CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT INDIVIDUALS AND BEHAVIOR
The emphasis in White’s introductory textbook in public administration was decidedly macro—an economic term often used to describe how overall government systems and their parts interact. In these early days, there was also great concern about micro issues: how individuals within organizations operated and how decisions were made. Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933)46 made significant contri- butions in public administration’s quest to understand how organizations worked. Indeed, one might say that she was a major voice for what today would be called participatory management. She wrote about the advantages of exercising “power with” as opposed to “power over.” Her “law of the situation” was contingency management in its humble origins. Reprinted here is her discussion, “The Giving of Orders,” which draws attention to the problems caused when superior-subordinate roles inhibit the productivity of the organization.
Follett was one of the first to focus on the theory of individuals within organizations. By the late 1920s research was under way at the Hawthorne experiments (to be discussed in more depth in the