Public Sector Management, Systems, and Ethics.

Abstract

To paraphrase Gawthrop's conception of our contemporary dilemma, public administrators are facing an organizational crisis brought on by the overloading of their lines of communication as a result of the variety of demands placed upon them by increasingly complex external environments. Consistent with Shannon's work on information theory and Ashby's law of requisite variety, Gawthrop believes there is a necessity to redesign public organizations and manage them with new methods appropriate for our complex society. In proposing an approach to these challenges, he draws heavily upon general systems theory (GST). In addition, he suggests the need for a new sense of purpose in public administration, an ethical orientation that is congruent with GST and democratic theory. Readers will find the book is cast at a high level of abstraction but appropriately so for a subject of this complexity. Few will disagree with the author's premise that organizational structures and procedures based upon classical designs for discrete organizations and traditional conceptions of our federal systems are not adequate to today's patterns of interorganizational and intergovernmental relations. Gawthrop provides some fresh insights into one of the classic questions of organizational theory: how to achieve coordinated and predictable patterns of behavior from complex organizations while avoiding diminution of their adaptive capacities. Drawing upon Herbert Simon and others he related programmed operations to variety attenuation and nonprogrammed to variety amplification. Then, he offers a stimulating discussion of new organizational designs and an analysis of the distinctive roles of organizational systems for decision-making, planning, maintenance, operational delivery, and boundary spanning. Based on his analysis an array of graphic models are furnished. Collectively the models provide additional design dimensions to consider in structuring organizations much in the way that Simon, Smithberg, and Thompson discussions in the 1950s of overhead, counterpart, and auxiliary units enriched our understanding of line-staff relationships. Gawthrop is unabashedly normative in his orientation; his prescriptions range from specific new organizational designs to his call for managers with a consciousness and a creative awareness. The author approaches questions of meta-organizational redesign with an appreciation of the difficulties involved in sustaining essential organizational innovation and creativity. To manage the redesigned management systems he sees the need for critical systems management. He calls for managers, who are both rationally effective

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