“We hold that efficiency cannot itself be a "value." Rather, it operates in the interstices of a value system; it prescribes relationships (ratios or proportions) among parts of the value system; it receives its "moral content" by syntax, by absorption. Things are not simply "efficient" or "inefficient." They are efficient or inefficient for given purposes, and efficiency for one purpose may mean inefficiency for another.”
Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 202
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Dwight Waldo 13
American political scientist 1913–2000Related quotes

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 4, State Intervention, p. 93
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: Adminstrators are another curious consequence of a bureaucracy which has forgotten its reason for being. In schools, adminstrators commonly become myopic as a result of confronting all of the problems the "requirements" generate. Thus they cannot see (or hear) the constituents the system ostensibly exists to serve — the students. The idea that the school should consist of procedures specifically intended to help learners learn strikes many administrators as absurd — and "impractical." …Eichmann, after all, was "just an adminstrator." He was merely "enforcing requirements." The idea of "full time administrators" is palpably a bad one — especially in schools — and we say to hell with it. Most of the "administration" of the school should be a student responsibility. If schools functioned according to the democratic ideals they pay verbal allegience to, the students would long since have played a major role in developing policies and procedures guiding its operation. One of the insidious facts about totalitarianism is its seeming "efficiency." …Democracy — with all of its inefficiency — is still the best system we have so far for enhancing the prospects of our mutual survival. The schools should begin to act as if this were so.

Source: "Notes on the Theory of Organization," 1937, p. 43

Source: "Science, values and public administration," 1937, p. 192-193
Source: Game-Changing Strategies, 2013, p. 66

Walter Dill Scott, "The Psychology of Business - Wages," in: System, (18) (Dec. 1910), p. 610. The first article appeared in XVII
Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 2, The great danger, p. 21
Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 191