s contend that centralized public administration is less accountable than the decentralized variety, but Wilson asserted just the opposite. As he put it:
And let me say that large powers and unhampered discretion seem to me the indispensable conditions of responsibility. . . There is no danger in power, if only it be not irresponsible. If it be divided, dealt only in shares to many, it is obscured; and if it be obscured, it is made irresponsible (p. 97).
Thus, he concluded that centralized administration was far preferable, because it allowed people to see clearly who was responsible for particular actions and kept the pressure on that individual or department to be open, honest, and effective.
Gortner et al. (1989) contend that management of public and private organizations, and organization theory for the public and private sector, really should be quite different, although they note that many theorists have subsumed the two realities in one framework. They start, however, with the perspective that bureaucracies are aspects of public organizations that make them clearly different from private organizations.
Max Weber (1947) is, of course, the classic writer about bureaucracies. For Weber, the bureaucracy is associated with the great public institutions of society, such as the church and the civil services of many countries. The characteristics of bureaucracies are those which are seen as essential to the effective operation of large public institutions, including among them such qualities as neutrality, stability, and expert administration of the law.
The fields of public administration and business management diverged from the very beginning, although both have frequently focused on issues of centralization or decentralization. The development of management theories in the business field started with Taylor and his scientific management, which emphasized a rigid control on all the factors within business that cou...