260 10: Conclusion: A Bright Future for Th eory?
postmodern theory a set of unique vantage points for examining administration.
Th ese have created opportunities for a wide range of new scholarly directions in
public administration—feminism and the push for more interactive forms of ad-
ministration being notable examples. For example, Shannon Portillo and Leisha
DeHart-Davis (2009) have shown that support for administrative hierarchy is in
fact gendered. Although their methodology (surveys) is positivist in nature, the
theoretical arguments have a postmodern, if not feminist, basis. Work by Mere-
dith Newman, Mary Guy, and Sharon Mastracci on emotional labor has generated
considerable attention in public administration and is clearly in the postmodernist
tradition (2009; Mastracci, Newman, and Guy 2006). Similar to Portillo and De-
Hart-Davis, Ken Meier, Mastracci, and Kristin Wilson (2006) use positivist meth-
odology (multiple regression) to examine the gendered aspect of emotional labor.
Given postmodern theory’s explicit doubts about some of the core purposes of
theory as they have been defi ned here, it is hard, and perhaps unfair, to judge this
theory using the same yardsticks as the other frameworks examined by this book.
For example, in Table 10.1’s summary assessment, postmodern theory’s replica-
bility is judged as low. But should this be viewed as a weakness in an intellectual
framework that emphasizes the importance of individual contexts and explic-
itly rejects the notion that any theory can universally transcend these contexts?
Perhaps the biggest problem with postmodern theory is that its attachment to
relativism makes it more a way of thinking about the world than a tool to explain
it. Scholars attracted to more positivist goals—for example, fi nding systematic
explanations of human and institutional behavior across a variety of empirical
cases—view postmodernism as a disorienting intellectual gyroscope and an unre-
liable explanatory compass.
Although postmodern theory is unlikely to ever rest comfortably in frame-
works with explicit or implicit positivist goals, its service to public administration
is considerable. At a minimum, it has provided a forceful critique about how to
conceptualize and think about the core elements of the discipline.
Decision Th eory
Decision theory is probably the most mature and empirically informed formal
theory in public administration. Th is may be a result of its origins, which, like
those of rational choice theory, are clearly anchored in the well-developed con-
cepts of rationality associated with neoclassical economics. Decision theory, how-
ever, is not simply an economic framework applied to the public sector but a
distinct model indigenous to public administration.
Th e father of decision theory is Simon, who laid down the basic concepts
and logic in his classic work Administrative Behavior (1947/1997). At the heart
of Simon’s argument was the proposition that the basic objective of any purpo-
sive organization was to discover or defi ne those purposes and take the neces-
sary actions to fulfi ll them. Decisionmaking describes the process that links an