Traditional Management Th eory Th rust Forward 109
Th e good news is that management theory is back. We start with this question:
Aft er fi fty years, has the positivist decision-theory founded by Simon met the
promise of a body of empirically verifi ed theory? Christopher Hood and Michael
Jackson (1991) argue that the results disappoint on three counts. First, the old
principles of management—Simon’s proverbs—persist and even fl ourish. Sec-
ond, there is no commonly accepted or agreed-upon theory or paradigm of man-
agement in public administration based on decision theory. Th ird, the positivist
administrative science of decision theory appears to have had little eff ect on the
day-to-day practices of public management, and the language, arguments, and
infl uence of the principles of management in public organizations remain sur-
prisingly “proverbial.” “It seems that Simon’s attack on the proverbial approach
to administration might never have existed, for all the practical infl uence it has
had on administrative argument” (1991, 21).
Building on his earlier “science of muddling through” critique of decision the-
ory, Charles Lindblom, with David K. Cohen (1979), found that “professional
social inquiry,” such as decision-science, seldom infl uences either public policy
or public administration. Instead, an interactive process of argument, debate,
the use of ordinary knowledge, and a form of social or organizational learning is
not only a more commonly found form of social problem solving; it is also safer
and less inclined to large-scale risk or error. Along the same lines, Giandomenico
Majone, in his brilliant Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process
(1989), demonstrates that the skills of policy analysis and the capacity to engage
in public problem solving are forms of a dialectic not unlike the arguments or de-
bates of generally informed participants. Th is dialectic is less like the authoritative
fi ndings of a scientist and more like the debate or argument of lawyers.
Finally, as a research methodology and an epistemology, positivism is now
less universally accepted than it was at midcentury. In part, this is because it has
not lived up to its promise. More importantly, positivism, particularly the logical
positivism that distinguished between values and facts, oft en failed to account for
values, norms, and traditional political philosophy, and sometimes didn’t even
acknowledge them. Nevertheless, positivism and the canons of social science
methodology and epistemology tend to dominate academic perspectives regard-
ing management theory in public administration. In the practices of public ad-
ministration, however, positivism is less infl uential.
As a way to distinguish between public management principles that are scien-
tifi cally verifi able and principles that are simply understood and accepted, Hood
and Jackson suggest that the principles are better understood as doctrines; and as
doctrines, they are powerfully infl uential in both debating and carrying out pol-
icy. Th ese doctrines, following Hood and Jackson, have six recurring features: (1)
Th ey are ubiquitous, found wherever there are organizations; (2) they are based
on “soft data” and “soft logic,” oft en lacking key elements and assumptions; (3)
they are a constantly shift ing “received view” or “received wisdom,” having more
to do with metaphor, rhetoric, packaging, and presentation and less to do with