Review

Author(s): James W. Fesler

Review by: James W. Fesler
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Feb., 1948), pp. 187-189
Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2125825
Accessed: 01-12-2015 19:55 UTC

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1948] BOOK REVIEWS 187

Ludens is one of the rare great works which advances sub-

stantially our understanding of man in historical and po-
litical existence.
ERIC VOEGELIN
Louisiana State University

Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making

Processes in Administrative Organization. By HERBERT A.
SIMON. (New York: The Macmillan Company. 1947. Pp.
xvi, 259. $4.00.)
Professor Simon brings a penetrating insight into ad-
ministrative operations and a distinguished talent for ab-
stract thinking to the task of describing the function of
decision-making in large organizations. This task in turn
leads him to careful building of the vocabulary and set
of concepts without which description would be impossible.
The reader who balks at conceptual writing and lacks a
broad set of administrative experiences to which Professor
Simon's broad generalizations can be related will find the
book hard-going.
Certain distinctions are fundamental to Simon'Asdescrip-
tion of decision-making and will command general accept-
ance. The correctness of an administrative decision is
more ascertainable if the decision concerns the best means
to an already defined end than if it concerns the relative
values of the ends themselves; an administrative science
can concern itself with the former but not with the latter.
An individual's behavior encompasses both a rational
sphere and an irrational sphere, and much of the function
of administrative organization lies in providing those con-
ditions that will enable officials to make decisions in a
rational framework. Efficiency of administration is rela-
tive; it cannot be appraised solely in terms of success in
achieving objectives but must be appraised in the light of
the limited resources available to the administrator for
achieving the desired objectives. Individual officials, even
if they succeed in overcoming preponderant concern with
their personal welfare and the welfare of private groups,
may identify themselves either with the objective of their
organization (e.g. promotion of health) or with the con-
servation of their organization qua organization; either

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188 THE JOURNAL
OFPOLITICS [Vol. 10

of these identifications if not compensated for by adminis-

trative arrangements may lessen the officials' usefulness
as decision-makers. Each employee has an "area of ac-
ceptance" or, in Barnard's phrase, an "area of indiffer-
ence," within which he is ready to accept directions by a
superior without those directions being formally phrased
as commands or implemented by sanctions.
Distinctions of this sort are numerous and serve to
clarify thinking about administration. The fact that such
distinctions are scarcely novel does not deprive of value
their orderly statement as universally valid features of
administrative operations.
Despite a notable effort to be realistic, and to distinguish
clearly between how administration does operate and how
it ideally should operate, Simon has not wholly avoided
enmeshment in the formalism that seems a frequent ac-
companiment of conceptual analysis. The emphasis is so
heavily upon assuring correctness of decisions that there
is little if any recognition of the time factor. Yet this
factor often makes some decision imperative even at the
expense of correctness and precludes the mobilization of
relevant information and the thoughtful weighting of
values that are requisite to a correct decision. The tele-
phone call demanding an instantaneous answer, the quickly
called conference on an unanticipated subject, the whole
tempo of emergency agencies, are largely ignored by the
analysis. The illustrations used by Simon are drawn from
such relatively orderly and standardized areas of public
activity as social work, sewer construction, ship designing,
and fire protection.
The illustrations suggest another curious feature of the
book. Although the focusing on decision-making coupled
with the conceptual character of the study lead the reader
to think of decision-making as almost the same process as
policy formation, the illustrations suggest that Simon has
in mind principally the social worker, sanitary engineer,
and fire chief. The professionalization of such decision-
makers and their quite narrow range of discretion make
it easy to say, "Two persons, given the same possible al-
ternatives, the same values, the same knowledge, can ra-
tionally reach only the same decision." While Simon
properly uses this as a basis for a plea to extend the area
of rationality in decision-making, it seems to the reviewer

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1948] BOOK REVIEWS 189

to mislead readers into extravagant expectations of auto-

maton-like formation of policy. Above the social-worker
level the honest differences of opinion among administrators
of sound judgment, shared values, and mastery of subject-
matter are surely one of the major features of administra-
tion. The lack of administrators' assurance of or agree-
ment on the correctness of particular decisions, and the
dynamism of conflict out of which decisions often emerge,
seem widespread enough phenomena to warrant doubt of
our ability to judge the correctness of many decisions on
any basis other than empirical study of results. The re-
viewer's feeling that the higher reaches of decision-making
have at times eluded the author is strengthened further
by Simon's discussion of "the planning process" entirely
in terms of an engineer's choice of railroad routes and
dam sites and a naval department's designing of a battle-
ship. Important as the planning process is to decision-
making in public administration, the whole process is here
reduced to physical designing by professionalized personnel
rather than treated in the more appropriate terms of policy
formation for a great administrative agency.
These observations do not do justice to the rich variety
of issues that Simon illuminates. The psychological aspects
of administrative behavior, the problems of communication
preceding and following decisions, the validity of many
widely accepted "principles" of public administration, the
nature of administrative efficiency, and other administra-
tive problems of like moment, are explored with an im-
pressive competence. Any student of the theory of ad-
ministration will henceforth have to start with Simon's
analysi? of decision-making.
JAMES W. FESLER
University of North Carolina

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