Few can deny that the domestic implosion of the 1930's known as the Great Depression was one of the true economic crises faced by this nation (the bank failing of 1837 being another). Certainly the remarkable Presidential career of Franklin D. Roosevelt was premised upon the nature of the fundamental economic crisis and the ability to use the federal government in emergency response during the "first 100 days" after taking office. Students of management are interested in the wholesale init iation of emergency government activities to reform the economics of the nation between 1933 and 1935. They are also interested in the reconsideration of administration role when a widespread emergency response persists more than three years (1936-1939). The election of Roosevelt to a second term meant one kind of organizational response while the mammoth "local" undertaking to build a "new south" around the Tennessee Valley Authority project meant another. Certainly, the mobilization of citizens to un dertake massive public works meant one form of emergency national politics. Roosevelt's attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court (from nine to fifteen members) is another cut at the meaning of a centralized executive during an emergency reform era.

The Brownlow or Committee on Administrative Reorganization evaluated the centralized executive and "top down" authority of the Roosevelt administration in 1937. They argued for what would be later called a "management team" form of staff support for the President. The Brownlow Committee did not challenge the authority of the President with their reorganization but they did consider he needed help

Philip Selznick interpreted the meaning of centralized expertise and local participation as "cooptation." His analysis of the TVA project determined that the central administration acts as a large "umbrella" while local involvement was deem ed important to create the behaviors of cooptation. There was no pretense that cooptation meant cooperation; cooptation meant creating the feeling of local involvement.

David Lilenthal government is politics; no separation because of law or structure. The arena of political deliberation was called planning. Planning allowed the distinction between policy intent and project feasibility to be further referen ced to the politics of actual implementation in a complex bureaucracy.

Perhaps the most important feature of administering emergency domestic reform in the 1930's was the initiation of World War Two. It could be argued that the centralization necessary to create large manpower pools of unemployed workers for public service jobs was starting to exceed its "shelf-life" when the military need arose. We can only speculate on what a domestic reform done in the name of emergency and sustained executive centralization would have brought about. Herbert Kaufman's (Shafritz & Hyde, pages 339-352) premise of a pendulum of countervailing forces might be instructive. Instead, active engagement in World War Two rejustified the activities of manpower mobilization and executive controls

For educators, the important feature of the emergency reform actions taken by the national government to counter the effects of the Great Depression was the lack of involvement of the public schools. President Roosevelt went to considerable le ngths to create new agencies responsible for vocational training and citizenship during the emergency. Public schools and postsecondary institutions were circumvented in the national agenda. We know relatively little about their operation except that so me teachers were paid in "chits or "IOU's" during that period of extreme economic downturn. After the 1930's, the discussion of management in large organizations (the corporation, school or nation) had reconfirmed a "political" sense of what operating and dealing with workers meant. Certainly, static bureaucratic regulations, abstract rules or even the kind of loyalty demanded by the turn of the century machine could not contain the growing sense of the "individual worker as actor" and the "human dim ension" in the meaning of organizational authority. Workers were understood to have a personal "craft" dimension within technical work and that "quality" productivity was tied to degrees of "autonomy" and "informal authority" from direct oversite and ma nagerial control. To implement policy and get things done management should consider the interpersonal values of cooperation and the symbolic value of cooptation in operating .

Finally, management was also perceived as political because the response to the Great Depression demonstrated that government could operate under a rationale of advocacy and making transformational changes. It could be argued that government had no other option but to adapt (like workers mobilizing for collective action) to the changes caused by economic failure. The issue may be the cart and the horse. After the 1930's management could be discussed as "proactive," "advocacy oriented" as exerc ising "change leadership."

Readings

• Truman Arnold, The Symbols of Government (1938);
• Elton Mayo, The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization (Harvard School of Business Administration, 1945);
• Richard Edwards, (1979);
• RoseBeth Kantor, The ChangeMasters (1884).