The Proverbs of Administration

principles of good administration.' On the other hand, when factors of communication or faiths or loyalty are crucial to the making of a decision, the location of the decision in the organization is of great importance. The method of allocating decisions in the army, for instance, automatically provides (at least in the period prior to the actual battle) that each decision will be made where the knowledge is available for coordinating it with other decisions. Assigning Weights to the Criteria. A first step, then, in the overhauling of the proverbs of administration is to develop a vocabulary, along the lines just suggested, for the description of administrative organization. A second step, which has also been outlined, is to study the limits of rationality in order to develop a complete and comprehensive enumeration of the criteria that must be weighed in evaluating an administrative organization. The current proverbs represent only a fragmentary and unsystematized portion of these criteria. When these two tasks have been carried out, it remains to assign weights to the criteria. Since the criteria, or "proverbs," are often mutually competitive or contradictory, it is not sufficient merely to identify them. Merely to know, for example, that a specified change in organization will reduce the span of control is not enough to justify the change. This gain must be balanced against the possible resulting loss of contact between the higher and lower ranks of the hierarchy. Hence, administrative theory must also be concerned with the question of the 1 See, for instance, Robert A. Walker, The Planning Function in Urban Government (University of Chicago Press, 1941), pp. 166-75. Walker makes out a strong case for attaching the planning agency to the chief executive. But he rests his entire case on the rather slender reed that "as long as the planning agency is outside the governmental structure . . . planning will tend to encounter resistance from public officials as an invasion of their responsibility and jurisdiction." This "resistance" is precisely the type of non-rational loyalty which has been referred to previously, and which is certainly a variable. weights that are to be applied to these criteria-to the problems of their relative importance in any concrete situation. This question is not one that can be solved in a vacuum. Arm-chair philosophizing about administration-of which the present paper is an example-has gone about as far as it can profitably go in this particular direction. What is needed now is empirical research and experimentation to determine the relative desirability of alternative administrative arrangements. The methodological framework for this research is already at hand in the principle of efficiency. If an administrative organization whose activities are susceptible to objective evaluation be subjected to study, then the actual change in accomplishment that results from modifying administrative arrangements in these organizations can be observed and analyzed. There are two indispensable conditions to successful research along these lines. First, it is necessary that the objectives of the administrative organization under study be defined in concrete terms so that results, expressed in terms of these objectives, can be accurately measured. Second, it is necessary that sufficient experimental control be exercised to make possible the isolation of the particular effect under study from other disturbing factors that might be operating on the organization at the same time. These two conditions have seldom been even partially fulfilled in so-called "administrative experiments." The mere fact that a legislature passes a law creating an administrative agency, that the agency operates for five years, that the agency is finally abolished, and that a historical study is then made of the agency's operations is not sufficient to make of that agency's history an "administrative experiment." Modern American legislation is full of such "experiments" which furnish orators in neighboring states with abundant ammunition when 66 This content downloaded from 40.77.167.82 on Sat, 28 May 2016 04:56:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms PROVERBS OF ADMINISTRATION similar issues arise in their bailiwicks, but which provide the scientific investigator with little or nothing in the way of objective evidence, one way or the other. In the literature of administration, there are only a handful of research studies that satisfy these fundamental conditions of methodology-and these are, for the most part, on the periphery of the problem of organization. There are, first of all, the studies of the Taylor group which sought to determine the technological conditions of efficiency. Perhaps none of these is a better example of the painstaking methods of science than Taylor's own studies of the cutting of metals.' Studies dealing with the human and social aspects of administration are even rarer than the technological studies. Among the more important are the whole series of studies on fatigue, starting in Great Britain during World War I and culminating in the Westinghouse experiments.2 In the field of public administration, almost the sole example of such experimentation is the series of studies that have been conducted in the public welfare field to determine the proper case loads for social workers.3 Because, apart from these scattered examples, studies of administrative agencies have been carried out without benefit of lF. W. Taylor, On the Art of Cutting Metals (American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1907). 2 Great Britain, Ministry of Munitions, Health of Munitions Workers Committee, Final Report (H.M. Stationery Office, 1918); F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Harvard University Press, 1939). sEllery F. Reed, An Experiment in Reducing the Cost of Relief (American Public Welfare Administration, 1937); Rebecca Staman, "What Is the Most Economical Case Load in Public Relief Administration?" control or of objective measurements of results, they have had to depend for their recommendations and conclusions upon a priori reasoning proceeding from "principles of administration." The reasons have already been stated why the "principles" derived in this way cannot be more than "proverbs." Perhaps the program outlined here will appear an ambitious or even a quixotic one. There should certainly be no illusions, in undertaking it, as to the length and deviousness of the path. It is hard to see, however, what alternative remains open. Certainly neither the practitioner of administration nor the theoretician can be satisfied with the poor analytic tools that the proverbs provide him. Nor is there any reason to believe that a less drastic reconversion than that outlined here will rebuild those tools to usefulness. It may be objected that administration cannot aspire to be a "science"; that by the nature of its subject it cannot be more than an "art." Whether true or false, this objection is irrelevant to the present discussion. The question of how "exact" the principles of administration can be made is one that only experience can answer. But as to whether they should be logical or illogical there can be no debate. Even an "art" cannot be founded on proverbs. 4 Social Work Technique 117-21 (May-June, 1938); Chicago Relief Administration, Adequate Staff Brings Economy (American Public Welfare Association, 1939); Constance Hastings and Saya S. Schwartz, Size of Visitor's Caseload as a Factor in Efficient Administration of Public Assistance (Philadelphia County Board of Assistance, 1939); Simon et al., Determining Work Loads for Professional Staff in a Public Welfare Agency (Bureau of Public Administration, University of California, 1941). 67 This content downloaded from 40.77.167.82 on Sat, 28 May 2016 04:56:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms