ABSTRACT
This chapter should foreshadow what is to come in the remainder of the book. It establishes one crucial component of the environment within which contemporary public administration functions. This is that government in the late twentieth century is very big government, which makes the job of public administrators much more difficult. In the first place, the scale of contemporary government means that any organization being managed is likely to be a large organization with complex inter-relationships with other public and private organizations. Even small local governments now require skilled management to be effective and efficient. The issues about which governments now must legislate require skillful and expert decision makers. The second problem that arises is a constraint on resources available to the administrator: real resources, for example, money; and the ‘‘policy space’’ in which to function in making new policies.84 Anything an administrator is likely to want to accomplish may involve him or her in a conflict with other organizations over money and ‘‘turf.’’ With limited resources, the conflicts that arise among public organizations over the use of resources become more intense. Even if the administrator is cooperative, he or she will have major coordination problems that will require substantial skill and effort to overcome.85
