Contingency Theory and Public Bureaucracies

The study of organizational bureaucracies has in recent years taken the form of ‘contingency theory’ a theory which rests upon the assumption that organizational characteristics have to be shaped to meet situational circumstances. The theory implies that the extent to which an organization secures a ‘goodness of fit’ between situational circumstances and structural characteristics will determine the level of organizational performance. Child summarizes it as follows: contingency theory ‘regards the design of an effective organization as necessarily having to be adapted to cope with the “contingencies” which derive from the circumstances of environment, technology, scale, resources and other factors in the situation in which an organization is operating’. It is interesting that not one of the major contributions to contingency theory has considered the existence of elected representatives, to whom an organization is subordinated, and who are themselves accountable to a wider electorate, as being a significant contingency operating upon government bureaucracies. Blau has studied several government agencies in the United States, covering personnel agencies finance departments and employment security agencies; Meyer examined finance authorities; Hage and Aiken studied sixteen social welfare agencies; Hall and Pugh et al. covered both public and private bureaucracies.