.

Management and the Manager

Undoubtedly, the business management education today is pretty much influenced by what she wrote in her books. In her view, management is ‘the art of getting things done through people’. But with that, she emphasizes the need to introduce scientific standard to business management. According to her, business management has two parts. The first includes technical knowledge which can be learned. The second one has to do with knowledge of how to interact with employees and all others connected to the business. Follett then states that despite the differences between the two, there is no way to separate them. Consequently, there should be a way to apply science to human relations connected to management. Another important thing required is to evaluate the job of the manager in a way that he is no more seen as different from his employees.

The steps to arrange business management education is her another contribution. To carry it out, she prescribes scientific method. The first step here is to research managing process constantly. Experiments should never be dropped. The conclusions then must be turned into knowledge to shape up the business management education.

Community Governance and Obstacles to Achieving It

Governance within the framework of a society is the set of actions supported by common ideals and objectives from normal civilians and institutions. To give birth to their joint effort or dissolve conflicts, there is usually no need for official approval. The most common characteristics of governance are:

Reality is made by normal people: You have heard about bureaucracy within which only the influential elite people such as the president, other politicians, corporations and director of a public agency have more control over a policy. Governance is a complete transition from this. It is based on the view that reality is built by normal humans and mainly by those who are affected by a given problem. Similarly, the solution can be found by their collective effort.

Temporary Relationship: This has to do with different actors coming from private, public and even nonprofit entities for a limited amount of time. Together they influence a policy or solve a public problem in such a way that it ends up being helpful to all in the society.

Discussion: Governance requires all actors to discuss how a problem is affecting them. The aim here is to establish a common psychological relationship in the form of subjectivity. Another word for this relationship is inter-subjectivity.

Small role for the government: Here government is no more the main guy. Thus, politics takes the backseat. It is truly all about the citizens.

Respect for diverse values: Values always differ. However, through discussions, governance, allows them to bring about the good in the society. In a way, the program or policy derived through this process is usually the reflection of what people feel.

Democratic: Any discussion opened up must be able to produce effort from all the affected parties. Of course, all others who have nothing to do with the problem can also join.

Obstacles to Governance
It can be quite difficult to achieve governance in a society. The reasons behind this are:

Silent community: Not all communities are vocal about their problems. While some have extremely busy people, others have the passive ones.

Value for taxes paid: Through taxes, the salary of public servants, programs and even policies are funded. Such a factor can make many feel that they are already helping. Also why should they be active in the policy making process when someone has been already paid to do so?

Majority is not always right: The American founding fathers had a reason to fear the idea of giving power to people. Something seen as a problem by the majority may not be a real problem. Similarly, ideals can be driven by hate and less education. Moreover, people do not always have common sense. Such factors can create solutions detrimental to minorities and even the entire nation.

Public servants themselves may not let go of their power: It is not easy to get rid of bureaucracy. It is likely for them to feel intervention of public as annoyance to their daily work. They may not just like being pushed and questioned.

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What is Rational Design in Public Administration?

What comes to mind when someone talks about rationality? Fairly justifying something, right? But then how to do it? The answer is through objective evaluation of certain causes. This is what rational design model is all about. At least once in our lives, we all have used it. Just think about what you did in the chemistry lab back in high school. You measured and mixed chemicals to get some kind of reaction out of them. Your every step was depended on a scientific method. That is how rational design works. It does not wait for the problem to occur. Instead, it demands analysis to search for it in the normal environment. The tradition of the rational design is coated with the notion that only by the use of science, the best solution of a problem can be derived. Now this best is rooted in objectivity. This should be taken as a sign that emotions of humans have no room in rational design. It demands data measurement followed by facts derived from it.

Typically, a public administrator who uses rational design is already a technical expert. In other words, he knows how to gather and read data. He is convinced that anything can be measured and that quantitative data can truly predict all kinds of outcomes. His analysis gives birth to facts. He does not care if there is anything beyond them. To stay fair, however, he may go with the idea that there were some limitations in his study. After that, he would let his conclusion or decision out. Even in this step, he does not let his mind succumb to emotions. For the sake of fairness, he allows his analysis to speak for itself.

Rational design model works best in learning about things that can be measured. In all other areas, it is a challenging tool. The problem is that the model assumes predictability and objectivity, which unfortunately is inconsistent with the realities of social environments. For instance, there is no way to measure behavior of humans. Secondly, in rational design, decisions are made according to the expert's perspective. The problem is that data can be misleading and thus, may not describe what actually takes place. Also because of the technical knowledge of the expert, his explanation is taken as far superior than what the citizens have to say.

Summary of Characteristics of Rational Design

• It is proactive 
• It approaches a problem scientifically with the aim to maintain impartiality
• Questions and categories are used to help observation
• Measurement maybe based on cause-benefit or analysis of the system
• The one doing it is a technical expert
• The problem is seen through his analytical eyes
• Decision is based on facts
• There is no involvement of citizens or other significant actors

Identifying Rational Design in the Real World

• Analyzing how much is needed to run a government program: Budget is the keyword. Before it can be designed for a specific program, the public administrator must know the cost associated with it. Sometimes this can help him extract any problem that in the future may form.
• Calculating how many would be affected by a given policy: Think about the time when government decided to give a decreased amount of money to defense department. Numerous studies coming from military and those sponsored by them suggested that it was going to leave many without jobs. Such conclusion was derived through the use of rational design model.

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What is Crisis Design in Public Administration?

Crisis design is a decision making model through which solutions are created to respond to a problem as soon as possible. It can be used to control damage as well as prevent one from happening. One of the interesting facts about crisis design model is that it does not give the administrator the time to evaluate majority of the advantages and disadvantages of the solution before it can be implemented. Much of it is connected to a need for immediate action, preventing the administrator from acquiring all the necessary data required to perform the evaluation. That is why, although the solution tends to have a shorter lifespan, there is always a possibility for it to cause a major problem in the long run.

Crisis design does not have a good reputation for a reason. The biggest problem is that it cancels out the need to allow subordinates to have a say about whether its solutions should be implemented. Same can be told about the public. The sound of their voice is ignored. In some cases, both the groups have to pay a big price. Moreover, the one who goes by the model can get in trouble later, for the affected people can always sue the government. This has given birth to the idea that crisis design is not a model that should be used frequently.

But it is not possible to completely do away with it and there is a very general reason behind it. The model does help at times and since the future can never be known with complete certainty, people cannot fully prepare for the worst. The last resort is to either just do or die. This is when the model comes in handy.

Yet it must be noted that crisis design cannot go in haywire mode. When applying it the administrators have to abide by policies and approval of the main government. A benefit is attached to it. In case of negative consequence, the administrator can use rationality to justice the application of the model.

Summary of Characteristics of Crisis Design

• It is reactive
• Used to implement quick action
• Decision is short lived
• Highly bureaucratic because only the top public administrators take the decision
• Short amount of time prevents complete analysis of the situation which weakens the task of finding other alternatives
• During implementation process, full information about the decision is not shared with all

Identifying Crisis Design in the Real World

• Use of atom bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japan was not giving up, turning into a matter of crisis. The last resort for US was to drop the bombs in those two places. Many Japanese are still affected by it. But according to US, it meant saving the lives of Americans.
• Firefighters and 9/11: The hit buildings and people trapped in them were a crisis for the government. Firefighters here were the ones responding to it. They were following order to rescue the people. However, the ones inside the southern tower did not have information about the norther one coming down. There was a lot of confusion. Eventually, the southern tower collapsed, killing many of them.
• Recession leading to budget cuts: During recession, tax revenue suffers. In this situation, government does have the ability to do something about the economy. But it does take time to put the plans in action. Shortage of fund needs immediate response. For government, the only option is to utilize budget cuts. This way many federal and state programs go through job loss. 

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Hidden Meanings of Liberal, Conservative and Radical

When we hear about liberal and conservative the first thing that comes in our head is the political system. We have two parties in United States known as Democrat and Republican. Their ideologies are marked as liberal and conservative respectively. When it comes to radical we think of extremists because the media has somewhat conditioned us to believe it in this way through constant blabbering. In cultures also, people utilize them. Those who like to think of themselves as open minded will often say they are liberal.

Meanwhile, those who are all about the culture will call themselves conservative. Since radicalism is shown as bad by the media, no average human wishes to be symbolized by it. Did you know that no matter how much you call yourself liberal you can be both conservative and radical? Actually, according to philosophy, humans are all of them. The reactions to situations make us liberal, conservative or radical. This is how it goes:

Liberal

Sure it means being open-minded, but this is not exactly the way philosophy defines it. Its true meaning is going with the flow. In other words, Liberals want what works. Compromise is their keyword.

You are liberal every time you have no complaint about your surroundings. In brutal way, this is linked to the idea of allowing atrocity to happen while the mind turns mutable to surrender to it. Think of it as eyes wide shut. That is why, the normal idea of being liberal is said to be free of thoughts on equality and justice.

Examples of liberal behavior

• Your professor is extremely harsh and unfair. You have been its victim, but you decide to just refrain from taking action against him. You still take his classes.
• You are satisfied with the way things are going.

Conservative

Generally, conservatives believe we should do what the culture says. But deep down inside they just want to conserve values. Psychologically, they prefer familiar places and people. Changes send them jolts. Conservative mind is usually very stubborn.

You are conservative whenever you feel something is worthy of your honor. You hold it close to your heart. However, certain changes make you feel you threatened and miserable. You do not wish them to occur at all. Bottom line is that conservatives have fear towards changes.

Examples of conservative behavior

• Tragedy has direct link to being conservative because it is something that changed your story in a bad way and you did not want this change to take place.
• You are madly in love with your romantic partner. You wish to marry her because marriage in your mind is something of great value.

Radical

Now this last one is most interesting. Radical, in general sense, has nothing to do with fundamentalism. Its true meaning is bringing changes suddenly and drastically to restore justice and equality. These changes are so unique that those who are used to what is ordinary find them shocking.To be clear, a mind becomes radical when it learns of something fair that it lacks, but wants. There is no time to wait for it. It must be achieved as soon as possible.

Example of radical behavior

• You come to know that your employer is not doing anything about safety concern at your workplace. You consider it injustice. Hence, you decide to bring an end to it by going on strike with your colleagues. 
• You introduce a new product which can completely take care of the problems of at home flee infestation.

Why Words in A Law Are Hard to Understand

When you hear a news reporter discuss a law on television you probably think of him as very smart. It is amazing that he knows what he is talking about. But when you go to read the original sections of this same law you struggle. Why the words in them are so difficult to understand? You probably tried using dictionary to get to their meanings. But even after this, the law ended up looking vague. Does this mean you are the dumb one here? No, not at all. The news reporter has helping hand. He did not analyze anything all by himself. He will never mention it. Actually, not many do because of the shallow embarrassment. It is like those royal officials from Emperor's New Clothes. Deep down inside they know they don't understand all parts of the law, but in public, they pretend to be knowledgeable about them.

Creating a law is a daunting task for a reason. It must be able to respond to a wide variety of problems without jeopardizing the rights of the citizens. It should do justice to innocent ones while punishing the criminals. It should not be forceful. It should not be an obstacle to progress. Because of all this, the law is made intentionally vague with words that in reality tend to be broad. Vagueness are mostly common under the provision called safe harbor created to not punish those who break the law in a shallow manner. Sometimes it may also be found within definitions and other clauses.

Vague words and lines of the law need official interpretation. The power to do so is given to public agencies and judges. The notion is that they are experienced enough to know where and when to apply them. At face value, this seems correct. But such vague words  have sometimes created more problems than solving anything. Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a great example of this. Critics call it lengthy, hard to understand and overly broad for a reason.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Controversy Over Vagueness

Copyright law is designed to protect the intellectual properties by establishing that their original producers are their sole owners, making it illegal for all others to use such properties without permission or following certain requirements falling under fair use. The basics of the law are coherent, but the progressive nature of technology has required them to be upgraded. Fortunately, this is a requirement recognized by the US constitution. To be clear, the founding fathers state that Congress must encourage the advancement of technology and creativity by making sure that those who produce original work within them get their due credit at least for a specific amount of time. History shows that Copyright law was federally replaced in the United States at least three times with Copyright law of 1976 being the last with an aim to protect the creators of original work within new found creative and technology fields. The early 90’s saw a major change in digitalization. Internet was becoming widely available, signaling potential business opportunities for fields related to computer programs and artistic creations such as music and motion pictures. Unfortunately, at the same time, it was posing threat of misuse to such work because Copyright law of 1976 which was still in use did not have policies that could allow government to protect them. Interestingly, in 1997, a case of pirated software compelled President Bill Clinton to sign No Electronic Theft Act, which made it illegal to duplicate and circulate any computer software worth more than $1000 in the market. This, however, did not provide the right solution to problems mentioned earlier. It sure was leaned more towards technology, but we must keep in mind that not every computer program costs as high as $1000. Also the act left out the works produced within creative fields.

Good news is that the gaps were not truly eluded by the federal government. In 1998, Digital Millennium Copyright Act was enacted which allowed revision of both Copyright law of 1976 and No Electronic Theft Act with emphasis on the following points: libraries are to be allowed to collect digital creations and make them available for educational purpose to requested parties, called as safe harbor, no legal action must be taken against online service providers if online users share intellectual property through their services and that they may not be deemed legally punishable if they agree to block or remove an intellectual property from their service as fulfillment of the request by the original creator, and lastly, United States would abide by the anti-circumvention laws established by World Intellectual Property Organization in an effort to protect electronically available intellectual properties. At this point, the law appears to be the most diligent guardian. But it has caused a lot of turmoil. Here are three small samples that show the issue of vagueness found within DMCA.

1. Ambiguous Meaning of Service Provider
According to DMCA, service provider is anyone offering the transmission, routing, or connections for digital online communications or a provider of online services or network access. Believe it or not, these meanings left plenty of judges confused. The first one is connected to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Netzero, America Online, Comcast and so on. The second one is the main problem.  It does not explain whether someone who runs a site connected purely to submissions by users is a service provider. By the way, social bookmarking and networking sites like Digg, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter fall under it. Their bread and butter rely on submissions by users. Consequently, from time to time, they become home to stolen contents.

2. What does Being Aware Mean for Service Providers?
In 2007, Viacom sued Youtube with a case that the website was allowing illegal distribution of copyright works of Viacom, but to its surprise, the court verdict ended up going in favor of Youtube with an emphasis on Safe Harbor which proved that the site officials were nothing more than service providers who did not have power to control what contents the users shared through site and since they were not sent take down notice, they were not required to remove any of those contents

Throughout the court session, Viacom provided evidence that even Youtube employees shared their television show clips with their friends and among them was Jawed Karim, the main creator of Youtube and that is why the site deserved no protection from Safe Harbor. This shows that Youtube was aware of the illegal distribution, but it still had stronger argument. Youtube stated that Viacom’s own mismanagement and constant changes in their policies made it difficult for everyone to understand what was legal and illegal and that they removed every clip mentioned by Viacom in take down notices. This is what allowed them to enjoy the favor granted by the court verdict.

The problem here is that the court did not take into consideration the evidence shown by Viacom and it happened because of the vagueness of Safe Harbor law.  To be clear, DMCA tells that in order to take full advantage of Safe harbor, online service providers just need to respond to take down notice in 72 hours, indirectly hinting that they do not need to worry about other stolen goods still sitting somewhere in their system because their original owners did not complain about them. Also the idea of sending take down notice generally means that the service provider was not aware of the infringement before.

3. Is it Educational or Commercial?
According to DMCA, it is a crime if anyone allows people to see or discuss the formula of the technology used to unlock an intellectual property like a file stored on a compact disc. Once, music industry sued some researchers over there attempt to publish  research work containing explanation on circumvent technology . It was withdrawn by the plaintiffs, but the researchers themselves again took the matter of DMCA to court and asked the judge to eliminate circumvent traffic provisions because it prohibited free speech and thus, was unconstitutional. The judge rejected the request by saying that DMCA did allow them to practice their free speech in their field because it is for educational purpose. But dabbling with circumvent is prohibited for those who wish to use it for commercial purpose, but if we think a little harder we will see that most businesses do dabble with them in the research and development department. Now is this commercial or educational? DMCA has no answer for it.

Explanation of the US Government Structure

Government itself is a body. It has many parts. Same is true for the US government. Its structure is somewhat complex, but not hard to understand and of course, there is a reason for which many different parts are designed with it. Not all of them have the same power, yet are connected to one another. The entire arrangement of rules related them match those that are made for board games. Click the picture below to see all the branches. For short summary table of those involved in policy making scroll down.

Constitution

On the top we have the constitution which dictates what basic rights the American citizens have and how government must be run. It begins with “We the People” as a signal that the power of the land belongs to its people. After this, it lists the do’s and don’ts for each branch of the government. This sets some limitations on them. The logic behind this is that if a branch becomes overly powerful it will begin to turn into a dictator, inhibiting the rights of other branches and citizens. This is practiced through check and balance system. According to it, if a Congress makes a law that does not sound fair for the people or government, President can block it through veto power. It may not mean much, for Congress can still reject the President’s veto through two thirds of votes from houses. But they may still not win if the judicial branch takes a look at the law and decides that it goes against the constitution. They can do the same with the President. Hence, no one has the full power. Most American laws are actually checked against Constitution to make sure that people do not lose their power. The only thing that has not come under its radar is foreign policy.

Executive Branch

This is where the President of United States falls. He sits in what is called as Executive Office of the President (EOP). Executive branch in whole basically is assigned the task of national policy implementation. Of course, how the policy is to be designed is first answered by Congress which falls under legislative branch. We will look into that shortly. Executive branch has three divisions which are:
Executive Office Agencies (EOP): Here we have the helping hands of the President in the form of officials. While some of them have direct connection to policy making, others give advice to the president regarding economy or budget.

Executive Departments: These are the offices running other national agencies. As of now, there are 15 executive departments. Newest among them is Department of Homeland Security. Constitution does not exactly make their establishment necessary. But they are still important in the sense that they focus on specific fields important to the nation. All chief members who happen to be the heads of these department are called secretaries. Together these people are known as cabinet of the President, but how the relationship between the two must go is not set in stone. Some Presidents in the past held meeting with the cabinet only for advice.  Cabinet members are paid almost the same amount in salary, but their importance in the eyes of EOP is not the same. In general, secretaries from Departments of Defense, Treasury and Justice are given more importance than the rest.

Independent Establishments (Agencies) and Government Corporations: These two are a bit different from each other and thus, needs separate explanation. This is how it goes:

Independent agencies: Agencies falling under independent establishments oversee rules and regulations of the nation, and or are for promotion of certain resolutions. They are of two types. The first one is directly connected to President. Their guardian is him. The second one is not under his control. The leader of independent agency is called either director or administrator and happens to take the seat as appointee of President, but by the approval of the Senate. Situation is a bit stick for his job position. The President has the right to get rid of him anytime. Independent agencies are not exactly fully independent. They rely on federal government for budget and are required to abide by laws.
Government corporations: Just as the title suggests, Government Corporation is any office that does business. However, it has three features. Firstly, it is declared as commercial. Second, it can generate its own money. Third, it is not restricted like the other government agencies. Just take a look at U.S Postal Service. It can make its own money. Hence, it is independent.

Legislative Branch

This one contains legislatures, but in two parts for which according to Constitution is bicameral. These parts are titled as houses of Senate and Representatives. Together they form Congress and represent their states. Their work in Washington DC involves designing bills or voting on them so they turn into laws. The two Houses are different in many ways.

Senate: It consists of only 100 elected people (2 from each state) known as Senators.  Senators are more influential and powerful than the Representatives. Constitution allows them to be not just voters, but also advisers. When President wishes to appoint someone for any federal department or Independent agency he must first get its approval from them. They also have the right to arrange impeachment trial if House of Representatives votes for it. Senators can stay in the House 6 years.

House of Representatives: As we learned earlier, these are less powerful legislators. But they are 435 in number. They are allocated based on the size of population of their states. As of now, California has the highest number of Representatives. But change may occur every 10 years because population size is never fixed. These Representatives are given the power to pick President for US if Electoral College fails in this task. They can also introduce revenue related bills and serve in a committee. Their Speaker is second in line to presidency with first being the Vice President. However, Representatives can serve only 2 years.

Judicial Branch

This where Supreme Court falls. The Judges serving in it are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. Their work involves interpreting laws passed by the Congress and figuring out whether certain decisions taken by lower courts or Presidents fall under Constitution or not. So in a way, they have the say in what is legal and illegal. Courts from all locations of the country are required to adhere to rules set by these Judges. No one has the right to go against their decisions. Judges can serve as long as possible.

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6  Foundations of Public Administration

Theories of Max Weber Made Simple

Max Weber's writings will make many fall asleep. Yes, they are extremely boring. Even people of his time pointed this out. But the reason why he keeps popping up in public policy classes is because he was not only one of the founders of the modern sociology, but also researched organizations keenly.

Despite the fact that his own work was often seen with suspicion, he criticized the idea of depending on abstract theories and suggested tangible research work based on history, realistic observation, facts and patterns. He gave us many theories. But among them, the one which still is extremely important is his ideal type of bureaucracy.He certainly did not coin the main term. But the ideal type was verified by research studies conducted by other researchers. Hence, it remains one of the most important elements. Government sector is run based on bureaucracy. Some experts claim that public administrations today are suffering because they are not holding onto Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy. That said, the man was not religiously devoted to the claim that such a system has perfection. He did list some problems regarding it. Much of what he gave us has connection to other elements of western society. He made sure to explain them in the form of theories. How do they go? Let's take a look.

Rationalization

Note that the meaning of rationality is creating opinion or excuse to justify something based on evaluation of evidence.  According to Max Weber, depending on supernatural power (magic and prayer) is not part of rationalization. In fact, it is irrational because there is no way to tell if the magic or payer is working and whether it will yield to solid result. Rationalization is more about finding solid explanations. Say a town ends up having smallpox epidemic. If a scholar of religion is asked why this happened he will probably say that it is because God is angry with the town people. If same question is asked to a medical doctor she will say that probably someone among these town people brought it along from another town where it is epidemic. She may also go one step farther to explain that the patients were not vaccinated. Her explanations are based on facts gathered through scientific research and discovery. Meanwhile, the scholar of the religion used his holy book or lessons he gathered from his theology class to explain the cause. There is a possibility that the scholar is also correct, but to rationalize it, he must show solid evidence of God's anger.

From Weber, we also come to know that are 2 kinds of broad rationality. Both are based on personal feelings, tastes and opinions.

Value rationality: Value rationality is connected to a person's feeling about the task he is to perform without giving much thought to its consequences. In behavioral science and philosophy, it is called intrinsic value or demand of the mind.

This is value rationality: The cat is more interested in
the fun aspect. She does not care if the end result of the butterfly is death

Purpose rationality: This one is more about what will happen if a certain job is done. In brief, the end result here is more important for the person.

This is purpose rationality. The cat wants to kill the mice to
turn it into a meal.

Weber also notes that economic actions have two different kinds of rationality and they are:

Formal economic rationality: An economic system or action that depends on formal rationality takes help from quantitative or logical analysis. Accounting, approved systematic research methods, logical rules and regulations are all examples of formal rationality. According to Weber, bureaucratic organizations are part of formal rationality.

Substantive economic rationality: An economic action performed to honor broader values separate from the laws of the modern society is considered substantive rationality.

Now formal rationality is not compatible with substantive rationality. This is what Weber pointed out. The reason is quite simple. Say, a scientist starts researching on cure for cancer with the aim to help the humanity. This helping the humanity part is based on substantive rationality. Now he finally has come up with a tonic. Unfortunately, the scientist does not get approval from Food and Drug administration to market it because he failed to show them enough clinical study results. The approval and guidelines are parts of formal rationality. They are hindering the substantive rationality of doing something good for the humanity.

The idea of rationality is included in his other theories also. We will look into them next, But before that here are some other points Weber made about the features of rationality.
1. It is the basic factor behind the structure of modern western society.
2. The amount of domination  put on a society decides how rational its people will be.
3. Highest amount of rationality is found within capitalism, the type of economy that demands us to change the way we do business to fit into the trends and earn continues profit.

Theory of Capitalism

Capitalism took birth from a mixture of  Protestant work ethics , ideas of economics and politics. Why is religion mentioned here? According to Max Weber, Protestantism tells its followers to not just sit with whatever they have earned from work.

Instead they should learn to make their savings more useful by reinvesting them in a way that they bring in prosperity. Weber called this Protestant work ethic and noted that this is what gave rise to spirit of capitalism.When reform was put into practice, protestants did not drop that value. Religion was no more the dominant force in their lives, yet they were using its ethics to fit into the secular world.

Max Weber listed some of the main features of capitalism. They are as follows:
1. All businesses are based on money and all their dealings are matter of capital activity.
2. There are opportunities for financial gains. Businessmen who fail to understand it will fail in capitalistic economy.
3. This economy system is nonviolent. In other words, no one can forcefully take over a business. It must be bought.
4. This economy system is based on formal rationality.
5. Capitalism has no place for traditional and custom rationality.
6. It has caused people to think that meaning of life is found in achievement of financial prosperity.
7. Capitalism depends largely on technical methods (formal rationality.

Ideal type of Bureaucracy

As mentioned earlier, Max Weber was the first person to list the ideal type of bureaucracy and it has been proven to be true by research. Here is what he said:
1. The organization follows a hierarchical order for all the offices. In brief, power flows from top to bottom.
2. The finance to run the businesses (work) in the organization comes from another source and not from the main authority figure. The example of this is the budget decided by the federal government to be given to federal agencies which they then use to pay their workers and work towards their projects.
3. Employees are not working to make the authority figure happy. They are there to just do the day to day work. Think about all the federal departments we have in the country. They don't do their tasks to make the president happy. They are doing their tasks because it is required by law.
4. The organization is approved officially through writing. In other words, there is formal basis for its existence. For instance, after 9/11, it was decided that defense department was not powerful enough to prevent false flag terrorist attacks. It was necessary to have a department focused mainly on terrorism. Approved by government officials, then Homeland Security department was formed.
5. Functions within the organization are divided into categories and approved as necessary.
6. Authority figure does not have the right to sell the organization or give it to his child.
7. There are guidelines for the organization. They are all impersonal.

Bureaucracy Problems

Despite giving the ideal type, Weber considered few problems that bureaucracy brings in.

1. Once set, no one in the society can get rid of bureaucracy. 

2. Those who are in bureaucracy will not allow it to die.

3. Leaders within this system have a tendency to convert their power into high positions and that gives birth to inequality.

4. It does not consider the feelings of public servants. They are thought to be robots who must work without asking any questions. He calls it dehumanization of the organization. 

Three Types of Leaders

Ever wonder why people accept domination from a third party? Broadly speaking, the reason can be either subjective or objective. Weber explains that people accept three kinds of leaders and they are:

Charismatic: As the title suggests, this form of authority is based on the leader’s personality or talent. People have a tendency to obey those who are bold and have the natural power to control. Think about that loud organized kid in your middle school class. You followed him simply because you thought he was right or because you saw some kind of reliability and hope in him. In a way, he is the revolutionary hero. People are also attracted to those who claim to specialize in working with super natural powers. One example is shaman. People follow him because he can show miracles. Weber states that approving a charismatic leader is psychological and not rational. In other words, we obey him because our mind tells us to do so, but most often we we are compelled by some kind of unstable situation or eagerness. However, our decision is rather temporary. When we find out that the leader no more has the power to do what attracted us we drop him. Weber warns that charismatic authority is prone to causing problems because he is driven by his wishes and power. He has no time for thinking rationally. Hence, in the long run, people under him suffer. In an organization, charismatic leader gets power through his high class or money. This is unhealthy for the employees, for he is neither experienced in the field nor he obeys official rules. If you have not understood what this means think about someone who has the money to open a business. When he does it he becomes its leader. But does he have the skill to look after the business and employees? Not really. Yet he is there to be the official leader. 

Traditional: You have heard of societies that do not wish to progress. They have their own leaders who make rules connected to what has been happening for centuries and not what brings progress. Weber calls this traditional authority. Under it, the leader is converted into a ruler and his followers are seen as subjects. Rules of traditional authority are obeyed simply because the subjects consider them fool proof honorable traditions. The leader is all about doing what is right despite the fact that he has no time for thinking rationally. Consequently, verdict of justice is based on latitude of choice within certain traditional bounds. Weber reveals that traditional leader sometimes may practice partiality by asserting positive verdict for those who are close to him. A good example of traditional authority is Wahabbism. Here the ruler is not a single person, but the kingdom of Saudia Arabia which wishes to set rules for follower Muslim countries in the form of sharia laws. Do note that in Wahabbasim the idea of subjects does not exist. The human followers are simply titled as Wahabbis.

Legal: When authority style is driven from formal paperwork and codes it is called legal authority. When it comes to making rules, the legal leader does not have the power to use his personal judgement and wishes. He is instead required to abide by existing laws to make new laws. Thus, his verdict tends to be neutral and more leaned towards fairness and rationality. People here do not truly obey him. Instead they obey his office. The organization that uses legal authority tends to be bureaucratic and formed out of requirements. The best example of this, of course, is a president elected through popular votes. Some people probably voted against him. But once he is in power, they have no choice but to abide by his rules. That said, the legal leader does not make the rules on his own. Instead he takes the help of his subordinates. Secondly, his power is obeyed only when the people find it legal. In a place of legal authority, people are neither followers nor subjects. They are simply known as citizens or residents. As for the leader, he is known as the superior. His terms are limited just like his power.

Browse Theories of:

Luther Halsey Gulick 
Mary Parker Follett
Frederick Taylor

Theories of Luther Halsey Gulick Made Simple

Luther Halsey Gulick was perhaps too modern for 30's and 50's. He agreed to Woodrow Wilson's statement that organizational structure should be established in a way useful to both government and private administrations, yet was critical of large government and officials who thought of themselves as experts and often showed lack of interest in hearing the public.

Throughout the years, he changed his views on the size of the government. But by personality, he was not a flip flopper. He emphasized adjustments and this is what brought changes to what he preached. In short, he was interested in bringing change according to the demands of the situations. We can imagine him as someone who to some extent irritated the elite conventionalists, for his theories were connected to democratic values. Gulick was a public administrator and professor. In 1937, he was chosen by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to serve in Brownlow Committee made to revamp the executive branch of federal government. Gulick's contributions to public administration studies earned him the title of Dean of Public Administration. As we go over his theories, you will agree that he truly is the rightful owner of that title.

The Cooperative Enterprise

According to Gulick, pluralistic society and democratic government go hand in hand. Together, they are able to extract a vast number of variables which then bring in a wide variety of ideas for positive changes. Government equals to security for both rich and poor. It reduces crimes and clashes. This is what Gulick points out in his writing. According to him, arrogant people can coexist together only because the government is their mediator. Businesses sometimes take the wrong path, making the market system fail. The mess can only be cleaned by the government. After all, every crisis needs intervention. But this does not mean that the power of the government should remain centralized. Instead, effort should be made in inviting the private businesses to work with those from public administrations for causes that help all in the country. He calls it cooperative enterprise.

In Gulick's view, citizens have the right to demand government to work on what they think is important

Planning must be central to it, but government should not do it in centralized manner. Instead effort must be made in hearing groups interested in this plan. In other words, planning should be done with the help of these private businesses, experts of the field, interest groups and of course, the public. Working towards something new is challenging especially when it is beyond the scope of expert's knowledge. That is why, Gulick suggests implementation of adjustment.

Ideal Government 

Just like most intellectuals, Gulick had his own definition for ideal government. According to him, it must have unified management for efficiency and democratic values. This is how he described it:

• Chief executive and his officials design the policy. They create the proposal to be sent to legislatures.
• The legislatures review it for either approval or rejection
• If the policy is approved, the executive embarks on making it effective
• The citizens are involved in influencing how the policy is designed and approved through interest groups and political parties.

Role of Administration

Administration can never be separate from government. That is what Gulick preached. In his words, the idea is impractical and impossible. This is because the administration implements policies, builds programs, allocates finance, coordinates and even is involved in governmental auditing process. In every way, all of them prove that administration is fully attached to government. Do you see the reality now? People during his time were stubbornly preaching that administration was to be strictly separate from the government. By listing the roles of administrators, Gulick proved that they were not being practical in their statement.

Yet according to him, politicians are somewhat different from such officials in the sense that they have the right to take the ultimate decisions about the policies. So it is more like politicians do the thinking and administrators act on it.  For the system to have a flow, there must be a good understanding of how things work. That is why, he adds that administrators must learn the strategies of the political side of the government system. He probably was the first person to recommend a change in the definition of public administrator.

Roles of Government Officials

Gulick also called for a change in the description of major government officials. How they must be?
Politician: They maintain the balance in the system by influencing the office holders, knowledge workers and interest groups to compromise with one another.
Political appointee: This person is creates link between the government knowledge worker and public.
Administrator: He studies the policy and then interprets, and implements it. Despite the fact that he takes the action, if the policy fails he is not responsible.
Technician: He deals only with technical concepts.

Principles of Administrative Reform

During Gulick's time, federal problems were solved through electoral process and yes, this happened frequently. On the other hand, agencies and committees had more than one leader. To make things worse, people did not think they required a true expert. They believed anyone could lead. Gulick called this formula flawed because it failed to produce the government people were hoping for and agencies never got out of the tent of energy deficiency. Simply put, it was a true situation of too many cooks spoiling the broth. To make things worse, the cooks were inexperienced. That is the reason why Gulick called for a reform through the 11 principles given below:
1. All projects that match should have only one unit.
2. Agencies must be combined into a small number departments.
3. Each unit must have its own skilled, experienced and responsible leader.
4. The leader's responsibility should match his power.
5. The top portion of every major department must employ officials to evaluate performance.
6. The functions must be approved by a special official.
7. Minimize the number of elected officials.
8. Administrative tasks should not be given to those in the boards and commissions. They are to be connected to only quasi legislative and judicial projects.
9. An elected chief executive must be the main leader of all the administrative tasks. He is responsible to voters or representatives.
10. Administrative department leaders must be selected or rejected by only chief executive.
11. The chief executive must employ a group of officials to research on the departments and look for ways to bring improvement in operations.

How Government Offices Use Research Data?

Data analysis is an essential part of public administration. Without it, no policy can come into existence. Without it, implementation is very impossible. Without it, there is no way to eliminate an outdated policy. Without it, government cannot function properly. Without it, a country may start to go towards corruption and destruction. Yes, it is that important. But how is it used?

Summing up the problem

Some issues are too small for attention. Others are big and thus, need immediate response in the form of either policy or assistance. Do you see how size of the problem matters? Usually, the problem is weighed based on its effect on a vast majority of the population. Public agencies must also find out the reason behind it and for this, they must rely on data. Policy analysis goes hand in hand with it, for the policy itself needs a description in the form of how massive the problem is followed by its attributes.

Example: Majority of the lipsticks have lead. There was one time when women began to get louder about it. To see how big the lead problem is, FDA began testing the lipsticks in their lab.

Forming the policy and program

Before designing a policy or program, it is important to find out how much it will cost,  the problems it will go after, targeted population, geographic locations and much more. All of them can be answered in numeric form. The handyman here, of course, is data analysis.

Example: A tornado damages a city. It is now government's job to help the residents with aid. But how much to give? The answer can be extracted by surveying the damages.

Tracking the active policy and program

An active program or policy generates data continuously. Majority of them are analyzed at least for two reasons. First of all, they reveal room for improvement. Secondly, they prevent abuse and waste. In brief, data analysis helps find out whether the policy or the program is doing its job properly.

Example: A new program is put into action to help mentally challenged patients. A specific department is also there to oversee it. Government wants to make sure that the fund is being used appropriately by the officials. For this,  all their account activities are tracked.

Summing up the outcome

Eventually, government wishes to know whether the policy or program has eliminated the problem in question. This can only be done by looking at the outcome. Nothing does it better than data analysis.

Example: Health insurance policy was changed a few years ago. Has it worked to create a healthy country? This can be answered by looking at the number of people visiting doctors regularly.

What is Policy Sciences of Tyranny?

Policy sciences of tyranny is connected to elite society formed from a mixture of high profiled elected officials, businesses and so called so called expert administrators. The main meaning of the term does revolve around oppression, but not in military sense. The idea is that when policies are made behind closed door, the government officials get freedom to manipulate them in a way that they serve mainly the elite society and not the general public. When we say closed door, we mean not allowing citizens to participate in the policy making process.

Both old public administration and new public management are prone to avoiding the voices of the citizens. Hence, they are more inclined to practicing policy sciences of tyranny sometimes without being aware. In real world, certain decisions taken by the government do fall the formula of this theory. After discussing them, we will head to the matter of why experts urge government to be scared of this theory.

Examples of Policy Sciences of Tyranny

• Outsourced jobs: Bush administration made it easier. While the elite society benefited from it, the average citizens lost jobs.
• Food and Drugs Administration's policy towards cosmetics: Cosmetics are not fully regulated by FDA. Much of the power is in the hands of the private industry. In fact, at present, FDA is still following a law made in 1938 for these specific products. Attempts have been made to get it revised, but somehow, they are always forced to be abandoned. Thus, safety of cosmetics remains a debate for citizens. They have no one to help.

Why Experts Ask Government to be Scared of It?

Although at this point, complete elimination of old public administration and new public management is not possible, government is recommended to lessen the impact of this theory. The reasons are:

• Citizens lose trust in government.
• Increase in crime rate. Both rich and poor may contribute to it.
• Too much power goes in the hands of the elite society which at one point can make the government crippled.
• Public outrage changing into revolution. This is a serious matter. A revolution can dethrone the government.

What Is Political-administrative Split?

In a world of true old public administration dwells the political-administrative split. It refers to the separation of elected government officials and administrators.

It goes by the rule of bureaucracy emphasizing hierarchical decision making process and requiring administrators to just focus on implementing the rules set by the elected government officials. They have no right to work with citizens. They do not need to meet one. As instructed, they must remain neutral at the time of implementation. Yet accountability cannot be thrown out of the window. In fact, this works in hierarchical way also and thus it has a model given below. With all honesty, government structure is not this restrained. The issues given after the model will explain it.

The Accountability Pyramid of Political-administrative Split

• People bring politicians to office through voting.
• Politicians make rules and thus, are accountable to people. 
• Administrators implement the rules and remain accountable to politicians.

Issues of Political-administrative Split

Under this theory, administrators remain unaware of how to establish a relationship with the elected officials, making it difficult for them to participate in policy process. After all, they are to stay neutral. Secondly, they take a huge amount of risks. This is because according to this theory, if they attempt to work with politicians within policy formulation stage they risk getting fired. With no proper guideline on the relationship and inability to work with the citizens, administrators are left to come up with law interpretations that do not fully serve the public interest. 

They can still make themselves look fair by pointing out the fact that the written laws are vague and that they have the knowledge on how to implement them. Actually, this is the reason why, a time came when government saw logic in hiring experts to do the administration work. This led to the birth of scientific approach to handling the implementation process. But all in all, it began to make elected officials appear less knowledgeable and participation of the citizens less important. The elected officials certainly did not lose their grip on the power. They still remained where they were. However, it was the group of citizens who lost the power to say anything, for their decisions were then taken by the experts.

There was actually a time when this rule was very much in action. Back then, the term implementation did not exist. It was just that the administrators listened to the instructions of the elected officials and went ahead performing their task. They were not required to work on adding new rules to the policies. Small amount of variation was okay, but this did not impact the overall structure of the policies. The idea that political-administrative split was superficial began to surface after the 40's. Still the implementation process was not a topic of discussion. The focus remained drown beneath the overall management structure of the government departments.

It was in 1973 when the term implementation began to steal the limelight. The credit for this goes to Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, the writers of Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland.

In this book, they explained the implementation issues which caused a massive project of Federal Economic Development Administration to fail miserably in California. They argued that it is difficult for a policy to turn into a reality without giving thought to how it must be implemented.

The Truth About Political-administrative Split

Only intellectuals thought this theory existed in real life. Many policies are so complex that the administrators have to let their judgement get in the way of implementation. Whether they are following the law is another issue where political-administrative split stumbles. If the administrations do not use their judgement they risk breaking the laws of the country. This is true especially in case of completely new policies. If it is hard to understand this for you take a look at some of the laws made before the 70's. Ask yourself how social security law served public interest if the administrators had no way to interact with the public.

What is Policy Network Theory?

This world is evolving everyday. Humans are getting more opinionated and sensitive to social issues. Economy cannot be ignored either. With so many global problems happening at the same time, its fate remains uncertain. What can we say about the prices? Coke no more costs just 5 cents. Technology, on the other hand, is making things convenient for all. They don't affect only the average person on the street, but also government. The trend we have now asks us to have cushion. Failure to respond to this means hurting the mother-ship. This is how government feels. To lessen the damage, it now has to bend and this is where policy network theory does its work.

As we know by now,  every policy has influence from a wide variety of groups such as think tanks, industry lobbyists, media and many more. What about programs? They are not fully in hands of government agencies. Some are contracted out to nonprofit and for profit organizations. Many policies make this a requirement. The reason can be anything ranging from making sure that the right group of people receive the assistance to getting things done in cost efficient manner. So you see, government no more operates on its own. Its role is reduced to being an actor among many actors working on the same goal. This togetherness is called policy network. In a formal way, it can be expressed as the network of main governments, public agencies, private companies, nonprofit organizations, think tanks and citizens. 

Theoretically, policy network is at odds with the concept of old public administration. The main issue is that while the first one emphasizes that power must be dispersed among all those who are involved in making of the policy, the latter depends highly on bureaucratic steps of decision making. As a result, policy network prefers the definition of governance over government. This, however, does not mean an end to the power of this entity. Actually, that would bring anarchy in the system, for when too many groups work together towards one goal without much restriction, competition of power and manipulation become apparent.

Policy network demands government to exercise the power through governance in a way that it encourages shared values and fair choices through facilitation and proper allocation of resources Making of rules and regulation is another thing that needs to be involved in this so that groups within the network do everything in legal way, going in favor of public interest.

How Federal Budget Money Is Spent

Federal spending in the United States usually represents about 20 percent of the total monetary value of all goods produced in the nation during a given year. Simply put, the enormous size of the nation's economy exists because federal spending exceeds the gross domestic product of nearly every country in the world. This spending is done in three ways and thus has four titles.

Mandatory Spending
Mandatory spending are those government payments that are enacted by law, and are not required to have any approval by Congress. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and interest are by far the three largest mandatory payments on the national debt. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid qualifying recipients are entitled to receive benefits every year which is why they are often referred to as "entitlement" payments.

Since 1960, the mandatory payments have skyrocketed. In 1960, they accounted for about 30 percent of government expenditures. Four decades later, they account for close to 70 percent of the federal budget. The Government Accounting Office(GAO) estimates that it will account for 90 percent of the entire federal budget by 2025 if it is left unchanged. Lawmakers are feeling immense pressure by trying to find an alternative way to fund future payment programs without causing more spending of them.

Discretionary Spending
Discretionary spending is simply the funding that requires approval by Congress, who determines the payments for this kind of spending. Funding levels of discretionary spending can be raised, lowered, or done away with completely during the budget process. A major difference from mandatory spending is that discretionary spending must be appropriated every year or the money will not be allocated.

National defense is the biggest discretionary spending expenditure. Defense spending decreased after the cold war in the early 90's in both percentage of discretionary spending as well as overall dollars for nearly a decade. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, defense spending is at an all-time high which it now accounts for about half of non-mandatory spending. In 2005, more than $400 million was spent on national defense.

Department of Homeland Security is another discretionary spending item that has seen a rapid increase. Homeland security is the second most discretionary spending expenditure behind only national defense.

Pork-Barrel Spending
Pork-barrel spending is when a particular member's district has a project(s) that benefits a politician(s) in a campaign or during the voting process. Those projects are often hid inside mandatory bills so that the public or possibly members of Congress are unaware of them. Usually committee and subcommittee chairmen are the biggest culprits of this particular kind of spending.

Most members use pork-barrel projects to reward campaign contributors as well as increase their own popularity. The Big Dig in Boston was one of the biggest pork-barrel projects ever that costed $14.6 million to relocate a highway underground.

Deficits, Debt, and Raising Revenue
Annual deficits and the increasing public debt have been on the increase nearly every year since the early twentieth century. Deficits occur when government spending exceeds revenue. Spending goals and revenue are often incorrect because they are estimated a year in advance. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, federal spending increased unexpectedly while tax revenues fell very sharply because of fighting terrorism. As a result, several years of surpluses were gone a few months after.

In order to prevent the economy from going into a recession, the government will sometimes increase spending to get out of it. or to prevent it. In both 2001 and 2003, the government did that with a combination of tax cuts, one-time tax rebates, and discretionary spending. A two-year recession ended in 1993 after a similar tactic that the government used.

The national debt is the accumulation of years of deficits. Currently, the national debt is just under $9 trillion. Without a national debt, other expenditures could be addressed. According to many economists, large deficit spending slows economic growth because long-term interest rates increase. Others say it has no real impact on the economy.

Revenue is money from taxes, fees, borrowing, and other sources that the government collects. In 2003, about 40 percent of all revenues came from income taxes, and 35 percent came from Social Security taxes.

Raising marginal tax rates on income, payroll tax increase, government spending, and elimination of corporate subsidies are just a few of the many ways that lawmakers can increase revenue in our government.

Agenda Setting Process Explained

Agenda setting is the first element in policy cycle and can be somewhat complicated in a country where people's freedom is the culture. Government cannot personally go around solving each person's problem. In fact, unnecessary intervention can get the government officials sued. For instance, in US, we have the constitution which gives citizens some special rights like freedom of speech, expression, right to bear arms and so on. There are also certain rules designed to prevent the government from getting overly powerful. But constitution does not exactly have medication for every issue and government does not have time to go around tracking them. Then, how will they know how to get to the agenda to design a new policy? The answer lies in agenda setting process consisting of three parts. Before understanding them it is important to know first the true meaning of agenda setting.

Meaning of Agenda Setting

It is the process through which an issue floats from one political source to another, eventually demanding consideration from the government.

The Process

Problem seen: The actor in this part can be anyone ranging from concerned citizen and interest group to political party.

Mass witness: Public is made aware of the problem by newspapers, news channels or massive uproar in the form of protest. At this stage, the problem is made to appear dramatic.

Demand for action: There will always be a group of journalists, news reporters and interest groups forcing government to pay attention to the problem. They actually do this job so well that at this stage the problem is given the shape of a national problem. Government cannot overlook this and thus is compelled to take action through a policy.

Theories of Frederick Taylor Made Simple

Not many basic management books give a proper idea about Frederick Taylor's scientific management. They usually paraphrase his principles without giving much thought to details.

It is not that they are fully eluded. The problem is in dull wordings. Let's cut through them to learn what truly is in his scientific management. His biggest disappointment was inefficiency at work.

He believed scientific management principles could solve it. He was able to acquire them only after careful experiment and observation.

His findings can be found in his book The Principles of Scientific Management. He tried promoting his ideas, but his arrogance and temper did not allow people to agree with them. Actually the ideas became popular because of other intellectuals. They gave birth to what is known as Taylorism.

What is Scientific Management?

According to Taylor, it is the idea of being sure of what the workers are supposed to do. And when they do it, the manager must make sure that their methods are best as well as cheapest.

4 Principles of Scientific Management

Taylor observed that there was a huge gap between the managers and workers. In fact, workers were allowed to find their own way of doing work. This turned out be a benefit for them in the sense that they intentionally worked slower to make sure that the work was never completed. This way they kept their positions intact. Meanwhile, the managers did not care as to how much each worker was to perform. If there was a a requirement to change parts of the performance, they relied on the history of their prior production results. This was called rule of thumb method. He also noticed that the workers were using same shovels for multiple tasks. This method was inefficient. To handle something bigger, a bigger shovel was needed. The smaller version was not made to carry anything heavy. Yet the workers used them because neither them nor the managers thought they were hindrance to productivity.

Small shovel cannot carry something huge. This kind of simple element was ignored by early managers.

Taylor's principles of scientific management sought to replace them for the purpose of achieving efficiency in production. They are as follows:

1. Development of  management science:  This emphasizes the importance of studying the job of each worker. Effort is to be made in acquiring knowledge on every aspect of a worker's job so that management could manage their work effectively.

2. Selecting and training workers through scientific methods: This is linked to learning the abilities of each worker. Additionally, the managers are to study the performance of the worker to find his strengths and weaknesses. His strength should be rewarded through training and advancement of opportunities.

3. Good relationship between the management and workers: In other words, managers and workers should cooperate with one another. They must work as a team.

4. Fair and equal division of work between management and workers: This means that managers will scientifically find out how a job must be done and workers are to follow their instructions.

Time and Motion Study is the Way to Go

Back in Taylor's time, there were no management books on efficient production. But he had to come up with a way to show how his scientific management was to put to work. His engineer mind came up with what is known as time and motion study. This is how it goes:

• Workers are to be given all the right tools and work environment.
• The major work is to be examined and broken down into small parts by the management.
• When the work begins management inspects is to find its weak and efficient movements. The weak ones are then to be dropped to boost performance of the workers.
• Next is to find the fastest, yet efficient way of doing the work. For this, the management will use a stopwatch and observes the workers at work.In this situation, the physical movements are to be given priority. They must be inspected to find the appropriate motions. Also when the work is going on, workers are not to be allowed to take a sudden break. In brief, they must carry on working.
• The basic movements found from the observation are to be then arranged in right order and put in a category with emphasis on how much time it takes to do the work.
• Management is to make a report on all the efficient steps of the work, tagging them as instructions and performance standard that all workers are to follow. According to Taylor, this report should be also used in training new workers.

Browse Theories of:
Max Weber 
Luther Halsey Gulick 
Mary Parker Follett