Organization Government: The Prospects for a Truly Participative System

Abstract

THE FACT THAT ADMINISTRATIVE organizations are political systems has not been ignored by theorists.' But this commonplace insight is not exploited. Administration deals with governmental issues. It is praised or condemned for how well it handles the allocation question of who gets what, how, why, when, and where in the organizations it governs. This question has economic, sociological, and psychological dimensions. But power is also part of its content, and power must be treated in the political and governmental order, as well as in the other behavioral disciplines. As management thought is surveyed over time, we discover that the major ideologies of administration have reflected obliquely the governmental character of organizational relationships. I say obliquely because the creeds of management have roots elsewhere than in political science. This creates inconsistencies both in theory and application. Administrators are told for example to expect satisfactory outcomes from democratic (participative) management. However, democratic management is currently treated as a psychotherapeutic technique. But if democratic management is anything, it is first a governmental phenomenon. Yet, this obvious notion receives little systematic attention in the literature. I say something about the pitfalls of managerial ideologies in this paper, in keeping, I hope, with the theme of alienation, decentralization, and participation, to which this symposium is devoted. My main objective, however, is to estimate the probability for a system of government in formal organizations which is consistent with democratic values and which