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The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe pp 1087–1104Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

An Organization Approach to Public Administration

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Abstract

This chapter addresses the need to combine organization theory with public administration research based in political science, starting from the concept of bounded rationality. This implies a theoretically informed approach to empirical studies of democratic governance and decision-making in formal public administration organizations. A transformative approach is applied combining environmental factors, cultural-institutional features and structural-instrumental factors. We argue that the Scandinavian take on the study of public administration as a mixture of political science and organization theory with a substantial empirical orientation is a fruitful one. To understand how composite and hybrid organizations based on mixed political orders and partly competing organizational principles, we have to apply middle-range organizational and institutional theories that take account of context and historical-cultural constraints of public administration.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Tom Christensen

  2. University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Per Lægreid

Authors
  1. Tom Christensen
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  2. Per Lægreid
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Correspondence to Tom Christensen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise—PulSE Faculty of Business and Law , The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

    Edoardo Ongaro

  2. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Sandra Van Thiel

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Christensen, T., Lægreid, P. (2018). An Organization Approach to Public Administration. In: Ongaro, E., Van Thiel, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55269-3_55

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