Mastering Public Administration: From Max Weber to Dwight Waldo

the industrial problem. Thus it is the individual who is to be "cured" under the benevolent and informed guidance of an administrative elite. Mayo's story of an encounter with a young radical is, perhaps, instructive in regard to the nature of the cure. The radical "suffered" from resistance to authority, which was the product of an unhappy relationship with his drunken father. After therapeutic counseling, the young man lost interest in his radical activities, abandoned his former associates, took a clerical position, and kept it. ¹⁴² In short, the cure was an accommodation to authority, which some might consider obeisance. One is reminded of Clark Kerr's protest that management should buy the labor power of the worker and leave his psyche alone. ¹⁴³

For Mayo, the question is not who is to control, but whether control will be exercised on a rational basis. ¹⁴⁴ But this pronouncement simply evades a fundamental issue and admits the possibility of the manipulation of the individual to serve the purposes of management. Mayo's primary concern may not have been improved productivity, but the techniques he offers have a substantial manipulative potential, whether for ill or for good.

Despite these reservations, Mayo's ideas have had an undeniable impact on the study of organizations. Mayo's attention to defining his underlying assumption s and exploring the broader implications of his studies is refreshing in a field that has become dismayingly bereft of such considerations. One does not have to agree with Mayo's position to appreciate the fact that critical issues are raised and examined in his works. Moreover, Mayo's work was largely responsible for a major shift in the study of organizations. His concern with the attitudes and sentiments of the worker, the importance he attached to the social group in determining individual behavior, and his search for "knowledge-of-acquaintance" based on direct observation, all served as an inspiration for a succeeding generation of scholars.

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