An Organization Problem of Public Welfare Departments

THE problems of public welfare administration are legion, but perhaps there is none on which there is sharper difference of opinion than on the fundamental problem of where the responsibility and authority for such a department should lie. Should it be vested in a board or in a single elective official? If a board, what kind of a board? The legislation of our various states and the charters of our cities differ widely and change not infrequently on this question. An interested committee of social workers, of which the writer has been a member, recently submitted the problem to the members of the Governmental Research Conference with a request for their opinions. They gave the matter very generous consideration, nineteen men replying. Of these, fifteen believed that centralization of authority and responsibility should be secured by the appointment of the welfare head by the mayor (or governor if a state department). Only four favored a board with authority, one of those doubtfully. It was the general opinion that boards, where the executive officer is chosen by such unpaid board, are not the most efficient type of organization, tending as they do to place a buffer between the chief executive and the departmental executive

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• Centralized and Pluralistic Organizational Structures in Public Welfare

  Open Access•Frank J Weed•Administration & Society•1977

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