PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

THEORY AND PRACTICE

Lester Lucero, LlB., Ph.D., LPT

1
 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

is both an academic discipline and a profession;

houses the implementation of government policy and an
academic discipline that studies this implementation and
that prepares civil servants for this work;
As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its
fundamental goal is to advance management and policies
so that government can function;

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 DEFINITIONS

"the management of public programs"

"translation of politics into the reality that citizens see
every day"
"the study of government decision making, the analysis
of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have
produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce
alternative policies”

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 CONCERNS

Centrally concerned with the organization of government

policies and programmes as well as the behavior of officials
(usually non-elected) formally responsible for their conduct;
Many unelected public servants can be considered to be
public administrators, including heads of city, county,
regional, state and federal departments such as municipal
budget directors, human resources (H.R.) administrators, city
managers, census managers, state [mental health] directors,
and cabinet secretaries;
Public administrators are public servants working in public
departments and agencies, at all levels of government;

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 MAX WEBER'S THEORY OF
BUREAUCRACY

Until the mid-20th century and the dissemination of the

German sociologist Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy
there was not much interest in a theory of public
administration;
The field is multidisciplinary in character; one of the
various proposals for public administration's sub-fields
sets out six pillars, including human resources,
organizational theory, policy analysis and statistics,
budgeting and ethics.
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 MAX WEBER'S THEORY OF
BUREAUCRACY…MORE
Public administration has no generally accepted
definition, because the scope of the subject is so great
and so debatable that it is easier to explain than define.
Public administration is a field of study (i.e., a
discipline) and an occupation. There is much
disagreement about whether the study of public
administration can properly be called a discipline, largely
because of the debate over whether public administration
is a subfield of political science or a subfield of
administrative science.

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 THE
NORTH AMERICAN INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATI
ON SYSTEM
DEFINITION
Public administration comprises establishments
primarily engaged in activities of a governmental
nature, that is, the enactment and judicial interpretation
of laws and their pursuant regulations, and the
administration of programs based on them.
This includes legislative activities, taxation, national
defense, public order and safety, immigration services,
foreign affairs and international assistance, and the
administration of government programs are activities
that are purely governmental in nature.

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 FROM THE ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE

public administration as a program that prepares

individuals to serve as managers in the executive arm of
local, provincial, city, and national government and that
focuses on the systematic study of executive
organization and management.
Includes instruction in the roles, development and
principles of public administration; the management of
public policy; executive-legislative relations; public
budgetary processes and financial management;
administrative law; public personnel management;
professional ethics and research methods.
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HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY
Dating back to Antiquity, Pharaohs, Kings and
Emperors have required pages, treasurers, and tax
collectors to administer the practical business of
government.
Prior to the 19th century, staffing of most public
administrations was rife with nepotism, favoritism, and
political patronage, which was often referred to as a
spoils system.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY

Public administrators have been the "eyes and ears" of

rulers until relatively recently. In medieval times, the
abilities to read and write, add and subtract were as
dominated by the educated elite as public employment.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY
Consequently, the need for expert civil servants whose
ability to read and write formed the basis for
developing expertise in such necessary activities as
legal record-keeping, paying and feeding armies and
levying taxes. As the European Imperialist age
progressed and the militarily powers extended their
hold over other continents and people, the need for a
sophisticated public administration grew.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY

The eighteenth-century noble, King Frederick William

I of Prussia, created professorates in Cameralism in an
effort to train a new class of public administrators. The
universities of Frankfurt an der Oder and University of
Halle were Prussian institutions emphasizing
economic and social disciplines, with the goal of
societal reform.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY

Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi was the most well-

known professor of Cameralism. Thus, from a Western
European perspective, Classic, Medieval, and
Enlightenment-era scholars formed the foundation of
the discipline that has come to be called public
administration.
Note: Cameralism (German: Kameralismus) was a German science
of administration in the 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed at
strong management of a centralized economy for mainly the state's
benefit. The discipline in its most narrow definition concerned the
management of the state's finances.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY

Lorenz von Stein, an 1855 German professor from

Vienna, is considered the founder of the science of
public administration in many parts of the world. In the
time of Von Stein, public administration was
considered a form of administrative law, but Von Stein
believed this concept too restrictive. Von Stein taught
that public administration relies on many pre-
established disciplines such as sociology, political
science, administrative law and public finance.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY

Lorenz von Stein called public administration an

integrating science, and stated that public
administrators should be concerned with both theory
and practice. He argued that public administration is a
science because knowledge is generated and evaluated
according to the scientific method.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY
In the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson is
considered the father of public administration. He first
formally recognized public administration in an 1887
article entitled "The Study of Administration." The
future president wrote that "it is the object of
administrative study to discover, first, what
government can properly and successfully do, and,
secondly, how it can do these proper things with the
utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost
either of money or of energy”.
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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY
Wilson was more influential to the science of public
administration than Von Stein, primarily due to an
article Wilson wrote in 1887 in which he advocated
four concepts:
Separation of politics and administration;
Comparative analysis of political and private
organizations;
Improving efficiency with business-like practices and
attitudes toward daily operations; and

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY
Improving the effectiveness of public service through
management and by training civil servants, merit-based
assessment.

The separation of politics and administration has been

the subject of lasting debate. The different perspectives
regarding this dichotomy contribute to differentiating
characteristics of the suggested generations of public
administration.

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY

By the 1920s, scholars of public administration had

responded to Wilson's solicitation and thus textbooks in this
field were introduced. A few distinguished scholars of that
period were, Luther Gulick, Lyndall Urwick, Henri Fayol,
Frederick Taylor, and others. Frederick Taylor (1856-1915),
another prominent scholar in the field of administration and
management also published a book entitled ‘The Principles
of Scientific Management’ (1911).

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 HISTORY: ANTIQUITY TO THE 19TH
CENTURY

He believed that scientific analysis would lead to the

discovery of the ‘one best way’ to do things and /or
carrying out an operation. This, according to him could
help save cost and time. Taylor’s technique was later
introduced to private industrialists, and later into the
various government organizations (Jeong, 2007).

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 US IN THE 1940S
The separation of politics and administration advocated
by Wilson continues to play a significant role in public
administration today. However, the dominance of this
dichotomy was challenged by second generation
scholars, beginning in the 1940s. Luther Gulick's fact-
value dichotomy was a key contender for Wilson's
proposed politics-administration dichotomy. In place of
Wilson's first generation split, Gulick advocated a
seamless web of discretion and interaction.

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 TAYLOR'S APPROACH

Taylor's approach is often referred to as Taylor's

Principles, and/or Taylorism. Taylor's scientific
management consisted of main four principles (Frederick
W. Taylor, 1911):
Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based
on a scientific study of the tasks;
Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee
rather than passively leaving them to train themselves;

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 TAYLOR'S APPROACH

Provide ‘Detailed instruction and supervision of each

worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task’
(Montgomery 1997); and
Divide work nearly equally between managers and
workers, so that the managers apply scientific management
principles to planning the work and the workers actually
perform the tasks.

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 TAYLOR'S APPROACH

Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce

his system (approach). It is only through enforced
standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the
best implements and working conditions, and
enforced cooperation that this faster work can be
assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of
standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with
management alone.

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 TAYLOR'S APPROACH
Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick are two second-
generation scholars. Gulick, Urwick, and the new
generation of administrators built on the work of
contemporary behavioral, administrative, and
organizational scholars including Henri Fayol,
Fredrick Winslow Taylor, Paul Appleby, Frank
Goodnow, and Willam Willoughby. The new
generation of organizational theories no longer relied
upon logical assumptions and generalizations about
human nature like classical and enlightened theorists.

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 POSDCORB
Gulick developed a comprehensive, generic theory of
organization that emphasized the scientific method, efficiency,
professionalism, structural reform, and executive control. Gulick
summarized the duties of administrators with an acronym;
POSDCORB, which stands for planning, organizing, staffing,
directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. Fayol
developed a systematic, 14-point, treatment of private
management.

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 POSDCORB

Second-generation theorists drew upon private management

practices for administrative sciences. A single, generic
management theory bleeding the borders between the private
and the public sector was thought to be possible. With the
general theory, the administrative theory could be focused on
governmental organizations.

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 POST–WORLD WAR II TO THE 1970S

The mid-1940s theorists challenged Wilson and Gulick.

The politics-administration dichotomy remained the
center of criticism. In the 1960s and 1970s, government
itself came under fire as ineffective, inefficient, and
largely a wasted effort. The costly American
intervention in Vietnam along with domestic scandals
including the bugging of Democratic party headquarters
(the 1974 Watergate scandal) are two examples of self-
destructive government behavior that alienated citizens.

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POST–WORLD WAR II TO THE 1970S

There was a call by citizens for efficient administration

to replace ineffective, wasteful bureaucracy. Public
administration would have to distance itself from
politics to answer this call and remain effective.
Elected officials supported these reforms.

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POST–WORLD WAR II TO THE 1970S
The Hoover Commission, chaired by University of
Chicago professor Louis Brownlow, to examine
reorganization of government. Brownlow subsequently
founded the Public Administration Service (PAS) at the
university, an organization which has provided
consulting services to all levels of government until the
1970s.

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 POST–WORLD WAR II TO THE
1970S
Concurrently, after World War II, the whole concept
of public administration expanded to include policy-
making and analysis, thus the study of
‘administrative policy making and analysis’ was
introduced and enhanced into the government
decision-making bodies. Later on, the human factor
became a predominant concern and emphasis in the
study of Public Administration.

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POST–WORLD WAR II TO THE 1970S
Henceforth, the emergence of scholars such as, Fritz
Morstein Marx with his book ‘The Elements of Public
Administration’ (1946), Paul H. Appleby ‘Policy and
Administration’ (1952), Frank Marini ‘Towards a New
Public Administration’ (1971), and others that have
contributed positively in these endeavors.

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POST–WORLD WAR II TO THE 1970S

Public administration can be defined as a department

in the executive arm of government responsible for the
formulating and implementation of government
policies and programmes.

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 1980S–1990S

In the late 1980s, yet another generation of public

administration theorists began to displace the last. The
new theory, which came to be called New Public
Management, was proposed by David Osborne and Ted
Gaebler in their book Reinventing Government. The
new model advocated the use of private sector-style
models, organizational ideas and values to improve the
efficiency and service-orientation of the public sector.

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 1980S–1990S

During the Clinton Administration (1993–2001), Vice

President Al Gore adopted and reformed federal
agencies using NPM approaches. In the 1990s, new
public management became prevalent throughout the
bureaucracies of the US, the UK and, to a lesser extent,
in Canada.

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 1980S–1990S

Some modern authors define NPM as a combination of

splitting large bureaucracies into smaller, more
fragmented agencies, encouraging competition between
different public agencies and encouraging competition
between public agencies and private firms and using
economic incentives lines (e.g., performance pay for
senior executives or user-pay models.
NPM treats individuals as "customers" or "clients" (in
the private sector sense), rather than as citizens.

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 1980S–1990S
Some critics argue that the New Public Management concept
of treating people as "customers" rather than "citizens" is an
inappropriate borrowing from the private sector model,
because businesses see customers are a means to an end
(profit), rather than as the proprietors of government (the
owners), opposed to merely the customers of a business (the
patrons). In New Public Management, people are viewed as
economic units not democratic participants. Nevertheless, the
model is still widely accepted at all levels of government and
in many OECD nations.

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 LATE 1990S–2000
In the late 1990s, Janet and Robert Denhardt proposed a
new public services model in response to the dominance
of NPM. A successor to NPM is digital era governance,
focusing on themes of reintegrating government
responsibilities, needs-based holism (executing duties in
cursive ways), and digitalization (exploiting the
transformational capabilities of modern IT and digital
storage).One example of this is openforum.com.au, an
Australian non-for-pronvites politicians, senior public
servants, academics, business people and other key
stakeholders to engage in high-level policy debate.

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 LATE 1990S–2000

Another new public service model is what has been

called New Public Governance, an approach which
includes a centralization of power; an increased
number, role and influence of partisan-political staff;
personal-politicization of appointments to the senior
public service; and, the assumption that the public
service is promiscuously partisan for the government of
the day.

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APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Behavioural Approach
System's Approach
Ecological Approach
Structural Functional Approach
Public Choice Approach
Contingency Approach

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 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
In academia, the field of public administration consists
of a number of sub-fields. Scholars have proposed a
number of different sets of sub-fields. One of the
proposed models uses five "pillars":

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 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Human resource management is an in-house structure
that ensures that public service staffing is done in an
unbiased, ethical and values-based manner. The basic
functions of the HR system are employee benefits,
employee health care, compensation, etc.
Organizational Theory in Public Administration is the
study of the structure of governmental entities and the
many particulars inculcated in them.

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 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Ethics in public administration serves as a normative
approach to decision making.
Policy analysis serves as an empirical approach to
decision making.
Public budgeting is the activity within a government
that seeks to allocate scarce resources among unlimited
demands .

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 INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
There are several organizations that are active. The
Commonwealth Association of Public Administration
and Management CAPAM http://www.capam.org/ is
perhaps the most diverse, covering the 54 member
states of the Commonwealth from India to Nauru. Its
biennial conference brings together ministers of public
service, top officials and leading scholars in the field.

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 INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
The oldest is the International Institute of Administrative
Sciences. Based in Brussels, Belgium, the IIAS is a
worldwide platform providing a space for exchanges that
promote knowledge and practices to improve the
organization and operation of Public
Administration and to ensure that public agencies will be
in a position to better respond to the current and future
expectations and needs of society. The IIAS has set-up
four entities: the International Association of Schools and
Institutes of Administration (IASIA), the European
Group for Public Administration (EGPA).

45
 INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
The Latin American Group for Public Administration
(LAGPA) and the Asian Group for Public Administration
(AGPA). IASIA is an association of organizations and
individuals whose activities and interests focus on public
administration and management.
The activities of its members include education and
training of administrators and managers. It is the only
worldwide scholarly association in the field of public
management. EGPA, LAGPA and AGPA are the regional
sub-entities of the IIAS.
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 INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
Also the International Committee of the US-based
National Association of School of Public Affairs and
Administration (NASPAA) has developed a number of
relationships around the world. They include sub
regional and National forums like CLAD, INPAE and
NISPA, APSA, ASPA.
The Center for Latin American Administration for
Development (CLAD), based in Caracas, Venezuela,
this regional network of schools of public
administration set up by the governments in Latin
America is the oldest in the region.

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 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH
Behavioralism (or behaviouralism) is an approach in
political science, which emerged in the 1930s in the
United States. It represents a sharp break from previous
political science. This is because it emphasized an
objective, quantified approach to explain and predict
political behavior.
It is associated with the rise of the behavioral sciences,
modeled after the natural sciences. This means that
behavioralism tries to explain behavior with an
unbiased, neutral point of view.

48
 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH

Behavioralism seeks to examine the behavior, actions,

and acts of individuals – rather than the characteristics
of institutions such as legislatures, executives, and
judiciaries – and groups in different social settings and
explain this behavior as it relates to the political
system.

49
 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH

Behavioralists used strict methodology and empirical research

to validate their study as a social science.
The behavioralist approach was innovative because it
changed the attitude of the purpose of inquiry. It moved
toward research that was supported by verifiable facts.
During its rise in popularity in the 1960s and 70s,
behavioralism challenged the realist and liberal approaches,
which the behavioralists called "traditionalism", and other
studies of political behavior that was not based on fact.

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 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH

To understand political behavior, behavioralism uses the

following methods: sampling, interviewing, scoring and
scaling and statistical analysis.
Behavioralism studies how individuals behave in group
positions realistically rather than how they should behave.
For example, a study of the United States Congress might
include a consideration of how members of Congress
behave in their positions. The subject of interest is the
how Congress becomes an "arena of actions" and the
surrounding formal and informal spheres of power.

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 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH V
From the beginning, behavioralism was a political, not a
scientific concept. Moreover, since behavioralism is not a
research tradition, but a political movement, definitions of
behavioralism follow what behavioralists wanted.
Therefore, most introductions to the subject emphasize
value-free research. This is evidenced by Easton's eight
"intellectual foundation stones" of behavioralism:

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 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH
 Regularities - The generalization and explanation of
regularities.
 Commitment to Verification - The ability to verify
ones generalizations.
 Techniques - An experimental attitude toward
techniques.
 Quantification - Express results as numbers where
possible or meaningful.

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 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH

 Values - Keeping ethical assessment and empirical

explanations distinct.
 Systemization - Considering the importance of theory
in research.
 Pure Science - Deferring to pure science rather than
applied science.
 Integration - Integrating social sciences and value

54
 BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH
According to David Easton, behavioralism sought to
be "analytic, not substantive, general rather than
particular, and explanatory rather than ethical.“
In this, the theory seeks to evaluate political behavior
without "introducing any ethical evaluations"; Rodger
Beehler cites this as "their insistence on distinguishing
between facts and values."

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 CRITICISM

The approach has come under fire from both

conservatives and radicals for the purported value-
neutrality. Conservatives see the distinction between
values and facts as a way of undermining the possibility
of political philosophy.
Neal Riemer believes behavioralism dismisses "the task
of ethical recommendation" because behavioralists
believe "truth or falsity of values (democracy, equality,
and freedom, etc.) cannot be established scientifically
and are beyond the scope of legitimate inquiry."

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 CRITICISM
Christian Bay believed behavioralism was a
pseudopolitical science and that it did not represent
"genuine" political research. Bay objected to empirical
consideration taking precedence over normative and
moral examination of politics.
Behavioralism initially represented a movement away
from "naive empiricism", but has been criticized as an
approach has been criticized for "naive scientism".
Additionally, radical critics believe that the separation of
fact from value makes the empirical study of politics
impossible.

57
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

Systems thinking is the process of understanding how

things influence one another within a whole. In nature,
systems thinking examples include ecosystems in
which various elements such as air, water, movement,
plants, and animals work together to survive or perish.
In organizations, systems consist of people, structures,
and processes that work together to make an
organization "healthy" or "unhealthy".

58
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

Systems thinking has been defined as an approach to problem

solving, by viewing "problems" as parts of an overall system,
rather than reacting to specific part, outcomes or events and
potentially contributing to further development of unintended
consequences.
Systems thinking is not one thing but a set of habits or
practices within a framework that is based on the belief that
the component parts of a system can best be understood in the
context of relationships with each other and with other
systems, rather than in isolation. Systems thinking focuses on
cyclical rather than linear cause and effect.

59
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

In science systems, it is argued that the only way to

fully understand why a problem or element occurs
and persists is to understand the parts in relation to
the whole.
Standing in contrast to Descartes's
scientific reductionism and philosophical analysis, it
proposes to view systems in a holistic manner.
Consistent with systems philosophy, systems
thinking concerns an understanding of a system by
examining the linkages and interactions between the
elements that compose the entirety of the system.

60
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH IV

Science systems thinking attempts to illustrate that

events are separated by distance and time and that
small catalytic events can cause large changes in
complex systems.
Acknowledging that an improvement in one area of a
system can adversely affect another area of the system,
it promotes organizational communication at all levels
in order to avoid the silo effect. Systems thinking
techniques may be used to study any kind of system —
natural, scientific, engineered, human, or conceptual.

61
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

The several ways to think of and define a system include:

A system is composed of parts.
All the parts of a system must be related (directly or
indirectly), else there are really two or more distinct
systems.
A system is encapsulated, has a boundary.
The boundary of a system is a decision made by an
observer, or a group of observers.
A system can be nested inside another system.

62
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

A system can overlap with another system.

A system is bounded in time.
A system is bounded in space, though the parts are not
necessarily co-located.
A system receives input from, and sends output into,
the wider environment.
A system consists of processes that transform inputs
into outputs.

63
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

Science systems thinkers consider that:

a system is a dynamic and complex whole, interacting
as a structured functional unit;
energy, material and information flow among the
different elements that compose the system;
a system is a community situated within an
environment;

64
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

energy, material and information flow from and to the

surrounding environment via semi-permeable membranes or
boundaries;
systems are often composed of entities seeking equilibrium but
can exhibit oscillating, chaotic, or exponential behavior.

65
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

The systems thinking approach incorporates several tenets:

Interdependence of objects and their attributes -
independent elements can never constitute a system.
Holism - emergent properties not possible to detect by
analysis should be possible to define by a holistic
approach.
Goal seeking - systemic interaction must result in some
goal or final state.
Inputs and Outputs - in a closed system inputs are
determined once and constant; in an open system additional
inputs are admitted from the environment.

66
 SYSTEM'S APPROACH

Transformation of inputs into outputs - this is the process by

which the goals are obtained:
Entropy - the amount of disorder or randomness present in
any system;
Regulation - a method of feedback is necessary for the system
to operate predictably;
Hierarchy - complex wholes are made up of smaller
subsystems;
Differentiation - specialized units perform specialized
functions;
Equifinality - alternative ways of attaining the same objectives
(convergence);
Multifinality - attaining alternative objectives from the same
inputs (divergence) ;

67
 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

The ecological model of competition is a reassessment of

the nature of competition in the economy. Traditional
economics models the economy on the principles of
physics (force, equilibrium, inertia, momentum, and linear
relationships).
This can be seen in the economics lexicon: terms like
labour force, market equilibrium, capital flows, and price
elasticity. This is probably due to historical coincidence.
Classical Newtonian physics was the state of the art in
science when Adam Smith was formulating the first
principles of economics in the 18th century.

68
 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

According to the ecological model, it is more

appropriate to model the economy on biology (growth,
change, death, evolution, survival of the fittest,
complex inter-relationships, non-linear relationships).
Businesses operate in a complex environment with
interlinked sets of determinants. Companies co-evolve
they influence, and are influenced by, competitors,
customers, governments, investors, suppliers, unions,
distributors, banks, and others.

69
 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

We should look at this business environment as a

business ecosystem that both sustains, and threatens the
firm. A company that is not well matched to its
environment might not survive.
Companies that are able to develop a successful
business model and turn a core competency into a
sustainable competitive advantage will thrive and grow.
Very successful firms may come to dominate their
industry (referred to as category killers).

70
 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

Ecological economics is referred to as both a

transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of
academic research that aims to address the
interdependence and coevolution of human
economies and natural ecosystems over time and
space.
It is distinguished from environmental economics, which
is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment,
by its treatment of the economy as a subsystem of the
ecosystem and its emphasis upon preserving natural
capital.
71
 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

One survey of German economists found that ecological

and environmental economics are different schools of
economic thought, with ecological economists
emphasizing "strong" sustainability and rejecting the
proposition that natural capital can be substituted by
human-made capital.

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 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

Ecological economics was founded as a modern

movement in the works of and interactions between
various European and American academics, see the
section on history and development below.
The related field of green economics is, in general, a
more politically applied form of the subject.

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 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

Mainstream economics has attempted to become a

value-free 'hard science', but ecological economists
argue that value-free economics is generally not
realistic.
Ecological economics is more willing to entertain
alternative conceptions of utility, efficiency, and cost-
benefits such as positional analysis or multi-criteria
analysis. Ecological economics is typically viewed as
economics for sustainable development, and may have
goals similar to green politics.

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 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

Ecological economics is distinguishable from

neoclassical economics primarily by its assertion that
the economy is embedded within an environmental
system.
Ecology deals with the energy and matter transactions
of life and the Earth, and the human economy is by
definition contained within this system.
Ecological economists argue that neoclassical
economics has ignored the environment, at best
considering it to be a subset of the human economy.

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 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

Ecological economics challenges the conventional

approach towards natural resources, claiming that it
undervalues natural capital by considering it as
interchangeable with human-made capital—labor and
technology.

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 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

Neoclassical economists tend to maintain that man-

made capital can, in principle, replace all types of
natural capital. This is known as the weak sustainability
view, essentially that every technology can be
improved upon or replaced by innovation, and that
there is a substitute for any and all scarce materials.

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 ECOLOGICAL APPROACH

At the other extreme, the strong sustainability view

argues that the stock of natural resources and
ecological functions are irreplaceable.
From the premises of strong sustainability, it follows
that economic policy has a fiduciary responsibility to
the greater ecological world, and that sustainable
development must therefore take a different approach
to valuing natural resources and ecological functions.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Structural functionalism, or simply

Functionalism, is a framework for building theory
that sees society as a complex system whose parts
work together to promote solidarity and stability.
This approach looks at society through a macro-
level orientation, which is a broad focus on the
social structures that shape society as a whole. This
approach looks at both social structure and social
functions. Functionalism addresses society as a
whole in terms of the function of its constituent
elements; namely norms, customs, traditions, and
institutions.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

A common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer,

presents these parts of society as "organs" that work
toward the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole.
In the most basic terms, it simply emphasizes "the
effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each
feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the
functioning of a supposedly stable, cohesive system".

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

For Talcott Parsons, "structural-functionalism" came to describe

a particular stage in the methodological development of social
science, rather than a specific school of thought. The structural
functionalism approach is a macrosociological analysis, with a
broad focus on social structures that shape society as a whole.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Classical functionalist theories are defined by a tendency

towards biological analogy and notions of
social evolutionism:
Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked
particularly towards biology as the science providing the
closest and most compatible model for social science.
Biology has been taken to provide a guide to
conceptualizing the structure and the function of social
systems and to analyzing processes of evolution via
mechanisms of adaptation ... functionalism strongly
emphasises the pre-eminence of the social world over its
individual parts.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Durkheim, who, following Comte, believed that

society constitutes a separate "level" of reality, distinct
from both biological and inorganic matter.
Explanations of social phenomena had therefore to be
constructed within this level, individuals being merely
transient occupants of comparatively stable social roles.
The central concern of structural functionalism is a
continuation of the Durkheimian task of explaining the
apparent stability and internal cohesion needed by
societies to endure over time.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Societies are seen as coherent, bounded and

fundamentally relational constructs that function like
organisms, with their various parts (or social institutions)
working together in an unconscious, quasi-automatic
fashion toward achieving an overall social equilibrium.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

All social and cultural phenomena are therefore seen as

functional in the sense of working together, and are
effectively deemed to have "lives" of their own. They are
primarily analyzed in terms of this function. The
individual is significant not in and of himself, but rather in
terms of his status, his position in patterns of social
relations, and the behaviours associated with his status.
Therefore, the social structure is the network of statuses
connected by associated roles.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Auguste Comte, the "Father of Positivism", pointed out

the need to keep society unified as many traditions
were diminishing. He was the first person to coin the
term sociology. Auguste Comte suggests that sociology
is the product of a three-stage development.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

1. Theological Stage: From the beginning of human history until

the end of the European Middle Ages, people took a religious
view that society expressed God's will. In the theological state,
the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings, the first
and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects—in short,
absolute knowledge—supposes all phenomena to be produced by
the immediate action of supernatural beings.
2. Metaphysical Stage: People began seeing society as a natural
system as opposed to the supernatural. Began with the
Enlightenment and the ideas of Hobbes, Locke,and Rousseau.
Reflected the failings of a selfish human nature rather than the
perfection of God.
3. Scientific Stage: Describing society through the application of
the scientific approach, which draws on the work of scientists.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), a British philosopher

famous for applying the theory of natural selection to
society. He was in many ways the first true sociological
functionalist.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Spencer concluded that society is constantly facing

selection pressures (internal and external) that force it to
adapt its internal structure through differentiation.
Every solution, however, causes a new set of selection
pressures that threaten society's viability. It should be
noted that Spencer was not a determinist in the sense that
he never said that:
Selection pressures will be felt in time to change them;
They will be felt and reacted to; or
The solutions will always work.

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 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

He was in many ways a political sociologist and recognized that the
degree of centralized and consolidated authority in a given polity
could make or break its ability to adapt. In other words, he saw a
general trend towards the centralization of power as leading to
stagnation and ultimately, pressures to decentralize.
Spencer recognized three functional needs or prerequisites that
produce selection pressures: they are regulatory, operative
(production) and distributive.
He argued that all societies need to solve problems of control and
coordination, production of goods, services and ideas, and, finally,
to find ways of distributing these resources.

90
 PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH

Public choice theory is the use of modern economic tools to study

problems that traditionally are in the province of political science.
From the perspective of political science, it is the subset of
positive political theory that models voters, politicians, and
bureaucrats as mainly self-interested.
It studies such agents and their interactions in the social system
either as such or under alternative constitutional rules. These can be
represented in a number of ways, including standard constrained
utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. `
Public choice analysis has roots in positive analysis ("what is") but
is often used for normative purposes ("what ought to be"), to
identify a problem or suggest how a system could be improved by
changes in constitutional rules, the subject of
constitutional economics.

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 PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH

Public choice theory is intimately related to

social choice theory, which uses mathematical tools to
study voting and voters.
Much early work had aspects of both, and both use the
tools of economics and game theory. Since voter
behavior influences the behavior of public officials,
public choice theory often uses results from social
choice theory.

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 PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH

Prior to the emergence of public choice theory, many

economists tended to consider the state as an agent
outside the scope of economic theory, whose actions
depend on different considerations than those driving
economic agents. (The many other economists who did
place the state and its agents within such theory include
Vilfredo Pareto.)

93
 PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH

Public choice theory attempts to look at governments

from the perspective of the bureaucrats and politicians
who compose them, and makes the assumption that they
act based on a budget-maximizing model in a self-
interested way for the purpose of growing their own
power and influence.
The theory aims to apply economic analysis (usually
decision theory and game theory) to the political
decision-making process in order to reveal certain
systematic trends towards inefficient government
policies.

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 PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH

Public choice theory is often used to explain how political

decision-making results in outcomes that conflict with the
preferences of the general public. For example, many
advocacy group and pork barrel projects are not the desire of the
overall democracy.
However, it makes sense for politicians to support these projects.
It may make them feel powerful and important. It can also benefit
them financially by opening the door to future wealth as lobbyists.
The project may be of interest to the politician's local constituency
, increasing district votes or campaign contributions.

95
 PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH

One way to organize the subject matter studied by public choice

theorists is to begin with the foundations of the state itself.
According to this procedure, the most fundamental subject is the
origin of government.
Although some work has been done on anarchy, autocracy,
revolution, and even war, the bulk of the study in this area has
concerned the fundamental problem of collectively choosing
constitutional rules. This work assumes a group of individuals
who aim to form a government, then it focuses on the problem of
hiring the agents required to carry out government functions
agreed upon by the members.

96
 PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH

Another major sub-field is the study of bureaucracy. The usual

model depicts the top bureaucrats as being chosen by the chief
executive and legislature, depending on whether the democratic
system is presidential or parliamentary. The typical image of a
bureau chief is a person on a fixed salary who is concerned with
pleasing those who appointed him. The latter have the power to
hire and fire him more or less at will.
The bulk of the bureaucrats, however, are civil servants whose jobs
and pay are protected by a civil service system against major
changes by their appointed bureau chiefs. This image is often
compared with that of a business owner whose profit varies with
the success of production and sales, who aims to maximize profit,
and who can in an ideal system hire and fire employees at will.

97
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

Contingency approach, also known as situational

approach, is a concept in management stating that there
is no one universally applicable set of management
principles (rules) by which to manage organizations.
Organizations are individually different, face different
situations (contingency variables), and require different
ways of managing. Contingency approaches remain
less common than change management approaches.

98
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

Contingency approach evolved during the 1960s. Management

theory and research began to adopt a new orientation, one that
embodied a simple concept and enabled significant advancements
in the study of management and organizations, now referred to as
the contingency approach.
It emphasised the importance of situational influences on the
management of organisations and questioned the existence of a
single, best way to manage or organise. Today, the contingency
approach dominates theory and research in the management
literature. Contingency approach challenged the classic process and
models designed by management theorists such as Taylor and Fayol
.

99
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

A conceptual model of the contingency approach was

developed by Kieser and Kubicek. According to the
model, the formal structure of an organization defines
the roles of its members in a specific way and thereby
directs their behaviour to a certain degree.
The performance of the organization depends on the
degree to which these role definitions enable members
to cope with the requirements resulting from the
context of the organization.

100
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

While classical management theorists such as Taylor and

Fayol, were looking for the one best way in management and
organization design, in the late 50s and early 60s a shift of
paradigm arose, claiming that the organizational structure of a
company or administration has to fit to the situation in which
it finds itself. As these situations vary, different structures turn
out to be most effective.
In other words the optimal organizational structure is
contingent, depending on certain contextual factors. Therefore
this approach is labelled Contingency Approach, in German
the context is termed “situation“; and the approach is called
situational approach (“Situativer Ansatz“).

101
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

Different researchers focussed on different contextual factors and

investigated their influence in empirical studies. Joan Woodward
(1958) looked into the production technology, Blau and
Schoenherr (1971) into the size of the organizations, Burns and
Stalker (1961) as well as Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) into the
economic environment, in particular market competition and
technological change.
A broader approach was developed by a British team of
researchers at the University of Aston by developing a conceptual
scheme for the comparative analysis of organizational structure
which took account of several contextual factors at the same time
(Pugh & Hickson et al., 1963).

102
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

In a survey of more than 30 organizations, seven contextual variables

such as size, technology, geographical dispersion as well as five
dimensions of organization structure (specialization, centralization of
decision making, standardization, formalization and configuration)
were operationalized by more than 80 indicators.
Statistical analysis was directed towards identifying correlations, which
were found, for example, between the size of an organization and the
degree of specialization and formalization, as predicted by Max Weber.
Later John Child joined the Aston Team and added variables describing
the role structure and behaviour of organizational members and the
performance of the organization, which are considered to be the
relevant criteria for judging the fit between the structure and its context.

103
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

The Aston research programme was adopted in studies

in more than ten countries. The whole research is
summarized in four volumes (Pugh/Hickson, 1976;
Pugh & Hinings, 1976; Pugh & Payne, 1977; Hickson
& McMillan?, 1981). Kieser and Kubicek summarized
this and related research in a German Textbook in
1976, using the following conceptual model (figure 1):

104
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

According to this model, the formal structure of an

organization defines the roles of its members in a specific
way and thereby directs their behaviour to a certain degree.
The performance of the organization depends on the degree to
which these role definitions enable members to cope with the
requirements resulting from the context of the organization.
For example if there is strong competition and a high degree
of technological change, decisions about new products and
marketing strategies have to be changed frequently and be
taken close to the market.

105
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

The method to analyze and assess these kinds of

relationships is the comparative quantitative analysis, in
the most advanced stage a multi-level quantitative
analysis, assigning data to the level of the context, the
organization and its members.
These variables are operationalized in quantitative
indicators, and data are collected by standardized
questionnaires distributed to several members of each
organization under investigation and afterwards
aggregated to different indices for each level (for more
details see Kubicek, 1975).
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 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

Empirical studies conducted according to this model could

identify some interesting relations but did not show very
high correlations and clear cut patterns.
The introduction of additional variables did not increase
the level of the correlations. The fit of an organizational
structure with its context depends on too many aspects and
seems to be too complex, to be precisely captured by linear
quantitative relations.

107
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

However, the basic idea of the situational contingency

of a particular object on its context as well as the idea
that the performance of an institution depends on the fit
between its properties and its relevant context is still
valid and of great heuristic value as it suggests the
critical examination of too early generalizations and
asks for situational differentiation.

108
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

This analytical approach can be found in other areas of

management theory too (e.g. leadership styles or strategic
management) as well as in studies on the social shaping of
technology.

109
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

For example Mayntz and Schneider in a comparative study

of the introduction of videotex in the United Kingdom,
France and Germany used a conceptual framework
according to which the final design of the technical system
and its institutional arrangement was influenced by different
constellations of actors in each country which acted in
different contexts, defined by the respective legal system,
political system, market structure and a different
technological pool. Kubicek and Westholm used a
contingency model of the deployment of e-democracy tools
in their scenarios of the future use of this kind of tools.

110
 CONTINGENCY APPROACH

The map of the socio-technical research landscape

employed to map different subjects of research in DEMO-
net is based on a contingency approach as well.

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THE END

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