Martin Luther Gulick's Separation Of Government And Public Administration

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Gulick’s major works Luther Gulick wrote several articles dealing with various topics of government reform and public administration, but he is best known for his work on Franklin Roosevelt’s Presidential Committee on Administrative Management, also known as the Brownlow Committee. The results of the committee’s year-long study resulted in recommendations to expand FDR’s staff, reorganize the executive branch and strengthen the president’s position (Newbold and Terry, 2006, p. 525). The committee’s report was written by Gulick in 1937, and became one of Gulick’s most well-known writings, “Notes on the Theory of Organization” (Luther Halsey Gulick III papers, 2015, p. 4). In 1937 Gulick also wrote “Science, Values and Public Administration.” In this article Gulick (1937b) argued that public administration was a political science that studies the behavior and desires of men, in addition to government and public administration, which are connected; this was unusual as most of Gulick’s contemporaries called for a separation of government and public administration (1937b, p. 191). Gulick’s main concepts and how his life influenced his themes Gulick’s main concepts dealt with reorganization of the chief executive’s position, efficiency and accountability within public administration, and the need for democratic …show more content…

These seven points were considered the main duties of the president, but Gulick recognized that these same points were important for all public administrators (p. 13). Gulick (1937a) noted the need for knowledgeable and skilled administrative staff, but seconded the belief that experts belong “on tap, not on top” (p. 11). Within Gulick’s experience working in several city municipalities, it can be inferred that he observed a lack of experienced individuals putting forth and implementing