The Public Administration Theory Primer

140 6: Postmodern Th eory

knowledge based on superstition or prophecy and replaced it with knowledge
based on science. All modern academic disciplines and fi elds of science are rooted
in the Enlightenment and in an epistemology based on the objective observation
of phenomena and the description, either quantitatively or qualitatively, of phe-
nomena. Modernist epistemology assumes discernible patterns of order in both
the physical and the social worlds, and in the social world it assumes a positivist
and rational association between means and ends. Modernism is the pursuit of

TABLE 6.1 (continued)

rational structure of bureaucratic functioning;

again calculability is undermined, traditional

organizational planning modes are useless.

New Paradigm

Natural selection and associated evolutionary

models have received sufficient attention by

organizational theorists to argue that the

morphogenetic metaphor for organizational

change is more tolerable than other

characteristics of the new paradigm. The

stumbling block is the extent to which

rational selection dominates the use of the

metaphor. The conflict arises around the

issue of calculability in planning for or

anticipating organizational change.

Objective

x

Perspectival Classic Paradigm

Weber believed that bureaucracy portrayed a

natural order; such a belief assumes the

notion that there is an objective reality to be

discovered out there; as Parsons noted,

Weber linked the methodology of science to

the substantive problems of rational action—

that linkage led him to both a positivist and

bureaucratic position.

New Paradigm

Modifications in this characteristic are more

apparent than real. No one denies the

impact of human constructions of reality on

organizational behavior, but the theorists,

researchers, and practioners are solid in their

faith in a discoverable, objective reality out

there.

Assembled

x

Morphogenic Classic Paradigm

A morphogenetic metaphor for

organizational change was unimagined in the

bureaucratic paradigm; the spontaneous,

unpredictable, and discontinuous nature of

the change process challenges the basic

Source: Adapted from David L. Clark 1985: 66–67