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Bureaucracy and Consultation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Fritz Morstein Marx
Fritz Morstein Marx
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Administrative organization, if at all the product of thought, reflects primarily the need for a rational division of labor. Purpose must be translated into functions. Functions must be mapped out in terms of individual working units devoted to specific tasks. The ensuing specialization, however, is not without undesirable concomitants. Inevitably, confinement to one set of operations has a stifling effect, differing only in degree, on those virtually prisoners of the office structure. Perspective narrows, initiative weakens. Day after day the same general formula is enacted, the same questions are raised, the same points are checked. An outsider bold enough to inquire into concrete considerations underlying the fixed pattern must be prepared for surprises. He will have to be satisfied all too often with the slipshod reply, reproachful or sarcastic: “It has always been done this way.” The answer is not only pathetically inadequate. It also reveals that the formative idea which once guided the design for action has lost its hold. Routine perpetuated by sheer habit is at best a makeshift. It may keep things going temporarily, but it is certain to cramp the conduct of business under changing conditions. Moreover, thoughtless reliance on techniques once acquired results necessarily in a corresponding measure of intellectual unemployment. When precedent is sacred, minds go idle.

Type
Articles
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 1939 , pp. 84 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1939

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References

1 For an acute interpretation of the significance of such symbols see Lasswell, Harold D., Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York and London, 1936), pp. 29 ff., 37Google Scholar.

2 Lenin, V. I., Whal Is To Be Done? (New York, 1929), p. 121Google Scholar, note. Lenin published this brilliant analysis of “burning questions of our movement” (so the subtitle) early in 1902.

3 A useful illustration is given in Kurtz, Russell H., ed., The Public Assistance Worker (New York, 1938)Google Scholar.

4 This theme is explored more fully by Herring, E. Pendleton, Public Administration and the Public Interest (New York and London, 1936)Google Scholar.

5 The system is outlined in his Li Chi (The Younger Tai's Record of Rites). Cf. also for the practices under the T'ang Dynasty (620–906) Rotours, Robert des, Le Traité des Examens (Paris, 1932)Google Scholar, an exceedingly valuable account.

6 Wiesiger, F. K., Beantwortung der Frage: Wie können Magistratspersonen in Mittleren und Kleinen Städten den grössten Nutzen stiften? (Zerbst, 1798), p. 53Google Scholar. The author of this manual of municipal practice for the use of middlesized and smaller communities was a Prussian career administrator.

7 Bain, Read, “Theory and Practice of State Administration,” American Political Science Review, vol. 32 (1938), p. 499CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Report of the Special Commission established to investigate the Advisability of amending the Constitution of the Commonwealth to provide for Biennial Sessions of the General Court and for a Biennial Budget, Senate (Massachusetts) No. 35, 01 1, 1936, p. 23. Italics mineGoogle Scholar.

9 Cardozo, Benjamin N., The Paradoxes of Legal Science (New York, 1928), p. 121Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Lassar, Gerhard, “Reichseigene Verwaltung unter der Weimarer Verfassung,” Jahrbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts, vol. 14 (1926), pp. 1 ff.Google Scholar

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13 Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the Year ending June 1, 1891 (Harrisburg, 1891), p. 87Google Scholar.

14 Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Special Committee on the Operation of the Civil Service Act, No. 39 (containing the final report submitted to Parliament 06 29, 1938), House of Commons, Ottawa, CanadaGoogle Scholar. Italics mine.

15 McCormick, Charles P., Multiple Management (New York, 1938)Google Scholar.