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Rationality and Decision in Administrative Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

H.T. Wilson
H.T. Wilson
Affiliation:
York University
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 271 - 294
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Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1973

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References

1 Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Parsons, Talcott (Glencoe, Ill., 1947)Google Scholar; From Max Weber, ed. Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright (New York, 1946)Google Scholar; Methodology of the Social Sciences, ed. Shils, Edward and Finch, H.A. (Glencoe, Ill., 1949)Google Scholar; Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, ed. Rheinstein, Max (Cambridge, Mass. 1954)Google Scholar; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958). A useful discussion of Weber oriented to his concept of rationality is Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber (Garden City, N.Y. 1962)Google Scholar, chap. 12; and Freund, Julian, The Sociology of Max Weber (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

2 See Waldo, Dwight, “Organization Theory: An Elephantine Problem,” Public Administration Review, 21, no. 4 (1961), 216–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Theory of Organization: Status and Problems,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 1963; Scott, William G., Organization Theory (Homewood, Ill. 1967)Google Scholar, especially prologue and chap. 5, 6, and 10; and Gouldner, Alvin, “Organizational Analysis,” in Sociology Today, ed. Merton, Robert, Broom, Leonard, and Cottrell, Leonard (New York, 1959), 400–28.Google ScholarPugh, D.S., “Modern Organization Theory: A Psychological and Sociological Study,” Psychological Bulletin, 66, no. 4 (October 1966), 235–51CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed provides a survey of types of organization theory.

3 What was presumably a conceptual means to the analysis of larger order questions having to do with human reason becomes self-justifying as a focus for analysis in its own right. This effective delimitation of a field of inquiry carries with it an expansion of the area of the taken for granted, as something to be handled by “philosophers” or “intellectuals” rather than “specialists” and “professionals.”

4 Boguslaw, Robert, The New Utopians (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1965)Google Scholar, chap. 2, 3, 4; Lee, Alfred McClung, “The Concept of System,” Social Research, 32 (Autumn 1965), 229–38.Google Scholar

5 Wilson, H.T., “Continentalism and Canadian Higher Education,” Canadian Review of American Studies, I, no. 2 (Fall 1970), 89–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarRourke, Francis and Brooks, Glenn, The Managerial Revolution in Higher Education (Baltimore, 1966)Google Scholar give a most thorough survey of automation in American universities.

6 Madge, John, The Origins of Scientific Sociology (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, especially chap. 1, 6, and 14. But see Baritz, Loren, The Servants of Power (New York, 1964)Google Scholar for a critical analysis of industrial psychology and sociology.

7 Grant, George, “In Defence of North America,” “The University Curriculum,” and “A Platitude,” in Grant, , Technology and Empire (Toronto, 1968), 15–40, 113–33, 137–43.Google Scholar

8 Especially Simon's, Administrative Behaviour 2nd ed. (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert, Smithburg, David and Thompson, Victor, Public Administration (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; Simon, and March, , Organizations (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Simon, , Models of Man: Social and Rational (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, especially chaps. 6, 10, 14, and 15.

9 Schutz, Alfred, The Phenomenology of the Social World (Evanston, Ill. 1967)Google Scholar; Schutz, , Collected Papers, Vols. 1–3 (The Hague, 1962)Google Scholar; Garfinkel, Harold, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1967).Google Scholar

10 See especially the introduction to the second edition, xxiv–xxvii, to be discussed later on.

11 See Thompson, Victor, Modern Organization (New York, 1961), 6–8Google Scholar; Thompson, , Bureaucracy and Innovation (University, Ala. 1968)Google Scholar; Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, Ill. 1964), 49–51Google Scholar; and Wilensky, Harold, Organizational Intelligence (New York, 1967), 75–82Google Scholar for a critique of “isolated actor” decision-making.

12 “The Science of Administration: Herbert A. Simon,” in Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed. Storing, (New York, 1962), 63–150.Google Scholar While much of the analysis is sound, Storing tends to place too much emphasis upon the fact-value dichotomy (rationality versus “non-rational preferences”) for this writer, a point to be discussed critically further on.

13 Administrative Behaviour, 64–6.

14 Waldo, Dwight, “Replies and Comments,” American Political Science Review, 46 (June 1952), 503Google Scholar, note 5.

15 This point is implicit in the alleged “standpointlessness” of logical empiricism to be discussed further on. Simon focuses on values as necessary to explain departures “from the norms of rationality.” See Administrative Behaviour, 149.

16 See Storing, “Science of Administration,” 70.

17 Ibid., 75.

18 Preface to the second edition of Administrative Behaviour (1957), especially xxii–xxvii.

19 Both political scientists and administrative law specialists were attempting to deal with “discretion” by administrators as a problem in legislative definition of standards. See Hyneman, Charles, Bureaucracy in a Democracy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar and the earlier analysis of the problem by Leys, Wayne, “Ethics and Administrative Discretion,” Public Administration Review, 3 (1943), 10–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Wilson, H.T., “Discretion in the Analysis of Administrative Process,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 10, no. 1 (August 1972) 117–39Google Scholar, for a discussion of the limits of a “discretion” focus in the analysis of administrative behaviour.

20 Administrative Behaviour, 149.

21 Administrative Behaviour, 110–18, inspired largely by Barnard, Chester, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, Mass. 1938)Google Scholar, especially chap. 12.

22 Administrative Behaviour, 69.

23 Ibid., 83.

24 For instance, note Simon's characterization of man contemplating “all the possible patterns of behaviour that an individual might underake” and the way in which his rationality would be defective no matter what his intent. Administrative Behaviour, 84.

25 Administrative Behaviour, 185.

26 Again this may not be a conscious choice to delimit, but a necessity. See Harold Wilensky, Organizational Intelligence, 77, where March and Simon, Organizations, 169, are criticized for their over-reliance upon psychological evidence linking “good” decisions with slowness and deliberateness. Wilensky claims, I think with merit, that such views “tend to overrate the payoff from ‘slow deliberation’ and underestimate the effect of attributes of structure and culture that transcend individual psychology-hierarchy, specialization, centralization, occupational ideology and other barriers to communication.”

27 Administrative Behaviour, xxii–xxvii.

28 Ibid., xxiv.

29 Ibid., xxiii–xxiv.

30 See notes 84 and 89 for a discussion of “objective” rationality. On the one hand it is defined in comprehensive terms, on the other in terms of the objectives of a given group in the organization. See Administrative Behaviour, 119 and 62. The latter definition suggests, but does not develop, the possibility that “objective” rationality may mean in the last analysis an intersubjectively shared world view on the matter of both ends and specific means to their attainment.

31 Ibid., xxiv.

32 Ibid., xxv.

33 See Subramaniam, V., “Fact and Value in Decision-Making,” Public Administration Review, 23 (1963), 236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Administrative Behaviour, xxv–xxvi. See also Simon, Models of Man, 199, where intentionality, equated with interests and values, does not constitute “even approximately optimal” behaviour. See Lowe, Adolph, On Economic Knowledge (New York, 1965)Google Scholar, especially chap. 3, 4, and 6.

35 As the behaviour-alternative model recognizes.

36 Boguslaw, New Utopians, chap. 2.

37 Administrative Behaviour, xxiii–xxiv, xviii.

38 Here “realistic” standards would recognize the constraints, when considered as such, as part of the situation to be dealt with, not interfering conditions. To the extent that “cognitive limits” are reformulated in terms of “environmental complexity,” some but not all the bias of Simon's discussion of satisficing is sidestepped. See March and Simon, Organizations, chap. 6.

39 Administrative Behaviour, xxxiv.

40 Ibid., 62–73.

41 Waldo, Dwight, The Administrative State (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, especially chap. 6–8; Waldo, , “Development of Theory of Democratic Administration,” American Political Science Review, 46 (1952), 81–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Notice Simon's statement in the context of his treatise on public administration in Simon, Smithburg, and Thompson, Public Administration, 58, and Storing's discussion, “Science of Administration,” 101—4.

42 To the extent that categories of analysis “match,” the existence of a terminology in common, at least where the fact-value distinction is involved, suggests the outer boundaries of the argument by Simon's “critics.” See, for instance, Dahl, Robert, “The Science of Public Administration: Some Problems,” Public Administration Review, 7 (1947), 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Administrative Behaviour, xiv.

44 See especially Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd ed. (New York, 1946). His addendum to the original text, published in 1935, is as theoretically significant from the standpoint of the canons of logical empiricism, as is Simon's preface to the second edition of Administrative Behaviour. Also Ayer, , “On the Analysis of Moral Judgments,” Horizon, 20 (1949), 165–81Google Scholar, and The Revolution in Philosophy (London, 1956). Simon's reference to Ayer and others in Administrative Behaviour is at p. 46.

45 He puts forward this distinction as a significant one in his preface to the second edition of Administrative Behaviour, xii. “It is therefore the premise (and a large number of these are combined in every decision) rather than the whole decision that serves as the smallest unit of analysis” (emphasis his). This suggests the significance of the fact-value distinction since premises on analysis turn out generally to be either factual or valuational. See p. 46.

46 Ibid., 47.

47 Ibid., 49–50.

48 Ibid., 50–1.

49 Ibid., 51

50 See Banfield, Edward, “The Decision-Making Schema,” and Simon's “The Decision-Making Schema: A Reply,” in Public Administration Review (autumn 1957), 284Google Scholar, note 5 and (winter 1958), 62. Also, Waldo, , “Development” and “Replies and Comments,” American Political Science Review, 46 (1952), 97 and 494–5, 503.Google Scholar

51 This extends to the work of Simon and his associates where logically rigorous models are used as a basis for describing an organization rather than suggesting a standard to which individuals and groups might address themselves. See Administrative Behaviour, xiv (preface to the 1st ed.) where Simon begins by noting that “we do not yet have, in this field, adequate linguistic and conceptual tools for realistically and significantly describing even a simple administrative organization – describing it, that is, in a way that will provide the basis for scientific analysis of the effectiveness of its structure and operation. Among the studies of administrative organizations that I have read, few have caught and set down in words the real flesh and bones of an organization…” And further on: “Before we can establish any immutable ‘principles’ of administration, we must be able to describe, in words, exactly how an administrative organization looks and exactly how it works” (emphasis mine).

52 For clarification see Binkley, Luther, Contemporary Ethical Theories (New York, 1961), 59–102 at pp. 64–70.Google Scholar

53 Here no (or little) distinction is made between the character of knowledge about social and about physical reality from the standpoint of the knowing subject. The social sciences are simply suffering from a methodological (that is, a technological) lag which subsequent improvements in technique will permit us to master. See Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science (New York, 1961)Google Scholar, especially chap. 1, 2, 6, 13, and 14 for one of the most sophisticated statements of this position.

54 See especially Schutz, Alfred, “Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” Journal of Philosophy, 51 (1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gurvitsch, Aron, “The Common Sense World as Social Reality,” Social Research, 28 (1961), 50–72.Google Scholar Also see Lowe, Adolph, On Economic Knowledge (New York, 1965), 61–2.Google Scholar

55 Here the definition of “objective” reality, whether physical or social, takes the form of agreement among colleagues, with the proviso of tentativeness embodied in hypothesis. Interestingly enough, it was logical empiricism which asserted in straightforward rather than hypothetical fashion the absolute value of their “standpointless” position beyond values. On schools generally, see Znaniecki, Florian, The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge (New York, 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 91–163.

56 Gurvitsch, “Common Sense World.”

57 “Socialization” in this formulation is not referenced ultimately to the system but rather to “significant others,” specific individuals in a person's biographical development who influence his view of the world even while they produce their own. Society, in effect, is both subjective and objective reality for the actor. See Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, N.Y. 1968)Google Scholar; Holzner, Burckart, Reality Construction in Society (Cambridge, Mass. 1968)Google Scholar and Blumer, Herbert, Symbolic Interactionism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1969)Google Scholar, especially chap. 1, “The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interaction.”

58 Garfinkel, Harold, “The Rational Properties of Scientific and Commonsense Activities,” in Garfinkel, , Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1967), 262–83 at p. 262.Google Scholar Also see Garfinkel, “Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities,” and “Commonsense Knowledge of Social Structures,” in Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, 35–75, 76–103.

59 Schutz, Alfred, “The Problem of Rationality in the Social World,” in Schutz, , Collected Papers, Volume 2 (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1962), pp. 63–88Google Scholar, and Garfinkel, The Rational Properties.

60 See Schutz, ‘The Problem of Rationality in the Social World,” 74–7, and Garfinkel, “The Rational Properties of Scientific and Commonsense Activities,” 263–71. Chester Barnard, whom Simon cites with great respect, criticizes scientific predefinitions of rational behaviour on the grounds that they are excessively narrow. See Functions of the Executive, appendix, “Mind in Everyday Affairs.” For this reason, among others, I would tend to disagree with Sherman Krupp, who places Simon and Barnard together in his analysis of administrative science and organization theory in favour of a view which sees Simon a “rationalist” and Barnard a merger of “rationalist” and “natural systems” approaches as presented by Gouldner, “Organizational Analysis.” See Krupp, Sherman, Pattern in Organizational Analysis (New York, 1961)Google Scholar, especially chap. 8.

61 Schutz, “The Problem of Rationality in the Social World,” 74, 69–70. Compare to Simon's dilemma, Administrative Behaviour, 76.

62 Garfinkel, “The Rational Properties of Scientific and Commonsense Activities,” 278; Schutz, “The Problem of Rationality in the Social World,” 79. Compare Simon's requirements for optimally rational behaviour by the actor in Administrative Behaviour (p. 69) with Garfinkel's requirements for the sociological theorist concerned with rational behaviour (p. 270, note 5).

63 “The Problem of Rationality in the Social World,” 85, 19. “What makes it possible for a social science to refer at all to events in the life-world is the fact that the interpretation of any human act by the social scientist might be the same as that by the actor or by his partner.” Ibid., 85–6. Notice also Schutz’ discussion of the “principle of relevance” and the “postulate of subjective interpretation,” also on 85–6.

64 See Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd ed. 5–16, where the author modifies his more stringent “principle of verification” (the meaning of a statement lies in the observations necessary to confirm or disconfirm it), which originally required direct observation, to require only that the scientist “know what observations would decide it for me, if, as is theoretically conceivable, I were once in a position to make them.” See 36–7. Ayer's effort to get around the “scientific conceit” implicit in this requirement, even in its watered down form, has required him to argue that logical positivism never put forward the verification principle as an empirically verifiable proposition but as a definition. Ayer, The Revolution in Philosophy, 75.

65 But does not, of course, warrant, or even excuse, failure to deal with these problems on the grounds that it seriously delimits the scope and potential ambit of the social sciences as knowledge technologies concerned with prediction and control as well as explanation.

66 See Garfinkel, “The Rational Properties,” 279–80.

67 Simon, , The New Science of Management Decision (New York, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar indicates his disillusionment with administrative science and organization theory. Much of his subsequent work is summarized in The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, Mass. 1968) and by Cyert, Richard and March, James in A Behavioural Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1964).Google Scholar

68 Public Administration Review, 19 (1959), 79–88. See also Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles, A Strategy of Decision (Glencoe, Ill. 1963).Google Scholar

69 Ibid., 87–8.

70 See Symposium, “Governmental Decision-Making,” Public Administration Review, 24 (1964), 153–65Google Scholar, and Dror, Yehezkel, Public Policy-Making Re-examined (San Francisco, 1965).Google Scholar

71 Administrative Behaviour, 64–73.

72 Thus are “cognitive limits to rationality” in March and Simon, Organizations, chap. 6, especially 169–71, transformed into attempts to minimize the problem of “uncertainty” given environmental complexity in Thompson, James, Organizations in Action (New York, 1968)Google Scholar as closed system “administrative science” becomes open system “organization theory.” See Waldo, “Organization Theory: An Elephantine Problem.”

73 Pfiffner, John, “Administrative Rationality,” Public Administration Review, 20 (1960), 125–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Ibid., 125.

75 Ibid., 128.

76 This differs substantially from Simon's characterization of proverbs as non-rational given his scientific-logical perspective on isolated rather than situated actors in Administrative Behaviour. See especially chap. 2 and this study, notes 11, 26, and 38.

77 Pfiffner, “Administrative Rationality,” 126–30.

78 Ibid., 130.

79 Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Glencoe, Ill. 1947), 88–98, 104–11.

80 Ibid. Compare Weber's discussion of the concept of “action” with his distinction between formal and substantive rationality, 184–6, 211–18.

81 For instance, Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man (Boston, 1964)Google Scholar; “Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber,” in Negations (Boston, 1968), 201–26; Habermas, Jurgen, “Technology and Science as Ideology,” in Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science and Politics (Boston, 1970)Google Scholar; Loewith, Karl, “Max Weber's Interpretation of the Bourgeois-Capitalist World in Terms of the Guiding Principle of ‘Rationalization,’” in Max Weber, ed. Wrong, Dennis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1970), 101–22.Google Scholar

82 Administrative Behaviour, especially chap. 4. It is through group action that uncertainty is minimized where total control and predictability remains the scientist's (but not necessarily the politician's or the administrator's) ideal.

83 Ibid., 76–7.

84 ”Organizational” and “objective” rationality virtually become one for Simon to the extent that the “constraints against maximization” become part of the situation for him. At this point, objectivity becomes synonymous with the idea that given groups in control of the organization intersubjectively share particular orientations to and views of the world. This does not happen very often, however; the technically correct “one best way” is still a scientific predefinition of possibility and ideal.

85 Administrative Behaviour, 76–7.

86 Ibid., 243; see this study, note 84.

87 This idea of the group, tied as it is to organizational design by a directorate, is quite different from the solidarity emphasis placed by human relations specialists on cooperation in the performance of relatively routine tasks.

88 There is always a danger that the discussion of the rationalities in the context of an analysis of formal organizations will reduce individual action to non-rational behaviour based on “impulses.” Of course, this view is only valid from the perspective of the scientist who supports organizational rationality as the “one best way” and characterizes “deviations” from it as non-rational given the desire of given groups to maximize their values. Simon makes his position clear on 75–6 of Administrative Behaviour when he excludes intention to be rational by the individual from his definition of rationality, then goes on (77, 243) to accept intentionality as a basis for defining rationality where it is a group which is in question. But even Karl Mannheim, clearly a supporter of the sort of critical analysis in this study, “reduces” common-sense rationality to “control of impulses” in his definition of “self-rationalization.” See Man and Society in An Age of Reconstruction (London, 1940), 55–6.

89 “A decision is rational from the standpoint of the group (objectively rational) if it is consistent with the values governing the group, and the information that the group possesses relevant to the decision.” Administrative Behaviour, 243. Compare to: “Then a decision may be called ‘objectively’ rational if in fact [emphasis his] it is the correct behaviour for maximizing given values in a given situation [emphasis mine]. Ibid., 76.

90 Mannheim, Man and Society, especially 49–75. Compare to Weber, “Theory,” 211–18.

91 Mannheim, Man and Society, 58. Compare to Thorstein Veblen, The Vested Interests and the Common Man (Boston, 1919), especially chap. 8.

92 If organization is seen as a device for imposing logic on unorganized externality, then participation in this logic demands that one master given technical repertoires as a precondition to the compensated performance of a stipulated function (or range of functions) in a specific division of labour. Thus this sort of rationality is formal or logical, functional, technological or technical, and ultimately organizational.

93 See Ellul, Jacques, The Technological Society (New York, 1964).Google Scholar I have compared and contrasted this critique of technology with the so-called rationalist critique of Weber, , Mannheim, , Marcuse, , and Habermas, in “The Sociology of Apocalypse: Jacques Ellul's Reformation of Reformation Thought,” Human Context (Summer 1973).Google Scholar

94 This not to say that subsets within large organizations like those dealt with in the human relations studies can count on such a harmony. Here it would appear that the design imperative which creates subgroups in the organization to meet criteria of technical rationality constitutes a sufficient factoring of organizational goals to be more legitimately perceived as a subset than as a set. Victor Thompson, Modern Organization, 15–16.

95 Mannheim, Man and Society, 58–60.

96 At this point, a strictly instrumental concept of rationality will be threatened by the rigidity of any system of authority overly dependent on a bureaucratic role hierarchy. See for instance, Victor Thompson, Modern Organization, and Wilson, H.T., “The Dismal Science of Organization Reconsidered,” Canadian Public Administration, 14 (Spring 1971), 82–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar