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Public administration has long been understood to be both a science and an art. In its artful aspects, public administration can also, in fact, be beautiful. At their very best, public organizations and processes have forms, designs, experiences, and languages which are beautiful and compelling. It is this beauty and its potential which draws us to public work. And, there is very great beauty in ideas of high and noble purpose and in the organizations and processes we build to achieve those ideas.
Introduction
It has long been understood that public administration is both science and art; indeed, for many years the masthead of the Public Administration Review read "PAR: The Journal of the American Society for Public Administration, to Advance the Science, Processes and Art of Public Administration." Although the science and processes of public administration have dominated the field, there is nevertheless a considerable treatment of public administration as art (Goodsell and Murray 1995; Lynn 1996; Egger 1959; Holzer, Morris, and Ludwin 1979; Kroll 1965; McCurdy 1973,1987; McDaniel 1978; Marini 1992; Tead 1951; Waldo 1956, 1968). This literature describes the artful qualities of good management and the usefulness of organizational and management perspectives taken from literature and art. While I agree with this literature, this essay makes a bolder and more fundamental argumentthat bureaucracy is a form of beauty and that organization and the work of organizations, including what is described as administration or management, can be beautiful, This claim is made first by describing organization and management as aesthetic phenomena. This is followed by the claim that these aesthetic phenomena are a search for the beauty of bureaucracy. Finally, the implications of the aesthetics and beauty of bureaucracy are sketched.
The Aesthetic Qualities of Organization and Administration
Form
Art in all its traditional manifestations-painting, sculpture, music, literature, poetry, architecture-exhibits one consistent characteristic-form. So it is with organization.
Form is universal. In the practices of organization and management and in its study, form is often mistaken for hierarchy. It is form that is universal to art and organization, not hierarchy. Form has many meanings. We speak of someone being in good form. The human body has form. Marriage is a form of relationship between two persons. A club or organization is said...