Ralph Nader's Case Summary

Kadushin tightens up on Dawson's formulation and presents his understanding of the three elements in terms of the primary problem and the primary goal. In administrative supervision the primary problem is concerned with the correct, effective and appropriate implementation of agency policies and procedures. The primary goal is to ensure adherence to policy and procedure (Kadushin 1992: 20). The supervisor has been given authority by the agency to oversee the work of the supervisee. This carries the responsibility:

While working for the department, it became very apparent that the practices and management style of the Department Director significantly affected the culture and daily activities of the individual sections under his leadership. First, he would set objectives and standards for the individual sections. These objectives usually looked good on paper but were often unrealistic when applied to daily operations. These lofty ideals, set as goals to middle management, seemed overwhelming and out of touch with the reality of hands on field operations. As a result, middle management would frequently choose to either change or completely disregard the given directives. This disconnect in the chain of command would often cause confusion and inconsistencies at the operations level. Additionally, lack of follow-up meant the Department Director assumed his set objectives were being carried out while lower level employees remained uninformed.

Cooper, T. L. (2012). The responsible administrator: An approach to ethics for the administrative role (6th ed.). New York, NY: Jossey-Bass.

Candidate Gore had some difficulty issuing the order with a solid command presence. Even though SNC managed to hit all the paragraphs of OSMEAC, there were several long pauses while he gathered his thoughts during his brief, which displayed a lack of confidence in his abilities to lead. Initially, SNC had planned to use the stairs to throw the rope over the obstacle, which was an interesting way to approach the problem. Once SNC was told that was not an option, he was able to adapt to the situation and quickly formulate a secondary plan. This plan was to throw the rope over the tallest part of the obstacle, which was repeated throughout the remaining time with SNC assigning one fire team member at a time to attempt this goal without success.

Kernaghan, K. 2000. The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Services Values. Interational Review of Administrative Sciences 66. 2000, pp. 92-93.

Articles 15, 40, and 54 from the classic literature gives us an overview of how the US public administration is established. Public administration as we know it involves organizations to make every effort to be a good corporate citizen of the community. Organizations must conduct their business to be in a fair, ethical and professional manner with customers, governments, suppliers, community neighborhoods, and the general public.

Bureaucracy is linked to structure and hierarchy; there’s different levels of management and specific roles and relationships within that structure. Standardisation techniques were also implemented, with strict control and monitoring of rules, policies and procedures. Keeping records helped maintain control and standardisation across an organisation by allowing surveillance and storage of information such as hours worked and absence records, so that pay would be fair and correctly assigned. Fayol mentioned bureaucracy could achieve an organisations aims most efficiently. He suggested that

Based on my reading of the Wilson article and "The Blast in Centralia No.5”, I would justify the need for and importance of a strong and effective public administrative system in society because it will bring together the guiding principals which all organizations can follow to reach an equilibrium. The most important thing is the relationship between the employees and leaders. When this is in balance, the result will be a higher level of production in a greater degree of profit, all of which makes the guiding principles relevant.

Next, is administrative responsibility? Simply put this is a shared responsibility between public officials. Our officials need to determine a way in order lead without division of said responsibilities. This should be performed collectively and not just individually.

Fredrickson and Smith (2003) note that administrative theorists have to struggle with conflicting ideas such as the desire for efficiency, which can be in opposition to democratic ideals of equity and consensus building. Fredrickson and Smith (2003) outline the work on bureaucratic control by some, such as Allison and Wilson in their attempts to explain what motivates the government or bureaucracies to take action. Others, like Seidman have suggested that scholars have been looking at government action through the wrong point of view. Instead of attempting to understand the administrative motivation behind government action, the focus should be on the political motivations (Fredrickson & Smith, 2003). Fredrickson and Smith (2003) also discuss representative bureaucracy, where if members of a bureaucracy share the same, or similar, points of view as the general public, then the actions taken by bureaucracy members may be more democratic than actions taken by elected

Theories of public administration can best be compared using a framework with two-axis (see figure 1 below). The Y-axis has the environment of the organization with formal at one end and flexible at the other end, and the X-axis has the role of the leader with autocratic on one end and democratic on the other. The framework will discuss the major relevant contributions of the following theorists: Max Weber, Frederick W. Taylor, Luther H. Gulick, Mary Parker Follet, Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Herbert A. Simon, Charles E. Lindblom, and Dwight Waldo.

Specifically, bureaucratic accountability system comprises of a well-constructed and authentic relationship between superior and subordinates, in which they adhere to undisputed instructions, including additional systems and operating procedures with clear rules and guidelines (Romzek, & Dubick, 1987). While this form of accountability rewards conformity with continuation and punishes nonconformity with penalties, professional accountability encourages communication throughout the decision making process, disregard of professional advice results in system breakdown (Burke,

For my research on the principles bureaucratic organizational structure, I chose the Memphis Police Department, for which I have been employed the past twelve years. The father of bureaucracy Max Weber had some interesting, yet very controversial perspectives. Many concepts that can not and will not be tolerated in any organization or cooperation. An agency would do significant harm to themselves if they demonstrated an impersonal rule-based merit system, that is managed by rational law. Weber’s perspective wanted to keep the human element out of organizations entirely and have logical structures which are detrimental to any criminal justice organization which relies on human interactions(Cronkhite, 2013). He believed that the individuals that made up the bureaucratic organization, will be more efficient if their human differences are ignored. His models included a hierarchical structure of authority in an ordered system of superiors and subordinates, with individuals, were selected because of expert training, technical qualifications and career employees (Cronkhite, 2013). Though some of Weber tactics seem outdated and sterile, they still seemed to be used or modified in current organizational principles. The Memphis Police Department’s Mission Statement fundamentally disagrees with some perspectives of Weber as they are sworn to respond to the needs, rights, and expectations of all citizens(Memphis Police Department. ,2017). The Memphis Police Department employs four

By discussing some of the advantages and disadvantages of administration and politics dichotomy, an opinion of whether it is useful or impossible will be made. Wilson’s politics administration dichotomy refers to the idea that administrative decisions need to be made without political influence. One argument to this is that politics has transformed, let’s say, the role of a city manager from a neutral expert to a problem solver and dichotomy should be replaced with an expanded base of professional values for them.

Objective- Describe the features of organizations and bureaucracies- formal, informal, gendered, and network (Pages 179-195, 197).