Administrative Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The thinker was Fayol.

Henri Fayol, in General and Industrial Management (1916), argued that management could and should be taught in schools and universities, and that the reason it was not taught was the absence of a theory: without theory no teaching is possible. He set out to supply one through his functions of management (planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling) and his fourteen principles.

Taylor's focus was the scientific study of work at the shop floor, Weber's the sociology of bureaucracy, and Urwick's the synthesis and popularisation of classical principles; the statement about theory and teaching is Fayol's.

Answer: A

Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).

Chester Barnard, in The Functions of the Executive (1938), gave close attention to informal organisation: the network of personal contacts, interactions and groupings that grows up alongside the formal structure. That is the assertion.

He studied it because he regarded informal organisation as essential to the formal one. It creates the conditions for formal organisation to emerge, aids communication, maintains cohesion and protects individual integrity. In his view the two are interdependent and complementary, which is why he examined it, so the reason explains the assertion.

Answer: C

The key gives a-3, b-4, c-1, d-2.

Max Weber wrote on authority and its legitimacy (legal-rational, traditional and charismatic) and on social development, so (a) goes with Weber. Herbert Simon's account of organisation as a system of decisions kept in balance between inducements and contributions fits (c). Fred Riggs worked on bureaucracy in its social setting in developing societies, as in his work on the prismatic society, so (d) goes with Riggs. That leaves (b), a critique of the US administrative system, with Lyndall Urwick.

I could not trace each line of List I to a single named work, so (c) and (b) rest on this reading of the authors and on elimination. Only the key's code gives Weber for (a), Simon for (c) and Riggs for (d) together, and no other code does.

Answer: C

The key gives Chris Argyris.

Argyris, the Harvard organisational theorist known for work on organisational learning and the clash between individual and organisation, is on the Thinkers50 Management Hall of Fame list for 2013, the earliest year the Hall of Fame's own year listing shows.

Ferrel Heady (comparative public administration) and Robert Golembiewski (organisation development and public administration) are scholars of public administration, and neither is on that 2013 list. Douglas McGregor, the author of Theory X and Theory Y, is not on it either, though I did not check later years.

Answer: A

The authors are Miller and Fox.

Charles J. Fox and Hugh T. Miller wrote Postmodern Public Administration: Towards Discourse (1995). They argued that the traditional model of representative democracy and hierarchical bureaucracy no longer works, and proposed 'authentic discourse' among citizens and officials as the basis of public administration.

Alice Rivlin is an economist known for Systematic Thinking for Social Action and as the first director of the Congressional Budget Office. John Rohr wrote on ethics for bureaucrats and constitutional legitimacy. Naomi Caiden is known for work on public budgeting.

Answer: B

New Public Service is built on democratic citizenship.

Janet and Robert Denhardt proposed the New Public Service (2000) as an alternative to New Public Management. Where NPM treats people as customers and asks government to steer, the New Public Service holds that public administrators should serve citizens rather than customers, pursue the public interest, and help citizens articulate and meet shared interests. Its foundations are theories of democratic citizenship, community and civil society, and organisational humanism.

Integral humanism is a political philosophy associated with Deendayal Upadhyaya, not this movement, and control of society or of the bureaucracy is not its basis.

Answer: A

The key gives Dwight Waldo.

Waldo (1913-2000) was the leading American critic of the orthodox view of public administration and the writer of The Administrative State.

I could not find a source that has Waldo, or anyone else in the list, naming 1940 as the dividing year, so the key is kept without a quoted source. Fred Riggs is known for comparative public administration and Robert Merton for sociology (his 1940 paper on bureaucratic structure and personality is the only 1940 link among the names), and I could not identify Michael Monroe.

Answer: C

Drucker's MBO emphasises motivation and self-control.

Peter Drucker introduced the idea in The Practice of Management (1954) as management by objectives and self-control. Managers and subordinates agree on objectives, and each manager then measures and directs his own performance against them, which motivates him far more than control from above.

Options pairing objectives or communication with plain control miss Drucker's point, which was to replace control by domination with self-control.

Answer: A

Minnowbrook III deliberated on the future of public administration, public management and public service.

The third Minnowbrook conference, held in 2008, forty years after the first, took as its theme the future of public administration, public management and public service around the world.

The other options alter the theme's key word to issues, review or core values. The first Minnowbrook (1968) launched the New Public Administration, and the second (1988) reviewed the discipline twenty years on.

Answer: B

Creative Experience focuses on conflict in organisation.

In Creative Experience (1924) Mary Parker Follett developed her idea of constructive conflict: conflict is not to be suppressed but used, and the best way to resolve it is integration, finding a solution in which both sides' desires are met, rather than domination or compromise.

She was interested in group psychology and ethics too, but the problem the book puts at the centre is conflict. Her earlier The New State dealt with forms of government.