An Analysis of Administrative Purpose

The battleground of administrative theory has witnessed the rise of functional-institutionalism, under the banners of Gulick and others, and the yielding, in part, of its “principles” to the hordes of the iconoclastic “pragmatic revolt” (or the cult of “administrationism” as Waldo labeled it). But just as legal realism has been interpreted by some observers as law's acid bath, so, too, this new “administrative realism” is considered by many a catharsis, not a cure.Some present-day theorists have attempted to throw normative life-lines to the administrator. Appleby has written of the socio-political role of the administrative process. Barnard and Friedrich have called upon the administrator to act under the rubric of his moral responsibility. Others on the organizational level—Stene for example—have attempted to derive a “pure theory of organization,” not based upon all-embracing, clearly predictive rules, but rather in the form of theories of “administrative statics” (another Waldoism) which may be cast over a framework of the concrete purposes of any specific administrative situation. The underlying continuum supporting both the social norms of Appleby, Barnard and Friedrich, and the organizational theoretics of Stene, is purpose. Indeed, defined purpose alone could make sensible Stene's axiom that “The degree to which any given organization approaches the full realization of its objectives tends to vary directly with the coordination of individual effort.” If the objectives are discoverable only by hindsight, a query may well be raised: Does coordination exist because the purpose was realized, or is the purpose realized because coordination existed? Clearly, a well-grounded theory of public administration must be based on a predictively refined approach to the concept of purpose.