108 5: Th eories of Public Management
Communication with external publics ordinarily involves segmenting publics
and specifi cally designed procedures for communicating agency positions, per-
formance, services, and so forth. Agency communication with an interest group
would diff er from its communication with a legislative body or committee, or an
individual member of that body, for example. Eff ective agency communication
with publics has as much to do with receiving as with sending signals, most agen-
cies being much better at the latter than the former. Incoming messages are oft en
highly fi ltered, agency managers receiving bits and pieces of information but of-
ten not understanding the full substance or meaning of signals sent by publics.
Selective listening is a persistent problem in public organizations (Garnett 1992).
Evolution of Management Th eory
Th e most signifi cant progress in management theory from the 1950s through the
1970s was in developing and testing middle-range theories, such as group, role,
and communication theories. Most of this work has been in the study of busi-
ness management rather than public management and has now fully migrated to
our literature. Th e middle-range theories, particularly group, role, and commu-
nication theory, are now the guts of management theory in business and public
administration.
Th e text by Herbert Simon, Donald Smithburg, and Victor Th ompson pub-
lished in 1950 was far ahead of its competition, then and now, mostly because it
used middle-range theory generously. For a generation, this text was the source
of most faculty lectures on theories of management in the public sector (Simon
1991). Most of the texts written in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s treat budgeting
and personnel staff functions as if they were management, and most do not in-
clude a separate treatment of management theory, let alone the middle-range the-
ories that contribute to it.
Th e most complete treatment of middle-range theories in public adminis-
tration is found in the now-out-of-print Administrative Organization by John
Pfi ff ner and Frank P. Sherwood (1960). In it, the authors set out the formal struc-
tures of public organizations and then use the concept of overlays to describe
how organizations actually behave and managers actually function. Overlays de-
scribe modifying processes and conditions and how they infl uence behavior and
outcomes. A public organization is, for example, understood to have an impor-
tant “group overlay” that should inform managers of group behavior; indeed,
an eff ective manager should have a rudimentary theory of groups to help with
management decisions and action. Th ere are also role overlays, communication
overlays, problem-solving overlays, and, most important, power overlays. Pfi ff -
ner and Sherwood’s book stands as the most complete midcentury treatment of
management theory in public administration. Th at it was in print only from 1960
to 1967 is evidence of the general lack of interest in the subject of management in
the scholarly public administration of that era.