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CHAPTER FOUR: Organizational Theory and the Role of Government's Structure

Study

Summary

Structure is the basis of any large administration. The structural approach to large organizations tends to concentrate on the top-down delegation of authority from higher officials to lower ones. Luther Gulick's classical model and Max Weber's bureaucratic model are examples of this structural approach. Systems theory, another way of studying organizations, views an organization as a black box that translates inputs into outputs. Systems theory generalizes about all organizations, public and private, large and small, open and closed.

The structural approach and systems theory, which focus on an organization's basic structure and on the relationship among its parts, have been challenged by four other approaches. The humanist approach focuses on the life of individual workers within the organization. The pluralist approach emphasizes that interest groups can shape an organization. The third-party approach maintains that the more government administration relies on contracting out, the less it fits structural models and so new ways of integrating third parties are necessary. Finally, formal models view bureaucracy as networks of contracts, built around systems of hierarchy and authority. The authors conclude that despite all these disagreements, each approach is based on some significant truth about government organizations.