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Citizens and interest groups are not the only ones who complain about bureaucratic intractability: so do presidents. This study explores the difficulties of translating presidential policy initiatives into ground-level policy implementation by the "permanent government" -- the career officials of ...

Citizens and interest groups are not the only ones who complain about bureaucratic intractability: so do presidents. This study explores the difficulties of translating presidential policy initiatives into ground-level policy implementation by the "permanent government" -- the career officials of executive agencies. Drawing on organization theory, it focuses on the ways that bureaucratic behaviors shape an agency's responsiveness to top-down directives that may not simply disturb established routines but also strain capacities, challenge the professional ethos, and evoke resistance.

The empirical grounding of the study is an intensive examination of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration with respect to the transit-related policy preferences of the Carter administration. The study demonstrates how bureau-level routines, predispositions, patterns of attention, and active calculation interact and impact the implementation of presidential directives, and underscores the political and organizational importance of a bureau-level process of policy legitimization to support the establishment of durable policy.

A scholarly analysis of Marine Corps survival as seen through the lens of three different organizational theories, this volume is a sourcebook in management and public administration for the "way of seeing" view. Marutollo, intimately familiar with the Marine ethic, provides a practical ...

A scholarly analysis of Marine Corps survival as seen through the lens of three different organizational theories, this volume is a sourcebook in management and public administration for the "way of seeing" view. Marutollo, intimately familiar with the Marine ethic, provides a practical demonstration of how management theories can be regarded as different ways of seeing rather than predictive schemes. Models used are Population Ecology, Resource Dependence, and Structural Contingency Models. This volume is a one of a kind approach to interpreting management theories.

American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of ...

American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued? In this book, the first organizational history of nineteenth-century America, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow says no. He shows that there was nothing inevitable about the surge in corporate size and power by century's end. Critics railed against the nationalizing of the economy, against corporations' monopoly powers, political subversion, environmental destruction, and "wage slavery." How did a nation committed to individual freedom, family firms, public goods, and decentralized power become transformed in one century?Bountiful resources, a mass market, and the industrial revolution gave entrepreneurs broad scope. In Europe, the state and the church kept private organizations small and required consideration of the public good. In America, the courts and business-steeped legislators removed regulatory constraints over the century, centralizing industry and privatizing the railroads. Despite resistance, the corporate form became the model for the next century. Bureaucratic structure spread to government and the nonprofits. Writing in the tradition of Max Weber, Perrow concludes that the driving force of our history is not technology, politics, or culture, but large, bureaucratic organizations.Perrow, the author of award-winning books on organizations, employs his witty, trenchant, and graceful style here to maximum effect. Colorful vignettes abound: today's headlines echo past battles for unchecked organizational freedom; socially responsible alternatives that were tried are explored along with the historical contingencies that sent us down one road rather than another. No other book takes the role of organizations in America's development as seriously. The resultant insights presage a new historical genre.

The typical workplace is a hotbed of human relationships--of friendships, conflicts, feuds, alliances, partnerships, coexistence and cooperation. Here, problems are solved, progress is made, and rifts are mended because they need to be - because the work has to get done. And it has to get done among ...

The typical workplace is a hotbed of human relationships--of friendships, conflicts, feuds, alliances, partnerships, coexistence and cooperation. Here, problems are solved, progress is made, and rifts are mended because they need to be - because the work has to get done. And it has to get done among increasingly diverse groups of co-workers. At a time when communal ties in American society are increasingly frayed and segregation persists, the workplace is more than ever the site where Americans from different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds meet and forge serviceable and sometimes lasting bonds. What do these highly structured workplace relationships mean for a society still divided by gender and race? Structure and rules are, in fact, central to the answer. Workplace interactions are constrained by economic power and necessity, and often by legal regulation. They exist far from the civic ideal of free and equal citizens voluntarily associating for shared ends. Yet it is the very involuntariness of these interactions that helps to make the often-troubled project of racial integration comparatively successful at work. People can be forced to get along-not without friction, but often with surprising success. This highly original exploration of the paradoxical nature--and the paramount importance--of workplace bonds concludes with concrete suggestions for how law can further realize the democratic possibilities of working together. In linking workplace integration and connectedness beyond work, Estlund suggests a novel and promising strategy for addressing the most profound challenges facing American society.