Who Were Lyndall Urwick And Luther Gulick, And What They Did For The Science Of Administration?
Lyndall Urwick (1891-1983) was a British army officer turned theorist and consultant whose work integrated the ideas of scientific management with the ideas of classical organization theory. Luther Gulick (1892-1970) served on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Committee on Administrative Management during the 1930s, and his major interests were political science and public service. Urwick and Gulick edited a 1937 publication titled Papers on the Science of Administration, which included articles on organization theory and public administration. Gulick isolated the responsibilities of the chief executive and enumerated them according to the acronym POSDCORB, which stands for planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. One of his main points was that well-managed, self-contained organizations or departments are nearly always headed by a single top manager such as a CEO. For his part, Urwick believed that the activities necessary to achieve organizat
