Basic approaches in the twentieth century

A number of scholars contributed to the emergence of a science of the public sector in the early decades of the twentieth century. One may perhaps say that the key figure was Max Weber, formulating the theory of the bureau as the chief institutional mechanism in the public sector, but he was certainly not the only major theoretician. One may wish to mention a name like Fayol and especially the early Americans, for instance Wilson, Taylor and Gulick (Fry, 1989; Raadschelders, 1998).