My subtitle puts Wallace Sayre’s oft quoted „law” as a question. Sayre had spent some years in
Ithaca helping plan Cornell’s new School of Business and Public Administration. He left for Columbia
with this aphorism: public and private management are fundamentally alike in all unimportant
respects.
Sayre based his conclusion on years of personal observation of governments, a keen car for what
his colleagues at Cornell (and earlier at OPA) said about business, and a careful review of the literature
and data comparing public and private management. Of the latter there was virtually none.
Hence, Sayre’s provocative „law” was actually an open invitation to research.
Unfortunately, in the 50 years since Sayre’s pronouncement, the data base for systematic comparison
of public and private management has improved little. Consequently, when Scotty Campbell
called six weeks ago to inform me that I would make some remarks at this conference, we
agreed that I would, in effect, take up Sayre’s invitation to speculate about similarities and differences
among public and private management in ways that suggest significant opportunities for systematic
investigation.
To reiterate: this paper is not a report of a major research project of systematic study. Rather, it is
a response to a request for a brief summary of reflections of a dean of a school of government who
now spends his time doing a form of public management – managing what Jim March has labeled
an „organized anarchy” – rather than thinking, much less writing.
1 Moreover, the speculation here
will appear to reflect a characteristic Harvard presumption that Cambridge either is the world, or is
an adequate sample of the world. I say „appear” since as a North Carolinean, I am self-conscious
about this parochialism. Nevertheless, I have concluded that the purposes of this conference may be
better served by providing a deliberately parochial perspective on these issues – and thereby presenting
a clear target for others to shoot at. Finally, I must acknowledge that this paper plagiarizes
freely from a continuing discussion among my colleagues at Harvard about the development of the
field of public management, especially from Joe Bower, Hale Champion, Gordon Chase, Charles
Christenson, Richard Darman, John Dunlop, Phil Heymann, Larry Lynn, Mark Moore, Dick Neustadt,
Roger Porter, and Don Price. Since my colleagues have not had the benefit of commenting on
this presentation, I suspect I have some points wrong, or out of context, or without appropriate subtlety
or amendment. Thus I assume full liability for the words that follow.