102 5: Th eories of Public Management
to the resulting nepotism and spoils. He argued that rational bureaucracy prac-
tices a specialization of labor. Jobs are broken down into routine, well-defi ned
tasks so that workers can perfect those tasks and so that job applicants can be
tested in specialized areas to meet formal qualifi cations. He described the formal
rules, procedures, and record-keeping characteristics of bureaucracies as well as
their scalar, or hierarchic, characteristics. Th e bureaucracy, he argued, is imper-
sonal and rational because individual selection and promotion are strictly on the
basis of merit, scientifi cally determined.
Weber’s bureaucracy was more popular with academics than with practi-
tioners, and it is a theory of management only in the sense that it describes what
he identifi ed as characteristics commonly found in large and complex organi-
zations that have endured. Th e critique of Weber’s work is well established. Th e
ideal type bureaucracy tends to inertia, resists change, is mechanistic rather than
humanistic, and is subject to goal displacement and to trained incapacity. Bu-
reaucracy, in the present day, has become the object of a political derision that
blames the problems of government on the people and organizations that operate
public programs. And bureaucracy is an equally popular whipping boy for schol-
ars and consultants who seek to make public programs more eff ective. Despite all
this criticism, Weber is acknowledged to have developed one of the most empiri-
cally accurate and universal descriptions of the large-scale complex organization
in its time, a description that is oft en accurate even today.
No criticism of the principles of public administration was so devastating as
Simon’s critique (1946)—dismissing them as proverbs. He demonstrated that
the principles of public administration were contradictory, had little ability
to be generalized as theory, and were fuzzy and imprecise. In the place of the
principles of management, which he found theoretically wanting, he developed
what has become decision theory. Th is theory has had a profound infl uence on
public administration, most of it good. But the obliteration of the principles
of management as a straw man was not essential to the presentation of deci-
sion theory and to its eventual importance. Th e principles of management were
obliterated, nevertheless—at least in the theoretical sense.
From the late 1950s through the mid-1980s, little serious theoretical work was
done on management in public administration. Th e subject gradually disappeared
in the texts as well as in the pages of the Public Administration Review. Th e irony
is, of course, that management continued to be the core of public administration
practice. It is no wonder that during this period there was a growing distance
between public administration scholarship and theory and public administration
practice.
During this period, fortunately, a strong interest in management theory in so-
ciology, social psychology, and business administration continued. Much of this
work was in the so-called middle-range theories, particularly group theory, role
theory, and communications theory. More recently, this past decade has seen a
rebirth in interest in management in public administration, with the prolifi c work