Analysis of Mastering Public Administration by Fredrick Taylor - Book Report/Review Example

His childhood dream was to be a lawyer, however, before he joined Harvard, he changed career and opted to join the field of engineering, this is where he developed interest in scientific management, in his scientific management theory, Taylor had a complicated view on workers.

At one time, he addressed some of their concerns in terms of the remuneration that they got as a result of their work, while at another time; he compared them, especially the less intelligent ones with draft animals. Taylor argued that all tasks that an employee was assigned could be organized in suan ch a way that the productivity of the worker would increase and that his scientific theory of management was more effective than the usual ‘initiative and incentive’ method, which was based on increasing productivity by placing responsibility on the worker to figure how to do it.

In order to establish the best possible way to carry out a job, Taylor carried out some experiments, which he labeled time studies or time and motion studies. In these studies, he used a stopwatch to time a worker’s motions to determine the most effective way to carry out a job based on the way that took the least time1. The possibilities of theory in public administration chapter talk about the use of theory in public administration, all the past events have happened because of public administration; several theories regarding public administration have been brought forward, however, there are still others that have not been fully developed, these theories are classified as useful depending on their ability to describe, explain and predict matters regarding public administration.

For a theory to be useful, it must have the ability to describe or depict real-life events with some level of thought, in these theories, there must be some explanations for some of the discrepancies in real life. In public administration, theory has been simply defined as a framework that, this definition of the theory differs from other definition of theory in other sciences. In public administration, theories are classified depending on their degree, from the nature of their elaboration author questions whether it is possible to have a useful and reliable public administration theory, a question he answers by bringing two positions of empirical theory; they are classical and traditional.

The traditional position argues that theory in public administration involves purpose and authority in a way that physical sciences do not.