4. Professionals. Street-level bureaucrats. Policy entrepreneur

The work of public organizations depends on professionals. The work of professionals involves applying their general knowledge to the specific case and requires considerable autonomy and flexibility.

Street-level bureaucrats deal with people and people are complex and unpredictable, they are not the same and require individual attention.

Street-level bureaucrats work privately. Most paperwork and computerized information systems attempt to control street-level bureaucrats.

Street-level bureaucrats are also policy-makers. They often decide what policies to implement, they may interpret the policy to benefit clients and vice versa, and thus they may change the policy while implementing it.

Policy entrepreneurs can exist at all levels of an organization. They are skilled in gathering support and guiding an idea into reality. The role requires conceptual leadership, strategic planning, and political activism. They also bend rules and sometimes lead policy astray.

5. Organization. Theory. Bureaucracy

Though there are different approaches to the field of public administration, this interdisciplinary subject nowadays has a quite strong theory that tries to take into account not only management subjects, but also the mix of administration, policy making, and politics.

Public organizations employ bureaucrats to create red tape; private organizations, worry about profit and consumers. Public organizations are pictured as wasteful; private organizations are often presented as efficient. Both types of organizations have

A dominant form of any administration is bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are defined as organizations that (1) are large, (2) hierarchical in structure, (3) provide each employee with a clearly defined role and area of responsibility, (4) base their decisions on impersonal rules, and (5) hire and promote employees taking into account their skills and training related to specific jobs.

All organizations resist change as organizational change is often painful and destructive. Despite the need for new ideas, new approaches, and new types of employees, stability need usually dominates in organizations. And the forces of stability are stronger in public organizations.

6. Organization as a structure of subgroups

There are two basic groups in organizations: formal and informal.

Formal groups (departments, committees) are identified and selected by organizational leaders, and their major characteristics are organizational legitimacy and task orientation.

Informal groups (sport groups, common lunch hours, etc.) are not created by management but evolve out of the rich social environment. Though people in these groups get together to share common interests, not to work, their activities in them (supporting friends, trading rumors, and so on) have a profound effects on work and are as important as formal assignments.

7. Organization as a cultural product. Civil Service System.

Organizations have not only an office building, an organizational chart, products and services, specific individuals and groups. Organizations are cultural and meaning systems as well as places for work.

Organizations provide meaning to our lives. Feelings and emotions are very important to work life of an organization. The despair of the unemployed goes deeper than financial worries; many feel lost, without significance.

Organizations are also sites rich with symbols and bureaucrats and executives act as tribal leaders: they tell stories, repeat myths, and stage rites and ceremonials. The symbolic and cultural dimensions of organizations are increasingly viewed as essential to understanding individual organizations and their role in society.

Public administration also has many more participants, such as the executive, the legislature, the courts, and organized groups, which are involved in the formulation and implementation of public policy. And if a public administrator focuses the attention on only some of them then others may become neglected and that may lead to the jeopardy of the entire program

Public administration has also the executive, the legislature, the courts, and organized groups, which are involved in the formulation and implementation of public policy. And if a public administrator focuses the attention on only some of them then others may become neglected and that may lead to the jeopardy of the entire program.