Commentary: Kaufman's Paradox

• Author: David C. Iverson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12801
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017

Kaufman’s Paradox 753

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 5, pp. 753. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12801.

David C. Iverson was Regional

Economist, Intermountain Region US Forest

Service, for 29 years until his retirement in

2007. He is a founding board member of

Forest Service Employees for Environmental

Ethics.

E-mail: dciverson@gmail.com

F orrest Fleischman correctly points out that that

the U.S. Forest Service, like too many other

government agencies, fails to recognize the

import of social context in both policy making and

administrative practice. The model for this isolationist

behavior was well documented in Herbert Kaufman ’ s

The Forest Ranger (1960). For many years, Forest

Service employees basked in the glow of praise from

academics and other bureaucrats in the wake of The

Forest Ranger, believing themselves to be cherished

caretakers of forests and resources, unaware that they

might be captured by the very same interests they

thought they had protected themselves from. Forest

Service administrators reveled in what they called

“professionalism,” believing that it shielded them

from corrupting influences from private individuals,

politicians, and corporate actors. They were partly right .

That same “professionalism” instilled a rigidity that

disadvantaged them when confronting contextualized

decision and policy making that is the norm, or at least

should be, for multiple mandate organizations.

Ironically, Kaufman himself may have been one of the

earliest voices to inform the Forest Service of its failing

and impending fall from grace. In the early 1990s,

Kaufman was invited by the U.S. Forest Service to

give an update on his then-classic book.

Contrary to expectations, Kaufman did not praise the

Forest Service. Instead, he explained that its strengths

in a stable society would prove weaknesses in periods of

instability like the United States has seen since the 1960s.

In “The Paradox of Excellence” ( http://forestpolicy.

typepad.com/fs_history/ kaufman_paradox_1994.html),

Kaufman minced few words in laying out what he called

“the downside of cohesion”:

[T]he better the organization got at using

techniques of mental manipulation to improve its

performance, the more uncertain its future became.

This ingredient of managerial success seemed to

contain the seeds of its own ultimate undoing.

I expected the Forest Service to be outraged by

this characterization of its managerial style; who in

America wants to be portrayed as engaged in a type

of brainwashing, no matter how administratively

effective such a strategy proves to be? I also

anticipated that the public administration

community, and social scientists in general, would

seize on this finding as the major conclusion of

the study. I was wrong on both counts. The Forest

Service, students of public administration, and

the social scientists who paid attention to my

book focused on the acknowledged cohesion,

high morale, and outstanding performance of the

agency and on the contribution of its methods to

those attainments. For a long time, hardly anybody

took note of the long-range implications that I

considered disturbing.

Unfortunately, Kaufman ’ s words fell on deaf ears.

Instead of seeking means to adjust organizational

culture and related behavior, the Forest Service chose

to do nothing. Worse, it buried Kaufman ’ s discourse

so that it faded rapidly even from the memories of

the few who ever knew that the message had been

delivered. In internet searches, I find only one

reference to “The Paradox of Excellence,” other than

my own. These two references link to a Forest Service

website that has now disappeared, as I note in my

Adaptive Forest Management post titled “Kaufman ’ s

Little Known ‘Paradox of Excellence’” ( http://

forestpolicy.typepad.com/am/2010/05/kaufmans-

little-known-paradox-of-excellence.html ).

Forrest Fleischman ’ s insight may help future

government managers avoid the paralysis and pitfalls of

the past, or maybe not, as bureaucracies seem to have

to have infinite abilities to ignore anything outside

their comfort zone. If the latter proves to be the case,

Kaufman ’ s later, more pessimistic studies will continue

to be the norm. As Kenneth Meier and George Krause

put it so well in 2003 in their preface to the book

Politics, Policy, and Organizations ( http://www.pitt.

edu/~gkrause/0472113178-ch1.pdf ), “Kaufman …

provocatively argues that government organizations

survive not because they perform well but because they

are blessed with favorable environments.”

Kaufman ’ s Paradox

David C. Iverson

Commentary