Introduction

The systematic development of organization theory has traditionally been associated with studies of private organizations, particularly business firms. Studies of public administration, on the other hand, for a long time had no explicit basis in organization theory, even though some pioneering work was done (Scott, 1998). These studies show clearly that there is a close connection between the practice of public administration and the development of organization theory; in other words, aspects of organization theory have been deployed in the running of public administrations, which in turn has yielded new theoretical insights. Over the past few decades an organization theory more specifically geared to studies of public administration has developed (Scott, 1995). This is not a ...