ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to review research which has focused upon public bureaucracies and to present a summary of the state of the existing knowledge about such organizations. 1 The immediate problem is one of definition. What is meant by “public bureaucracy”? How do “public bureaucracies” differ from other kinds of human organization? Not much effort needs to be spent trying to define “organizations” per se. Many attempts have already been made to explain this term in the literature of administration, management, and “organization” theory, including the definitions suggested by a number of contributors to this Handbook. Barnard's definition of a formal organization as a “system of consciously coordinated activities of two or more persons” will suffice for present purposes (1938, p. 73), as long as the focus is on complex organizations of a more or less enduring nature. But what distinguishes “public bureaucracies” from other complex organizations?
