Proverbs and the Evolution of Public Administration

• Date: 01 January 2015
• Published date: 01 January 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12288

75th Anniversary

Article

Kenneth J. Meier is Charles H. Gregory

Chair in Liberal Arts and Distinguished

Professor of Political Science at Texas

A&M University. He is also professor of

public management in the Cardiff School

of Business, Cardiff University, Wales. His

current research includes studies of public

management (in the United States, United

Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, and

Africa), race and public policy, methods

in public administration, democracy and

bureaucracy, and theories of decision mak-

ing and public management context.

E-mail: kenneth-j-meier@pols.tamu.edu

Proverbs and the Evolution of Public Administration 15

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 1, pp. 15–24. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12288.

Kenneth J. Meier

Texas A&M University

Cardiff University, United Kingdom

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of essays

we will publish in 2015 to commemorate PAR’s

75th anniversary. This essay, by Kenneth J.

Meier, focuses on Herbert Simon’s “Proverbs of

Administration.” Meier reviews Simon’s original

critique of the field, the article’s import, and

offers his ideas about steps important for the

next wave of progress for the field.

JLP

Abstract: Herbert Simon, in his 1946 essay “ e

Proverbs of Administration,” indicted public adminis-

tration as having conf‌l icting and contradictory theories

and an absence of a knowledge base that could provide a

guide to practice. Simon proposed that public administra-

tion def‌i ne concepts, adopt ef‌f‌i ciency as its objective, focus

on the study of decision making, and construct models

that could predict ef‌f‌i cient results.  is 75th-anniversary

article revisits Simon’s essay in light of contemporary

public administration. It examines the progress that has

been made and what still needs to be accomplished, and

it ends with a list of barriers to further progress.

Public administration is a science of the artif‌i cial,

concerned as much with how things might

be as with how things are (Simon 1969).  is

concern with how things might be, with improving

on the state of administration, has always meant that

public administration as a f‌i eld of study seeks two

ends—scientif‌i c quality and practical relevance (Perry

2012, 479). To be useful, to be relevant, means that

the prescriptions of public administration must have

empirical validity, that they must be supported by

strong scientif‌i c evidence. Scientif‌i c validity is a neces-

sary condition for practical relevance.

In “ e Proverbs of

Administration,” Herbert

Simon (1946) lodged two criti-

cisms of existing scholarship in

public administration—that

the theories of administration

were inconsistent and often contradictory and that the

body of empirical knowledge was completely lack-

ing.  eory was viewed as a logical and coherent set

of principles that generated testable hypotheses. Such

theory is a guide to both research and practice. Simon

then proposed a preliminary road map to a solution

with four parts: creating clear concepts, establishing

ef‌f‌i ciency as the guiding principle for public admin-

istration research, focusing on decision making as

the essential element of public administration, and

weighting how various criteria or actions might lead

to ef‌f‌i ciency. His essay was more in the tone of nailing

95 theses to the door of a church than a systematic

empirical critique of the literature; it was as much an

invitation to debate as it was the f‌i nal word on the

status of public administration at that time.

 is essay revisits Simon’s criticism in light of the

evolution of public administration. It asks what

progress we have made in terms of Simon’s arguments.

 e task of evaluating progress on Simon’s prescrip-

tion is more dif‌f‌i cult for f‌i ve reasons. First, Simon’s

objective of a general theory of public administra-

tion was highly ambitious, even by today’s standards.

Whether such a theory is attainable in public admin-

istration or any other design science is debatable.

Second, Simon himself moved on to focus on the

cognitive process of decision making and a variety

of other intellectual enterprises. Although much of

his work remained relevant to public administration

(Augier and March 2001), public administration was

not the focus of his later work, and his insight was

directed elsewhere.  ird, many of the contributions

to the scientif‌i c study of organizations, including

public organizations, have occurred outside the f‌i eld

of public administration in sociology, psychology,

economics, business, and other

disciplines.  is situation leaves

public administration in the

unenviable position of respond-

ing to developments in a wide

range of other disciplines but,

at the same time, having little

Proverbs and the Evolution of Public Administration

Simon’s objective of a general

theory of public administration

was highly ambitious, even by

today’s standards.