Bureaus of Efficiency: Reforming Local Government in the Progressive Era

Citation

Lamond, D. (2009), "Bureaus of Efficiency: Reforming Local Government in the Progressive Era", Journal of Management History, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 222-224. https://doi.org/10.1108/17511340910943840

[…] these bureaus […] committed to improving the efficiency of government in terms of comprehensive budgeting and accounting systems, rationalizing work processes, eliminating waste and duplication, improving the quality of government outputs, and strengthening political and administrative supervision (Lee, 2008, p. 203).

In this era of Barack Obama's, “Change you can believe in” or new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's call for greater transparency in government decision making, the reader could be forgiven for thinking that the above description refers to government agencies recently established or to be established on accession to government. Instead, it is a portrayal of the bureaus of efficiency (BOEs), established in the USA during the so‐called Progressive Era (1890‐1920), by author, Mordecai Lee, who has combined his experiences as a Member of the Wisconsin Legislature and, later, as a Professor of Government, to provide a framework for their analysis.

The opening chapter is an introduction to the BOEs and their genesis in a disparate range of activists, business leaders and academics wanting “good government” and “efficiency in government” (Lee, 2008, p. 16). It includes a preliminary exploration of definitions (of the bureaus themselves and the types of “efficiency” they pursued) that is not mere pedantry but a genuine, critical effort at developing an understanding and appreciation of the terrain to be traversed. Noting that the term “efficiency” was cast about with apparent gay abandon, Lee provides a model of efficiency as a focus for consideration, being that proffered initially by Haber (1973). Haber's (1973, pp. 57‐60) fourfold typology of efficiency includes mechanical (input‐output ratios), commercial (price‐cost), personal (hard work, thrift and will power) and social efficiency, the latter related to reducing disparities, injustices and immorality in society. Lee uses this touchstone as a basis for the later examination of what efficiency meant to the various bureaus, based on their concrete actions.

Lee (2008) then presents a chapter for each of four government and nonprofit BOEs he examined (one government bureau in Milwaukee which subsequently became a nonprofit entity; and one government and one nonprofit bureau established at the same time Chicago). On the basis that their recommendations were often fully, or at least partly, adopted, Lee (2008, p. 198) is able to conclude that all four positively affected outcomes in local public policy and played important roles in their respective metropolitan areas. A further chapter examines the “bigger picture” of BOEs in other parts of America, and the book wraps up with a summary and conclusions chapter.

For the reader interested in more detail, there are two appendices. The first summarises all the reports issued by the BOEs in Milwaukee and Chicago, in terms of the subject matter, details of the main authors, and the recommendations they contained. For example, the Milwaukee Bureau of Economy and Efficiency's June 1911 bulletin, Women's Wages in Milwaukee, authored by Ruby Stewart and Katherine Lenroot, was a study of women's wages in Milwaukee, with reference to practices in the UK and Australia, which also proposed legislation to address the issue.

Appendix B provides a comparison of the claimed advantages and disadvantages of the sectoral (government vs nonprofit) affiliation of the various BOEs. For example, one factor, seen as a nonprofit bureau advantage and a government bureau disadvantage, was:

A governmental BOE is dependent on funding decisions of other political bodies. Changes in political circumstances can change its funding level, even its existence. On the other hand, the independence of a nonprofit BOE makes it permanent, assuming it can indefinitely raise adequate funding (Lee, 2008, p. 252).

Again, on the basis of the case study analyses he has undertaken, Lee (2008, p. 252) is able to conclude that, in relation to the advantage of nonprofit bureaus, the literature was “partly correct and partly incorrect”, while, as regards the disadvantage of governmental bureaus, “[t]he literature was correct”.

My evaluation of the book begins with the quibbles, so that I can finish on a positive note, reflecting my overall view of the book.

This book is unabashedly US‐centric and perhaps rightly so, but there are lessons here for governments and societies of other nations now going through their own “progressive eras” (or even revisiting the yearned for aims of the “original” progressive movement). To the extent that Lee (2008) has a contribution to make beyond the USA, he also has a responsibility to provide the wider context within which that contribution can be judged. For example, Lee (2008, p. 206) notes the contemporary debates in USA about issues such as nonprofit transparency and accountability to the public, without a seeming recognition that there are different expectations of nonprofits in, for example, the UK and Australia. At the same time, in his exploration of “efficiency”, Lee (2008, p. 23) pays particular attention to Frederick Winslow Taylor, but whither Max Weber in any discussion of public sector management, especially where the aim, at least in part, is the development of a bureaucracy that acts sine ira et studio. Again, a much more powerful analysis is to be had in the wider international context.

Still, there is much to like about this book, in which Lee provides an exemplar in style and method, combined with an explicit reflection on the contemporary relevance of his findings, which are, in turn, based on thoroughly researched available data. None of the four bureau that were the subject of this study exists today but, “[a]s an idea, the goals of the efficiency bureau movement are alive and well in the United States” (Lee, 2008, p. 212), while “[e]fficiency has remained a central goal for government in the new millennium” (Lee, 2008, p. 213). Accordingly, there are still lessons to be learned from that which has gone before for those who are open to them.