Administrative Thought
What it is
Unit II surveys administrative thought from Kautilya through the classical, human-relations, behavioural, motivational and humanist schools to four major writers and the Minnowbrook, New Public Service and postmodern perspectives. UGC-NET tests it by attribution (thinker to book, year or term) and chronology; each school reacts to the one before.
Core concepts
Oriental approach: Kautilya. The Arthashastra, traditionally attributed to Kautilya, minister of Chandragupta Maurya, has 15 books (adhikaranas) and 150 chapters; its date of composition is debated. The saptanga theory names seven elements of the state: swami, amatya, janapada, durga, kosha, danda and mitra. Ministers passed four upadhas (tests of piety, wealth, lust and fear); departments were run by adhyakshas (superintendents), with the samaharta collecting revenue and the sannidhata keeping the treasury. Kautilya listed forty ways of embezzlement. Foreign policy rests on the mandala (circle of states), the six-fold policy and four upayas: sama, dana, bheda, danda.
Classical: F.W. Taylor. The father of scientific management wrote Shop Management (1903) and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), replacing rule of thumb with time study and the "one best way". His four principles: a science of work, scientific selection and training, cooperation, and equal division of responsibility between management and workers. He added the differential piece-rate and functional foremanship: eight foremen, four planning (route clerk, instruction card clerk, time and cost clerk, shop disciplinarian) and four on the floor (gang boss, speed boss, repair boss, inspector). He demanded a "mental revolution".
Classical: Fayol, Gulick and Urwick. Henri Fayol (1916) split an enterprise into six activities (technical, commercial, financial, security, accounting, managerial), gave management five elements (planning, organising, commanding, coordinating, controlling) and 14 principles, among them unity of command, unity of direction, scalar chain and esprit de corps. Gulick and Urwick edited Papers on the Science of Administration (1937) for the Brownlow Committee; Gulick's essay coined POSDCORB (Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordinating, Reporting, Budgeting). Urwick's eight principles: objective, specialisation, coordination, authority, responsibility, definition, correspondence, span of control.
Classical: Max Weber. Weber's three types of legitimate authority are traditional, charismatic and legal-rational; bureaucracy is the purest form of the last (Economy and Society, published posthumously, 1922). The ideal type has rule-bound jurisdictions, hierarchy, written files, expert full-time officials appointed on merit and paid salaries, separation of office from private property, and impersonality. Robert Merton showed rules becoming ends in themselves (goal displacement).
Human relations: Elton Mayo and Mary Parker Follett. The Hawthorne studies at Western Electric (1924–1932), joined by Mayo's Harvard team in the late 1920s, ran through illumination, the relay assembly test room, mass interviewing and the bank wiring room. Output depended on social factors, informal groups set norms, and attention raised morale (the Hawthorne effect); Mayo rejected the "rabble hypothesis". Follett (Creative Experience, 1924; Dynamic Administration, 1941) settled conflict by domination, compromise or integration, preferring integration, and urged the "law of the situation" and "power with" over "power over".
Behaviouralism: Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon. Barnard's The Functions of the Executive (1938) saw organisation as a cooperative system of willingness to serve, common purpose and communication. Authority rests on the subordinate's acceptance; orders in the "zone of indifference" pass unquestioned. Simon called the classical principles "proverbs" (1946); Administrative Behavior (1947) made the decision the unit of analysis: under bounded rationality "administrative man" satisfices rather than maximises, and facts can be tested while values cannot. He renamed Barnard's zone the "zone of acceptance" and won the 1978 Nobel Prize in economics.
Motivation: Maslow, Herzberg and McGregor. Abraham Maslow (1943) ranked needs as physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-actualisation; a satisfied need stops motivating. Frederick Herzberg (The Motivation to Work, 1959, interviews with Pittsburgh engineers and accountants) separated hygiene factors, which only prevent dissatisfaction (salary, supervision, conditions, security), from motivators, which satisfy (achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, growth); his remedy is job enrichment. Douglas McGregor (The Human Side of Enterprise, 1960) set Theory X (people dislike work and must be coerced) against Theory Y (people seek responsibility and direct themselves).
Organisational humanism: Chris Argyris and Rensis Likert. Argyris (Personality and Organization, 1957) found formal organisation incongruent with mature personality: people grow along an immaturity–maturity continuum (passive to active, dependent to independent), but specialisation and chain of command keep them immature, breeding frustration and apathy; he urged job enlargement and participation. Rensis Likert (New Patterns of Management, 1961) ranked System 1 exploitative-authoritative, System 2 benevolent-authoritative, System 3 consultative and System 4 participative group, the most productive; in his linking pin model each manager belongs to two overlapping groups.
Writers on administration: Waldo, Heady, Golembiewski and Drucker. Dwight Waldo's The Administrative State (1948) treated public administration as political theory and attacked the efficiency gospel; he debated Simon on value-free science and sponsored Minnowbrook. Ferrel Heady (Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective, 1966) made bureaucracy the focus of comparison and found developing-country administration imitative and marked by a gap between form and reality. Robert Golembiewski (Men, Management, and Morality, 1965) faulted traditional organisation theory on moral grounds, championed organisation development and argued for "mini-paradigms". Peter Drucker (The Practice of Management, 1954) launched Management by Objectives.
Minnowbrook, New Public Service and postmodernism. Minnowbrook I (1968, Syracuse University) launched the New Public Administration (Frank Marini's volume, 1971): relevance, values, social equity, change and client focus, against value-neutral efficiency. Janet and Robert Denhardt's New Public Service (2000) answered New Public Management: serve citizens, not customers; seek the public interest; value citizenship over entrepreneurship; serve rather than steer. Postmodern public administration rejects grand narratives: Fox and Miller (1995) propose authentic discourse, and David Farmer (1995) stresses imagination, deconstruction, deterritorialisation and alterity.
Worked example
Sorting a motivation plan with Herzberg and Maslow. A district office with low morale proposes six measures. Which will motivate?
| Measure | Herzberg factor | Type | Maslow level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Pay rise | Salary | Hygiene | Physiological and safety |
| 2. Better office space | Working conditions | Hygiene | Physiological |
| 3. Assured tenure | Job security | Hygiene | Safety |
| 4. Team outings | Interpersonal relations | Hygiene | Social |
| 5. Award for the best project | Recognition | Motivator | Esteem |
| 6. Own a project end to end | Responsibility | Motivator | Esteem and self-actualisation |
Step 1: name the factor each measure touches. Step 2: match it to Herzberg's lists; salary, conditions, security and relations are hygiene, recognition and responsibility are motivators. Step 3: measures 1 to 4 lift staff only to no dissatisfaction. Step 4: measures 5 and 6 alone create satisfaction, both on Maslow's upper rungs, so Herzberg advises job enrichment.
Common traps
- Barnard's term is the zone of indifference; Simon's version is the zone of acceptance.
- POSDCORB is Gulick's; Fayol's five elements are planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling.
- Salary is a hygiene factor; for Herzberg the opposite of satisfaction is no satisfaction, not dissatisfaction.
- New Public Administration (1968, equity), New Public Management (1980s–90s, markets) and New Public Service (2000, citizens) differ.
- Weber's ideal type is an analytical model, not the best organisation.
Speed technique
- Chronology: 1911 Taylor, 1916 Fayol, 1937 Papers, 1938 Barnard, 1947 Simon, 1948 Waldo, 1959 Herzberg, 1960 McGregor, 1961 Likert, 1968 Minnowbrook, 2000 New Public Service.
- Number tags: Kautilya 7 elements, 4 upadhas; Taylor 8 foremen; Fayol 6 activities, 5 elements, 14 principles; Urwick 8 principles; Likert 4 systems.
- Place a school by what it rejected: human relations the machine model, Simon the proverbs, Minnowbrook value neutrality, New Public Service the market.
Check yourself
- How many elements does Kautilya's saptanga theory name, and which one is the ally?
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Seven; mitra — with swami, amatya, janapada, durga, kosha and danda. - Which of Taylor's eight functional foremen sit in the planning department?
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Route clerk, instruction card clerk, time and cost clerk, shop disciplinarian — the other four work on the floor. - Under Herzberg, does a pay rise motivate?
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No, salary is a hygiene factor — it removes dissatisfaction but does not create satisfaction. - Which of Likert's management systems is the most productive?
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System 4, participative group — the most participative of the four. - Who proposed the New Public Service, and what did it answer?
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Janet and Robert Denhardt — it answered New Public Management with serving citizens.
Try it: Administrative Thought questions
Real questions from the NET Public Admin. bank on exactly this skill. Pick an answer to see the full solution — the intuition, the worked steps, the faster methods and the traps.
In The Functions of the Executive (1938), Chester Barnard called the range within which a subordinate accepts orders without questioning them the:
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option D
Barnard held that authority rests on the subordinate's acceptance, and that orders falling within the 'zone of indifference' are obeyed without conscious questioning.
The 'zone of acceptance' is a later renaming of the same idea by another writer, which makes it the usual trap.
So Barnard's term is the zone of indifference, option D.
Which of the following is a hygiene factor rather than a motivator in Frederick Herzberg's two-factor theory?
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option B
Herzberg's The Motivation to Work (1959) separated hygiene factors, which only prevent dissatisfaction, from motivators, which create satisfaction.
Salary is a hygiene factor, alongside supervision, working conditions, security and interpersonal relations; recognition, achievement and responsibility are motivators.
So the hygiene factor is salary, option B.
Which of Rensis Likert's systems of management did he find the most productive?
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option D
In New Patterns of Management (1961), Likert ranked four systems from System 1, exploitative-authoritative, through benevolent-authoritative and consultative, to System 4, participative group.
He found the most productive units used System 4, with group decision-making and trust, held together by managers acting as linking pins.
So the most productive is System 4, participative group, option D.
Arrange the following in chronological order: I. The first Minnowbrook Conference II. Publication of Barnard's The Functions of the Executive III. Publication of Fayol's Administration industrielle et générale IV. Publication of Simon's Administrative Behavior V. Publication of McGregor's The Human Side of Enterprise Choose the correct answer from the options.
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option C
Fayol's Administration industrielle et générale appeared in 1916, Barnard's book in 1938, Simon's Administrative Behavior in 1947, McGregor's book in 1960 and Minnowbrook I took place in 1968.
In numeral order that is III, II, IV, V, I.
So the chronological order is III, II, IV, V, I, option C.
Match the terms from Kautilya's Arthashastra in List – I with their meanings in List – II and choose the correct answer from the options. List – I (Term) | List – II (Meaning) --- | --- (a) Samaharta | (i) Keeper of the treasury (b) Sannidhata | (ii) Collector-general of revenue (c) Adhyaksha | (iii) Secret test of a minister's integrity (d) Upadha | (iv) Superintendent in charge of a department
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option A
In the Arthashastra the samaharta is the collector-general of revenue (a – ii), and the sannidhata is the keeper of the treasury and stores (b – i).
Departments are run by adhyakshas, or superintendents (c – iv), and ministers are screened through upadhas, secret tests of piety, wealth, lust and fear (d – iii).
So matching List I, from "Samaharta", gives a – ii, b – i, c – iv, d – iii, option A.
Answer above — every one shows its working.