This paper presents a discussion of the influence of managerialist values on the field of public administration.  The author begins by developing a definition of managerialism consisting of four components: efficiency as the primary value guiding managers’ actions and decisions; faith in the tools and techniques of management; a class consciousness among managers; and a view of managers as moral agents.  The paper next considers the influence of managerialism on the development of the field of public administration.  The analysis centers on the early history of the field, but also discusses the ongoing influence of the managerialist mindset.  The author then turns to consideration of three alternative approaches to public administration theory and practice which have arisen as challenges to the dominance of the managerialist mindset within the discipline.  Specifically, the values and assumptions underlying the work of selected writers associatied with the New PA, the  Blacksburg group, and PA Theorists are discussed.  The paper closes by contrasting these alternative views of public administration to managerialism and considering the extent to which they represent major challenges to its dominance or simply reflect variations of the same theme.
 

 For much of its history, the field of public administration has been guided by a particular view of the nature and purpose of public service.  In its most stark form, this dominant and traditional view holds that public agencies exist only to carry out programs and policies established by the legislative and executive branches of government, and to do so with maximum efficiency.  This is the model of public service espoused by Woodrow Wilson in his famous essay which most observers identify as the starting point for the self-conscious study and practice of public administration in the United States.(1)  The model also provided the foundation for the ideal of neutral competence which drove civil service reform for much of the last one hundred years.(2)
 
This traditional model operated almost without challenge during the formative decades of the discipline.   In the 1920s, however, the dominant view began receiving criticism from those who believed that the simple pursuit of efficiency by apolitical bureaucrats provides an inadequate basis for public administration in a democratic society.(3)  These challenges have intensified and become more pointed over time, adding to what Wildavsky called a "ubiquitous anomie" within the field regarding the role of  public service in American democracy.(4)

 Recently, some students of organizations have introduced the concept of managerialism to describe a mindset held by many which glorifies hierarchy, technology, and the role of the manager in modern society.  This essay has two primary goals.  The first of these is to consider managerialism in the context of public administration.  The second goal is to contrast the traditional model to some of the alternative views of public service that have arisen as challenges to the dominant model over recent years.

   The impact of managerialist values on the field is so obvious that it seems almost unnecessary to state the case.  Given the historical and continuing concern with issues such as efficiency and controlling bureaucratic behavior within the discipline, one could easily use the term, "administrationism," as a synonym for managerialism.  This review finds its justification, however, less in the analysis of the influence of managerialism in public administration than in the consideration of the continuing search for an alternative orientation for the field, one that would place more emphasis on values such as citizen participation in policy making processes and egalitarianism.  Put simply, the values and assumptions associated with managerialism  provide broad targets for those who believe that public administrators should be more active in defining political goals and redressing social injustice.

 I begin by distilling a definition of managerialism from the several offered by various observers.  I then discuss the linkages between managerialism and public administration.   As will be explained below, managerialist values and assumptions manifest themselves in various ways within the field, albeit with a number of contextual peculiarities.   I conclude by considering several alternative approaches to public administration theory and practice that represent challenges to managerialism with a view toward assessing how different they really are.
 

Managerialism as Business Practice

 Denhardt offers the most simple definition of  managerialism as it relates to public administration, equating it to the importation of business management practices, designed specifically to increase profit and efficiency, into public agencies.(5)  Examples of these intersectoral transplants might include strategic planning activities, performance pay systems and, most recently, organizational reinvention, redesign, or reengineering.  Denhardt notes that such no-nonsense approaches with their bottom line orientation might be beneficial in public settings, but may also "lead to excessive control and regulation."  He further criticizes the managerialist mindset for its lack of ethical content and concern for democratic principles, making it of questionable worth as a guide to behavior in public agencies.

   The value of this definition lies in its recognition that managerialism reflects concerns normally associated with for-profit organizations.   However, the definition is inadequate since it implies that managerialism, with its emphasis on control and hierarchy, only occurs in the context of public organizations.  Put another way, Denhardt’s definition leads to the conclusion that practices which reflect managerialist tendencies in public agencies do not qualify as evidence of  managerialism in business organizations, but the critique of  control oriented, authoritarian management has a long history in the management literature and criticism is generally not conditioned on the type of organization in which it occurs.  Thus, limiting the term to the adoption of private sector management strategies by public administrators focuses on where the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors associated with managerialism occur instead of the mindset itself.  Here we are concerned with managerialism in public agencies, but the managerialist mindset involves a set of beliefs and assumptions that  transcends organizational type.
 

Managerialism as Not Leadership

 Another approach to defining managerialism relies on contrasting it against its sexier counterpart, leadership.  According to this view,  a basic difference between the two is that managers seek only to maintain the status quo while leaders develop their visions and blaze new trails.   Zaleznik, for example, says that managers are risk-averse because risk may lead to failure, and this explains why so many managers are reluctant to change.(6)   In contrast, leaders take chances.  If they fail, they learn from the experience and try again.  Zaleznik also charges that managers tend to focus excessively on controlling the behavior of their subordinates through rules and procedures embedded in the structures of their organizations.

Thus, traits associated with managerialism are much the same as those normally associated with the negative stereotype of  bureaucracy including such pathologies as over-emphasis on hierarchical relationships and control mechanisms, resistance to change, risk averseness, turf protection, lack of creativity, rule-mindedness, and so on.  The difference between managers and leaders, Bennis and Nanus tell us, is that  "Managers are people who do things right," apparently without regard for the content of whatever it is they do, "and leaders are people who do the right things."(7)
 

Managerialism as Ideology

 Some writers define managerialism as an ideology which incorporates an array of  beliefs and values, and which may be encountered in any organizational setting.  For example, Krantz and Gilmore define managerialism as a technocratic ideology which views analytical tools, developed to help managers make decisions, as ends in themselves.(8)   According to their definition, the essence of managerialism occurs "when a tool or technique of management is treated as a magical solution, and members (of an organization) invest their hope in the technique or approach as if it, by itself, will help resolve complex, conflictual situations."   Thus managerialism simply refers to a strong faith, perhaps if not probably misguided, in the ability of managers to apply their specialized tools and techniques to solve organizational problems.

 Scott also characterizes managerialism as an ideology.(9)  However, in contrast to Krantz and Gilmore who focus primarily on its effects within organizations, Scott is concerned with  the implications of the ideology for society as a whole.  To Scott, managerialism reflects a belief system that contrasts sharply with the values underlying  traditional democratic notions of individual freedom and autonomy.  He acknowledges that the American political system has always incorporated a tension between two somewhat contradictory value sets, one stressing individual liberty and the other emphasizing legitimate demands placed on the individual by the community, but suggests that managerialism represents the triumph of  community values at the sacrifice of  individualism.

 Scott ties managerialism to a belief in the moral superiority of  human cooperation and the conviction that effective cooperation can only be achieved within organizations, ideas developed most effectively by Chester Barnard.(10)  Barnard’s work provided a moral basis for managers seeking to ensure workers’ compliance in the pursuit of organizationally defined goals with little regard to possible negative implications for the individual or for those outside the organization.(11)  According to Barnard, managers are justified in using a variety of means, up to and including coercion, to inculcate appropriate values within their subordinates.(12)  Appropriate values are those which promote cooperation in the achievement of organizational goals.  Workers, for their part, are willing to submit to managerial control and to sacrifice large measures of their freedom because of the material rewards made possible by their cooperation.   As Scott notes, they engage in "a trade-off of one sort of freedom for another,"(13) echoing Waldo’s earlier formulation that "Autocracy during hours is the price of democracy after hours."(14)    As long as organizations continue to provide sufficient economic  benefits, workers remain willing to submit to managerial control.  In turn, the willing compliance of workers contributes to the ever-increasing  influence of  large, complex organizations and their managers in modern society.

 Characterizing managerialism as an ideology reinforces another point made by Scott.   The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language offers two definitions of  ideology.(15)  The first states that an ideology is, "The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, a group, a class, or a culture,"  and the second defines the term as  "A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system."    As Scott points out, the managerial ideology contributes to a "class consciousness" among professional managers.(16) It provides a set of  ideas that serve to enhance the role, power and prestige of managers, and contributes to class maintenance among managers whose individual self-interests are enhanced by promoting the interests of the class as a whole.  On another level, the ideology serves to perpetuate a social system based on the presence and primacy of large organizations.   It does not necessarily matter what goals individual organizations pursue, or whether they are public, private, or non-profit.  What does matter is uncritical acceptance of a socially constructed reality that makes membership and participation in managerially controlled organizations a dominant feature of most of our lives.

Managerialism: A Composite Definition

 So, what is managerialism?  Based on the discussion above, we can identify four components of the term:

The primary  value of managerialism is economic efficiency, or the pursuit of maximum output with minimum inputs.  Denhardt’s association of managerialist values with profit-seeking organizations reinforces the point, but the primacy of efficiency in public administration was established long ago by Woodrow Wilson.

The second component of the managerial ideology is faith in the tools and techniques of management science and the ability of managers to use those techniques to resolve problems.   In the extreme, this faith in managers’ specialized skills and knowledge may get carried over from the organizations they run to society as a whole.

Managerialism’s third component is a class consciousness which serves as a unifying force among managers and which is perpetuated through a common literature and training regimen.  This common consciousness places responsibility for organizational well-being squarely on the shoulders of managers and justifies to some degree the reliance on hierarchy and control inherent in bureaucratic structures.

Finally, managerialism views the manager as a moral agent working to achieve the greatest good, not only for their organizations, but for society as a whole.

 In sum, managerialism is an ideology, accepted to varying degrees by all of us but held most closely by members of the managerial class, that places faith in the ability of managers to provide for the needs of society by application of specialized skills and knowledge.  The ideology rests on the value of efficiency which provides guidance to managers in the application of their expertise toward the achievement of organizationally defined goals.  Further, it tends to justify bureaucratic organizational structures since these enhance managerial control.
 

 To the extent that the above definition accurately describes managerialism, the term’s relevance to the field of public administration is obvious, with the components of the ideology finding full expression within the discipline’s mainstream.  Concern with efficiency has provided significant motivation throughout the history of the discipline and  the search for tools to improve the delivery of public services continues unabated.  One only has to look at recent trends in public administration literature, with emphases ranging from Total Quality Management to Reinventing Government, to recognize that managerialist themes continue to drive the discipline.

 Most public administrationists learn the drill early.  Wilson established public administration as a self-conscious field, pointing to private enterprise as the appropriate model for public managers.(17)  Wilson did more than simply establish business management as the model for public administration, however.  His greater significance arises from the ethical framework he provided for those involved in the delivery of public services which allowed them to reconcile their activities with generally accepted (at least at the time) constitutional principles.  Wilson’s famous/infamous politics/administration dichotomy established the principle/myth that politics and administration were separate activities.  According to the dichotomy, political leaders, elected  by voters to represent their interests, made all the important decisions. Public managers simply carried out the directives of their political masters.  If the electorate did not like the result, they could easily replace their representatives at the next election.  The supposed separation of politics from administration assured accountability and kept democracy safe from bureaucratic abuse while leaving public administrators free to concentrate on finding the most efficient means of achieving the public will as expressed through duly elected leaders.

 The search for efficiency in public service was reinforced and stimulated by the progressive movement active in the United States in the late 1800s and continuing through the early decades of this century.  The work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, father of  "Scientific Management," defines the progressive movement in large measure.(18) Taylor popularized the scientific study of managerial concerns, developing and refining techniques such as time-motion studies and incentive pay systems.   His work focused on increasing worker efficiency, but to assuming that this was Taylor’s only goal misses the mark widely.  To Taylor, maximizing efficiency was simply a means of achieving more satisfying outcomes for everyone. The application of his techniques, he claimed, would lead to more profits for owners and investors.  Consumers would enjoy lower prices deriving from lower production costs.  Workers would benefit most of all and in multiple ways.  They would benefit from higher compensation, but more importantly, workers would also benefit from the change in management his methods required.   In Taylor’s words, "the suspicious watchfulness that characterizes the old type management, the semi-antagonism, or the complete antagonism between workmen and employers is superseded," by scientific management, leading workers to  view their employers as "the best friends they have in the world."  Taylor is commonly criticized for a variety of reasons, including his focus on efficiency and a painfully condescending view of  workers’ intelligence and character.  But in common with his progressive contemporaries, his efforts rested on  moralistic underpinnings which saw the application of his techniques as a way of creating a better society.

 In the public sector, Taylorism manifested itself in diverse ways. Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883, establishing  the federal civil service system and promising the elimination of politics from personnel decisions as well as greater efficiency in government operations.(19) The application of science to administration seemed to provide the method by which those goals could be realized. Scientific management rests on measurement and classification of work processes-- how many pounds of material can be lifted in a shovel of a certain size and so forth.  Extrapolations of these notions became deeply embedded in civil service job classification rules which required that jobs be classified and graded according to objective criteria such as the amount of skill and training required for acceptable performance, the relative difficulty of a particular job, and the degree of responsibility associated with a position.  Job classification has played such an important role in the history of the civil service that Klingner and Nalbandian call it the cornerstone of public personnel administration.(20)  Thus, the early development of  civil service rules and procedures was heavily influenced by the ideas rooted in Taylor’s scientific management movement.

 The concern with efficiency as the primary value in public administration also motivated the work of Luther Gulick, best and forever known as the author of that unfortunate acronym, POSDCORB.  Gulick subscribed to Taylor’s notion that there is "one best way" to organize and carry out a task, meaning one way which is most efficient.  Instead of focusing on the minutia of work processes, however, Gulick turned his attention to organizational structure.  Building on the work of other structuralists such as Henri Fayol, Gulick proposed that there were "principles" upon which a science of management could be built.  These principles addressed issues such as the proper span of control for effective coordination of work, unity of command, and the division of labor within an organization.(21) Adhering to the principles, Gulick claimed, would promote unity of purpose among organization members and thereby maximize technical efficiency.

 Gulick’s work is especially relevant to the issue of  public sector managerialism for two reasons.  First, his ideas were influential in both a theoretical and a practical sense.  In terms of theory, Gulick’s "principles" still serve as a foil for many students of management.  Discussions of how to improve management are routinely premised on the conviction that earlier theorists like Gulick had it all wrong.  Thus, he helped to erect the edifice against which so many rail.  Gulick’s influence was also substantial in practical terms.  After all, as a member of the Brownlow Commission, his ideas and recommendations enjoyed the imprimatur of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.  Such credentials could hardly be ignored by those engaged in the study and practice of public administration.

 A second reason for the particular importance of Gulick’s work derives from his interpretation of the role of the bureaucracy in the United States.  In an early essay, he suggested that successful operation of a democracy was too important to be left in the hands of citizens.(22)  The national government, working through its administrative apparatus, should therefore devise and impose a "master plan of national life."   As Denhardt puts it, "In the organized, administered world of the future, the politics-administration dichotomy will be resolved by giving administrators power once held by citizens."(23)  A half century later, Gulick still expresses faith in government to develop controls which promote "harmonious communal values," and calls for according more respect to "top civil servants."(24)  In summary, Gulick’s work completely reflects the managerial ideology, expressing concern for efficiency as a primary value, belief in the moral superiority of cooperative effort over individual action, support for an administrative class, and acceptance of the elite notion solidly rooted in managerialism-- faith in experts to achieve desirable social goals.

 Although offering little or no empirical management research of his own, many observers credit Herbert Simon for moving the study of administration from the realm of unverified opinion to empirical observation.  His attack on the "Proverbs of Administration" pointed to an embarrassing fact about the common managerial wisdom current up to the 1940s-- it was largely self-contradictory and therefore useless as a guide to managerial decision-making.(25)  Even worse, according to Simon, it lacked an empirical basis and therefore represented opinion based on values rather than objective fact.  Thus, Simon proposed to replace managerial "proverbs" with facts discovered through objective analysis.

 Simon’s critique is often interpreted as a devastating attack on traditional management theory.  However, while his analysis directly challenged prevailing managerial wisdom, he did not question the primary component of the  managerial ideology nor offer a replacement.   According to Simon, the fundamental principle of administration, or at least the most important criterion by which administration should be judged, is efficiency.(26) Thus, Simon did not question the values underlying traditional concepts of management, but only the means by which those values could be advanced.  While his predecessors had relied on "common sense" to formulate their proverbs, Simon proposed empirical analysis as the means of developing a science of administration.  Although the means were different, the ends remained the same.

  There is no need to recount the entire history of the field in order to make the point since that has been done admirably elsewhere.(27)  As these early exemplars of public administration thought demonstrate, the managerialist leanings of the field are rooted in our past.  Moreover, they continue to heavily influence concerns within the discipline.  Consider Bingham and Bowen’s analysis of "mainstream" public administration.(28)  Their content analysis of articles appearing in Public Administration Review (PAR) over a 50 year period shows that managerial issues dominate the primary journal in the field.  They derived 14 topical categories by reviewing public administration textbooks and used those categories to sort PAR articles.  They found that articles dealing with four topical categories—Public Management, Human Resources, Budgeting and Finance, and Program Evaluation and Planning—represented a combined average of 57% of published articles over the five periods reviewed.  One other category, Government and Organizational Behavior, accounted for 22% of published articles.  The category is somewhat ambiguous but obviously has some relevance for managerialism.   In contrast, articles falling into the "Introspection" category represented a combined average of only seven percent of all articles published over the period.

 If additional evidence is needed of the dominance of managerial issues in the field, consider The PAR's  indexing system.(29)   Table 1 presents topic categories appearing in the index for the journal’s 1991 volume sorted into four domains(30)—Political, Managerial, Disciplinary, and Policy.  As the table shows, the managerial domain includes the largest number of index categories.  Of course, categories change from year to year, depending upon the articles appearing in each volume.  Thus, the 1994 volume indexing categories, again sorted into the four domains, are shown in Table 2.  Inspection of the table shows that 36 categories appearing in the 1991 index are no longer present in the 1994 index and that 22 new categories have appeared.  The important point here is that only eight of the 36 categories dropped between 1991 and 1994 came from the managerial domain while 15 of the 22 new categories fall into that domain.
 

The New PA: Administrator as Activist

 The first alternative view I wish to consider arose in the 1960s as part of the general redefinition of the social sciences going on at that time.  The Minnowbrook perspective arose from a 1969 conference held in New York which brought together a group of public administration scholars to discuss the state of their discipline.  Conference participants attacked traditional public administration on many grounds including its "antique maladapted analytical models and normative aridity," and initiated what became known as the New PA.(32)

 Although some question whether or not there was anything really new about the New PA, or if it represented a movement or something less,(33) there is no doubt that the conference intensified the dialogue about the managerial  biases of traditional public administration.  Those associated with the New PA advocated a sort of administrative activism, turning the simple recognition that bureaucrats do make policy into a moral imperative that bureaucrats should make policy aimed at redressing injustice and increasing social equity.   They defined the purpose of public agencies as "the reduction of economic, social, and psychic suffering for those inside and outside the organization,"(34) and warned that "a public administration which fails to work for changes which try to redress the deprivation of minorities will likely be eventually used to repress those minorities."(35) With the stakes so high, public administrationists simply could not be hindered by minor details such as the fact that they were not elected and therefore had no democratically legitimated mandate to impose their concept of justice on society.  Wilson’s dichotomy is a fiction, but in many ways a useful one, especially if you are concerned about bureaucratic overreaching and are suspicious of those who claim a clearer vision of truth and justice.  The New PA was based not only on recognition of the mythical quality of the dichotomy, but more on the conviction that it was an impediment to what needed to be done-- turning matters over to the bureaucrats and letting them run the show.

 The problem with traditional approaches to public administration, according to advocates of the Minnowbrook perspective, lay in  the discipline’s commitment to values associated with the managerialist ideology.  The ideal of neutral competence, with its implicit reliance on expertise, encouraged an overly technocratic orientation among bureaucrats and served to glorify the role of the expert.  The single-minded pursuit of efficiency precluded consideration and adoption of preferred values such as social equity to guide public administrators in the delivery of public services.  Hierarchically structured organizations forced public employees to accept authoritarian control, while also restricting citizens’ access and ability to influence agency operations and decisions.  In short, the New PA can be interpreted as a highly structured challenge to the domination of managerialist values in mainstream public administration which rejected (at least rhetorically) most everything that the ideology represents.
 

The Public Administration: Relegitimizing Public Service

  Some of the same themes associated with the New PA appear more recently, although with different motivations, in the so-called "Blacksburg Manifesto"(36) and extended in Refounding Public Administration.(37) The Minnowbrook perspective was inspired by perceived inadequacies within the discipline of public administration, but the Blacksburg group finds their motivation in defending the bureaucracy against political attack and helping to restore the respect and confidence once enjoyed by the public service among citizens.  Despite this difference, however, the prescription is much the same-- a stiff dose of administrative activism.

 The Minnowbrook participants’ call for bureaucrats to take matters into their own hands gets generous amplification by the Blacksburg group.  They base their claim less on moral obligation to help build the just society than on a rather dimly perceived constitutional mandate.  Relying on the fact that public agencies are created by statute under constitutional authority, they conclude that the framers intended that The Public Administration have a share in governing.  The Public Administration’s role is therefore "not to cower before a sovereign legislative assembly or a sovereign executive authority," but to participate as a full partner in "governing wisely and well the constitutional order."(38)  Once again, then, the distinction between politics and administration which allowed civil servants to focus on managerial ideals of efficiency and neutral competence are rejected in favor of political activism.
 

PA Theorists

 A third alternative to traditional public administration is espoused by some who are concerned with a perceived lack of theoretical development within the discipline.  In the extreme, those who write from this perspective call for the complete and absolute rejection of managerial, economic-based values.

Meier(39) provides a case-in-point.  Troubled by the political hegemony of the economic perspective, Meier proposes that public administrationists purge their discipline of anything to do with economics-- its tools, its assumptions, and its values.  To Meier, economics (at least the applied variety) has only one value and that is efficiency.  Other values espoused by economists such as cost-effectiveness, competition, and entrepreneurship are simply code words for this basic value.  Meier fears that the pursuit of economy will "strip public administration of its rich tapestry of values," and "stagnate theoretical development" in the field.
 
In sum, Meier foresees a dark future for a public administration dominated by pseudo-economists.  Welcoming the invaders, collaborating with the enemy so to speak, may help the discipline survive for a while, but only at the cost of  "our most dearly held public administration values-- responsiveness, legitimacy, competence, etc."  Alternatively, we can stand by our guns on a sinking ship, to mix metaphors, "building theory in a dying paradigm."   Neither outcome is particularly attractive, so Meier offers a strategy based on guerrilla-style tactics and aimed at staving off the invasion of economists.  "First," he says, "we must abandon the cities,"  suggesting that public administration scholars cut their ties to public administration practitioners since constraints imposed by demands for  practicality stand in the way of theory-building.

 The second item on the battle plan is to pick fights with economists, but only if we are sure that we can win.  These will involve conflicts in which we can claim the normative high ground, waving our banners of fairness, equity, and deeper commitment to democracy.

 Third, says Meier, we should lay traps for economists. "Sophisticated cost-benefit studies that reveal successful government programs will serve to separate the true believers in economics from their political fellow travelers."  Thus, we can lead them into ambushes where their hypocrisy will be exposed.  Meier offers no guidance, however, on how to handle analyses that reveal dismal failure in bureaucratic performance or government policy.

 Finally, Meier recognizes the power of good leadership.  "The revolution," he says, "needs an ideological leader."  He stops short, however, of placing names in nomination.

 Since managerialism is rooted in economic, utilitarian values, Meier’s proposal to purge public administration of the influence of economists can be read as a rejection of the ideology.  He follows the New PA’ers in finding efficiency contrary to preferred values such as equity and representativeness.  Furthermore, he shares the conviction that public administrators must become more political and less neutral in their approach to public service.  The prospects of reconciling political activism and technical rationality seem remote at best, and so to the extent that prescriptions aimed at substituting activism for  neutral competence and efficiency find favor, the influence of managerialism must decline in public administration theory and practice.

 Meier’s attack on the influence of economic principles in public administration gets an enthusiastic "Amen" from Farmer.(40)   Referring to the "predominant efficiency motif of Public Administration Theory" as the "King," Farmer proceeds to build a case for assassination.  The problem, according to Farmer, is that the motif is too limiting, standing in the way of the development of a "liberation ethic" to replace the  production or efficiency ethic that currently dominates theoretical development in the field.

 Farmer is unclear as to exactly why he finds the efficiency ethic so objectionable, or how his liberation ethic would improve on the current state of affairs.  "Liberation from what?" he asks.  Well, "for one thing, from all the conceptual constraints, prejudices, stereotypes, and cobwebs," that surround Public Administration Theory.  These apparently include "greater responsiveness, greater effectiveness, greater practical impact X per unit of input, (or) less input per unit of practical consequence Y."  Farmer does grant that:

There is utility in Public Administration activity that helps to produce managers... who are better sheepdogs, dog-managers who can operate agencies that execute their masters’ intentions in a defined fashion-- where the fashion is defined as very efficient, very consumer responsive, or in another similar way.

Thus, Farmer’s admission of the utility of resource- and service-consciousness by public administrationists comes across as damnation by faint praise at best.
 

The disdain for "traditional" public administration evident in the rhetoric of the writers discussed above seems to reflect a wholesale rejection of the managerialist ideology.  However, closer analysis makes it clear that the rejection is not absolute.  As stated earlier, the managerialist ideology includes four components-- a commitment to efficiency as the guiding value for managers; faith in managers' ability to resolve pressing problems; class consciousness; and the image of managers as moral agents acting on behalf of and for the good of society.  Table 3 contrasts these four elements of managerialism embedded in traditional public administration with each of the alternatives discussed above.
 
 As the table indicates, the view of managers as moral agents goes unchallenged and in fact is magnified by those who would turn public administrators into teachers of civic virtue or administrative freebooters out to right social injustices.  Likewise, managerial class consciousness survives these redefinitions of the
 

field more or less intact, albeit with an emphasis on a particular subset of the class-- public administrationists.  Indeed, the Blacksburg group and Meier justify their arguments almost totally in terms of class maintenance.  Finally, these alternatives require an even deeper faith in elites cum experts than the traditional managerialist model since citizens are asked to turn over more power and authority to bureaucrats and trust them to solve society’s problems.
 
The only  point of departure from managerialism for these critics involves the appropriate value base for public service.  They would replace the traditional, managerial-based concern with efficiency with values such as equity and liberation.  Reorienting the field in this way poses at least three major problems, however.  To begin, trivializing concerns with efficiency and practicality threatens to disenfranchise a large portion of the public administration community-- those actually involved in the delivery of public services.  Theorists may find the emphasis on efficiency vexing, but one suspects that it is of tremendous importance to managers in public agencies.  Ours is an applied discipline.  Public administration programs in colleges and universities are generally justified in terms of training practitioners.  Severing our ties to practitioners seems a poor strategy for improving public service, much less surviving as a discipline.

 Another problem associated with minimizing economic concerns involves public expectations.  Most observers agree that bureaucrats are negatively stereotyped in our culture.  A primary element of that stereotype portrays bureaucrats as wasteful and inefficient.  Why reinforce these negative perceptions by trivializing the importance of  efficiency?  Certainly, citizens expect public servants to show concern with issues of equity and representativeness, and to carry out their  programs and policies with appropriate compassion.  Judging from the political discourse going on in the country today, however, most seem to think that more efficiency is in order, not less.

 A third problem associated with de-emphasizing efficiency and replacing it with  alternative values to guide the practice of public administration involves the issue of accountability.  Put simply, values like social justice and equity raise the possibility, if not the probability, of arbitrariness in the delivery of public services and administration of government programs.  Bureaucrats have been criticized because of their tendency to treat everyone the same regardless of any unique circumstances that may apply to individuals.  However, such even-handedness assures some degree of fairness.   Once public administrators take upon themselves  responsibility for defining what is just and equitable, clients are at the mercy of the individual bureaucrat reviewing their case.

 In conclusion, the influence of managerialism in the development of public administration has been extensive, both as an ideal to be achieved and as a target to be attacked.  Moreover, the values and assumptions underlying the managerial mindset remain influential despite long-running efforts to develop alternative approaches to public service.  The persistence of these values need not lead to despair, however.  After all, what is so bad about efficiency?  Why would we want to disassociate ourselves from practitioner concerns?  In the absence of consensus about the role of the public service in our system of governance, and indeed, about the role of government in general, why not focus on economy and efficiency as central objectives of public management?  Such an approach may not lead to development of grand theory or contribute to our sense of self-importance, but it should make us more useful to those charged with managing public agencies.

Perhaps those who find managerialist tendencies in public administration troublesome can comfort themselves with what may be the most valuable, and is certainly the most sobering, principle of economics.   The concept of opportunity costs points out that resources wasted in the pursuit of one goal are unavailable for other purposes.   Thus, the more efficiently we manage, the more we can accomplish.  More importantly, commitment to efficient administration-- as well as to other important values-- may provide the most direct route to restoration of citizens’ confidence in their public servants.
 

1. Wilson, Woodrow.  "The Study of Administration."  Political Science Quarterly (June 1887): 197-222.
 
2. Kaufman, Herbert.  "Emerging Conflicts in the Doctrines of Public Administration."  American Political Science Review 14, (December 1956): 1057-73.
 
3. Waldo, Dwight.  "Development of a Theory of Democratic Administration."  American Political Science Review 46, (March 1952): 81-103.
 
4. Wildavsky, Aaron.  "Ubiquitous Anomie: Public Service in an Era of Ideological Dissensus."  Public Administration Review 48, (July/August 1988): 753-755.
 
5. Denhardt, Robert B.  The Pursuit of Significance: Strategies for Managerial Success in Public Organizations. Wadsworth Publishing Company: Belmont, CA., 1993a, 8-9.
 
6. Zaleznik, Abraham   The Managerial Mystique: Restoring Leadership in Business.  Harper and Row: New York, 1990,  6.
 
7. Bennis, Warren and Nanus, Burt.  Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge.  Harper and Row: New York, 1985, 7.
 
8. Krantz, James and Gilmore, Thomas N.  "The Splitting of Leadership and Management as a Social Defense."  Human Relations 43 (February 1990): 183-204.
 
9. Scott, William G. (1992).  Chester I. Barnard and the Guardians of the Managerial State. University of Kansas Press: Lawrence, KS, 1992, 159.
 
10. Barnard, Chester I. The Functions of the Executive. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1938.
 
11. Golembiewski, Robert T. and Kuhnert, Karl W.  "Barnard and Transformational Leadership: Testing Several Possible Linkages."   Unpublished paper prepared for delivery at Barnard Society Meeting, Academy of Management, Miami, August, 1991.
 
12. Barnard, 149.
 
13. Scott, 159.
 
14. Waldo, 87.
 
15. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (3rd ed.), Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1992.
 
16. Scott, 35.
 
17. Wilson, 201.
 
18. Taylor, Frederick Winslow.  "The Principles of Scientific Management.  In Shafritz, Jay M. and Ott, J. Steven  (Eds.), Classics of Organization Theory (3rd ed.), Brooks/Cole Publishing Company: Pacific Grove, CA, 1992, 69-80.
 
19. Klingner, Donald E. and Nalbandian, John. Public Personnel Management: Contexts and Strategies. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993, 13-14.
 
20. Klingner and Nalbandian, 14.
 
21. Gulick, Luther.  "Notes on the Theory of Organization." In Shafritz, Jay M. and Ott, J. Steven  (Eds.), Classics of Organization Theory (3rd ed.), Brooks/Cole Publishing Company: Pacific Grove, CA, 1992, 87-96.
 
22. Denhardt, Robert B.   Theories of Public Organization (2nd ed.). Wadsworth Publishing Company: Belmont, CA., 1993b: 54-55.
 
23. Denhardt, 1993b, 55.
 
24. Gulick, Luther.  "The Dynamics of Public Administration Today as Guidelines For the Future. Public Administration Review, 43 (May/June 1983): 193-198.
 
25. Simon, Herbert.  "The Proverbs of Administration."  Public Administration Review 6 (Winter 1946):  53-67.
 
26. Simon, 61.
 
27. See Nicholas Henry's excellent recounting of the history of the field, "Public Administration's Century in a Quandary" in Public Administration and Public Affairs (6th ed.), Simon and Schuster: Englewood Cliffs, 1995, 22-50.
28. Bingham, Richard D. and Bowen, William M. (1994).  "'Mainstream' Public Administration Over Time: A Topical Content Analysis of Public Administration Review." Public Administration Review 54 (March/April 1994): 204-208.
 
29. Public Administration Review (August 1997).  PAR indices, 1988-94 [Hypertext link leading to gopher site posted on World Wide Web].  Retrieved February 1, 1998 from the World Wide Web: http://www.niu.edu/ext/par/
 
30. Content analysis was used to derive the four domains and to sort index topics into the domains.  Sorts were conducted independently by two individuals.  In sorting the 1991 index topics, the sorters initially disagreed on the proper domain for four of 79 topics-- Ethics, Administrative State, Affirmative Action, and Citizen Participation.  The same high rate of agreement held for the sort of the 1994 index topics.  Differences were resolved by discussion and Tables 1 and 2 reflect sorter consensus.
 
31. Golembiewski, Robert T. Practical Public Management. Marcel Dekker, Inc: New York, 1995, iii.
 
32. LaPorte, Todd.  The Recovery of Relevance in the Study of Public Organization.  In Marini, Frank (Ed.), Toward a New Public Administration: The Minnowbrook Perspective (17-47). Chandler: San Francisco, 1971, 17-47.
 
33. Denhardt, 1993b, 126.
 
34. LaPorte, 32.
 
35. Frederickson, H. George (1971).  Toward a new public administration. In Marini, Frank (Ed.), Toward a New Public Administration: The Minnowbrook Perspective   Chandler: San Francisco, 1971, 309-331.
 
36. Wamsley, Gary L., Charles T. Goodsell, John A. Rohr, Orion F. White, and James F. Wolf.  "The Public Administration and the Governance Process:  Refocusing the American Dialogue." Dialogue: The Public Administration Theory Network 6 (1984).
 
37. Wamsley, Gary L., Robert N. Bacher, Charles T. Goodsell, Philip S. Kronenberg, John A. Rohr, Camilla M. Stivers, Orion F. White, and James F. Wolf. Refounding Public Administration. Sage Publications: Newbury Park, CA, 1990.
 
38. Wamsley, Goodsell, Rohr, White, and Wolf, 1984, 13.
 
39. Meier, Kenneth J. "Public Administration Theory and Applied Economics: Some Intemperate Remarks."  Administration and Politics: The Newsletter for the Section on Public Administration of the American Political Science Association 3 (1993): 3-6.
 
40. Farmer, David J.  "Kill the King: Foucalt and Public Administration Theory."  Administrative Theory and Praxis 17 (October 1995): 78-83.
 

The author wishes to thank Dr. Robert T. Golembiewski and Dr. Stephanie Bellar for their review of this manuscript and suggestions for its improvement.
 

 
  OR Follow this link to return to the MPA Homepage.