The Component Parts of Gulicks Ideas Relative to Organizational Classification - Essay Example

Your 1) 2) 3) 4) Public Administration The effectiveness and competence of any organization is determined by its management. An enterprise attains its objectives by adopting a most favorable management (strategy). Administration is management in the public sphere. Public administration is defined as the management of public affairs. The administration on its part is the corpus of civil servants. This corpus governs the State in the context of a clearly defined hierarchy. There are several forms of government worldwide and understanding Public Administration is of great interest since it reveals the nature of the vast government machinery.

Among several issues like the history of a government, its form and reform, stands the topic on governmental organizations and classifications, on which a number of authors have written. Among these outstanding authors is Luther Gulick in his 'Notes on the Theory of Organization' (1937). This discussion focuses on the component parts of Gulick's ideas relative to organizational classification, how they interrelate and contribute to the whole. In chapter 3 of the, 'The Craft of Public Administration', George Berkley and John Rouse attempt an Anatomy of Public Organisation.

'The article on the Machinery of Government Reform: Principles and Practice', (:Machinery of Government Reform Principles and Practice.htm) quotes the Haldane Report of 1918 on the 'distribution of government activities between government departments.' In effect, the Report proposes ten divisions in government ranging from Finance to Justice, despite recognising impossibility in 'co-operation between Departments in dealing with business of common interest" (Haldane 1918: 16). Contrary to the Heldane report, the American Public Administrator and Educator, Luther Hasely Gulick, 1892 - 1992, proposed four criteria for allocating government activities: purposes, such as furnishing water or conducting education; processes (employed), such as engineering, Your last name 2.

medicine, carpentry: place, for example Hawaii, Boston; and clientele served, such as immigrants, farmers, orphans. (Machinery of Government Reform). Gulick tried to explain that a specific department should have a defined purpose as well as identifying the processes to be used to attain this specific purpose. Thereafter, the type of persons to be served is chosen and the place of service is chosen as well. Before drawing a conclusion on the significance and observing contrasting views on Gulick's approach, it is important to briefly explain certain terms relative to the nature and/or functioning of an administration.

Centralization and/or decentralization can be political, administrative, financial or market. Administrative centralization is the concentration of government authority and responsibility on a central power while administrative decentralization is the delegation of such authority and responsibility to inferior hierarchical levels. The three principal forms of administrative decentralization are deconcentration, delegation and devolution. In administration, unity of command is the concept that each employee has one immediate superior; the chain of command is the hierarchy and its continuity is assured by the command protocol.

The span of control on its part is defined as the number of employees reporting to one superior. The application of these concepts ensures the smooth running of any administration and/or administrative division. For Gulick, his criteria on organizational classification ensure administrative efficiency. Like Herbert Simon, Thomas H. Hammond has identified that there is an 'impossibility of clearly dividing all the work of any government into a few such major purposes which do not overlap extensively' (Hammond 1990: 163).

However, the idea here is that Gulick's categories of organizational classification are significant in that they are an attempt to suggest a better way of allocating government functions. Reference 20-04-2008