POSDCORB is an acronym widely used in the field of Management and Public Administration that reflects the classic view of Organizational theory. It appeared most prominently in a 1937 paper by Luther Gulick (in a set edited by himself and Lyndall Urwick). Initially, POSDCORB was envisioned in an effort to develop public service professionals. In Gulick's own words, the elements are as follows: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Co-Ordinating, Reporting and Budgeting.
Contents
Coining of the Acronym
In his piece "Notes on the Theory of Organization," a memo prepared while he was a member of the Brownlow Committee, Luther Gulick asks rhetorically "What is the work of the chief executive? What does he do?" POSDCORB is the answer, "designed to call attention to the various functional elements of the work of a chief executive because 'administration' and 'management' have lost all specific content."
According to Gulick, the elements are:
Elaborations
Gulick's "Notes on the Theory of Organization" further defines the patterns of POSDCORB by explaining that if an executive's workload becomes too overwhelming, some of the elements of POSDCORB can be organized as subdivisions of the executive, depending on the size and complexity of the enterprise.
Under Organizing, Gulick emphasized the division and specialization of labor in a manner that would increase efficiency. Yet Gulick observed that there were limitations. Based on his practical experience, he carefully articulated the many factors.
Gulick described how the organization of workers could be done in four ways. According to him, these are related and may be multi-level. Specifically, they are:
Gulick stresses how these modes of organization often cross, forming interrelated structures. Organizations like schools may include workers and professionals not in the field of education such as nurses. How they are combined or carefully aggregated into a school—or a school system—is of concern. But the early work of Gulick was not limited to small organizations. He started off his professional career at New York City's Bureau of Municipal Research.
Under Coordination, Gulick notes that two methods can be used to achieve coordination of divided labor. The first is by organization, or placing workers under managers who coordinate their efforts. The second is by dominance of an idea, where a clear idea of what needs to be done is developed in each worker, and each worker fits their work to the needs of the whole. Gulick notes that these two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and that most enterprises function best when both are utilized.
Gulick notes that any manager will have a finite amount of time and energy, and discusses span of control under coordination. Drawing heavily from military organizational theory and the work of V. A. Graicunas, Sir Ian Hamilton, and Henri Fayol, Gulick notes that the number of subordinates that can be handled under any single manager will depend on factors such as organizational stability, the specialization of the subordinates and whether their manager comes from the same field or specialty, and space. Gulick stops short of giving a definite number of subordinates that any one manager can control, but authors such as Sir Ian Hamilton and Lyndall Urwick have settled on numbers between three and six. Span of control was later expanded upon and defended in depth by Lyndall Urwick in his 1956 piece The Manager's Span of Control.
Also under coordination, as well as organization, Gulick emphasizes the theory of unity of command, that each worker should only have one direct superior so as to avoid confusion and inefficiency.
Still another theory borrowed from military organizational theory, particularly Sir Ian Hamilton and Lyndall Urwick and brought to prominence in non-military management and public administration by Gulick and Urwick is the distinction between operational components of an organization, the do-ers, and coordinating, the coordinating components of an organization who do the knowing, thinking, and planning. In the military, this is divided between "line" and "staff" functions. Gulick gives the private-sector example of a holding company performing limited coordinating, planning, and finance functions, with subsidiary companies carrying out their work with extensive autonomy as it saw fit according to the parent company's overall direction.
Influence from French Administration Theory
Luther Gulick, one of the Brownlow Committee authors, states that his statement of work of a chief executive is adapted from the functional analysis elaborated by Henri Fayol in his "Industrial and General Administration." Indeed, Fayol's work includes fourteen principles and five elements of management that lay the foundations of Gulick's POSDCORB tasks of administrative management in the future.
Fayol's fourteen principles of management are as follows:
Henri Fayol's influence is also visibly apparent in Luther Gulick's five elements of management discussed as in his book, which are as follows:
Place in Management and Public Administration History
POSDCORB and it's humble beginnings in the Brownlow Committee literature is still heavily referenced in today's public administration and politics. Many public administrators even believe the Brownlow documents initiated "the Reorganization Act of 1939, a train of measures that the act set in motion can reasonably be attributed to it".
POSDCORB management theories that are also responsible for the administrative reorganization that occurred around 1937, which utilizes Gulick's organizing and coordinating steps in the POSDCORB administrative process providing for more concise departments and even room for new agencies within the government making for a more efficient government.
POSDCORB generally fits into the classical management movement, being classified as an element of social scientific management, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. Gulick's POSDCORB patterns were instrumental in highlighting the theory of span of control, or limits on the number of people one manager could supervise, as well as unity of command to the fields of management and public administration.
According to notable Public Administration scholars such as Nicholas Henry, POSDCORB, the principles it represents, and subsequent expansions upon the POSDCORB concept form the height of Public Administration in an era when it was seen as just another aspect of the field of management as a whole.
Gulick's work has been heavily cited and expanded upon by scholars and practitioners in the fields of management and public administration since the publication of Papers on the Science of Administration in 1937.
In his 1987 piece "Deja Vu: French Antecedents of American Public Administration," French public administrator, Daniel Martin notes that virtually all of the principles in American Public Administration up to 1937 and the coining of the POSDCORB acronym, including the POSDCORB principles, were present in the French literature on the subject by 1859, but that this literature had largely been forgotten by the theorists of that era, thus the "re-invention" of these principles in the later French and American literature.
Essentially, "The highest goals of the American Administrative State are the same today as they were in 1937 and in 1787: Public administration is first and foremost concerned with upholding the democratic values embedded within our constitutional heritage."
Criticisms
As early as 1938, literature began appearing in the field of Public Administration challenging the validity of POSDCORB and the concept that there could even be a rigid set of principles in administration. In 1946 and 1947, prominent Public Administration scholars such as Robert Dahl, Dwight Waldo, and Herbert A. Simon released articles and books criticising POSDCORB and the principles notion. Simon's article Proverbs of Administration challenges the POSDCORB principles by stating "For almost every principle one can find an equally plausible and acceptable contradictory principle." Among other criticisms, Simon states that the POSDCORB principles are an oversimplification of administration. Simon's criticisms largely center around span of control and unity of command, stating that sometimes it is necessary for a subordinate to receive guidance or directives from more than one source, as well as Gulick's division of labor concepts. Other criticisms of Simon involved a lack of evidence.
Subsequently, POSDCORB, faced a lot of criticisms concerning the constrictive nature of it. Many argue that organizations both private and governmental are full of variety and differences and cannot be controlled through a fixed set of principles.
It has been pointed out by many skeptics that this formula may have any relevance for militaristic conduct which is run strictly by distinct guidelines, but these may not be effective or relevant for general management or administration. Military administration and general administration are managed by separate principles. Specifically, the commercial operations and governmental departments are administered by different principles and policies. This formula may not be fully applied in state administration. In this case, politicians play an important role.
Peter Self is very critical of the functionality of the POSDCORB principality. He notes: "it is very difficult to link the notion of personal staff assistance favoured by Gulick, Urwick and others with the notion of a systematic treatment of the POSDCORB functions. The functions can only be made operational if they are institutionalised, which reduces the element of purely personal assistance" Peter points out that modern organizations do not hold POSDCORB in as high regards as it once was because a fixed formula does not pertain to new problems that arise in organizations.
In his 2016 piece "Instantiations of POSDCORB," practioner Paul Chalekian suggested empirical evidence for POSDCORB involving the adoption of institutions and element support.