Traditional Management Th eory Th rust Forward 105
ways that foster, rather than frustrate, achievement of organizational goals, and
that money and other tangible goodies are oft en potent inducements.
But the rational choice theorists miss the other half of Barnard—and no
small part of human nature to boot. Th ey discount the importance of what Bar-
nard termed the “moral factor.” . . . More broadly, they discount the tug of social
sentiments and relegate the effi cacy of moral motivations to a limbo of lesser
behavioral reality.
In sum, rational choice theorists of bureaucracy underestimate the propen-
sity of people to redefi ne their self-interest in terms of the preferences of lead-
ers they respect, the well-being of co-workers they care about, and the survival
and reputation of organizations they labor for. It may well be true that under
most conditions, most bureaucrats, especially within government, follow nar-
row defi nitions of self-interest. But that is neither the whole story nor the most
important part of the story of what public servants—corrections offi cers, fi re
fi ghters, police offi cers, public health workers, social workers, and others—do
on a day-to-day basis. Even in the bowels of government agencies, there is more
self-sacrifi ce, and less self-interest, than rational choice theory allows. For the
principled agents of the BOP and other government bureaucracies Americans
can and should be proud and thankful. (1994, 288–289)Role Th eory
Social psychologists tend to defi ne all human organizations as role systems. In
observing organizations in action, we see that what are actually organized are the
acts of individuals in particular positions or offi ces. In role theory, each offi ce or
position is understood to be relational; that is, each offi ce is defi ned in its relation-
ship to others and to the organization as a whole, and oft en to the organization’s
purposes. Persons in roles exhibit essential persisting features of behavior, such
as the behavior of school superintendents, prison wardens, or data entry workers.
Role theorists observe and measure the persisting patterns of behavior of persons
in common roles; they especially study the relations between persons in particu-
lar roles, both inside and outside the organization. Each offi ceholder performs in
a role set, a contextual set of relationships with others who hold particular role
expectations toward the offi ceholder.
Perhaps the best-known study in role theory was in the public sector, a study
of school superintendents (Gross, Mason, and McEachern 1958). Persons and
groups in the superintendents’ role set include other internal roles, such as teach-
ers, principals, and members of the school board, as well as signifi cant external
roles, such as parents, parent-teacher organizations, business groups and lead-
ers, social and fraternal groups, the state offi ce of education, and so forth. School
superintendents behave according to perceived role expectations; in the best of
circumstances, superintendents’ perceived role expectations will be accurate and