Organisation

• Administration is a cooperative group effort for the purpose of achieving

predetermined objectives or goals. Public administration is an organised
activity aiming at provision of services besides application of constraints
to individuals and groups in the society.
• It is obvious that the efforts of different persons have to be in accordance
with a preconceived plan to avoid confusion and working at cross-
purposes.
• Katz and Kahn observe that when goal-directed activities are coordinated
rationally by assignment of duties and responsibilities, this rational
coordination is organisation.
• Consequently, public administration requires organisation. But
organisation can take many different forms and can maximise many
diverse values. The structure of organisation affects the behaviour of the
organisation as a whole and of the individual members of it.
 MEANING OF ORGANISATION
• The word ‘organising’ springs from ‘organism’, which means a
structure with parts or components integrated in such a way that
their relation to the whole governs their relation to each other.
• According to Nicholas Henry organisations are different creatures to
different people, and looking at different facts of various
organisations such phenomenon appears to be unavoidable.
• Victor A. Thompson: An organisation is “a highly rationalised and
impersonal integration of a large number of specialists cooperating to
achieve some announced specific objective”.
• Chester I. Barnard: An organisation as “a system of consciously
coordinated personal activities or forces of two or more persons”.
Cont.
• Max Weber: Organisation is a corporate group, - that is, a social
relationship which is either closed or limits the admission of outsiders
by rules. Its orders are enforced by the action of specific individuals.
The focus is on legitimate interaction patterns.
• L. Urwick: Organisation determines the activities those are necessary
for a purpose (or plan) and arranging them in the group, which may
be assigned to individuals. In this definition, while the identification of
the tasks and their grouping is given priority, the individuals to whom
the functions are entrusted come later.
Cont.
• Nicholas Henry identifies the following characteristics of
organisation:
• purposeful, complex human collectivities;
• characterised by secondary (or impersonal) relationships;
• specialised and limited goals;
• characterised by sustained cooperative activity
• integrated within a larger social system;
• provide services and products to their environment;
• dependent upon exchanges with their environment
 FORMAL AND INFORMAL ORGANISATION

• Mohit Bhattacharya distinguishes formal organisation from social

organisation or informal organisation.
• According to him formal organisation is established for the explicit
purpose of achieving certain goals, and possesses rules designed to
anticipate and shape behaviour in the direction of these goals, and it
has a formal status structure with clearly marked lines of
communication and authority.
• He observes where social life is carried on without a framework of
explicit goals or rules, which define a formal status structure; it is
usually thought more appropriate to use the term social organisation.
Cont.

• According to Chester Barnard formal organisation is a system of

consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons
and such organisation comes into the existence only when
• a) there are persons able to communicate each other;
• b) who are willing to contribute action; and
• c) to accomplish common purpose.
Thus, communication, willingness to serve and a common purpose are
the three elements in a formal organisation.
• Barnard observes that individuals in the organisation continuously
interact based on their personal relationship rather than
organisational purpose.
Cont.
• Such interaction may be due to the gregarious instinct or fulfilment of
some personal desire.
• Because of the continuous nature of such interaction, such relations
become systematised and result in what are called informal
organisations.
• He describes an informal organisation as the aggregate of personal
contacts and interactions and the associated grouping of people.
These organisations are indefinite, structureless and are a shapeless
mass of varied densities.
The Characteristics of Formal Organisation

• It has a clearly defined structure of activities which is predetermined by the

top management.
• A formal organization is relatively stable.
• A formal organization grows and expands.
• The organization structure is based on division of labour and specialization.
• The structure is based on the jobs to be performed and not according to
individuals who are to perform jobs.
• The organization does not take into consideration emotional aspect. It is
deliberately impersonal.
• The authority and responsibility relationships created by the organization
structure are to be honoured by every one.
• Organizational charts are usually drawn. All the positions from General
Manager down to lower levels appear on the formal chart of the
The Characteristics of Informal Organisation

• An informal organization has its own characteristics.

• Generally a society evolves its own unwritten laws, beliefs and
controls regarding what is desirable behaviour and what is
undesirable. This is what an informal organization also does.
• People think and act alike in groups and this continuous cooperation
gives rise to common values and common codes of behaviour.
• It forces the members of the group to observe the common rules. It is
a very effective organization to impose penalties on or punish those
who violate these rules.
• The leadership in it is also informal.
• There is stratification also within an informal organization, which is
based on several factors.
Relation between Formal and Informal Organisations
• Organizations consist of human beings and they are human organizations.
Informal organizations have a serious impact on the members of the formal
organization, thereby bringing a continuous interaction between formal and
informal organization.
• According to Chester I. Barnard formal organizations create informal
organizations as a means of communication and to protect the individuals from
the domination of formal organizations.
• In turn, informal organizations tend to formalise several elements, thereby
establishing a formal organization within an informal organization.
• The relation between the two according to Barnard’s observation is that they are
inter-dependent aspects of the same phenomenon – a society is structured by
formal organization, formal organizations are vitalised and conditioned by
informal organizations.
• The bottomline is that there cannot be one without the other. If one
organisation fails, the other will necessarily disintegrate.
 Wilson's vision of Public Administration

• Historically, Woodrow Wilson was considered as the author of the

separation of politics and administration in government (i.e., the
politics-administration dichotomy).
• Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States
(1913-1921). Among his main contributions, Wilson served as
President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, as the Governor
of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 and was elected President as a
Democrat in 1912.
• Literature also shows that Woodrow Wilson was enormously
successful as a doctorate graduate of Johns Hopkins University in
1883 and the author of The Study of Administration which he
published in 1887.
Cont.
• Twice in the role of the president, wilson brought about significant
legislatios as part of progressive reforms. These were the Underwood
Act ( a system of graduated Federal Income tax), the Federal Reserve
Act, anti-trust legislation, Child Labour Prohibition Law and a law that
stipulated a maximum of 8 hour work day to railroad workers.
• He led America into world war I in 1917. in 1918, he proposed
Fourteen Points intended to return peace and create a community of
nations based on natural respect for each other’s political sovereignty
and territorial integrity.
 Important Developments in Wilson’s Era
• To understand Wilson’s views on the public administration, it is
necessary to follow the developments that saw the U.S through the
World War I, under his stewardship. These are:
• New Freedom Campaign
• League of Nations
• Wilson’s Fourteen points
 WOODROW WILSON'S VIEWS ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

• For Wilson, an important arena in serious need of reforms was American

Public Administration. He developed his doctoral thesis into his first book,
Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (1885), comparing
the American presidential form of government with parliamentary form of
government.
• He concluded that only reforms could instill greater efficiency and
accountability in the American system.
• In 1887, the Political Science Quarterly published Wilson's The Study of
Administration, reputed to be a classic text on public administration. Wilson
began this Article citing a keen observation— the practical science of
administration found its rightful place in college curriculum only recently.
• This late realisation "to know more about administration" could be attributed
to the ubiquitous feeling of "taken for granted among us" for years.
Cont.
• The on-going civil service reform movement, therefore, aimed to get
rid of systemic inefficiency and mounting costs through improvement
in government organisation and methods, and government personnel.
• Hence, the objective of administrative study was "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.
• Administration may be expressed as government in action. Being the
most inevitable part of government, it is as old as government itself. It
represents the executive branch characterised by ever growing
responsibilities both complex and cumbersome.
Cont.
• Successful execution of government functions depends on:
1. prior wisdom, knowledge, and experience,
2. robust planning,
3. professionalism,
4. strong organisation devoid of corruption, and
5. sense of duty.
• Given the vast expanse and sheer complexity of government work,
Wilson opined the science of administration was the need of the hour
like never before.
 Cont.
• The science of administration did not originate in the US. In Wilson's
words, "[i]t is not of our making; it is a foreign science, speaking very little
of the language of English or American principle.
• It employs only foreign tongues; it utters none but what are to our minds
alien ideas. Its aims, its examples, its conditions, are almost exclusively
grounded in the histories of foreign races, in the precedents of foreign
systems, in the lessons of foreign revolutions”.
• The roots of this science were traced to Europe, particularly France and
Germany. Rule by the government had been a recurrent political norm in
Europe for mainly 2 reasons.
• Firstly, government could be wide-spread because it was independent of
popular consent.
Cont.
• Secondly, monopolists wishing to keep a monopoly over government
used such means that would attract least resistance.
• Even if 'government' were a defining feature of Europe, Wilson argued
that a government passed through three periods of growth:
1. absolute rule by absolute rulers with an administrative system
2. constitutional government formed by the people (abolishing
absolute rulers) and a much neglected administrative system, and
3. sovereign government contingent upon administration construed
on the basis of the new constitution that was the source of its
power.
Cont.
• The science of administration, wherever adopted, was tailored to the
needs of respective states run by highly centralized forms of
government.
• In the US, the science was customized to meet the demands of a
complex and multi-form State and extremely decentralized forms of
government.
• The science had to be Americanized in terms of language, thought,
principle, and aim so that "[i]t must learn our constitutions by heart;
must get the bureaucratic fever out of its veins; must inhale much
free American air"
 Administration and Politics as Two Distinct Domains
• Wilson's most important contribution to the study of administration
was the distinction between administration and politics.
• According to him, "[t]he field of administration is a field of business. It
is removed from the hurry and strife of politics".
• Matters of administration were different from matters of politics.
Though politics determined administrative duties, it should not
interfere in the discharge of administrative functions.
• Since administration was often found tangled with politics, he
believed that civil service reform in particular and administrative
reform in general could ensure separation of administration from
politics.
 Cont.

• Administration, devoid of politics, would help to improve methods of

appointment and carrying out executive functions, as well as establish
the sanctity of public office and restore public trust.
• Wilson essay of 1887 on the Study of Administration was distribution of
power to many would obscure responsibilities, therefore the principle of
sharing power with heads of services and heads of branches of services
would prevent irresponsibility and consequent abuse of power.
• Beginning of the pertinent debate on the domain of public
administration for Wilson, political science was much older than public
administration.
• “All this while, we were concerned with Constitution, legislation, political
theories; who makes, laws, never who implements laws and policies and
who facilitates them.”
Cont.

• Wilson wanted administration to be business-like administration, he

thought should not be subjected to political interference. His approach
to public administration was scientific.
• He was the first to bring in comparative analysis into the domain of
administration.
• He initiated the concepts of checks and balances and political
neutrality. Even the effective bureaucracy concept and business like
approaches to administration can all be attributed to Woodrow Wilson.
• The Wilsonian view embracing politics-administration dichotomy
represented the orthodox ideology that developed between early
1900s and late 1930s.
Cont.
• This ideology was founded upon assumptions:
1. efficiency/ bureaucracy and democracy were poles apart and
irreconcilable,
2. politics-administration dichotomy maybe expressed through decision-
execution dichotomy
3. administration, akin to execution, could be conceptualized as a science
built upon purely technical and applicable principles, and
4. government administration could be run like business grounded in
values and practices of management.
• The orthodox model of public administration remained popular prior to
World War II. Politics-administration dichotomy had its roots in the
Progressive Reformism of the Western cultural history.
Cont.
• Method of Administration
• Wilson urged Americans to acknowledge the science of administration
without prejudice. The borrowed science could be filtered or amended to
suit the American constitutional, administrative, and political disposition.
• Most importantly, the eventual science of administration for America
should be established upon the principles of democracy. The performance
of public administration is best adjudged by public opinion.
• According to Wilson, public opinion referred to views expressed by
intelligent critics (of government) produced by political science
departments of reputed colleges.
• Wilson also observed that it was equally important to prepare a class of
executive officials "conducting government".
Cont.
• Improved public opinion rested upon well-trained civil service
personnel demonstrating good behaviour.
• He defined good behaviour as firm and whole-hearted allegiance to
government policies, and direct and inescapable responsibility to public
opinion.
• Civil service or bureaucracy committed to the service of all could,
therefore, be possible only if it were removed from State and
organisational politics.
• A bureaucrat's motivation to serve may emerge from esprit de corps or
undying loyalty to a superior (including ministers). In reality, a
bureaucrat's duty to serve the general public was often overshadowed
by the tendency to offer obeisance to supreme authority.
Cont.
• This represented a typical occasion for the confluence of
administration and politics which Wilson loathed a lot. For Wilson, it
posed three unavoidable bureaucratic dilemmas:
1. How to serve the interests of the community without jeopardizing
benevolence of or favours to superiors.
2. How to achieve sustenance in abundance and further ambitions of
a lucrative career without losing honour and character.
3. How to provide service, despite best efforts and talents, at the local
as well as the national level?
• If answers could be found, Wilson believed America would lead the
world again.
conclusion
• Wilson will always be remembered for his presidency and contribution to the
field of public administration.
• Building upon Theodore Roosevelt's aspirations, Wilson tried to make the
American presidency the most dominant branch of government.
• He wished to conduct his office on the lines of the Prime Minister of England
in the British Parliament. He also came to be regarded as a central figure in the
Progressive Movement which intended to separate politics and administration.
• Of course, the detailed institutional arrangements to attain this separation
changed over the years with his more mature intellectual works.
• Interestingly, his idea of separation made politics less authoritative, while
administration received increasing emphasis. He perceived administration as
the domain of scientific experts in the bureaucracy while political persons or
institutions lacked such expertise.