Papers on the Science of Administration

Gulick's 'Notes on the Theory of Organization' introduced POSDCORB, an acronym for the seven functions of the chief executive: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting. Gulick attributed the essentials to Henri Fayol . The acronym became a standard pedagogical device for teaching administrative functions, though later scholars noted it was 'one of the least interesting parts' of his essay . POSDCORB remains a reference point in public administration textbooks and management training, even as critics have challenged its assumption that administration can be reduced to a fixed set of universal functions .

Gulick's position is more nuanced than the orthodox label suggests. He identifies four bases for departmentalization—purpose, process, persons (clientele), and place—but explicitly concludes that 'no one way of grouping work activities in terms of homogeneity was clearly superior to the others' and that 'there is apparently no one most effective system of departmentalization' . He compares the search for a single principle to the alchemists' pursuit of the philosopher's stone . His essay is therefore an assertion that administration can be studied scientifically, but not a claim that a single universal principle governs organizational design.

The characterization comes from Wallace Sayre, who argued that the Papers, together with the 1937 report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, represented the peak of orthodox public administration theory in the United States—two canonical works whose authority was only shaken after the Second World War by Herbert Simon, Dwight Waldo, and Paul Appleby . However, a revisionist account by Alasdair Roberts argues this view is 'incorrect': the field was only tenuously established in the mid-1930s, and Gulick's contributions are better understood as a 'defense for a new and weakly-institutionalized field of study' rather than a proclamation of settled orthodoxy .

Simon's 1946 essay 'The Proverbs of Administration' attacked the principles approach as contradictory and unscientific, arguing that maxims like unity of command and span of control clashed with one another. Simon is generally considered to have won the debate, turning the field toward behavioral decision-making . A later reassessment, however, contends that Gulick's essay 'was not nearly as vulnerable to Simon's criticisms as has commonly been assumed' and that his arguments were 'richer and far more subtle than Simon recognized' . Had Gulick's approach been pursued as he suggested, the reassessment argues, the field would know considerably more about organizational structure design .

The volume assembles a genuinely international and interdisciplinary set of contributors. Beyond Gulick's two essays and Urwick's on organization as a technical problem, it includes James D. Mooney on the principles of organization, Henri Fayol on administrative theory in the state, Mary Parker Follett on the process of control, and L.J. Henderson, T.N. Whitehead, and Elton Mayo reporting on the effects of social environment—an early publication of findings from the Hawthorne studies, appearing two years before Roethlisberger and Dickson's definitive account . V.A. Graicunas contributes on relationships in organization, and John Lee on functionalization .

The volume was published in 1937 by the Institute of Public Administration at Columbia University, where Gulick served as president from 1921 until 1962 . It was edited by Gulick and Lyndall Urwick and ran 195 pages with charts and diagrams . A contemporary review in the American Political Science Review praised the editors for collecting papers that had 'hitherto been difficult of access' and for illustrating that 'advances in this field are frequently made through the medium of the short paper' . The reviewer noted the volume's central problems as 'organization and function, of staff and line, of the higher command' .