Wallace Brett Donham: Point

Wallace Brett Donham was American academic. Explore interesting quotes on point.
Wallace Brett Donham: 22 quotes0 likes

“To me, there are multifarious forces at work in government departments which are different from those in private business; the responsibility to and necessary interference of Congress, the responsibility to the President, to defined over-all controls, have little parallel in private business. The power politics of government departments are radically different from the power politics of private companies. The existence of pipe lines into Congress strengthens the bureaucracy against the chief executive of the particular subdivision of government. It may strengthen it against the President of the United States or Congress itself. Dimock himself points out how easily government bureaucracies develop organized opposition to policies involving change. This opposition may in substance, though not in form, sabotage all change which appears to threaten the security of the bureaucracy. Power politics, of course, exists in large private companies; but the urge to expand functions and simultaneously to defend what exists seems to me radically less in the case of well-run, large, private industry than in the case of big departments of the government. The quantitative difference becomes a qualitative change.”

Wallace Brett Donham

"Governmental and Business Executives", 1946

“All these associates were willing to help me in expanding my habit of trying to look all around things before interpreting them, as it seemed to me that the administrator should, instead of limiting his range of thought to some specialized point of view.”

Wallace Brett Donham

Wallace Brett Donham (1952). Administration and blind spots: the biography of an adventurous idea. p. 3

“I find from experience both with government agencies and with private business that there are striking differences. One of those differences is that, in government, there is more continuity and definition in the mandate. The limits of action are often clearly defined. in many cases by Congress. No such situation exists in large private business. Dimock says bureaucracies are related, for example, to size. Yet he points out some bearings on bureaucracies of the inadequacies in our federal civil service system and the conflict of loyalties which arises out of it. This, he states, he succeeded in overcoming. I have had contact with several war agencies made up mainly of businessmen. These men rapidly took on bureaucratic characteristics radically different from their own behavior in private life. The only close parallels I find in the areas of private business to the deadening effects of the present civil service are, on the one hand, what one of my old labor leaders used to call the "sonority" system and, on the other, the very real problems faced by management in dealing with labor which arise immediately out of the prolonged governmental support for organized labor-which is in my judgment bad for labor.”

Wallace Brett Donham

Source: "Governmental and Business Executives", 1946, p. 176; cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 194-5

“At this point water-tight compartments of university specialization and theories founded on the selected isolation of facts easily break down. Specialized thinking is rarely a sufficient foundation for concrete decisions involving action. The social scientist cannot often form sound administrative judgments solely on the basis of elements which he has picked out simply because they relate directly to his particular specialty. The present emphasis on artificial subdivisions of knowledge and on specialized thinking and teaching in universities, technical schools, and colleges and the relative neglect of administrative problems involving action have a dangerously narrowing effect on graduates of these institutions. While we may and frequently do arouse the intellectual interest of students in a considerable variety of subjects intimately related to the civilization of which they are a part, we pay almost no attention to the web of cross ties among these subjects.”

Wallace Brett Donham

Source: "Training for Leadership in a Democracy", 1936, p. 65-70, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 663

“In the social sciences there has been a serious gap, except where administration is involved, between the theorist and the man who must act. As a result our social science theory continues to be detached from reality. There is great need for a new social science, namely, the Science of Administration, where social theory and action must meet. Administration as conceived in this paper is, therefore, a social science with its own techniques, its own abstractions clustering around the concept of action through human organizations, and its own problems of theory. It is vitally concerned in integrating other sciences, physical, biological, psychological, and social, at the point where action is involved. Its social importance is great. Indeed if our civilization breaks down, it will be mainly a breakdown of administration, both private and public.”

Wallace Brett Donham

Source: "The Theory and Practice of Administration", 1936, p. 409; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 662-3