Rationality and the Problems of Administrative Theory精选.pdfVIP

Rationality and the Problems of Administrative Theory RICHARD HARTWIG* Mr. Hartwig is an instructor in the Political Science Department of Iowa State University. ‘I believe that the history of philosophical ethics can be viewed as an exploration of insoluble problems, some of which, by rephrasing, have been transformed into answerable questions.’ (Wayne Leys, Ethics and Administrative Discretion.) The condition of public administration has been diagnosed as serious, but as yet there is no cure. Our inability to integrate the many partial theories of administrative behaviour is one sympton of the ‘crisis’, and the ambiguity of key concepts such as ‘organizational effectiveness’ and ‘administrative responsibility’ is another. Public administration theory has traditionally attempted to explain and evaluate the behaviour of complete organizations. The problem is that the composite behaviour of complete organizations involves multiple types of rationality. Concepts used in the contexts of multiple types of rationality are necessarily ambiguous, and theories ignoring the full range of types of rationality are necessarily partial. My central thesis is that the five types (and two aspectshevels) of rationality described by the political philosopher, Paul Diesing, may be used as a comprehensive framework of ideal types around which to organize administrative theory. According to Waldo, the condition of public administration is confusion as to the nature, boundaries, methodology and subject matter of the ‘field’, ‘discipline’, or ‘profession’, and any cure will have to come from outside the traditional frame of reference of public administration