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The Toronto Transit Commission: A Case Study of the Structural-Functional Approach to Administrative Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Harold Kaplan
Harold Kaplan*
Affiliation:
York University
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Extract

Political scientists have approached the study of administrative organizations with widely divergent purposes and modes of analysis. The early studies in this field were suffused with a desire to improve administrative institutions. Attention was centred on the “problems” of administrative accountability, red tape and inertia, administrative efficiency, and the public's low estimation of government service. Emphasis in these early studies was placed on the description of formal institutions and arrangements, since these arrangements, rather than informal behavioural patterns, were amenable to reform. This approach still characterizes the great body of literature on “public administration” in all western countries.

In the 1930s and 1940s some American political scientists began to focus their analysis on the “leadership” or “political” behaviour of top-level administrators. Rejecting the notion that public administration could be studied or taught apart from the general concerns of political science, this approach viewed administration as simply one phase in the political process. Emphasis was shifted from the internal aspects of administrative organizations to the environmental or “political” problems of these organizations. Emphasis was shifted from reform to value-free, neutral analysis. This “administrative politics” approach developed at the same time as the “behavioural revolution” in American political science and applied many aspects of that revolution to the study of public administration.

Cet article cherche à utiliser et à développer l’approche structurelle-fonctionnelle aux organisations administratives. Cette approche a été décrite dans les ouvrages de Talcott Parsons. L'article souligne les caractéristiques, avantages et limitations de l'approche de Parsons par rapport aux nombreuses autres approches à l'étude des organisations administratives. Après modification de certains aspects de l'approche de Parsons, la version amandée de l'approche structurelle-fonctionnelle est utilisée pour étudier l'histoire d'une organisation: la Toronto Transit Commission. Les crises que cette Commission a connues entre 1953 et 1965 sont analysées en termes d'un effondrement de l'équilibre politique. L'insuccès de la Commission à établir un nouvel équilibre est attribué à des contradictions fonctionnelles inhérentes à la situation de cette agence.

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Articles
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Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , May 1967 , pp. 171 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1967

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References

1 Almost any textbook on “public administration” will serve to illustrate this approach. A highly sophisticated statement may be found in White, Leonard, An Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 4th ed. (New York, 1955.)Google Scholar Most of the literature on Canadian administrative organizations falls into this category, but new approaches are explored in Lemieux, Vincent, “L'Analyse stratégique des organisations administratives,” Canadian Public Administration, VIII (12 1965), 535–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Since the administrative-politics school has not produced a systematic synthesis of its view, one must pursue this approach through monographs. See: Herring, Pendleton, Public Administration and the Public Interest (New York, 1936)Google Scholar; Leiserson, Avery, Administrative Regulation (Chicago, 1942)Google Scholar; Selznick, Philip, TVA and the Grass Roots (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949)Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert et al., Public Administration (New York, 1950), chaps. 18 and 19Google Scholar; Truman, David, The Governmental Process (New York, 1951), chap. 14Google Scholar; Maas, Arthur, Muddy Waters (Cambridge, Mass., 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardin, Charles, The Politics of Agriculture (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Fenno, Richard, The President's Cabinet (Cambridge, Mass., 1954)Google Scholar; Bernstein, Marver, Regulating Business by Independent Commission (Princeton, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J, L. Freeman, The Political Process (Garden City, NY, 1955)Google Scholar; McConnell, Grant, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959)Google Scholar; Sayre, Wallace and Kaufman, Herbert, Governing New York City (New York, 1960), chaps, VIII-XGoogle Scholar; Wood, Robert, 1400 Governments (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), chap. 4Google Scholar; Rosenblum, Victor, “How to Get into TV. The Federal Communications Commission and Miami's Channel 10,” in Westin, Alan, ed., The Uses of Power (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Harold, Urban Renewal Politics (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Altshuler, Alan, The City Planning Process (Ithaca, 1965).Google Scholar

3 Some summaries of organization theory can be found in: March, James and Simon, Herbert, Organizations (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Etzioni, Amitai, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Blau, Peter and Scott, W. Richard, Formal Organizations (San Francisco, 1962)Google Scholar; Crozier, Michel, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar; and Caplow, Theodore, Principles of Organization (New York, 1964).Google Scholar A critical review of organization theories is presented in: Gouldner, Alvin, “Organizational Analysis” appearing in Merton, R. et al., Sociology Today (New York, 1959), 400–28Google Scholar; and Haas, Ernst, Beyond the Nation State (Stanford, 1964), chap. IV.Google Scholar

4 An over-all summary of the structural-functional approach to social systems may be found in Parsons, Talcott, The Social System (New York, 1951).Google Scholar This approach is applied to complex or bureaucratic organizations in: Talcott Parsons, “A Sociological Approach to the Theory of Organizations,” and “Some Ingredients of a General Theory of Formal Organizations,” reprinted in Parsons, , Structure and Process in Modem Societies (New York, 1960), 16–96.Google Scholar Two critiques of the Parsonian approach—the first a bit more sympathetic than the second—are: Henry Landsberger, “Parsons' Theory of Organizations,” and Whyte, William F., “Parsons' Theory Applied to Organizations,” in Black, Max, ed., The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1962), 214–67.Google Scholar An approach related to Parsons' can be found in Selznick's, Philip “Foundations of the Theory of Organizations,” American Sociological Review, XIII (02 1948), 25–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For example, I do not wholly subscribe to the Parsonian emphasis on the actor's orientation to the situation or to Parsons' rejection of quantification based on observed behaviour. Nor do I utilize his famus “pattern variables.” Criticisms of Parsons' image of society are presented in a subsequent section.

6 “Metropolitan Federation: A Structural-Functional Analysis of the Metro Toronto Political System” (Columbia University Press, forthcoming in 1967).Google Scholar For underwriting my research efforts in the the field of Canadian city politics, I am grateful to the Canadian Council on Urban Regional Research and to the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Of course, neither agency is responsible for the views expressed herein. My sources of information on the TTC were mainly the newspapers, TTC documents and personal interviews with many of the participants in Metro politics.

7 Kaplan, Harold, “Politics and Policy-Making in Metropolitan Toronto,” this Journal, XXXI, no. 4 (11 1965), 538–51).Google Scholar

8 For similar but not identical definitions of functional imperatives, see Aberle, D. F. et al., “The Functional Prerequisites of a Society,” Ethics, LX (01, 1950), 100–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parsons, Talcott and Smelser, Neil, Economy and Society (New York, 1956), 39–51 Google Scholar; and Bales, R. F., “The Equilibrium Problem in Small Groups,” in Parsons, Talcott et al., Working Papers in the Theory of Action (New York, 1953), 111–61.Google Scholar See also Homans, George, The Human Group (New York, 1950), chaps. 4–6.Google Scholar

9 These aspects of adaptation are discussed in Deutsch, Karl, The Nerves of Government (New York, 1963), particularly chap. 14.Google Scholar

10 “Some Ingredients of a General Theory of Formal Organizations,” Structure and Process in Modern Societies, 60ff.

11 Ibid., 69–93.

12 Levels of integration and adaptation are discussed in: Diesing, Paul, Reason in Society (Urbana, 1962), chap, IIIGoogle Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., “Bureaucracy and Political Development,” in LaPalombara, Joseph, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bert Hoselitz, “Levels of Economic Performance and Bureaucratic Structures,” ibid.; Parsons, Talcott, “Evolutionary Universals in Society,” American Sociological Review, XXIX (06 1964), 339–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The upward and downward spiral was noted in Homans, , The Human Group, 450 Google Scholar, and passim.

13 For an elaboration of this theme see Sjoberg, Gideon, “Contradictory Functional Requirements and Social Systems,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, IV (06, 1960), 198–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Although equilibrium is an important part of Parsonian theory, the notion of “policy equilibrium” is borrowed from organization theory. See March, and Simon, , Organizations, 86 Google Scholar; and Huntington, Samuel, “Equilibrium and Disequilibrium in American Military Policy,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXVI (12 1961), 481–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Parsons' image of society is criticized by Ralf Dahrendorf among others; but I do not take these criticisms to be sound reason for rejecting all of Parsons. See Dahrendorf, , Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959), 157–73.Google Scholar

16 This aspect of Parsons' framework is succinctly stated in “Authority, Legitimation, and Political Action,” Structure and Process in Modern Societies, 170–98.

17 See “A Sociological Approach to the Theory of Organizations,” Structure and Process in Modern Societies, particularly 17–41.

18 Apparently Parsons intends this image of society to be an ideal type. He notes the uses and limits of ideal types in his Introduction to Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, 1947), 11–17 Google Scholar; but Parsons' warnings on the possible abuse of “ideal type” analysis could be applied to aspects of his own subsequent work.