Republic of the Philippines

Technological University of the Philippines

College of Industrial Education
Graduate Program

LYNDY G. PANTAO
Program: Ed.D. - IEM
Course: MM 517 Public Administration
Professor: ROMEO S. EBONITE, Ed.D.
Semester: Second Semester
School Year: 2019-2020

Insight Paper No. 3

The Evolution of Management and Organizational Theory

The Origins of Public Management

Civilization and administration have always gone hand in hand. When a
civilization grows, administration also grows. It is evident that the profession of
management began and developed as profession of arms because war at the state
level is impossible without an effective system of public administration behind it. Military
officers were the first public administrators. In military, there is a system of command
which they follow starting from the people at the top down to the people at the bottom.
This system is applied in management. Upon knowing this I realized that indeed military
is the precursor of management. The people at the bottom of the organization wait for
the instruction given to them from the people above hence there is a system. Even the
word reform is of military origin. It means to once again (“re”) organize the ranks (“form”)
for an additional assault whether on another army or on a difficult management
problem.
We can say that public management owes it origins from military so heavily that
the field would literally be tongue-tied without it. The history of the world can be viewed
as the rise and all of public administrative institutions. Ancient empires that rose and
prevailed for a while were those with better administrative institutions than their
competitors. In today’s time, if a company persists for a longer time, it means that it has
functional administrative system.

The Evolution of Management Principles

Authoritarian or traditional management is the classic model of military
government applied to civilian purposes. I learned in this part that management takes its
roots from the military. It started in an authoritarian way where it values order, precision,
consistency, and obedience. Relationships are hierarchical, based on dominance and
dependence. Later on, this authoritarian style has given way to less centralized, more
participative management styles.
 Administration is a dynamic entity that is there are no generally accepted
principles of management. However, there is a principles approach that has its origins in
the principles of war.
1. Objective: this is important because this provides the purpose of the
organization.
2. Offensive: to me this means taking initiative at every opportunity.
3. Mass: every step made should be strategic where pros and cons are considered.
4. Economy of force: this is also strategizing one’s resources.
5. Maneuver: to me this means one should always be in advantageous position.
6. Unity of command: in an organization, it is important that all the composing parts
are united.
7. Security: every step of the way should be well calculated.
8. Surprise: strike the enemy at a time and/or place and in a manner for which he is
unprepared.
9. Simplicity: prepare clear uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure
thorough understanding.
These principles as one will notice are applied in the military hence civilian
management principles take its roots from military principles. It should be noted that
military principles are more policy oriented, more leadership directed than civilian
principles.
The Organization Theory
If we define organization, it is a group of people who jointly work to achieve at
least one common goal. A theory on the other hand is a proposition or set of
propositions that seeks to explain or predict something. Organizational theory relates
how groups and individuals behave in differing organizational arrangements. This
information is important for a leader or a manager in such a way that this knowledge will
guide the leader or manager to effectively manage the organization. Before,
organizational theory was done naturally without formal learning much like how leaders
in every field during every age as naturally as they used their oratorical powers. It can
also be said that it came from the authoritarian model offered by the military. When the
problems of managing an organization grew to be more than one head could cope with,
the search for guidance on how to manage and arrange large-scale organizations
became as noble a quest as the secular world of business could offer. Larger
organizations need a more sophisticated system in order to tackle the problems met.
Leaders should keep in mind that not all environment is the same. They differ.
Leaders should be able to maximize what is in the organization. I learned that the best
leaders are those who can effectively manage the resources that are present in the
organization.

The Origins of Scientific Management

The basic problem with the traditional hierarchical organization was that it was
dependent on the proper enculturation of individual supervisors at every level for its
success. For me, this means that a leader’s effectiveness depends on his background.
Some leaders do well on a particular set-up while other also do well in other set-up.
While traditional hierarchical organizations allowed leaders to extend their reach, the
organization was still dependent on the necessarily limited intellectual energy at the top.
This can be answered by staff concept which overcome the inherent limitations of a
single mind and ever-fleeting time.
Talking about staff concept, it refers to two mutually supporting ideas that
gradually evolved in both military and civilian contexts. As an organization becomes
bigger, managers started using assistants. This traditional use of staff was followed by
the staff principle (or staff concept), which created a specific unit in the larger
organization whose primary responsibility was to think and plan, to ponder over
innovations and plan for their implementation.
Nowadays, leaders should know about scientific management. This means that
they should know how to be systematic in dealings with issues and concerns. Leaders
should remember that being scientific means that a leader should use data before
making a decision. Everything must have a basis in order to steer the direction of the
organization in its right course.

The Period of Orthodoxy

The tenets of this orthodox ideology held that the work of government could be
neatly divided into decision making and execution (the politics–administration dichotomy
of Woodrow Wilson) and that administration was a science with discoverable principles
(scientific management). This two-facet view shows that public administration is a
dynamic entity. This also shows that politics can be separated from administration. But
this notion was quickly disposed of by the New Deal and World War II. Those times
show immense managerial undertakings. The experience of those years called into
question much of what was then the conventional wisdom of public administration. The
politics–administration dichotomy of the progressive reform movement lost its viability
amid the New Deal and the war effort because it was increasingly seen that it simply
was not possible to take value-free processes of business and apply them to
government. Government, in spite of the best efforts of many reformers, was not a
business and was not value-free.
I learned in this section that politics and administration are difficult to separate
from each other. Administration is affected by politics and politics is affected by
administration. For aspiring leaders, the effect should be brought to a minimum level in
order to become more objective in dealings with the issues and concerns of the
organization.

The Meanings of Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy has many meanings. The following are its meanings:
1. All government offices. This is the totality of government offices or bureaus (a French
word meaning “office”) that constitute the permanent government of a state— that is,
those public functions that continue irrespective of changes in political leadership.
2. All public officials. This refers to all of the public officials of a government— both high
and low, elected and appointed. So, everyone who works in the government is part of
bureaucracy.
3. A general invective. Bureaucracy is often used as a general invective to refer to any
inefficient organization encumbered by red tape. Here, corruption is related to
bureaucracy.

The Neoclassical Organization Theory

There is no precise definition for neoclassical in the context of organization
theory. The general connotation is that of a theoretical perspective that revises and/or is
critical of classical organization theory—particularly for minimizing issues related to the
humanness of organizational members, coordination needs among administrative units,
internal-external organizational relations, and organizational decision processes.
Advocates of neoclassical organization theory sought to “save” classical theory
by introducing modifications based on research findings in the behavioral sciences. The
neoclassical school was important because it initiated the theoretical movement away
from the oversimplistic mechanistic views of the classical school. This is some sort of a
liberating idea. Second, in the process of challenging the classical school, the
neoclassicsts raised issues and initated theories that became central to the foundations
of most of the schools or approaches to organization theory that have followed.

“Modern” Structural Organization Theory

When we say structure of an organization, we talk about the relatively stable
relationships among the positions and groups of positions (units) that comprise the
organization. On the other hand, structural organization theory is concerned with vertical
differentiations—hierarchical levels of organizational authority and coordination, and
horizontal differentiations between organizational units—for example, between product
or service lines, geographical areas, or skills.
Here are the basic assumptions of ‘modern” structural organization theory
according to Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal:
1. Organizations are rational institutions whose primary purpose is to accomplish
established objectives; rational organizational behavior is achieved best through
systems of defined rules and formal authority. Organizational control and coordination
are key for maintaining organizational rationality.

2. There is a “best” structure for any organization—or at least a most appropriate

structure—in light of its given objectives, the environmental conditions surrounding it (for
example, its markets, the competition, and the extent of government regulation), the
nature of its products and/or services (the “best” structure for a management consulting
firm probably is substantially different than that for a certified public accounting firm),
and the technology of the production processes (a coal mining company has a different
“best structure” than the manufacturer of computer microcomponents).

3. Specialization and the division of labor increase the quality and quantity of production
—particularly in highly skilled operations and professions.

4. Most problems in an organization result from structural flaws and can be solved by
changing the structure.
Systems Theory
Systems theory views an organization as a complex set of dynamically
intertwined and interconnected elements, including its inputs, processes, outputs,
feedback loops, and the environment in which it operates and with which it continuously
interacts. This means that if there is a change in any element of the system, it can
cause changes in other elements. There is an interconnection of elements which tend to
be complex, dynamic, and often unknown. Systems theorists study these
interconnections, frequently using organizational decision processes and information
and control systems as their focal points for analysis.
Systems theories tend to be multidimensional and complex in their assumptions
about organizational cause-and-effect relationships. They see organizations as
continually changing processes of interactions among organizational and environmental
elements.