Administrative Innovations in Probation Service

Abstract

This paper asserts that restructuring the organization and management patterns of existing probation departments is funda mental to the more effective delivery of probation service and to the testing of new programs. Organizational administrative prob lems are analyzed within the context of administrative theory and practice. Max Weber's principles of bureaucracy are applied to probation practice as a method of conceptualizing problems in contemporary justice; they are buttressed by Douglas McGregor's more recent analysis of bureaucratic organizations and the as sumptions about human nature and behavior underlying such organizational structures (Theory X). Finally, personnel motiva tion is examined from the perspective of Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" theory.