THE FAILURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY

Résumé

Questioning whether twenty-five years of theoretical discussion have advanced our understanding or our practice of administration, Hodgkinson inspects in turn the various views that have prevailed in the field and offers a humanist's verdict on each. Finding some promise in the phenomenological approach, he suggests the adoption of a "triplex reality" as a framework for experience which will permit the application, each in its place and in due proportion, of predictive science, probabilistic hypothesis, and individualistic interpretation. An as yet unestablished philosophy of administration must clarify the language games being played in each of these three dimensions, and must adopt a wide new range of methodology that would include the modes of the arts.