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Classical Theory of Public Administration

There have been several debates and disagreements over whether public administration should be classified as a science or an art form. We had come across authors and social scientists who fiercely supported the idea that public administration was actually a science during our earlier discussion of the matter, and among the most renowned advocates of this notion were Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urvick.

Gulick and Urvick were born in different countries, Gulick in Japan and Urvick in the United Kingdom. Gulick earned his bachelor's degree from Columbia University and served on the National Defense Council during World War I. From 1954 to 1956, he was the administrator of New York City, and from 1962 to 1982, he was the head of the Institute of Public Administration in New York. Administrative Reflections of World War II, Metropolitan Problems and American Ideas, Modern Management of the City of New York, and Papers on the Science of Administration were among his many works.

The most important book, Papers on the Science of Administration, presented by Gulick in 1937, was edited by Urwick. Fayol and Taylor, as well as the idea of a machine model of man, impacted both of these thinkers considerably. All of this, together with their separate military and industrial backgrounds, led them to establish the Administrative Management Theory, often known as the Classical Theory of Management. The traditional view of public administration is that it is a science. Both authors stated that, much as engineering created science through empirical observation, methodical finding, and long-term recording, public administrators might build the science of administration using the same approaches.

Both the authors also stressed on the importance of the structure of the organization. Urwick wrote that lack of structure can lead to a lot of inefficiencies and confusion within an organization and Gulick went ahead to identify 10 principles on which the organizational structure can be designed. Below are the 10 principles as listed by Gulick:

1. Division of labor or what we call specialization 2. Departmental Organization 3. Hierarchical coordination 4. Deliberate coordination 5. Creating coordination committees 6. Decentralization 7. Unity of command 8. Staff and Line 9. Delegation and Span of Control

The last principle regarding the span of control of a senior executive or a leader, acted as a stimulant for other authors on writing about leadership. According to this last principle, the executive should have less number of people directly reporting to him to increase his efficiency.

Urwick believed that there are 8 principles on which an organization can function, the important points being:

• The objective of the organization • Authority and responsibility • The principle of span of control • Coordination

The principle of definition amongst other principles And lastly, we can end the discussion without writing about Gulick’s POSDCORB, each word signifying the various executive functions:

• P - Planning • O- Organizing • S - Staffing • D - Directing • CO - Coordination • R - Reporting • B - Budgeting

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