Wilson wanted the study of public administration to focus not only on personnel problems, as
many other reformers of the time had advocated, but also on organization and management in general.
The reform movement of the time, which had already secured the passage of the first lasting federal
civil service reform legislation, the Pendleton Act of 1883, had a reform agenda that both started
and ended with merit appointments. Wilson sought to move the concerns of public administration a
step further by investigating the “organization” and “methods of our government offices” with a view
toward determining “first, what government can properly and successfully do, and secondly, how it
can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either
of money or energy.” Wilson was concerned with organizational efficiency and economy—that is,
productivity in its most simplistic formulation.