ABSTRACT
This is a textbook on organization theory for the public sector with a particular focus on the way the public sector is organized in representative democracies. A central issue is the links between public organizations and the content of public policy.The people who shape public policy normally act on behalf of formal organizations. A key assumption is that these participants’ organizational affiliations and the organizational setting in which they act will influence their way of thinking and their behaviour, and hence the content of public policy.An organization theory approach to the public sector assumes that it is impossible to understand the content of public policy and public decision-making without analysing the way political-administrative
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as well as between It is the interplay between individual factors and organizational conditions that must be analysed, for we are faced with organizations consisting of people and with people in an organizational context. The internal features of an individual public organization will influence how it identifies problems and how it solves them, which consequences it emphasizes and what evaluation criteria it uses. At the same time, a public organization’s mode of operation will be influenced by other formal organizations in the public and private sectors, in civil society and abroad.
