Classical Theory

In the field of public administration, various arguments take place when it comes to categorising public administration as a science or as an art. Various authors have discussed the nature of public administration, and they also showcase how we can design an organisation or public administration system. It seems like building an organisation without knowing the design of an organisation is equal to an illogical, wasteful, and inefficient step. We can compare it to hiring a person without knowing about his roles and responsibility. The author has provided various pieces of literature that can help us in designing an organisation by knowing about the insights of the organisation.

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Classical Theory

A classical theory defines how to design and conduct the operations of any organisation or system. A public administration can also be considered as a system where we find the involvement of various officers with their responsibilities. There are various authors that have provided their theory about the structure of the public administration and in general studies, we mainly find the notable work is from Luther Gulick and lundall Urvick.

Both of the authors work mainly in defining the structure of the organisation. According to Urwick lack of design or structure leads to inefficient and confused organisations and according to Gulick, 10 principles can define a good structural organisation. These principles are as follows:

• Division of labour
• Departments of Organisation
• Coordination is a hierarchy
• Deliberate coordination
• Designing coordination committees
• Decentralisation
• Unity in officers to the command
• Line and staff
• Delegation and Span of Control

Talking about the principles from Urwick, there are mainly 8 principles that need to be followed to design an efficient organisation. Some of the important points are as follows:

• The objective of the organisation
• Authority and responsibility
• The principle of span of control
• Coordination
• The principle of definition amongst other principles

We also call the work of Gulick POSDCORB, because it has the following executive functions:

•  P – Planning
• P – Organising
• S – Staffing
• D – Directing
• CO – Coordination
• R – Reporting
• B – Budgeting

These two theories are the most important theories in the field of public administration which is why a combination of these can be called a classical theory.

Principle of organisation

According to the Gulick,

• Distribution of work is a basic requirement
• Above defined POSDCORB is executive functions of the system
• Department can be created by suggesting 4 principles.
• Hierarchy is applied for coordination
• Coordination should be deliberated
• There is always a need for coordination between the departments
• Decentralisation

According  to Urwick:

• Distribution of departments and designing the departments is a basic requirement.
• There is always a need for correspondence to generate coordination.
• Distributed responsibility
• The principle should be scalar
• Officers need to be specialised
• Coordination is required in every aspect.
• The work of the officers needs to be predefined

Here in the above, we can see what are the principles derived from the theories of Luther Gulick and Lundell Urvick.

Criticism of Classical theory

some of the important criticisms are as follows:

• These are just theories that are not scientifically proven
• We can find the neglect of the human dimensions in the theory
• These theories neglect the sociological aspects
• These theories neglect the psychological aspects
•  Represented principles in the theory are based on the economic motivation of the workers, there are no principles that represent the emotional motivation of the workers to the office or other staff
• These theories are stable means designed organisations using such theories are not able to adopt the changes
• These theories represent the organisation as an isolated system in any environment
• Only focused on the structure or hierarchy of the system
• Theories are non-descriptive which means a perfect reason for any suggestions under the theory is not defined or not provided

Significance of Classical Theory

• We can find in the theories that public administration is expressed as a science at the start and the end of the theory it is expressed as art, there can be principles that are not applicable universally but their application depends on the personality of the in-charge
• These theories promote the use of administration deficient departments like reporting, accounting, and budgeting
• These theories can play an important role in the industrial organisation because it gives an overview of how we can make an organisation by assembling different departments

Conclusion

Classical theory can be considered as the theory for establishing any organisation in public administration. This theory explains how we can design an organisation and run it to complete a predefined aim. Theories given by Luther Gulick and lundall Urvick are the basic theories whose combination is called a classic theory.

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