Administrative Theory & Praxis

ISSN: 1084-1806 (Print) 1949-0461 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/madt20

Stories Managers Tell and the Knowledge Analytic

Terence M. Garrett

To cite this article: Terence M. Garrett (2013) Stories Managers Tell and the Knowledge
Analytic, Administrative Theory & Praxis, 35:1, 163-167

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/ATP1084-1806350113

Published online: 07 Dec 2014.

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 Stories Managers Tell and the Knowledge Analytic

A Brief Review of
Ralph Hummel’s Work and Influence
Terence M. Garrett
University of Texas at Brownsville
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Abstract

Ralph Hummel’s body of work is substantial. Especially in the

area of phenomenology, his special expertise, and his impact
on public administration theory are unsurpassed. Hummel’s
advocacy of the practical application of theory based on the true
meaning of experience, and on what we know and how we know
phenomena, was central to his life’s work. His seminal article
“The Stories Managers Tell: Why They Are as Valid as Science”
captures the essence of his previous and subsequent writings. I
will explain how his work has influenced my own, especially the
knowledge analytic. Warning: This assessment is brief and does
not constitute a complete assessment of Hummel’s scholarship.

A Violin and the Stories a Professor Tells

Ralph was, is, and will always be my mentor—as the Japanese might say, my
sensei. My life experience with him began when I was a graduate student at the
University of Oklahoma (OU). He was my professor in one of the first classes
I took at OU in the fall semester of 1990. The class, Organization Theory,
was supposed to be my elective for public administration that I was going to
get out of the way—on my way to a Ph.D. in political science specializing in
the fields of American government, comparative politics, and international
relations. (I wound up eventually dropping American government as a politi-
cal science field and adding public administration because of Ralph—thanks
are owed to him here, by the way.) He showed up at the first meeting carry-
ing a violin—and started playing it right at the beginning of class. The tune
was “Amazing Grace.” Okay, I thought at the time, this is a bit unusual. As a
musician myself who plays jazz, I judged the performance to be aesthetically
pleasing—beautifully played, in fact. The 10 or so other students in the class
and I gushed about how wonderful it was! One student said that it struck a

Administrative Theory & Praxis / March 2013, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 163–167.
© 2013 Public Administration Theory Network. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 1084-1806 (print)/1949-0461 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/ATP1084-1806350113 163
 164  Administrative theory & praxis  v  Vol. 35, No. 1

chord with her emotionally and religiously. Others remarked that the tune
played was spiritually moving. Then Ralph proceeded to drop a bomb. He
said, “What if I told you that I was an atheist? What then?” A stunned mood
and silence immediately gripped the seminar room. Fidgeting took place
among the graduate students. It may not have lasted more than a minute or
two, but it seemed as if time had stopped. Ralph eventually broke the ice by
talking about the importance of what we know (in music) and our aesthetic
sense of judgment—seeing, hearing, and tasting—and how this all takes place
as we come to grips with understanding Kantian principles applied to what
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we experience. And this experience plays a central role in how we relate to

each other as human beings and how we know the world. This is good stuff,
I thought, for the first day of a graduate seminar! I was hooked.

The Importance of Stories and Knowledge

Around the time I appeared at OU, Ralph was in the process of writing his now
classic “The Stories Managers Tell” article for PAR. He had always been criti-
cal of what passes for science in public administration—and this was a good
thing. I suppose that most people reading Ralph’s seminal article assume that
the following statement was the most important summation near the end of the
piece: “People in management everywhere—including public management—
could do worse than hone their skills in storytelling and in story-validating”
(Hummel, 1991, p. 39). I know, for example, that Herzog and Claunch (1997)
used Ralph’s storytelling approach as the basis for their important work on
typologies of citizens by city managers in Texas. However, the following sec-
tion had more promise in the area I wanted to do research—eventually what
became known as the knowledge analytic (description below)—that Ralph
and David Carnevale, Ralph’s dear friend and colleague at OU, were able to
conceptualize. Their help and mentoring enabled me as their graduate student
to work on and to prove it in a more empirical way in the form of an eventual
dissertation. The key section from “Stories” is posted here:
In a highly technical workplace, science and rational calculations have
their place. But the manager must also develop a felt sense for what
it is that his or her subordinates and co-workers are talking about . . .
ultimately what managers must judge is not what has been scientifically
calculated in the past or even what trends a computer can project into the
future. They must judge whether the data of science and rational calcula-
tion fit into a future no one has yet seen. (Hummel, 1991, p. 39)
Ralph was clearly interested in how people make judgments about work
and how people in organizations use their knowledge through the stories they
tell! The key insight here is to understand how people actually behave in an
organizational hierarchy—the pyramid; and that how and where they are in

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 garrett 165

1. Executives: who
know the organization’s
“Idea” and rely on numbers
indicating it is being carried out.
(Mathematical Knowledge)

2. Mid-managers: who know the concepts that capture

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the rule governing what is real and what needs to be done.

(Scientific Knowledge)

3. Workers: who experience what it takes to get the work done.

(Craft Knowledge)

Figure 1. The Knowledge Analytic Pyramid

Source: Based on Carnevale & Hummel, 2007; Garrett, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007,
2010; Hummel, 2004, 2006).

it affects their work—and they let us know through their stories. Managers
have to use science, through rational calculations, in dealing with other hu-
man beings. For my research aspirations, this was gold! A depiction of the
knowledge analytic pyramid is shown in Figure 1.
Mary Schmidt, too, was working with Ralph on the effects of what knowl-
edge workers use, the stories they tell, and she developed her classic article
“Grout: Alternative Kinds of Knowledge and Why They Are Ignored” in PAR
(Schmidt, 1993). Conceptually, the knowledge analytic was taking shape. I
was originally interested in developing and applying the knowledge analytic
to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) raid on the Branch
Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, but my committee, including Ralph
Hummel and David Carnevale, decided that there would be more “data”
for theory assessment in the ill-fated Challenger launch decision of 1986.
I was eventually able to write several articles on the knowledge analytic
(Garrett, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010) on all manner of things, including
space shuttles, the BATF (yes, I was able to use my previous work), critiques
of New Public Management, hurricanes, and most recently, Collaborative
Public Management. Ralph also contributed extensively to the development
of the knowledge analytic (2004, 2006, and with David Carnevale, 2007).
The knowledge analytic was also featured and supported through the work
of Mary Schmidt (2007) and Nick Zingale (2007) as part of a symposium in
Public Voices assembled by Ralph that came from an ASPA panel in Denver
2006. All of us working on knowledges in organizations are deeply indebted
to Ralph’s mentorship, most especially me.

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 166  Administrative theory & praxis  v  Vol. 35, No. 1

Onward Beyond the Knowledge Analytic

The basis for the knowledge analytic partly lies in the now-classic and
seminal work of “Stories Managers Tell.” Everyone who is aware of the
importance of the article knows that it represents an alternative to the
technical rational enterprise that generally drives much of the scholarship
in public administration. Ralph was always an advocate for a true politics
for human beings (Hummel & Isaak, 1975) and warned us extensively of
the perils of bureaucracy (1977, 1982, 1987, 1994, 2008). Even with all
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of his accomplishments, I believe that Ralph Hummel was most impor-

tantly a dear friend and person of the highest moral character (not bad for
an avowed atheist!). I say this as Ralph’s last Ph.D. dissertation student
at OU, though most certainly not his last student. In 2004, at the ASPA
annual conference in Portland, Oregon, after Ralph had presented his
paper, I mentioned this fact at the panel to Alex Kouzmin, who corrected
me, “We’re all Ralph’s students!” He was right, of course. I thought,
and still think: Thanks, Ralph! You are a fantastic scholar and an even
greater human being. He will be sorely missed, but his legacy on public
administration theory lives on through our works.

References

Carnevale, D.G., & Hummel, R.P. (2007). Innovation and discovery in

factory and bureaucracy: Theory, art and method of the knowledge
analytic. Public Voices, 10(1), 5–21.
Garrett, T.M. (2001). The Waco, TX ATF raid and Challenger launch
decision: Management, judgment and the knowledge analytic. American
Review of Public Administration, 31, 66–86.
Garrett, T.M. (2004). Whither Challenger, wither Columbia: Management
decision making and the knowledge analytic. American Review of
Public Administration, 34, 389–401.
Garrett, T.M. (2006). An interpretive-phenomenological critique of the
science of (new?) public management: A polemic. Public Voices, 8(2),
102–115.
Garrett, T.M. (2007). Katrina, Rita, “Challenger,” and “Columbia”:
Operationalizing a knowledge analytic in NASA and DHS crises. Public
Voices, 10(1), 22–35.
Garrett, T.M. (2010). Inter-organizational collaboration and the Department
of Homeland Security transition: A knowledge analytic interpretation.
Administration & Society, 42, 343–360.
Herzog, R.T., & Claunch, R.G. (1997). Stories citizens tell and how
administrators use types of knowledge. Public Administration Review,
57, 374–379.

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Hummel, R.P. (1977). The bureaucratic experience. New York: St. Martin’s
Press.
Hummel, R.P. (1982). The bureaucratic experience (2nd ed.). New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
Hummel, R.P. (1987). The bureaucratic experience (3rd ed.). New York: St.
Martin’s Press.
Hummel, R.P. (1991). Stories managers tell: Why they are as valid as
science. Public Administration Review, 51, 31–41.
Hummel, R.P. (1994). The bureaucratic experience: A critique of life in the
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modern organization (4th ed.). New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press.

Hummel, R.P. (2004). A once and future politics: Heidegger’s recovery
of the political in Parmenides. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 26,
279–303.
Hummel, R.P. (2006). The triumph of numbers: Knowledges and
mismeasure of management. Administration & Society, 38, 58–78.
Hummel, R.P. (2008). The bureaucratic experience: The postmodern
challenge (5th ed.). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Hummel, R.P., & Isaak, R.A. (1975). Politics for human beings. Monterrey,
CA: Duxbury Press.
Schmidt, M.R. (1993). Grout: Alternative kinds of knowledge and why they
are ignored. Public Administration Review, 53, 525–530.
Schmidt, M.R. (2007). Knowledge for natural disasters. Public Voices,
10(1), 35–45.
Zingale, N. (2007). From novice to expert: Operationalizing kinds of
knowing in an environmental management setting. Public Voices, 10(1),
46–62.

Terence M. Garrett (Terence.Garrett@utb.edu) is a professor of government

at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He received his Ph.D. in political
science and public administration from the University of Oklahoma. His
research delves primarily into organization theory, crisis management, and
decision-making, and he is a research fellow of the Institute of Applied Phe-
nomenology in Science and Technology (www.appliedphenom.org).

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