ABSTRACT
In the era of Weber and Taylor, the environment within which an organization functioned was relatively steady, and the tasks of the government were limited and simpler. The years since have seen rapid change and demands upon government have become multidimensional. Although not always very timely and state-of-the-art, the response of public administration has been more than adequate: through building and reinforcing multiple capacities, it has managed the American welfare state quite successfully. World War II gave rise to Operations Research-a science of maximizing allocation of limited resources for attaining maximum benefit, which emerged as a policy tool useful in coordinating large-scale logistic efforts of the armed forces. Since the 1950s, the systems approach has become a framework for analyzing public programs. Versions of this approach include cost-benefit analysis, institutionalized use of which in the United States is often traced back to the U.S. Flood Control Act of 1936.(145) By the 1950s, it had become an established feature of water-resources policy. Cost-effectiveness analysis gained momentum in the Department of Defense in the beginning of the 1960s, when the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara initiated the Planning Programming Budgeting System (PPBS)—a programmatic approach of systematic comparison of different programs in terms of their unit costs or effectiveness per dollar spent. To put the massive governmental effort of the War on Poverty on ‘‘scientific’’ rails and answer questions about the effectiveness and efficiency of Great Society programs, President Johnson ordered the use of PPBS for all executive agencies in 1965 (it was officially terminated in 1971). An entire cottage industry of policy analysis and program evaluation emerged. A variety of approaches have been proposed for program evaluation.(146) Although these studies have been largely cast in terms of economic efficiency and effectiveness, they also incorporated some perspectives from organizational sociology and other related disciplines. An influential study of public policy implementation in Oakland, California, by Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky,(147) gave rise to yet another stream in this direction for public administration: how programs are implemented and what are the obstacles to these processes. In their analysis, Pressman and Wildavsky(148) not only paid attention to economic benefits of the programs, but underscored the importance of the ‘‘complexity of joint action.’’ Implementation studies since have proliferated and many frameworks have been proposed.(149)
Post World War II expansion of the government services and growth of knowledge in public administration and in the field of social science in general was proceeding against the background of rapid change in the society-technological, social, legal. Such rapid change has meant less predictability in the life of governmental agencies. Worker skills and expectations have changed; technology has changed; neighborhoods and cities have changed; and client needs are constantly changing. The policies, programs, or procedures that were appropriate even five years ago may no longer suit an agency’s clientele today. It is not possible today to develop slowly the ‘‘one best way’’ and then continue to use that way without question. Instead, activities must be constantly monitored and questioned in terms of their effectiveness.
