Why Manage?
PMPA 809: Introducing
the Public
Administration and
Management Context
Roundtable Coming Up
 Who you are and your
expectations – coming
in 5 minutes…
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
2
First – me…..
E-mail is best, any day
and time.
You have my coordinates: use my cellular
number as I move around.
I am here PMPA days and
happy to set up a meeting,
but set it up in advance.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
3
Now… You
• Who you are….
• What you do….
• What you are looking
for….
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
4
Over-riding Themes

Understanding the basis of public administration
Public sector values in management

A framework for understanding management

The realities of managerial life

Trends of change and reform and underlying elements
of continuity
No Magic Bullets, ready clichés to offer or
nice sounding bromides – this is a messy
business.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
5
How we are going to do this
• Lectures with discussion
• Class group exercises – a word on getting started
• Case studies – my overall approach
• Stories – yours and mine
• Guests:
• David Szwarc, CEO, Peel
• Margaret Biggs, federal Deputy Minister
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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The Course Work – Readings, Assignments and
Assessment
 All readings are posted on Moodle
 All assignments are posted on Moodle
 All assignments are expected to be on time.
 Any delays require a notification to me – it pays to
communicate.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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Assignments and Marking
PARTICIPATION
– 10 MARKS
3 – 1000 WORD
MINI-CASES –
15 MARKS
EACH
1 – 2500 WORD 20
PAGE PPT MAJOR
CASE – 45 MARKS
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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Leave your guns at the door – or put them
on vibrate
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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My assumptions about you:
present and future leaders in
the public sector – this
course is designed to signal
to you the fundamental
underpinnings of
management to be successful
at that.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
10
Your experience counts and we want to
draw on it as we look at issues of
management.
Put yourself into the manager’s position
as you look at this material – you are in
the play, not outside it.
But, in the end, this is not a group
therapy session so keep your examples
relevant and useful to everyone.
Listen up and respect each
other’s views.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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What I Look For in Marking
Communication:
clear, to the
point
Link to action:
here is what
needs to be
done
Link to Ideas:
what we have
here
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
Link to user: can
I do something
with this?
Live
Briefing
Note
Professional,
written in context
12
Assignments as Live Briefing
Notes
Walk
with me
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
To the
point
Focused
on
action
Pulls it
together
quickly
13
An Effective Case Study…….
Fosters
solution
thinking
Leaves
important
issues
unresolved
Multiple
levels of
analysis
Generates
questions
Creates
tensions
among
options
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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Why Management and Why
Core?
• Great policy poorly executed is poor policy
• How things are done (managed) in the public sector
often as important as what is done.
• In government, management is how we execute or
implement, i.e., bring to realization, public policy.
• No amount of good policy will change anything without
good execution.
• This requires more than management, but in the end, the
people, regulations, capital and resources must be
managed
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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“Implementation is worth studying precisely
because it is a struggle over the realization of
ideas. It is the analytical equivalent of original
sin. There is no escape from implementation
and its attendant responsibilities.”
Pressman and Wildavsky, Implementation: How Great
Expectations in Washington are Dashed in
Oakland”: or, Why It’s Amazing that Federal
Programs Work at all , 3rd edition. 1980
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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Three Principal Modules
•
Public administration and the application of management
theory to it,
•
“Whole of Government” management and administration
issues
•
Delivery and Implementation at the program level
But it is about
the craft of
management.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
This course is not about techniques of
management, but rather how
management fits into the over-riding
concept of public administration.
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Management
Framework
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
Whole of
Government
View of
Management
Delivering
Public Goods
The Pillars of
Public
Management
Management
18
The heart of public
administration is the nexus
between political will to
achieve certain things –
policies, goods, benefits,
outcomes, you name it and
the means to achieve them.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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Some Common Themes in Managerial Thinking:
Trade-offs, Balancing and Tensions
 Accountability (following the rules) versus
flexibility (getting the job done)
 Public sector management is different from private
sector – how and where is an important factor
 New versus old public management – changes, fads,
challenges
 Systems versus people
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Some Common Themes in Managerial Thinking: Tradeoffs, Balancing and Tensions
 Organizations, how they work and what they do
 Management theories versus the life of the manager
 Vertical and horizontal management
 Managing up and managing down
 Knowing what is happening, understanding it and
speaking to performance
 The search for better cheaper faster processes.
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Where it all began: a
quick history of
management
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
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King
Hammurabi,
ruler of the
Old
Babylonian
Kingdom
1792-1750
BCE)
An early model
of efficient public
administration
Hammurabi
receives the
Code of
Laws from
Sun God
“To cause
justice to
prevail in
the country,
To destroy
the wicked
and the evil,
That the
strong may
not
oppress the
weak”
 337 BCE: Chinese philosopher Shen Buhai wrote a treatise
on the same topic. Main points:
 Seniority
 Merit rating
 Official statistics
 Written reports about government activities
 From 165 BCE, Chinese officials were selected by
examination
Managing with Moses: the First Consultant’s
Report
 We don’t know, but we have traced the
first management consultant – Jethro,
father-in-law of Moses
 As Moses took on all tasks of governing
the Israelites in the desert – classic A
type, theory X kind of guy, Jethro came
along offered plenty of advice
Which
came
first?
 Check out Exodus 18 – think of it as a
standard consultants’ report
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“And Moses’ father said unto
him, the thing that thou
doest is not good. Thou
wilt surely wear away,
both thou, and this people
that is with thee; for this
thing is too heavy for thee;
thou are not able to
perform it thyself alone.
Risk Analysis
Workload
Analysis
Time to
Delegate
28
 Thou shalt provide out of all the
people able men, such as fear god,
men of truth, hating covetousness;
and place such over them, to be
rulers of thousands, and rulers of
hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rules
of tens.
CompetencyBased Staffing
Chain of
Command
 And let them judge the people at
all seasons: and it shall be, that
every great matter they shall bring
unto thee, but every small mater
they shall judge; so shall it be
easier for thyself, and they shall
bear their burden with thee and
Delegation
The Pay Off
 Moses harkened to the voice of his
father in law, and did all that he had
said.”
Implement
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Never Underestimate the Impact of
Machiavelli
 “Stability exists only in the grave; not in this life.”
 “If you are going to be a leader, you have a simple choice:
either dominate or be dominated.”
 Keys to leading:







See the world as it is, good, bad or ugly
Act with humility: recognize there are forces over which you
have no control.
Be ready to react
Aggressively exploit the chances granted to you by Fate.
Create, hope for, and use luck.
Never whine.
Recognize the uniqueness of the moment and circumstance
(fallacy of best practice).
30
Management Perspectives Over Time
31
Max Weber (1864-1920): The Origins of
Modern Bureaucratic Theory
 Created an ideal type for this new idea of
bureaucracy designed to:
 Eliminate entrenched patronage
 End capricious decision-making by frivolous nobility
 Provide a system for managing and performing repetitive
tasks that involved little or not discretion
 Impose order and efficiency
 Create a clear understanding of the service provided and
reduce arbitrariness – common goods for all
 Ensure clear accountability and limit discretion
32
Characteristics of Weberian
Bureaucracy
Concept of
permanent employment
Division of labor
with Clear definitions of
authority and responsibility
Personnel are selected
and promoted based
on technical
qualifications
Positions organized
in a hierarchy of authority
Managers subject to
rules and procedures
that will ensure reliable
predictable behavior
Administrative acts
and decisions recorded
in writing
Management separate
from the ownership
of the organization
33
Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) and
Scientific Management
 His most famous technique was the Time and Motion
Study to create what he called scientific standards for
performing specific tasks
 These are not just production targets but
measurements of the very action, i.e. body
movements that achieved maximum efficiency.
 This would provide the basis of production planning
and the means to measure a worker’s performance
against an ideal standard.
 On the management side, there was the need to
scientifically analyze and design work flow in the
most efficient manner.
 Taylor's contribution affects both the notion of
individual labour and the idea that ideal management
regimes can be designed as well.
34
Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915) and
Scientific Management
 Taylor would feel warm and fuzzy with the
notion that all MacDonald's Restaurants can
and should run alike using the same manual
regardless of the number of under-aged,
under-paid people that are running them: he
might site MacDonald's as proof of the
scientific school
The ‘Science’
in Scientific –
fakery, lies and
manipulation.
 The Scientific School is built on the conceptual
separation of strong backs (workers) from
strong minds (managers)
Taylor, Frederick W., The Principles of Scientific Management,
New York: W.W. Norton, 1967
35
Scientific Management
Contributions

Argued but did not prove the importance of compensation for
performance.

Initiated the careful (or not) study of tasks and jobs.

Demonstrated the importance of personnel and their
training.

Focus on the worker’s performance.
Separation of
brain and
brawn.
Criticisms

Did not appreciate social context of work and higher needs of
workers.

Did not acknowledge variance among individuals.

Tended to regard workers as uninformed and ignored their
ideas

Fundamentally exploitative.
Focus on the
work not the
person.
36
Henri Fayol 1841-1925
Examples of General Principles of Management
 Division of work
 Unity of command
 Unity of direction
 Scalar chain – unbroken chain of command
37
Mary Parker Follett 18681933
 Importance of common super-ordinate
goals for reducing conflict in
organizations
 Popular with businesspeople of her day
 Overlooked by management scholars
 Contrast to scientific management
 Reemerging as applicable in dealing
with rapid change in global
environment
 Leadership – importance of people vs.
engineering techniques
Concepts such as ethics, power and
empowerment
38
Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933)
 She introduced the idea of Circular Response:
people interact in ways that influence both
parties: an early articulation of modern
communications theory without all the boxes,
connectors and arrows
 Follett argued that intelligent, trained individuals
are capable of taking their cues from the situation
and respond accordingly rather than requiring
careful structure to guide their actions – the
Giving of Orders, 1926
 She advocated Integration: the need to bring
together diverse elements into a whole
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Chester Barnard 1886-1961
 Informal Organization
 Cliques
 Naturally occurring social groupings
 Acceptance Theory of Authority
 Free will
 Can choose to follow management orders
40
Gulick and Urwick (1930): The Scientific
Theory of Organization
 Gulik, Luther and Urwick. Lyndall, editors, Papers on the
Science of Administration, New York: Augustus M. Kelly,
1969
 Gulick and Urwick moved away for the work being
performed
 They tried to apply Taylor’s commitment to
‘scientific inquiry’ to create ideal organizations and
organizational models
 In that sense, they reflected both Taylor and Weber.
41
Gulick and Urwick (1930): The Scientific
Theory of Organization
 They also introduced a set of language and issues that
continue in our organizational culture
 Span of Control: the number of subordinates who report
to one supervisor
 Repetitive versus highly varied work – determines span
of control and required level of supervision
 Level of skill of subordinates as a determinant of
hierarchy
 Extent of geographical decentralization
 Overall stability of the organization
42
Gulick and Urwick (1930): The Scientific
Theory of Organization
 Provided an honest recognition of the complexity of ideal
organizational design, leaving in the end the impression
that all such designs are a compromise based on some
principles that they put forward:
 What is the purpose of the specific function
 What is the process being used and can various
workers applying the same process be put together into
one unit
 Is there a client and who is it.
43
The Origins of PODSCORB
 Gulick and Urwick gave us that enduring description
of the activities of an executive: POSDCORB:
 Planning
 Organizing
 Staffing
 Directing
 Coordinating
 Reporting
 Budgeting
 It is also here that we see the first discussion of Line
and Staff Functions. These roles continue to play
important roles in organizational design
44
From Organization Design and the Application of Science to
Organizational Development and the Humanistic Approach
 Apparent opposition between the
scientific structural approach and the
humanistic one
 Most of early scientific thinking treated
workers as units to be redesigned as best
you can with imperfect entities like these
45
From Organization Design and the Application of Science to
Organizational Development and the Humanistic Approach
 Important Elements in the humanistic approach:
The role of informal culture in the organization
The interplay between formal and informal culture and rules
The role of power in organizations
Leadership as a task separate from formally ascribed power
The role of communications and the emergence of
communications theory
 Change and change management





 The focus of later work is on workers as people
involved in a series of dynamic processes in the
work
46
Recent Historical Trends
● Systems Theory
● Total Quality Management (TQM)
● Learning Organizations
● Lean
47
Systems View of Organizations
48
Contingency View of
Management
Exhibit 2.6
49
TQM
 Focuses on managing the total organization to deliver
quality to customers.
 Four significant elements are




Employee involvement
Focus on the customer
Benchmarking
Continuous improvement
50
Elements of a Learning
Organization
Team-Based Structure
Learning
Organization
Empowered
Employees
Open
Information
Exhibit 2.7
51
The philosophy of W. Edwards Deming
and the Origins of Lean
 "Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that by
adopting appropriate principles of
management, organizations can increase
quality and simultaneously reduce costs (by
reducing waste, rework, staff attrition and
litigation while increasing customer loyalty).
The key is to practice continual improvement
and think of manufacturing as a system, not as
bits and pieces."
The Deming System of Profound
Knowledge
Deming advocated that all managers need to have what he
called a System of Profound Knowledge, consisting of four
parts:
1.
Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes
involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods
and services
2.
Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality,
and use of statistical sampling in measurements
3.
Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the
limits of what can be known
4.
Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.
Snapshot of Lean
 The purpose of lean is to remove all
forms of waste from the value stream.
 Waste includes cycle time, labor,
materials, and energy.
 The chief obstacle is the fact that waste
often hides in plain sight, or is built into
activities.
Andrew.Graham@queensu.ca
54
Peter Drucker: Where Do You Start?
 Drucker is prolific and hard to characterize
 Squarely in the humanistic school
 Behind much of the early advocacy for the participative school
of management
 Advocated breaking down of barriers created by specialization
and focusing all parts of the organization on its overall goals
 We see here an early focus on mission, horizontality, integration
and teamwork
 He also supported the generic view that management itself had
similar function no matter where it took place: setting
objectives, organizing, motivating and communicating,
measuring, developing people
55
Knowledge
Worker
Non-profit
management
Planned
Abandonment
Theory of the
business
MBO
Key
Concepts
of
Drucker
Social role of
manager
Decentralization
Outputs vs.
Inputs
Management
SMART
56
Henry Mintzberg and the Empirical School of
Management
 Mintzberg actually looked at what
manager did in real life and worked
towards his general conclusions from
there
 His seminal work, The Nature of
Managerial Work was published in
1973
 His most recent book, Managing
Publicly

Argued that what managers did, when
successfully carrying out their
responsibilities, was substantially
different from much business theory
More to follow
next month.
57
Karl Weick and Organizational Resilience
 Role of complexity theory
 Concepts that organizations have fissures and
fragilities that require new ways of understanding
them – role of managers in sensemaking
 Has had and will have a major impact on managing
security issues
 Concepts of adaptability and resilience in operations
and emergencies
58
Karl Weick and Organizational Resilience
 Preoccupation with developing high-reliability
organization. These are organizations that can carry
out extraordinarily complex tasks quickly with few
errors and almost no catastrophic failures.
 Highly mindful organizations characteristically
exhibit:
 a) Preoccupation with failure,
 b) Reluctance to simplify
 c) Sensitivity to operations,
 d) Commitment to Resilience, and
 e) Deference to Expertise.
Risk Management
is Key to
Resilience
59
Karl Weick and Organizational Fragility
 Increasing focus on learning from failure and not
simply on successes – tricky political dimension of
accepting failure.
 Concept of mindfulness.
“By mindfulness we mean the combination of ongoing scrutiny of existing
expectations, continuous refinement and differentiation of expectations
based on newer experiences, willingness and capability to invent new
expectations that make sense of unprecedented events, a more nuanced
appreciation of context and ways to deal with it, and identification of new
dimensions of context that improve foresight and current functioning.” –
Weick and Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected
60
Management gurus: purveyors of useful
theory or sellers of 'snake-oil'?
 Populizer of ideas and charger of high fees
 Great attraction to the slogans, slick acronyms and
anthemic solutions (the Cold Play of management)
 Often strike a cord, offer a useful insight, get people
excited
 Seldom based in research or proven.
 Management gurus try not to concern themselves
with the vagaries of organisations. Success is possible
if you listen to their formula.
 Real life is messier.
61
Concluding Thoughts and Linkages
 Tension between what managers actually do on a
daily basis and what they do theoretically:
 “Social scientists build elegant, logically consistent
models; public managers deal with mess, real-world
problems.” – Fred Thompson, Atkinson Graduate
School of Management, Willamette University
 Recent changes in public administration and
management thinking are shifting traditional
thinking – New Public Management
62
Concluding Thoughts and Linkages
 Theme of tension between structure and people
– the human management school versus the
systems/structural view
 Theme of tension between accounting and
controlling and acting and delivering
 Change versus continuity – change and
continuity
63
Concluding Thoughts and Linkages
 Emerging theme, especially post 9/11, of
organizational reliability, capacity to detect and
correct errors, especially in a highly political and
transparent environment: Karl Weick
 Principles of action (managing for flexibility) versus
principles of structure (managing for
accountability)
64
Concluding Thoughts and Linkages
 Public sector overlay more than just politics –
accountabilities, transparencies qualitatively
different
 In the 21st century we have moved into a postbureaucratic world. The implementation of public
policy is no longer directed by government in a topdown fashion. Instead, policies take shape through
bottom-up processes and networks that are loosely
managed by government incentives rather than
dictated by government fiat in rigid bureaucratic
structures.
65
Signs for a spouse that your partner has
gone overboard on management…
He/she….
• Gives Valentine’s Day card that have bullet points.
•Develops an agenda for the long week-end at the cottage.
•Refers to parental guidance as ‘achieving downstream
impact’.
•Refers to your kids as ‘major files’.
•Refers to those ‘intimate moments’ as ‘win-win situations’.
•Refers to the bathroom as a ‘robust system where the
situation is fluid’.
•Prepares ‘key messages’ for dinner conversation.
•Designates mother-in-law as ‘stakeholder relationship’.
•Refers to first-born as the ‘template’.
66