Muddling Through: The Science and Art of Administration

Public Administration Review is not a journal that I read. But somehow I muddled my way into finding a 1959 article by Charles Lindblom. Its catchy title: The Science of “Muddling Through”. (Vol. 19, No.2, pages 79-88, if you’re interested.)

How does an administrator, particularly in the complex area of policy, determine how to proceed? The issues are thorny. There are no ‘right’ answers. There are pressures left, right and center. The scientist might expect a rational approach based on fundamental principles. Find all the available data, systematically analyze everything, rank the results according to the objectives and goals, and the best solution will emerge. The problem is that, for the most part, this strategy does NOT work.

How then do administrators make decisions? Enjoying my present situation as a ‘regular’ faculty member without formal administrative duties, it can seem as if some administrative decisions are made capriciously, poorly, and sub-optimally. But having been an administrator before, I know this isn’t always the case, but sometimes it might be – or it certainly looks that way from the outside. The timing of my reading this article was uncanny, given the recent U.S. government shutdown this past weekend. Since I don’t know much about politics and public policy (I should learn more), the whole enterprise looks ridiculous.

But perhaps there is a method to the madness, even if unconsciously adopted. One might say that the administrator ‘muddles through’ the options (although hopefully not actually like Mr. Muddle.) This is the subject of Lindblom’s article. He calls it the method of successive limited comparisons, and contrasts it to the rational-comprehensive method, the latter being more familiar to scientists as the way we think decisions ought to be made. A simple moniker for each: branch and root. The characteristics of each method are laid out below by Lindblom.

The branch strategy is “continually building out from the current situation, step-by-step and by small degrees”. The root strategy is “starting from fundamentals anew each time, building on the past only as experience is embodied in a theory, and always prepared to start completely from the ground up.” Lindblom analyzes each step closely. I recommend his original article for the full analysis, but here are my highlights.

In the ideal world, values/objectives/goals are laid out, prioritized, and come before the analysis. A process is then laid out that maximizes the goals, i.e., determining what constitutes the ‘best’ policy. In reality, the goals and the analysis are closely intertwined, and therefore (paradoxically) the laying out of values/objectives/goals comes from the actual articulation of policy, but not prior to it. Furthermore “to show that a policy is mistaken one cannot offer an abstract argument that important objectives are not achieved; one must instead argue that another policy is more to be preferred.” So what makes the policy ‘good’ or ‘best’? Agreement, wherever it can be found, even if the goals and values of different constituencies are not necessarily in complete alignment.

Why might such a limited analysis be sufficient, instead of going the whole comprehensive hog? “[It] reduces the number of alternatives to be investigated and also drastically simplifies the character of the investigation of each. For it is not necessary to undertake fundamental inquiry into an alternative and its consequences; it is necessary only to study those respects in which the proposed alternative and its consequences differ from the status quo.” Furthermore, “because policies being considered are like present and past policies, the administrator can obtain information and claim some insight. Non-incremental policy proposals are therefore typically not only politically irrelevant but also unpredictable in their consequences.”

An important feature that acts as a proxy to the missing comprehensiveness is, ironically, having multiple agencies, pressure groups and watchdogs. Policies also evolve over time, as they respond to different interest groups, even strongly partisan ones. By using a limited incremental approach to policy formulation, different groups can anticipate what their rivals might do, in a sort of counter-correction. This may not lead to the ‘best’ solution in the eyes of any individual constituency, but that’s not the point. Lindblom reminds us: “Policy is not made once and for all… [it] is a process of successive approximation to some desired objectives in which what is desired itself continues to change under consideration. Making policy is at best a very rough process. [No one] knows enough about the social world to avoid repeated error in predicting the consequences of policy moves. A wise policy-maker consequently expects that his policies will achieve only part of what he hopes and at the same time will produce unanticipated consequences he would prefer to avoid. If he proceeds through a succession of incremental changes, he avoids serious lasting mistakes…”

In my limited experience as a higher education administrator at both a start-up institution and a more established one, much of what Lindblom articulates rings true in terms of how things actually work. Those experiences have been an education for me personally to step away from the model-building theory-laden world of computational chemistry research, to dealing with the social complexity of different constituencies in a varied institution with different desires, plans, values – some carefully masked and others more overt.

But one of the glaring problems that results from Lindblom’s analysis is the need for time and institutional memory. The accelerations of the 21^st century are exponentially more acute than in 1959. Leaders in higher education are increasingly coming from the outside rather than nurtured from within the institution. The gospel of Disruption as a synonym for Innovation has the loudest disciples. (The New Yorker has an excellent article where Jill Lepore takes apart the Clayton Christensen gospel.) Fear-mongering is effective today as in ages past, and sadly so is demagoguery. Leaders and educators at administrative institutes don’t want to be ‘left behind’ as technology races towards its supposed apotheosis.

As I consider new creative opportunities this year in my teaching, scholarship and yes, even administrative work, I am reminded of the value of incremental change. In some cases, I might take big steps, but in others perhaps smaller ones. Maybe age has made me a little more patient, and I’ve come to terms with ‘muddling through’ some of the less tractable issues. But the muddling can be systematic or capricious, and it’s important to recognize the difference. Lindblom addresses this when comparing theorists (root) and practitioners (branch).

“Theorists often ask the administrators… to follow the best canons of the scientific method, when the administrator knows that the best available theory will work less well than more modest incremental comparisons. Theorists do not realize that the administrator is often in fact practicing a systematic method. It would be foolish to push this explanation too far, for sometimes practical decision-makers are pursuing neither a theoretical approach nor successive comparisons, nor any other systematic method.”

Capricious, it may be. But I think I would still prefer trying to persuade a fellow human being, over generating a huge database with complicated black box algorithms run by an innovative Artificial Intelligence. Sounds like Deep-Fried Data.

Selection of other eclectic administrative musings:

·      Bagman or Crouch?

·      Managing Thermodynamics

·      Garbage Can Organizational Choice