White, 1969

20 THE DIALECTICAL ORGANIZATION: AN ALTERNATIVE TO BUREAUCRACY

Orion F. White, Jr.

One of the more interesting aspects of the early development of public administration in the United States was the extent to which sociological factors apparently affected the prescriptions and principles of which its literature was composed. Faced with the task of making a secure role for themselves in the American academic, governmental, and societal structure, writers of the early public administration literature hardly felt impelled to notice or to dwell in their work on the less attractive aspects of administration in the governmental process. As a consequence of this shading in the early perspective, however, a literature was produced which explicitly disavowed but nonetheless contained significant ideological

The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable help given him by Buford Farris and Richard A. Brymer of Wesley Community Centers, San Antonio, Texas, and by Gideon Sjoberg in carrying out the research reported here. Source: Public Administration Review 29( 1969): 32-42.

396

Orion F. While. ]r. 397

premises.1 This ideological bent was characterized by the tendency to see administration as the solution—a remedy which is only technically problematical and without side effects-—to most problems of government.

This picture of administration—through the early teachings, the successes of the reform movement, and the widespread adoption of the city-manager form of government-—has been widely distributed both through academia and the general public.2

This strain of thinking probably is still the dominant one in the established centers of public administrative study in the United States. However, there is quite definitely a tangent of thought which is moving out from the established core. Political scientists and sociologists have begun to raise questions about the operation of administrative structures in and on government and society.' It seems odd that the field of public administration itself has not evidenced a general awareness of the rumblings of change that are being heard in the public and from some intellectuals—especially in light of the fact that in its early days as a discipline it prompted a radical governmental reform movement. There does appear to be some cognizance of the increasing criticism of government administration, but there is little orientation toward change in the sense of reaction to broader problems.

What is the problem of administration which is creating the public and intellectual reaction alluded to above? In a general sense, it is the way in which people are being treated by administrative systems: it is the problem of "clientele bureaucracies." The other aspects of the problem of formal bureaucratic organization—the problems of effective operation, capacity to plan effectively, and that of making job roles compatible with the healthy human personality—have been and are being given extensive attention by scholars in the general areas of administration, organization theory, and management, but little attention has been turned to the problem of understanding and improving the relations between organizations and their clients. It is not surprising that this is the case, however, since traditionally the client was viewed as demanding only "efficiency," defined in the same sense that administrators defined it. Hence the problem of effective clientele relations was seen as essentially a problem in effective "management."

Two Models of Client Relations: Adults and Children

In order to understand fully the nature of the complaints about the treatment of clients in current administrative institutions, and in turn what can be done to meet these complaints, it is helpful to examine the question of what forms clientele relations can take.

The client-organization relation has not been a major theoretical concern of those interested in bureaucratic organizations and administration. However, one particularly relevant analysis does exist and it can be em-

398 The Dialectical Organization

ployed as an outline of a framework.4 Basing an analysis on some suggestive data gathered by Alvin Gouldner, Victor Thompson conceptualized client-organization relations in terms of the maturity of personality brought to the relationship by the client. While he is definitely aware of the pathology of bureaucratic personality and structure, Thompson depicts much of the concern about "red tape" and other problems as stemming from excessive "childishness" in some clients. Thompson's perspective provides a useful basis for a dichotomous analysis of the problematic aspects of organization-client relations. Viewed at the one extreme, the client's posture vis-a-vis the organization with which he is interacting could be seen as essentially "childlike," while at the other extreme, essentially "adult."

The Client as Child

Though admittedly a somewhat artificial schema, the child's psychological makeup can be viewed in terms of five closely related aspects: (1) a feeling of powerlessness, (2) inability to abstract well and consequent tendency to personalize all relationships, (3) inability to cathect energy in future goals—i.e., to delay gratification of wants he seeks to satisfy, (4) inability to take the role of the other and hence to see the point in explaining or accounting for his behavior, and (5) an expectation that his needs will be met without his having to pay a price for the gratifications.

When confronted with the demands of a formal organization, the childlike client will find much that clashes with his personality. Because he feels powerless, he is somewhat afraid and suspicious of authoritative administrative institutions; his propensity to personalize all his relationships prevents him from understanding, much less accepting, the impersonal operation of formal organizations; his inability to tolerate delayed gratification causes him to become irritated at time-consuming formalities; and his expectation of reward without price leads him to resent the demands which organizations inevitably make on recipients of their services or goods. It is such clients—ones who carry childlike orientations to their organizational relations—who in large part define the "problem of bureaucracy."

The Client as Adult

In contrast, for the segment of clients which could be termed "adult," no such problem exists. The "adult client" finds that his basic personality inclinations coincide with the patterns of operation of formal organization. As an adult, he feels no relative power deprivation and hence no fear of powerful institutions. He is able to assume an impersonal attitude toward others when the occasion demands (probably most often in his own job


role) and is thereby able to "understand" when organizations treat him in an impersonal fashion. The adult, since he understands the instrumental nature of the economic relationship and is able to distinguish it from the love relation, realizes both that he must by necessity pay for what he gets and most likely will have to wait for it in addition. As an adult he is probably able to achieve self-insight by assuming an "objective" posture toward his own personality structure. He sees that important segments of his self are obscure even to him. Hence he finds little offense in even somewhat personal organizational probing.

The current criticism of the way administrative bureaucracies are operating on clients in general fits the pattern of objections outlined in the client-as-child model, indicating that the Gouldner-Thompson analysis is still accurate. The charges against administrative structures as they are popularly framed are that they are too powerful, inhumanly impersonal, rather slow in acting (or, more often, simply do not help people at all), pry too far and too often into individuals' lives, and exact too heavy a price from individuals through the use of rules. Viewed from this perspective, the problem of bureaucracy can be viewed as a form of clash between generations, in that demands are being made that clients be treated in a more personal, childlike fashion by format organizations.

Two Comments on the Adult World Of Organizations

In regard to the question of what justification there is for a serious response to demands from "childlike" clients, it is enlightening to examine two central tenets of traditional administrative structure: the concept of "policy rationality" and the "efficiency criterion." These mainly are the principles which define and justify the "adult" nature of administrative organizations, hence weaknesses in these tenets must be considered as rightful openings for arguments that the nature of such organizations be altered or transformed.

Regardless of whether or not the concept of rationality, to begin with, can adequately comprehend the reality of the process by which public goals are transformed into administrative action, it serves a useful purpose if it can be shown that it provides a basis for organizational coherence through systemization of policy.

However, Gideon Sjoberg, Richard Brymer, and Buford Farris have recently drawn attention to the striking and undeniable point that bureaucracies do not hold to truly systemized, rational policy/ Rather, they enforce policy differentially in response to pressures by clients and in accord with the clients' social class position. Just as is the case of children and adults in actuality, where parents enforce rules of behavior on their children which they violate themselves, "childlike" lower-class clients are


forced to conform to rules and to patterns of treatment which "adult" middle-class clients are able to avoid.

Hence, the "rational" policy or rule is in many cases the "best way to do it" (or, as is often claimed, "the only way") mainly for those who lack the resources required to pressure the organization into using another and less onerous "best way" in their particular case. This inconsistency in rational policy application, when coupled with the related fact that rational policy is not "rational," but is actually based in large part on a less than comprehensive survey of possibilities thought out through only a political logic, should serve as substantial grounds for challenge of this concept as a basis of defense for traditional organizational structure/

Just as with the rationality principle, so can the "efficiency" criterion be critically examined in light of its ideological aspect. What has tended to be obscured in discussions of organizational efficiency—because the dominant concern has been with how to measure and maximize it—is the fact that the criterion of efficiency itself is but a technical version of the classic and fundamental political question of order versus freedom. The degree of efficiency with which an organization works its way on a client is simply a lower-level framing of the question of how much freedom the client wishes or may have to yield in the name of the general order. Efficiency as an idea and operational standard is subject to political definition.

It thus appears that two basic tenets of traditional administration cannot serve as effective defenses for it. A helpful method for moving away from the traditional conceptualization might be to view the problem "dialecti-cally." Rather than aim toward "balance," the dialectically formulated objective would be reversal of past patterns. By so doing, a picture could perhaps be drawn of an organization which could meet even the most extreme shift in its client environment.

Dimensions of a Dialectical Analysis of Bureaucratic Organizational Structure

In order to carry out this type of analysis most effectively here, observational data from a case study of a small clientele-centered organization will be presented.7 These data are directly relevant in that the organization is attempting to operate with a structure that is antithetical to the traditional bureaucratic type. Hence its experience provides both a concrete example of what a counter-bureaucratic model of organization would be like and what problems might be encountered in attempting to implement such a model in practice.

The agency to be analyzed is a private, church-related social service agency which operates in a low-income area of San Antonio, Texas. It has roots going back to 1909, but was officially constituted in its present form


in T958. While the agency is church related, it is definitely ecumenical in its approach to social service work. Policy control over the agency is carried out through a board of directors, which has authority to make policy and develop procedures for the agency consistent with the general guidelines of the national division in the church which governs such agencies. The great bulk of its sizable annual funds comes from church sources and the United Fund, but some money is received from membership and service fees, and from agency projects. With a staff of approximately 32 (at the beginning of the study), the agency maintains three separate neighborhood centers, which during fiscal years 1965-66 served 3,000 individuals (or approximately 1,200 families) through groups, special services, clinic programs, and home visiting.

In addition to carrying out such programs as building neighborhood organization, and maintaining a clinic and kindergarten, the agency has been carrying out a delinquency control program, and is involved officially in the "war on poverty." It supervises a day-care center financed with poverty funds, is involved in a Neighborhood Youth Corps program, and supervises a VISTA program. While the agency is firmly implanted in its environment and enjoys close ties to the neighborhoods it serves (some agency workers were involved in agency programs as children), it is by no means stagnant or fixed in its outlook or its actual operation. It is attempting a basic innovation in social work style, and along with this change in style have gone fundamental alterations in organization structure. The unorthodox patterns can be catalogued as in the areas of clientele interactions, administrative structure, organizational ideology, and the staff's "organizational mentality."

Dimension I: Oient Relations

The nature of the interaction of client and organization is for the most part defined by the particular structural arrangements characteristic of the organization, since these not only impose formal constraints on the interaction, but also tend to shape its more subtle, informal aspects, as Merton showed when he detailed the structural sources of the bureaucratic personality and how this affects interactions with clients.8 With the traditional bureaucratic organizational structure, relations to clients are quite definitely circumscribed in several ways.

The whole tenor of the interaction is set, in the first place, by the fact that the client is viewed as a subordinate to the bureaucrat.' The hierarchical pattern of authority in which the bureaucrat functions is simply extended into the client relation. This means, in addition, that the same process by which responsibility, or as Victor Thompson put it, "blamabil-ity," is transmitted from the powerful top to the weaker bottom levels of


the hierarchy works on the client."' This means that the client is blamed or held responsible for the failure of the bureaucracy to treat or remedy his problems.

Second, just as the bureaucrat's role is specialized, so is his interaction with the client segmental—he relates to the client not as a total person, but as a specific type of problem or in terms of one part of a general problem.

Third, because bureaucratic structures are legitimate or authoritative, they usually represent and advocate the status quo to the client. Most social service organizations have traditionally stressed helping the client "adjust" to his life situation, rather than working for rearrangement of the social structure which is causing the client's problem.

Fourth, even though the client-oriented bureaucrat's task is the quite intimate one of helping effect a personal adjustment, he must carry out his interaction with the client in an impersonal fashion because he operates from a fixed role definition, the purpose of which is to insure "objectivity" and "impartiality" in his treatment of clients.

Fifth, because the bureaucrat operates under the norm of efficiency, he can invest his and his organization's resources in the client in only a qualified fashion. That is, if the client appears to require more resources or "input" for treatment than the solution of his case represents as a unit of organizational "output," he simply will not be treated. To treat him would be "inefficient."

The type of client relation which is dialectically opposite to the bureaucratic type is obvious and easily describable in terms of the five characteristics mentioned above. The opposite of the client-as-subordinate framework of bureaucratic organizations is the client-as-peer as the basic posture of the professional-client interaction. Instead of viewing the client segmenta l s as a "problem" or part of a problem, he would be viewed in terms of a "gestalt" type perspective as a total person. Rather than advocating the current social order to the client, the nonbureaucrat professional would, at least, be willing to solve the client's problem by removing its more general causes in society if this were the course of action indicated. A personal involvement rather than an objective-instrumental type relation would be characteristic of the nonbureaucratic client relation—perhaps at the expense of impartiality or bureaucratic "fairness." There would be a willingness, last, to keep on attempting to help clients-—even supposedly helpless cases. The commitment to client service would be unequivocal.

Client Interaction

These conditions of client interaction are being realized in the Wesley agency. Instead of allowing the consideration of the structural integrity of the agency to dictate the mode of client interaction, the agency's conceptu-


alizarion of the proper client-organization interaction prevails and the administrative structure is fitted to this. This conceptualization is based upon or derives primarily from two sources: a theologically founded service orientation and the new theory of social work practice which has been developed in the agency. The agency sees definite implications in its theological base for service to clients. As it is stated in personnel orientation materials discussing the service orientation, these implications are:

1. Service is not at a distance—it means personal involvement with people.

2. No person or problem is beyond our concern or attention. In fact, we are obligated to seek out the "outcasts."

3. Our motivation for service cannot be the possibility of success or any other condition that might be associated with the receiver of the service. We can never really give up on a person.

4. Our own interests or personal feelings are not of any importance as we serve. We may not personally like the person.

5. We must individually assume that we are responsible when others do not live up to their responsibility, and thus try our best to make a difference.

This explicitly stated orientation supports in obvious ways the dialecti-cally defined client relation sketched earlier: in particular the personal involvement and disregard for "efficiency" (traditionally defined) in the helping relation are clearly supported by the agency's theological base. Also, the personal involvement with the client means that he will be viewed as a total person rather than segmentally.

The other major source of the unorthodox client orientation, as noted above, is the theory of social work style developed in the agency. In broad terms, the Wesley agency theory of social work stresses mutual conciliation of all parts of a social problem situation. Hence it differs from the classical clinical style, which stresses a therapeutic role for the social worker through which a psychic rearrangement or restructuring of the individual client is effected. These excerpts from one document stating the Wesley agency theory summarize the points relevant to the present discussion:

[Our] outlook involves a responsiveness to all of the perspectives of all participants involved in the social work process. It is assumed that all social processes involve the interaction of participants having similar and dissimilar perspectives. The social worker . . . is responsible for transcending these perspectives, and this transcendent ideology becomes the perspective to which he is accountable. However . . . the social worker may have to be more partisan in favor of the perspective of those having an unequal power position such as the poor. The goal of the social worker is a consensus or a "concord" of


equals rather than a peaceful arrangement based on inequality. . . . [The] worker would help equalize the power positions of the participants before working on an agreement between different or conflicting perspectives.

The ultimate objective of this type of social work is to enable the client to represent himself as an equal in the process of working out a concord between himself and community institutions. Hence the goal is not to subordinate the client, but to elevate him to a position of equal power and nego-tiational effectiveness. On the other hand, workers must interact with representatives of community institutions in an effort to build good will or "credit" with them which can then be used to the benefit of the client. Also, an effort is made to alter the institutions' view of their lower-class clients.

Orienting professional workers toward clients in this fashion has created some problems for the agency, however. As has often been noted, a great deal of strain is introduced into the service role when a person who has undergone long and arduous professional education and training must relate to his client as a peer and thereby allow him, for example, to judge the success of the professional's effort to help him. A much more comfortable position for the professional is to utilize his organizational position, social status, and educational superiorly to hold the client in a subordinate posture. Group work in the agency, where the social worker plays the role of leader adorned with obvious physical and symbolic status indicators, tends to be favored over individual work with problem cases "out in the neighborhood," where clients are confronted more on a peer basis and where the worker is responsible to the client, and not to his "profession," its organizations, nor to "professional knowledge."

Further, it is highly frustrating to work on really tough cases, with little hope of success and no possibility of simply "giving up." In addition, there is a tendency to avoid necessary efforts at building "credit" with the representatives of community institutions. These people often hold a higher status position than the workers, and sometimes regard them as nuisances. The agency must keep reinfusing its professionals with its conceptualization of clientele relations, so as to combat the inevitable tendency to slip back into the more secure bureaucratic posture.

Since the objective of the agency's style is to enable clients to fend for themselves before community institutions, its successes often turn out to have the quality of a double-edged sword. Since the agency is itself a community institution which is highly visible, it is often confronted with effective criticism from its own, successfully helped clients. While these attacks are problems for the agency, however, what they mean is that the agency is constantly forced to reevaluate its operations and change itself in the direction dictated by client needs as these become apparent. This is in effect a


"dialectical administrative process," in that the agency is held constantly responsive to contradictions between itself and client needs.

A further problem is the one of resources. This difficulty has two essential aspects. On the one hand, given the unqualified commitment to all clients, a shortage of worker resources is virtually inevitable. One reaction to this is overwork on the part of the personnel—a problem which the organization must take explicit action against. The other aspect of this problem is maintaining a sufficient input of resources from the agency's supporting environment. Since the agency is committed to active social change where it seems necessary—especially in raising the power position of the lower class—it lives in danger of criticism from representatives of the status quo in the community. This criticism can result in threats or actual sanctioning of the agency. It possesses a major defense in this regard, however, in its theologically based operating philosophy. It can employ powerful and widely shared symbols from this philosophy in rationalizing its actions to its environment.

In spite of these problems, the agency's relations with its clients must be considered effective at least as far as current observations indicate. It has scored some striking successes with extremely hard cases—such as with an individual who at one point committed violent physical aggression against an agency social worker, but who through persistent personal involvement by the worker was developed into a stable, highly effective personality. In one other case, a young male was successfully reinstated in school after having been expelled from five different schools and dropped as a "case" by other welfare agencies. He was considered "hopeless" and public school officials stated flatly that they would never readmit him.

The religious base of the agency no doubt plays a part in its success in having its social workers relate to clients in the problematical, unorthodox fashion described. However, not all the staff have the same religious affiliation as the agency and not all are religious in the conventional sense. The conceptualization of the client relationship probably is generally a workable one, if the other aspects of an organization are such that the unorthodox client relationship is supported, and can yield distinctive success in some hard cases.

Dimension II: Administrative Structure

The traditional bureaucratic administrative structure possesses two central characteristics which are most relevant to the analysis here. The more basic of these two is the principle of hierarchy, which entails strictly defined roles articulated in terms of layers of authority. Policy is set at the top of the hierarchy and transmitted down through rules and close authoritative supervision which insures that the rules are followed. Categories of decisions,


decision points, and decision criteria are all closely denned, and the most rule-bound of roles are those at the bottom of the hierarchy—where the client is met. In addition, bureaucratic structures promote a cohesive (vis-a-vis the environment) and homogeneous social structure. Conformity to a comprehensive and rather strictly defined set of norms is a primary characteristic of bureaucracies. (Because these norms are primarily middle class, bureaucratic organizations often find that they can neither understand nor communicate with lower-class clients.)"

In direct contrast to this type of administrative structure would be one where the basic principle of organization would be nonhierarchical—where roles are allocated authority functionally and equally, and where authority relations are thereby lateral instead of vertical. Hence at all levels roles would not be strictly defined, but would be fluid according to functional necessity. Also, policy would be set in a "balance of power" fashion by laterally related groups instead of "at the top." Instead of homogeneity, heterogeneity would prevail and be supported administratively in the organization. Conformity, in fact, would not be possible because there would be no predominant personnel "style" such as there is in a bureaucratic organization.

These are the administrative conditions which exist at the Wesley agency. Policy within the agency is fluid and is set, as an agency document notes, by "several bodies [executive staff, area staff, total program staff, and total staff] to insure flexibility and some balance of power within the staff." The two areas of policy not subject to change by the staff are those regarding alcoholic beverages and games of chance. Staff relations are explicitly designed on a principle of "non-dominance"—i.e., of not allowing individuals to possess or develop truly authoritative positions in the agency. Supervisory or management positions are periodically assigned by total staff decision, and in addition, the agency operates with overlapping administrative roles, so that one person may be over another in one functional area but under him in another area. While there are job descriptions, these are general in nature. No specific constraints except those relating to housekeeping activities (reports, records, etc.) are defined for the various roles. Also, except for such guidance as can be obtained from the agency's social work theory, few criteria for defining duties and effective role performance exist.

Heterogeneity is markedly evident in the organization, since it is only by maintaining a direct organizational cognizance of various perspectives and individual styles that the agency feels it can truly be responsive to its clients. Variety of three types is evident in the agency personnel: social class, personality, and service skill and style. Whereas bureaucratic agencies would not easily tolerate personnel who exhibited lower social class behavior patterns, such persons are valued staff people at the Wesley agency. By maintaining some lower social class personnel on the staff, the agency cannot readily develop a monolithic, class-based orientation. Het-


erogeneity in personality type and in service skills and style also help in this regard, in that a broad range of individuals and social service situations can be effectively communicated about and reacted to by the agency, and it is hence not forced by organizational necessity to define some persons or situations as "impossible" for it to handle.

The primary problem arising from use of this type of administrative structure is its "expense." Because of the rather unstructured, heterogeneous, and egalitarian nature of the agency, much flexibility and freedom of communication is obtained. At the same time, the efficient conflict-dampening and ambiguity-relieving effects of hierarchy are absent, and other more costly administrative techniques must be employed by the agency director as a substitute. A continuing socialization effort must be carried on in the agency. Through this process it is hoped that the staff will introject new norms which will supplant the culturally dominant norms of bureaucratic job structure which they had internalized.

This helps ease anxieties in a situation where duties, decision criteria, evaluation criteria, and a means for measuring output per unit of time are absent. Also, administrative supports for this same purpose must be provided. Salary is allocated by need and is not used as a technique of reward and punishment. The evaluation process is highly private and two-way and sanctions are not brought into play, job tenure in the agency as far as possible is insured. Further difficulties are created by the regular conflicts and dissensions in the staff which arise out of its heterogeneous composition. Personality frictions, disputes over priorities of skills, and social class-based conflicts in viewpoint occur and must be combatted through a reso-cialization effort and through administrative support for whichever perspective in the dispute appears to be in the weaker position. These conflicts, it should be noted, are "valued" in the agency for the constant stimulus to evaluate which they provide. Hence the point of the administrative effort to contain them is not to smooth them out through human relations techniques, but rather to structure them so that they will be productive rather than destructive."

In spite of the fact the agency employs an administrative structure which fosters diversity and dissent, and which creates anxieties among its personnel, it functions rather well administratively. It is quite organized in its internal procedures and so far even rather intense conflicts among the staff have been effectively mediated. Further, the problem appears to be lessening as the resocialization efforts led by the agency director continue.

Dimension III: Organizational Ideology

One way of conceptualizing organizational ideologies is in terms of an Apollonian-Dionysian continuum." Norman O. Brown has characterized


the human ego in such terms in order to denote the contrast between individuals who are unable to confront the reality of death and hence are oriented toward moderation and longevity—these he calls Apollonians after the Greek god of moderation, Apollo—rather than toward using themselves up in the process of life, as those people do who through a stronger ego are able to confront death without fear-—these he calls "Dionysians" after the Greek god of the full life, Dionysius.14

There is a counterpart to this analogy at the organizational level. The traditional bureaucratic form of organization is clearly Apollonian in nature, in that it stresses first and above all self-preservation as an organizational structure—even at the complete expense of its goals. The numerous studies which document the phenomenon of goal succession in bureaucratic organizations bear this point out." In contrast would be the nonbu-reaucratic organization form, which stresses first in a Dionysian fashion, the attainment of its purposes or goal.

It is possible to see from evidence already presented that Wesley agency's ideology at least approximates the nonbureaucratic Dionysian type. The heavy commitment to client service—even to the extent of actively working for changes in currently dominant community institutions—is one indicator of this, since activity of this sort could result in serious attack on the agency. More directly to the point, however, is the agency's position in regard to the involvement of staff or its neighborhood organizations in controversial issues or political issues. Each individual's or organization's civil right to participate in a controversial issue is supported explicitly in the agency. The decision of whether or not to participate is left up to the worker, and the agency will support him, even though his own differentiation of his agency and individual roles in the controversy is not accepted by the public. One such instance has occurred and it very nearly resulted in the effective destruction of the agency as it is presently constituted.

The only problem that exists because of the agency's Dionysian organizational ideology exists as a matter of definition. From the agency's own point of view, its willingness to spend itself in the service of its goal is natural and proper. It is only from a more Apollonian perspective that such a disposition could be faulted.

Dimension IV: Organizational Mentality

Herbert A. Shepard has effectively characterized the "mentality" of traditional bureaucratic structures as "primary" in nature."' At the individual level, the primary mentality, as Shepard puts it:

sees himself as separated from the rest of the world by his skin. . . . To provide what his internal environment needs . . . he must compete with other in-


dividuals for the scarce resources available in the external environment. Other individuals are at best instrumental to him in die satisfaction of his needs.1'

This is, obviously, the mentality of the classical "economic man" and, indeed, of human nature itself as it has been defined by the most of psychology and our dominant socializing institutions.

The primary mentality is reflected in traditional organization structure in that it is built on the assumption that relations between people are threatful, competitive, and mutually exploitative. Cooperation and order must therefore be effected by coercion and compromise through a pyramidal structure of formal power. Individuals bargain across the levels of this pyramid as best they can and "win-and-lose" (go up, down, or stay put in the hierarchy) according to their skill in this competition. Organizational life in this situation has been aptly called "antagonistic cooperation," and the dysfunctional consequences it produces are many and serious.1* The structure of most organizations, however, affirms the view of reality represented in the primary mentality, and thereby gives it the nature of a self fulfilling prophecy. Hence it appears that the only way to exact an organizational effort from people is through coercion and compromise.

In contrast to this type of mentality is the "secondary" type. Briefly, in Shepard's words:

[The] secondary mentality assumes that individuals can have more than instrumental meaning for one another... . |ItJ assumes that personal development, well being, self actualization arc the products of authentic, non-exploitive interpersonal relations.. .. [This] means that the provision of the consumables needed for physical well-being can be accomplished through collaboration, and their distribution determined on a consensual basis. . . . The commitment of members of collaboration-consensus systems is to one another's growth, and to superordinate goals on which their growth in part depends."

It should be clear from what has been said already about the Wesley agency that it must at least approximate the secondary mentality among its staff. The heavy emphasis on consensual decision in policy formulation and resource allocation and the nonhierarchial staff relationships indicates this. Further, while there is conflict, it is carried out for the most part through open, genuine confrontation about problems.

Most indicative, however, of the "secondary" nature of the organizational mentality of the agency is its intense commitment to the superordinate goal of service and the principle of existential responsibility which it espouses. Instead of attempting to avoid or shunt away responsibility in the way a primary mentality would in its attempt to win the organizational game of dominance he constantly plays, Wesley agency staff assumes a


generalized existential responsibility for what happens in the agency. Each individual must be committed to the principle of shouldering whatever burden he sees must be shouldered in order to make the agency effective in its goal attainment effort without regard for the question of whether or not he is directly to "blame" for creating or for solving the problem.

It is probably by virtue of the fact that the staff is rather theologically oriented that they evidence secondary mentality traits to the extent that they do. At any rate, it is no doubt through a secondary mentality perspective and behavior patterns that the unorthodox structure of the agency functions so well. This apparent fact makes the organization type represented in the agency seem all the more feasible; since, as Shepard describes, people can be trained into the secondary mentality.

Wesley Agency as a Dialectical Organization

It is possible to see from the above description of a nonbureaucratic client organization that a central difference between the bureaucratic and nonbureaucratic types is the process by which client needs are defined. Every aspect of the bureaucratic type dictates that clients will be analyzed as subordinates by the organization and their problems will be organizationally diagnosed. It is largely because of this fact alone that bureaucratic organizations become unresponsive to their clients. Traditional definitions of problems and solutions to these become crystallized in rigid policies and rules which inevitably lose their relevance over time. Because of the highly fluid nature of Wesley agency's organizational structure, however, and in addition its commitment to clients, this does not occur. Instead, as client demands change and inconsistencies between these and the agency develop, a new synthesis of agency operations and client demands is achieved through the fluxional internal decision process of the agency. Because this is a dialectical process, the nonbureaucratic organization type described here could be called the "dialectical organization."

Toward a Dialectical Political System

Transferring the experience of this small, private, and church-related agency into the arena of large-scale government and politics raises many large and complicated questions, but making the effort to answer these questions may become of critical importance to the effective continued functioning of our political system. It is interesting and instructive in this regard to view the United States Supreme Court in its recent history as performing a dialectical role. What it has done recently is react to inconsistencies in the structure of the American legal system by altering it in ways which reflect a personal, immediate, and human concern with the clients of

Orion F. White. ]r. 411

the legal system and other institutions. Because it has worked out a contemporary synthesis of individual and system needs, it probably has saved the system from some mighty strains that would have originated from the unresolved inconsistencies.

The reverse of this trend appears to be occurring, however, in our public administrative institutions—probably in large part because of the ongoing influence of t radi t ional pa t te rns of adminis t ra t ive thinking. Instead of moving toward responsive, flexible, and human modes of operation, they are becoming more and more mechanical. There seems to be little possibility that the Court can take cognizance of the problem, hence it seems imperative that students of the administrative process set themselves at the task. The opportunity seems to be at hand to recall the heritage of radical reform out of which the study of administration grew. Certainly, the relevance and immediacy of the administrative process to effective democratic government is as great now as it was then.

Notes

1. See Dwigfat Waldo, The Study of Public Administration (New York: Random House, 1955), and his The Administrative State: A Study of the Political Theory of American Public Administration (New York: The Ronald Press, 1948).

2. For a discussion which suggests the nature of this impact in regard to city-manager government for cities, see "Leadership and Decision-making in Manager Cities, a Symposium" Public Administration Review, Summer 1958, pp. 208-230.

3. The classic traditional work on this line of argument is Charles S. Hyneman's Bureaucracy and Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950). More recent statements include James Q. Wilson, "The Bureaucracy Problem," The Public Interest, Winter 1967, pp. 3-9; Robert Presthus, "University Bosses: The Executive Conquest of Academia," The New Republic, February 20, 1965, pp. 20-24; Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960), pp. 352-434; William W. Boyer, Bureaucracy on Trial (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1964). Also, see Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963), for data relating to the American attitude toward bureaucracy. Also, the work of Warren Bennis is relevant in this regard. See Warren Bennis, "Beyond Bureaucracy," Trans-action, July-August 1965, pp. 31-35. Recent widespread discussion of the possibility of establishing an "ombudsman" system in the United States also indicates the type of concern described here.

4. Victor A. Thompson, Modern Organization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 170-177; Alvin W Gouldner, "Red Tape as a Social Problem," in Robert K. Merton (ed.), Reader in Bureaucracy (New York: The Free Press, 1952), pp. 410-418.

5. Gideon Sjoberg, Richard A. Brymer, and Buford Farris, "Bureaucracy and the Lower Class," Sociology and Social Research, April 1966, pp. 325-337. It should be noted, also, that Weber himself made only a qualified claim for the rationality of


bureaucratic structure, saying that it possesses a "formal" as opposed to "substantive" rationality. See Bertram M. Gross, The Managing of Organizations: The Administrative Struggle (New York: The Free Press of Glcncoe, 1964), p. 142.

6. A major critique of the idea of a synoptic rationality is Charles Lindblom's The Intelligence of Democracy: Decision-Making Through Mutual Adjustment (New York: The Free Press, 1965).

7. The author entered the agency as a "research consultant" and maintained access for 16 months. Data were obtained from agency documents, lengthy unstructured interviews with the director and other personnel, and through direct observation.

8. Robert K. Merton, "Bureaucratic Structure and Personality," in Robert K. Merton (ed.), op. cit., pp. 361-371.

9. Gideon Sjoberg, Richard A. Brymer, and Buford Farris, op. cit. 10. Victor A. Thompson, op, cit., pp. 129-137. 11. Gideon Sjoberg, Richard A. Brymer, and Buford Farris, op cit. 12. The "power equalization" which has been effected in this agency is therefore

unlike the commonly discussed pattern. See George Strauss, "Some Notes on Power-Equalization," in Harold J. Leavitt (ed.), The Social Science of Organizations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), pp. 39-84.

13. This typology is developed fully in another paper: "Organization Structure and Political Process—From an Apollonian to a Dionvsian Politics," forthcoming in a book of original papers edited by J. W. Dyson.

14. Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (New York: Vintage Books, 1959).

15. David L. Sills, "The Succession of Goals," in Amitai Etzioni (ed.), Complex Organizations (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1961), pp. 146-159.

16. Herbert A. Shepard, "Changing Interpersonal and Intergroup Relationships in Organizations," in James G. March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1965), pp. 1115-1143.

17. Thid., p. 1118. 18. Ibid., pp. 1122-1124. 19. Ibid., pp. 1127-1128.

White, 1969

Documents

Transcript of White, 1969