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- Title
On the Concept Of a Self-Correcting Organization.
- Authors
Landau, Martin
- Abstract
Public bureaucracies are inflexible and inadequate problem solvers because they are not scientific enough. The proper application of scientific principles to management reinforces the Weberian concept of bureaucratic administration as the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge. Within this perspective, the cardinal function of bureaucratic administration is to prevent and correct errors. Accordingly, they must be concerned with rules of adequate solution, not rituals of authority. Two classic devices in public administration, the pre-audit and the post-audit, are represented here as analytic instruments capable of error detection with respect to policy making, planning and programming. Policies are reinterpreted as the equivalent of theories; plans as models; programs as experiments - in the interest of displacing rationalization by verification, and establishing the spirit of criticism as the essential property of a scientifically managed organization.
- Subjects
INDUSTRIAL management; PUBLIC officers; BUREAUCRACY; POLITICAL planning; LEARNING; PUBLIC administration; MANAGEMENT; ORGANIZATIONAL sociology; THEORY of knowledge
- Publication
Public Administration Review, 1973, Vol 33, Issue 6, p533
- ISSN
0033-3352
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/974565