INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - Deneme Sınavı - 5

The 1960s and 1970s saw some interest—particularly in the New Public Administration—in theories of democratic administration, including flat hierarchies, worker self-management, project management, matrix organizations, and the elimination of competition as an incentive for work. These theories have had some effect on practices and are commonly found in contemporary “good public management” models.

The social equity theory found in the New Public Administration of the 1960s and 1970s has also had a long shelf life. It came along at a time of high concern for fairness in the workplace, equal employment opportunities, affirmative action, and comparable worth.

The Hawthorne experiments and the work of Barnard introduced a human relations approach that forever changed management theory.

Role theorists observe and measure the persisting patterns of behavior of persons in common roles; they especially study the relations between persons in particular roles, both inside and outside the organization.

Distinctions between leadership and management are sometimes found, the most famous being the Warren Bennis couplet “The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing”. Bennis argues that there is too much management and not enough leadership, particularly in American business. There is not much convincing evidence that there is an important distinction between leadership and management, aside from labeling some things as leadership and therefore important, and other things as management and therefore less important.

It is essential to recognize that contract management is a growing and important form of public management. It has made for smaller government in the sense of there being fewer employees. But it has not made government a smart buyer. Indeed, a smart-buying government must have a somewhat different kind of bureaucracy, one with many more frontline bureaucrats trained, hired, and rewarded to do contract management.

Contracting may also have perverse effects on policy outcomes. The firm monitoring structures often present in contracts can create conflicts between management and workers, and distort the incentives for behavior on the part
of the contractor. Emphasis on short-term production over long-term goals, or on maximizing output while minimizing costs, can create policy failure, since contracts such as these simply ignore the importance of public management.

There is little doubt that the NPM (New Public Management) has reconnected theory to practice. At all levels of government, public managers are reinventing government, reengineering government, attempting to be entrepreneurial, attempting to better serve their customers, attempting to be more innovative, attempting to take risks, and attempting to add value. It has replaced the old principles of public administration with a new set of principles, or doctrines.

In the contemporary theory of management in public administration, three particularly important concepts/metaphors dominate: leadership, contracting out, and governance.

As can be seen in the table titled “Comparisons of traditional and contemporary principles of management in public administration”, all have changed except for employment principles.

The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) influenced the traditional management theory.

Acceptance Theory of Authority was identified and set out by Chester Barnard (The Functions of the Executive, 1938).

All the options except Option B are Theory Y assumptions.

Only Option A is one of McGregor's Theory Y assumptions.