Feature

Interface with a giant, the exponent of POSDCORB

Dr. Syed Naquib Muslim

WHAT are the functions of an executive or a manager ? The question is one but the answers may be multiple as management experts perceive the managerial role in various perspectives and the reader naturally gets puzzled. To save the situation, Luther Gulick evolved the peerless acronym-- POSDCORB----planning, organising, staffing, directing, co-ordinatiing, reporting and budgeting-- that provides the common, core activities of an executive of any corporate body. The acronym, valid and unchallenged, remains as a popular catchword to remember a manager's functions.

Luther Gulick, a pioneer and a giant of Public Administration (PA) is a legendary figure to the students of this discipline. While doing MS in PA in the US, I planned to meet this stalwart man. I wrote to him seeking a brief interview. The response was unexpectedly quick. It was 24 March 1985, the day fixed for the interview in Gulick's apartment at 404, Riverside Drive, New York. As the elevator stopped across the apartment, I found an old, snow-white Gargantuan waiting to receive a Lilliputian. While we stood exchanging greetings, Gulick pulled off my coat as a mark of respect. As the interview continued, his emaciated but effusive wife Caroll graced us with her company and kept on discoursing on her husband's intellectual life at intervals.

Gulick majored in political science but he also studied subjects like psychology, mathematics, and arts. At 29, Gulick assumed the office of Director, IPA. His reputation continued to grow in 1930s with successes in social projects and publications on administration. Earlier, he eked out his living by washing dishes, doing janitor's work, selling magazines from door to door and training swimming courses for girls in New Hampshire.

The most prestigious assignment Gulick received during his lifetime was induction to the President's Committee on Administrative Management in 1936. He received this offer from President Roosevelt. Gulick was bold enough to decline this lucrative offer as he was busy elsewhere. A hard nut to crack, Roosevelt's reply was: “Luther, you can't say 'no' to the President of the United States.” Gulick had to accept the offer to work as his confidante. Gulick is remembered also for producing the classic document “Papers on the Science of Administration”. His ideas and concepts on administration have been truly reflected in this historic document ; here he declared that efficiency was “axiom number one on the value scale of administration”.

In 1983 he revised and reversed his old conception on organisations saying “every government organisation is a socio-biological system...not a machine”. In 1983 he admitted: “to look on government as a machine was once a useful and constructive gesture. He believed, PA must evolve in response to the changes occurring in the environment and public administrators must adjust their style or process in tune with the demand of the day. Gulick declared : “We must change or we will not survive. Evolution has caught up with us.”

Today every government is struggling either to establish or consolidate the overarching value of democracy. Ever conscious citizen craves for a democratic and accountable administration. It was Gulick who anticipated the future of democracy and declared in 1977 in the journal PAR: “Democracy will survive... it will survive because it permits, even encourages the change of leaders, without bloodshed and devastating periods of turmoil and hatred. It will survive because it gives the maximum opportunity for individual freedom.”

Gulick was a staunch advocate of decentralization ; he believed that any government believing in democracy must decentralise administration to deliver efficient services to the people. According to him, decentralisation “brings decision-making into the hands of men who themselves see what is needed at first hand”... and it “encourages local democratic responsibility.” He believed that in an ideal system of democratic government, the executive must be held accountable to the public representatives.

Conflict between bureaucrats and politicians is endemic everywhere. When I wanted to know from Gulick if he had any prescription for reducing politics-bureaucracy conflict, Gulick sharply replied-“There is no simple way. We have to educate the persons occupying the posts of responsibility as well as the public.”

Gulick's personal life was a blend of comedy and tragedy. Just before graduation, he became engaged in 1917 to Helen Swift, daughter of a missionary whom he described as “my brilliant, beautiful and vivacious classmate.” During the interview, I asked Gulick why he had described his classmate as “ brilliant”, Gulick posed a modest smile airing a sense of innocent pride and said, “Helen's role in shaping up my career was tremendous but unseen.” Helen bore him two brilliant sons : one a professor of Geography and the other a senior civil servant who worked for the federal government. The first tragedy befell him when Helen died in 1968. Next year, he married Caroll Moffet, a widow. Both Gulick and Caroll enriched each other's life through ceaseless intellectual dialogues on the issues of management. Gulick again became lonely when Carolll died in 1988.

Gulick was gracious enough to write a series of letters to me. The last letter he had written to me before his death was dated 10 December, 1989. In it he mirrored the bleak solitariness of the retired and widowed life he had been living until his death. Here he vented his anguish of a forlorn life saying “a retired professor should have, when he retires, not only his pension but also a secretary. My problem is serious as my beloved wife died of heart failure almost a year ago.” As I asked him- “ what are the secrets of attaining a long life ?” he replied-“ Physical requirements like diet, recreation, rest, association with other individuals. Combined with these are commitment of a person to the values of his culture and fellows and commitment to the ideals of human welfare have much to do with sustaining a long and a productive life. But the fundamental is a balanced life, balanced physically and emotionally and its commitment to the broad concept of welfare of human mankind. Gulick was just one hundred and one when he died in 1992. Gulick is gone but his concepts stay back.

(Syed Naquib Muslim, Ph.D is a secretary to the Government and Chairman, Bangladesh Tariff Commission. )