From reorganizing to reinventing: sixty years and “we still don’t get it”

Abstract

Sixty years ago the “Brownlow Committee Report” was written by some of the most prominent members of the emerging field of public administration. Its recommendations had serious consequences for the way both our democratic republic and the field of public administration have evolved. In developing principles in which to anchor the recommendations, Luther Gulick, who was both the intellectual and political force behind the committee, contributed to a confusion of the concepts of organizations and the polity and those of management and governance. Some of the story of how the concepts promoted by Gulick and the Papers on the Science of Administration led to a misconception, which became public administration's living legacy is told in this article. We then discuss the Brownlow Committee Report as something which changed: our very conception of the Constitution; Gulick's rationale for cooperation with Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Report as a misplacement of organizational concepts upon a polity; the dimensions...