A Remembrance of Luther Gulick

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12257
• Date: 01 November 2014
• Author: Scott Fosler,Dwight Ink
• Published date: 01 November 2014

Perspective

Scott Fosler worked for the Institute of

Public Administration from 1969 to 1973,

was president of the National Academy

of Public Administration from 1992 to

2000, and is currently senior lecturer at

the University of Maryland School of Public

Policy. He contributed a foreword to Lyle

C. Fitch’s biography of Gulick,

Making

Democracy Work: The Life and Letters of

Luther Halsey Gulick, 1892–1993

(Institute of Governmental Studies Press,

University of California, 1996).

E-mail: scottfosler@aol.com

Dwight Ink held key executive

positions in state and local government

and in the Atomic Energy Commission,

Off‌i ce of Management and Budget,

General Services Administration, Off‌i ce of

Personnel Management, and U.S. Agency

for International Development, and he

led several presidential interagency task

forces. He helped create the Department of

Housing and Urban Development and the

Environmental Protection Agency. He also

served as director of continuing education

at American University from 1976 to 1980,

as president of ASPA from 1977 to 1978,

and as president of the Institute of Public

Administration from 1989 to 1993.

E-mail: dwightink@aol.com

A Remembrance of Luther Gulick 691

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 6, pp. 691–692. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12257.

Scott Fosler

University of Maryland

Dwight Ink

Luther Gulick was an American visionary

pragmatist. His contributions to government

covered so many arenas and eras that people

are constantly surprised when yet another one pops

into view.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gulick collabo-

rated on a wide range of federal issues. For example,

Luther instructed the president on administrative

options for the new Social Security system, and the

president instructed Luther on the importance of

the apparently superf‌l uous Social Security “personal

accounts,” disabusing him of stripping politics com-

pletely from administration. “ at account is there,”

FDR explained to Luther, “so those sons of bitches

up on the Hill can’t ever abandon this system when

I’m gone.”

Gulick was a consummate institution builder, help-

ing create the Maxwell School of Citizenship at

Syracuse University, the Brookings Institution, the

Public Administration Service, the National Planning

Association, and, of course, the American Society for

Public Administration. He transformed the New York

Bureau of Municipal Research, the pioneering local

government reform organization, into the Institute

of Public Administration (IPA), which he headed for

most of his career, starting as its f‌i rst president and

chair in 1931, but even earlier as director of its pred-

ecessor organization in 1921.

Luther did not spend time reminiscing about the

impressive record of the IPA or his own remarkable

role in the development of public administration,

although he took pride in having been involved in

the drafting of Roosevelt’s stirring “Four Freedoms”

speech. Until he was 100, Luther was always looking

forward and challenging us to try new ideas.

In his mid-nineties, still on its board, he found the

Institute of Public Administration facing a serious

f‌i nancial crisis.  e discussion centered initially on

whether the IPA could survive. However, Luther

urged us to talk instead about whether the IPA should

survive, suggesting that if we no longer had the capac-

ity to plow new ground in public administration, he

would vote to close shop. Luther said that a nonprof‌i t

organization should not look upon mere survival as a

justif‌i cation for existing. Only if the IPA could con-

tribute new knowledge to the f‌i eld of public admin-

istration should it try to climb the dif‌f‌i cult road back

to solvency. Another board member, Alan K. “Scotty”

Campbell, agreed.

 e IPA met Luther’s test by providing technical

assistance to the newly independent countries formerly

dominated by the Soviet Union, whose leaders needed

immediate help to avoid political and economic chaos.

Despite poor prospects for funding and skepticism

from several board members who thought this venture

foolhardy in view of the IPA’s sharply reduced capac-

ity, Luther thought the stakes were so high that we

should try, and we did. As this gamble began to pay

of‌f , Luther also supported the IPA’s leadership of an

equally formidable United Nations Development

Programme initiative to help the People’s Republic of

China design a huge civil service reform and massive

government decentralization. He was fascinated by

the creativity required to achieve the results sought by

the Chinese. Models were to be avoided because they

assumed a static society and discouraged innovation.

IPA staf‌f in Bolivia in the 1970s found palpable

evidence of Gulick’s inf‌l uence: POSDCORB (the

acronym standing for planning, organizing, staf‌f‌i ng,

directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting) was

being used to instruct students of government man-

agement on the principal roles of the public execu-

tive.  is was a shorthand that Luther had cooked

up for the President’s Committee on Administrative

Management (the so-called Brownlow Commission

on which he served), an FDR project to redesign the

federal administrative structure.

For some, POSDCORB and its associated principles

of public administration (articulated in his “Notes on

A Remembrance of Luther Gulick