Public Administration and Office Management: Theory and Practice
This section pairs administrative theory with everyday office practice. Theory questions ask who said what and which principle applies; office-management questions ask how records, files, correspondence and workflows are controlled in a government office.
Theory anchors
- POSDCORB (Gulick): planning, organising, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, budgeting.
- Fayol's fourteen principles, notably division of work, unity of command, unity of direction, scalar chain, esprit de corps.
- Weber's ideal-type bureaucracy: hierarchy, written rules, impersonal conduct, merit appointment.
- Taylor's scientific management (time and motion study, differential piece rate) versus the human relations school from the Hawthorne experiments.
- Motivation: Maslow's hierarchy, Herzberg's hygiene versus motivators, McGregor's Theory X and Y.
- Concepts to distinguish: span of control, line versus staff functions, delegation versus decentralisation, centralisation, MBO (Drucker), New Public Management.
Office management
Filing and indexing, classification and retention schedules, inward and outward registers, noting and drafting on a file, e-Office and digital signatures, forms and stationery control, records management, MIS reporting, office layout and work measurement through O&M studies.
Worked example
A clerk receives conflicting instructions from two section heads on the same file. Which principle is violated? Reasoning: the problem is multiple command over one subordinate, which is the definition of a breach of unity of command. Unity of direction concerns one plan for one objective, not one boss - so that is the distractor. Answer: unity of command.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing unity of command with unity of direction.
- Attributing POSDCORB to Fayol instead of Gulick.
- Mixing Taylor's shop-floor focus with Fayol's general management principles.
- Treating delegation (to a subordinate, revocable) as decentralisation (system-wide, structural).