Challenges in public management

Abstract

Civil servants derive a deeply felt faith from work for their nation. This is how Max Weber sees the motivation of civil servants in 1922 (Weber (2002)). They feel proud and faithful in the direct subordination of the sovereign. Maybe this was the case in ancient Rome and the time of great emperors. The civil servant went through different ages by now and the traditional WEBERian model of the steering of the nation and the public sector began to tumble. Max Weber was not the first to research in public administration and the classical model (CM) of bureaucracy cannot be attributed to him alone. However, he stated the model “in such a forcefully simple manner that it became easily accessible not only for researchers but also for practitioners.” (Lane (2000), p.20). Weber came up with a compact list of features that are supposed to characterize the optimal organisation of the public sector: