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Administrative Thinkers ADMINISTRATIVE THINKERS Material prepared according to the Textbook and Reference Books given in the Syllabus Subject Code : 18MPA23C Prepared by : Dr. C. Esther Buvana, Asst. Professor & Head Department : PG & Research Department of Public Administration Contact No. : 9840881638 E-mail ID : [email protected] Year Subject Title Sem. Sub Code 2018 - 19 Core 6 : Administrative Thinkers II 18MPA23C Onwards Objective The purpose of this paper is to enable the students to understand the views of the Administrative Thinkers during classical, Neo classical and modern period which will make them to analyse further the various aspects of administration. UNIT – I: INTRODUCTION Kautilya – Thiruvalluvar - Woodrow Wilson. UNIT – II: CLASSICAL SCHOOL F. W. Taylor – Henri Fayol -Luther Gulick- Max Weber UNIT – III: NEO _ CLASSICAL SCHOOL Elton Mayo- Mary Parker Follet – C. I. Barnard UNIT – IV: BEHAVIOURAL SCHOOL Herbert. A. Simon- Rensis Likert- Riggs UNIT – V: SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL SCHOOL Abraham Maslow -McGregor- Herzberg Textbook 1. Ravindra Prasad and Sathyanarayanan - Administrative Thinkers, sterling publishers New Delhi 2004 Reference Books 1. Anthony Tillet, Thomas Kemper & Gordon Willey – Management Thinkers, Penguin Books 1970. 2. Ramesh K Arora – Perspective in Administrative Theory, Associated Publishing House, New Delhi, 1979. 3. Sapru R.K.-Administrative Theories & management Thought, Prentice Hall, New Delhi 2000. 4. Singh R N – Management Thinkers, Sultan Chand Publishers, New Delhi. HERBERT ALEXANDER SIMON Herbert Alexander Simon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 15, 1916. Simon's father, Arthur Simon, was a Jewish electrical engineer who came to the United States from Germany in 1903 after earning his engineering degree at Technische Hochschule Darmstadt. An inventor, Arthur also was an independent patent attorney. Simon attended Milwaukee Public Schools, where he developed an interest in science and established himself as an atheist. While attending middle school, Simon wrote a letter to "the editor of the Milwaukee Journal defending the civil liberties of atheists". Unlike most children, Simon's family introduced him to the idea that human behavior could be studied scientifically; his mother's younger brother, Harold Merkel (1892-1922), who studied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under John R. Commons, became one of his earliest influences. Through Harold's books on economics and psychology, Simon discovered social science. Among his earliest influences, Simon cited Norman Angell for his book The Great Illusion and Henry George for his book Progress and Poverty. While attending high school, Simon joined the debate team, where he argued "from conviction, rather than cussedness" in favor of George's single tax. In 1933, Simon entered the University of Chicago, and, following his early influences, decided to study social science and mathematics. Simon was interested in studying biology but chose not to pursue the field because of his "color-blindness and awkwardness in the laboratory". At an early age, Simon learned he was color blind and discovered the external world is not the same as the perceived world. While in college, Simon focused on political science and economics. Simon's most important mentor was Henry Schultz, an econometrician and mathematical economist. Simon received both his B.A. (1936) and his Ph.D. (1943) in political science from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Harold Lasswell, Nicolas Rashevsky, Rudolf Carnap, Henry Schultz, and Charles Edward Merriam. After enrolling in a course on "Measuring Municipal Governments," Simon became a research assistant for Clarence Ridley, and the two co-authored Measuring Municipal Activities: A Survey of Suggested Criteria for Appraising Administration in 1938. Simon's studies led him to the field of organizational decision-making, which became the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Simon’s Decision Making Theory Introduction Herbert Simon is also a great contributor of administrative theory and is regarded as the first Behaviourist. The human relations were considered as the first Behaviourists but it was not fully developed and it was not recognised as such. According to Simon administration/management requires an enquiry into how decisions are made and tasks performed and was the essential process of organisational action. In his book ‘Administrative Behaviour’ he argued that ‘making a decision is really making a choice between alternative courses of action or even between action and non-action’. His theory has directed the scholars to study the importance of decisions and how they are made. He states that there can never be a ‘one best course of action or decision’ as stated by Classical Theorists as in reality an administrator can never have all the complete information and knowledge to do so and there will always be a better course of action which he is not aware of. And so he takes a decision based on principles of bounded rationality or limitations of human capacity in solving complex problems. Such limitations arise from internal or psychological facts of stress or motivations on one hand or external, environmental factors on the other hand. And thus, the decision taken by an administrative man is ‘satisficing’ that is satisfying and sufficing rather than maximising for the situation and ‘best choice’ as per his knowledge. STAGES IN DECISION MAKING: Intelligence Activity Stage: This stage identifies the problems of an organisation and the head of the organisation has to analyse and understand the organisational environment to proceed to a resolution. Design Activity Stage: After problem identification, the organisation head starts to look for various suitable courses or strategies or alternatives and identifies the merits and demerits of each. Choice Activity Stage: Once alternatives have been developed, the administration begins the choice activity stage. It critically evaluates the different consequences of all alternatives available and a decision is taken after examining the abovementioned alternatives’ merits and demerits and the most suitable course of action is selected. This stage requires skills such as judgement, creativity, quantitative analysis and experience in the decision making process. VALUES AND FACTS IN DECISION MAKING – SIMON: Simon opined that every decision comes with 2 components associated with it: Value component: Refers to such preferences which decision maker may be seen pursuing as an ethical statement and which cant be evaluated as true or false. Fact component: Refers to such verifiable premises where propositions can be tested to determine that whether they are true or false. Science as per Simon is concerned with facts and not values. Choosing of correct and factual aspects is what Simon advocates. But decision making is always clouded with values. Simon opines that administrative man should avoid values in decision making as much as possible to find rationalism. However he did not completely rule out values and suggested that values can be incorporated in decisions relating to fixation of end goals while factual judgements shall be seen pre- dominant in the implementation of such goals. PROGRAMMED AND NON-PROGRAMMED DECISION MAKING: In regard to organisational decision making Simon identified two types of decision making: Programmed decisions: Decisions having repetitive components and where pre established examples are present. Non Programmed decisions: Non repetitive in nature and directed towards solving problems in new environments and new variables. Simon advocated delegating to sub-units programmed decisions whereas non- programmed decisions should be retained with the upper level strategic management. RATIONAL DECISION MAKING – SIMON: Simon says that rationality in organisational decisions could be improved using the following tools: Promoting high degree of specialisation. Applying Scientific tools in the process of Decision Making. Promoting operations on the basis of market mechanism. Promoting knowledge of political institutions. Creating a wider base of knowledge so that rationality could be improved in problem solving. Bounded Rationality Herbert A. Simon proposed bounded rationality as an alternative basis for the mathematical modeling of decision-making, as used in economics, political science, and related disciplines. It complements "rationality as optimization", which views decision-making as a fully rational process of finding an optimal choice given the information available. Simon used the analogy of a pair of scissors, where one blade represents "cognitive limitations" of actual humans and the other the "structures of the environment", illustrating how minds compensate for limited resources by exploiting known structural regularity in the environment. Many economics models assume that agents are on average rational, and can in large enough quantities be approximated to act according to their preferences in order to maximise utility. With bounded rationality, Simon's goal was "to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist." In short, the concept of bounded rationality revises notions of "perfect" rationality to account for the fact that perfectly rational decisions are often not feasible in practice
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