Looking for Postmodern Public Administration Th eory 157
see things diff erently, now popularly and tritely referred to as “thinking outside
the box,” fi nding new ways to organize, encouraging personal empowerment, and
fi nding new ways to self-organize. When connected to theory and research meth-
odology, creative management could be described as essentially an action- learning
model or ethnographic research in which the analyst/interventionist not only
engages in research but also presumes to help the organization learn to improve
itself.
A second version of the postmodern imagination perspective is associated
with leadership and strategic management. Th is is the call for public adminis-
trators to improve their capacities to see around the corner, to have greater vi-
sion, and to take risks. Again, this is a staple in the standard training/intervention
manual.
Although imagination and vision are central to the postmodern argument, in
many ways this dimension of the argument is premodern. It was, aft er all, the vi-
sions of those who presumed to speak for the deity that characterized the organiz-
ing forces and the exercise of power in much of the premodern world. And, too,
it was those who held power by the mysteries of lineage who controlled the land
and the armies of the premodern world. If the logic of rationality has weaknesses,
and it does, and if organizing and managing the public sector through rationality
result in less than entirely eff ective organizations, and they do, where will the
vision and imagination of postmodern public administration theory take us? Re-
ferring to Plato, Farmer maintains, “Th e best government is lawless and the true
statesman is one whose rule is adapted to each individual case. In postmodernity,
this development will take place in a new context, one that Baudrillard calls the
transpolitical” (1995, 177). Th e transpolitical is “the obscenity of all structures in
a structureless universe . . . the obscenity of information in a defactualized uni-
verse . . . the obscenity of space in a promiscuity of networks” (Baudrillard 1990,
163). Th is brings us to that element of postmodern public administration that has
tinges of either the antistate or the antijurisdiction, or is openly antistate.
Although it is a rather grand generalization, the overall postmodern perspec-
tive tends to be somewhat antiauthoritarian and antistate. It may seem curious,
therefore, that the fi eld of public administration, a fi eld closely identifi ed with
the state and with the exercise of authority, would include several scholars who
are attempting to build a postmodern theory of the subject. Th ese scholars, many
of them already cited in this chapter, tend toward a soft or modifi ed postmodern
perspective, a less shrill and dogmatic view of the state and the exercise of state
authority. We chose here to use elements of the postmodern public administra-
tion perspective on the state and on authority that, in our view, make important
contributions to understanding modern public administration. Th e postmodern-
ists are most attuned to the weaknesses of the nation-state and to an open and
direct criticism of the state. Because of this, postmodern public administration
theory comes the closest to thoughtful perspectives on one of the most important
contemporary issues facing the fi eld: the declining salience of the state.