Current government size and complexity require career officials to manage an experimental and service-based system of public administration. A problem-solving executive service is an effective means of managing a diverse public-service system without stifling its productive potential.
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References
1.
See also Norton E. Long's discussion of the SES, “The S.E.S. and the Public Interest,”Public Administration Review, 41(3):305, 312 (May-June 1981).
2.
2. Leonard P. White, ed., Civil Service in Wartime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), pp. 36-44.
3.
3. Eugene B. McGregor, Jr., ed., “Symposium: The Public Service as Institution,”Public Administration Review, 42(4):304, 320 (July-Aug. 1982).
4.
4. Frederick C. Mosher, Democracy and Public Service (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).
5.
5. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977).
6.
6. Wilson, “Study of Administration,” p. 199.
7.
7. Ibid., pp. 200-1.
8.
Jean J. Couturier and Stephen E. Dunn, “Federal Colonization of State and Local Governments,”State Government, 50(2):65, 71 (Spring 1977).
9.
9. Managing Federal Assistance in the 1980's: A Report to the Congress of the United States Pursuant to the Federal Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act of 1977, Public Law 95-224 (Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, Mar. 1980).
10.
10. Wilson, “Study of Administration,” p. 215.
11.
That Woodrow Wilson exulted in the same pragmatic and experimental approach to problem solving seems clearly implied in “Study of Administration”; see his comments on the transferability of European practice to the United States, p. 216, and the role of theory in practical administration, pp. 220-221.
12.
12. Observers from outside the United States find U.S. public-service structure anomalous. As the Fulton Committee report noted, “ `Agencies' proliferate on a considerable scale, and they may or may not eventually be brought together under one ministerial head.”Report of the Committee on the Civil Service to Parliament (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1968), p. 144.
13.
13. Louis Bragaw's analysis of the “hidden stimulus” describes nicely how agency missions change over time: Managing a Federal Agency (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
14.
14. James E. Webb, Space Age Management: The Large Scale Approach (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 162.
15.
For an even earlier account of the structure and operation of governmental redundancy, see, for instance, Charles A. Beard, American Government and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1936), pp. 382-383, on the role of American government in the advancement of foreign trade.
16.
16. Eugene B. McGregor, Jr., “Politics and Career Mobility,”American Political Science Review, 68(1):18, 26 (Mar. 1974).
17.
17. Beard, American Government and Politics, pp. 300-301.
18.
18. Richard Rose, ed., Challenge to Governance: Studies in Overloaded Polities (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980), pp. 6-7.
19.
19. An excellent illustration of the governance process is found in Robert Caro, The Power Broker (New York: Vintage Books, 1974); see ch. 33, “Leading Out the Regiment.”
20.
20. Alan K. Campbell, “Testimony on Civil Service Reform and Reorganization,” Testimony before the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, U.S. House of Representatives (14 Mar. 1978). The establishment of a statutory basis for federal labor relations appears not to have been the strategic issue addressed by CSRA. The subject was omitted in the original arguments for reform (see Campbell, “Testimony”). The subsequent appearance of what became the labor-management relations provisions of Public Law 95-454 confirms that Title VII of CSRA was designed to secure the support of federal labor unions whose help was needed to pass the rest of the legislation. In effect, the key part of CSRA lies with those subjects for which the support of labor was solicited.
21.
21. John A. Rohr, “Ethics for the Senior Executive Service: Suggestions for Management Training,”Administration and Society, 12(2):203, 215 (Aug. 1980).
22.
See also James L. Sundquist, “The Crisis of Competence in Our National Government,”Political Science Quarterly, 95(2):207, 208 (Summer 1980).
23.
23. Douglas Yates, Bureaucratic Democracy: The Search for Democracy and Efficiency in American Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
24.
24. I am indebted to Long's analysis of the problem of administrative fragmentation and problem solving in the Pentagon, “S.E.S.,” pp. 307-8.
25.
25. It is important to emphasize that what Harlan Cleveland has referred to as a “situation-as-a-whole” generalist does not imply the absence of specialized training and experience: The Future Executive (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), ch. 9, “Shapers of Values.”
26.
26. Arthur L. Finkle, Herbert Hall, and Sophia S. Min, “Senior Executive Service: The State of the Art,”Public Personnel Management Journal, 10(3):299, 312 (Fall 1981).
