On the Concept of a Self-Correcting Organization

Abstract

M y purpose here, quite directly, is to defend the principle of scientific management. The basic ground for my effort is the realization, set down by Justice Holmes in a few simple words, that Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based on imperfect While one can readily observe an increase in the importance of large-scale formal organization (LSFO), and while this form of organization is the distinguishing structural property of modern society (having achieved such prominence in the last 50 years as to have become the paradigm for the management of task environments), it is equally discernible that bureaucracy-technical and professional, rational and scientific-has become a socially problematic entity. Indeed, it is now seen as a profound threat, a spectre that haunts democracy and the spirit of humanism. This feeling, however widespread, is not new. At various stages of its development, bureaucracy has been denounced as an alien continental nuisance, tainted with the stamp of a Prussian boot, and branded as an enemy of the people. In lighter moments, it becomes a wonderland which alone of all social institutions can call into existence such roles as the Associate Assistant Administrator in the Office of Assistant Administrator for Administration. Parkinson did not discover this one; it was found by The New Yorker. Still, and despite our general apprehensions, all modern nations have seen in this social artifact an invention of such compelling power-problem-solving power-as to have made it their primary instrument of social control. Given the endurance of bureaucracy, and despite a classical tradition that suspects size, fears centralization, and exalts personality, one might be tempted to dismiss contemporary protest as an ideological residue that makes itself evident every now and again, only to pass into history. *Public bureaucracies are inflexible and inadequate problem solvers because they are not scientific enough. The proper application of scientific principles to management reinforces the Weberian concept of bureaucratic administration as the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge. Within this perspective, the cardinal function of bureaucratic administration is to prevent and correct errors. Accordingly, they must be concerned with rules of adequate solution, not rituals of authority. Two classic devices in public administration, the pre-audit and the post-audit, are represented here as analytic instruments capable of error detection with respect to policy making, planning, and programming. Policies are reinterpreted as the equivalent of theories; plans as models; programs as experiments in the interest of displacing rationalization by verification, and establishing the spirit of criticism as the essential property of a scientifically managed organization.

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