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Four Main Theorists Of The Classical Approach To Public Administration

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Classical Approach The classical approach to public administration was focused on finding the best way to perform and manage tasks. This classical approach to Public Administration is often associated with Weber, Wilson, Taylor, and Gulick. Under the classical approach was four areas of focus which was the Bureaucratic, Scientific, Administrative, and Managerial approach. Each area represented the four main theorists that the classical approach was associated with. Max Weber's bureaucratic approach focused on the rational-legal model which viewed bureaucracy from a rational view and argued that bureaucracy is the most efficient and rational way in which one can organize the human activity and that hierarchies are necessary to maintain …show more content…

Mayo was one of the first to think about individual behavior and how it integrates with group processes. Mayo's human relations approach says; a happy worker is an efficient worker; that means if an organization can keep its workforce happy, it would bring more productivity and more profit because if a worker is happy what the organization provides. Elton Mayo for the first time brought out the importance of relationships between social factors and productivity. Before his studies, the productivity of the employees was considered to be a function only of physical conditions of work and money wages paid to them. Simon, on the other hand, was a further departure from the classical approach to Public Administration. Although Simon was noted to having some similar views to some of the theorists before him but according to Fry and Raadschelders (2014),"truly distinctive feature of Simons work lies in his preoccupation with decision making in the organization" (P281). His work known as "satisficing" was that Simon maintained that individuals do not seek to maximize their benefit from a particular course of action (Guru, 2009). Simon contended that individuals were limited in their ability to assess all information that would be needed in order to maximize their benefit. Bounded by cognitive limits. Hence people seek something which is good

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