What an administrative organization is said to be, and six modern features

An administrative organization system, the notes say, is a frame in which decisions for execution, and the supporting action that follows, are achieved. An organization, as they define it, is a collection of individuals, a social unit that reaches a purpose through the organic activity of members who perform set roles, and who cooperate organically for that purpose. A government aims at the realization of socially meaningful public values, and a government organization also stands in an interdependent relation with other units that make up society. An organization is treated as having an organic vitality: outwardly it takes measures that fit changes in the environment; inwardly it keeps its system even when members change.

In a large organization such as a state, the work each person holds is brought into line with a standard, and those related tasks are given a structure so that work can be done with more stability. Managers, they write, care how to structure and manage the people who make up the organization, and the jobs they hold, so that the purpose is reached effectively. A structure dimension deals with connecting people and the parts of the work they hold; a management dimension deals with concrete managing activity for that purpose: motivation, communication, conflict management, and change management. Conflict strategy is first to prevent latent conflict, second to resolve surface conflict, and third even to foster conflict so that a fitting amount of it can help raise performance. Change management is said to need the support of top policymakers and of the environment, communication, members’ participation, majority support, and negotiation.

A government organization is special, they write, because it is the result of a mix of factors: a compromise of various interests, including politicians’ intentions, pressure from the environment, benchmarking of advanced countries’ government organizations, and the path dependence of existing organizations. How far and how large a reorganization goes varies; because ministries are the core bodies that carry out a president’s governing philosophy and national tasks, a ministry reorganization is a political process that carries the president’s will. Reorganization may be full or partial, according to its breadth. A full change at ministry level has a large effect on stakeholders, including the civil service, so it needs public support behind it, and because it reflects the president’s philosophy it is done at the same time as the government is launched. Modern administrative organizations, compared with older ones, are given six features: a diversification of organizational forms, an enlargement of scale, a formalization of the processing of administrative work, a growing complexity of structure that also asks for integration, an increase in responsibility and control, and a humanization of administrative management.

February 2003, the 1998 IMF crisis, and Roh’s “government that does its work well”

In February 2003, the notes record, the Roh Moo-hyun government billed itself as a “Participatory Government.” After the 1998 IMF foreign-exchange crisis, the public realm is said to have been tilted toward a market in which market ideas dominated, and toward conservative ideas; to move away from that, a new goal of governing, “moderate innovation,” was proclaimed. Those years stay in February 2003 and 1998 as the notes give them.

Roh, they write, sought to adjust new-public-management administrative reforms that had spread through the public realm under several previous governments. That turn is said to show clearly in newly offered principles of governing: fairness and transparency, principle and trust, decentralization and autonomy, and dialogue and compromise. The purpose of Roh’s administration is given as “a transparent government that does its work well,” set apart from the “small and efficient government” of several earlier governments. In reorganization, unlike before, a small government aimed at cutting scale was not in view. Instead an evaluation system was used, a senior civil-service corps was formed, and an emphasis on performance, among other steps, put the stress on the organization’s functions and efficiency.

Privatization carried out under previous governments is understood as not having achieved qualitative reform, so competition with private firms through corporate innovation was treated as important. Regulatory reform, too, was done with quality at the center, not a mere adjustment of quantity. In personnel reform, techniques of personnel management used in firms were applied, such as analyzing jobs and developing performance indicators to match; in fiscal reform a program budget system (PBS) was introduced, and a performance-centered fiscal system was to be made. Besides reforms meant to raise performance or improve management, the agenda also included developing means of widening participation, and even the problem of distributing power among governments inside the government organization. In personnel reform, that meant dividing the authority to appoint and raising the autonomy of lower-level agencies; in fiscal reform, work to match the capacities of the center and of local government, moving resources, and gradually increasing autonomy and participation in fiscal management. Overall, Roh’s administrative reform is said to have erased a small government of deliberately created staff cuts and agency shrinkage, while continuing to spread a new-public-management style of reforming government like a firm. In implementation, a top-down strategy led by the central government through special committees or core ministries, used by previous governments, was relatively relaxed. Reform that crowded itself into process and procedure was chosen over reform that put the stress on structure, and long-term performance was the aim.

Lee Myung-bak’s grounds, and a problem joined to the career civil service

Under the Lee Myung-bak government, the notes say, worldwide social-structural change, such as knowledge informatization as the world became one, made a large reform of national administrative organization necessary. No year is attached to that government in the unique body, and none is invented here. Its reform of national administrative organization is given four grounds: first, a deepening of competition as globalization widened around the world; second, a change in the socio-economic structure toward an economy whose source is knowledge, with knowledge as the base of economic growth; third, a change in population and social structure from a general problem of low fertility and from aging; fourth, a growing importance of the state’s role in answering an environmental crisis that had become a worldwide problem.

The Lee Myung-bak government, they write, newly divided administrative organizations around functions for the people who make up the state, so as to answer dynamically a desire to bring the people together, and also put stress on a reform that would revive the people’s livelihood economy by overcoming administrative regulation. The intention is said to have been to make a practical government that does the work well, by rearranging the functions of administrative organization, and so to deal dynamically with the environment of the time.

A problem of our administrative reorganization, the notes add, is that political forces must be prevented in advance from doing what is not justified. That is joined to the aims of a career civil service: to have stability in administrative office, to block civil servants’ corrupt practices and to have an ethic of office, to have excellent talent, and to raise the quality of the official human resource through personnel management according to results. A long-term task that comes into view, they write, is how to combine, in a fitting way, the officialdom’s ability to respond — a concern that arose from fear of a closed officialdom — with the stability and the ethics of office. Those claims stay as the notes give them, not as a later official audit. The shop title also names the relation of the National Assembly and the executive; unique sentences available here develop reorganization, not that relationship, and nothing on the Assembly is invented. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Notes on what an administrative organization is, and on six features given to modern agencies, including ministry reorganization as a political process at a government’s launch.
2. Roh Moo-hyun’s February 2003 “Participatory Government,” set against the 1998 IMF crisis and against earlier “small and efficient government,” with those years left in place.
3. Grounds given for Lee Myung-bak’s later reforms, without an invented year, and a problem of Korean reorganization joined to the aims of a career civil service.

Last updated: 14 November 2026