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Renate Mayntz, a German citizen, graduated from Wellesley College
in 1950. She became a doctor at the Free University of Berlin in
1953. She was a professor of sociology at the Free University, at
the Hochschule for Administrative Sciences in Speyer, and, from 1973
to 1985, at the University of Cologne. In 1985 she took over the
directorship of the Max Planck Institute for Societal Studies in
Cologne. She became emeritus professor in 1997. She was awarded a
Doctorate Honoris Causa from the universities of Uppsala, Paris
X-Nanterre and from the European Institute in Firenze. She also is a
honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
We at EGOS have at least two main reasons to distinguish her as
our 2002 new Honorary Member. As it has been the case in the past
years for David Hickson, James March and Cornelius J. Lammers, EGOS
wants to underline and reward two outstanding contributions. Renate
Mayntz has been a scientific pioneer in the field of modern
organization studies. And she has been very active and helpful
throughout the whole development of our association. This explains
the strong support her nomination mobilized among our members, the
respect she unanimously gets from various generations of European
scholars.
At the start of her career, she published in 1963 one of the
first if not the first book in German on the sociology of
organizations. Later on, she specialized on the study of public
administration and public organizations. She conducted rather large
and intensive research projects on the Federal Government of her
country, later on the implementation processes in various policy
sectors. These studies have nurtured her famous textbook on the
sociology of public administration, first issued in 1978 and which
still serves as a standard.
Little by little Renate Mayntz widened her fields. As several of
her colleagues have done (such as Michel Crozier in France, Niklas
Luhmann in Germany, Richard Scott in the USA, just to name a few),
the sociologist specialized in organizations turned more theoretical
and macro-sociological. In fact this trend was a major evolution on
the European scene in the 1970s and 1980s. Either pioneers of the
field widened their research agenda, dropped more or less out of
organizations, and remained affiliated to social sciences
departments in universities. Or they joined applied schools such as
business or engineering schools, but they remained basically inside
our specialized field, when not dealing exclusively with for-profit
organizations.
Renate Mayntz provides an example which is not uncommon among the
founders of EGOS. She developed a strong interest in political
science and in policy analysis. The distance was not far
transferring her research agenda from the understanding of public
administration organizations to the study of the state as a complex
set of organs and as a collective socio-political construction, its
steering processes and its governance ability within contemporary
societies. Her collective project on public policy implementation
processes, which gave birth to two co-authored books, represents a
landmark for the discipline. This project allowed her to gather and
grow many talents among the new generations of German scholars.
Later on, Renate Mayntz has authored and co-authored many more major
contributions, empirically grounded as well as theoretically robust,
which have ranked the Max Planck Institute she directed among the
world top research units in several fields such public policies,
contemporary polities and societies in Europe, public institutions
and organizations.
Renate Mayntz has also been a very active and supportive force in
the success story of EGOS. She has been present in many meetings
right since the early 1970s. She joined the so-called SuperEGOS
gang. She hosted the EGOS Colloquium at Speyer. She also offered
good and decisive advice, in particular about German initiatives and
participation. She was also quite influential in easing possible
misunderstandings scientists may experience when competing for the
search for truth. Renate's is a thoughtful mind, and a fearless one.
As David Hickson and a few of us remember, she has never been afraid
to point out bluntly what have seemed to her to be failings in EGOS
or in Organization Studies. As experienced by one of the
senior members of EGOS, 'on these occasions, you were better off not
being in the room or not being linked to the point she discussed'.
Examples are many which demonstrate the influence of her writings
within our community. For instance, Renate Mayntz wrote around 1960
a review of work on Max Weber’s notion of bureaucracy. This piece
helped to launch the Aston studies of organization structure. It was
read by the nascent Aston team who, in a basement in the city centre
of Birmingham, were struggling to conceptualize the nature of
organization. Or, 20 years later, her research on implementation
provided me with strong scientific incentives in order to publish
the first French book on policy analysis. What Renate Mayntz had
done in Germany proved that scientific alternatives existed to a
discipline which had underestimated the political consequences of
administrative behaviors. Policies and organizations were not only a
subject for analysts hired by decision makers, they could be
approached as a field for a better understanding of political
systems.
By the way, it is amazing to see that quite a few of the founding
or quasi-founding members had known each other since several years.
For instance Renate Mayntz and Cor Lammers had met already at the
Salzburg Seminar in the early 1950s.They also had gone to the USA at
some early point in their career and they were trained as
sociologists
Renate Mayntz illustrates another facet of EGOS which should not
be underestimated: bridging. She bridged the gap between
academicians and practitioners. This is why in 1999 she was awarded
the Schrader prize for her continuing efforts. She also bridged the
gap between basic disciplines and organizations studies. Last but
not least, she reminds us that the state or the public sphere, as
much as the firm and the market, offers an exciting, innovative and
decisive phenomenon to study and to manage
When I gathered information and anecdotes about Renate in order
to prepare the present laudation, I received recurrent advice from
my correspondents. Basically the style of the speech should be sober,
even austere, and rather formal. The reason given was that it should
reflect her own style in professional life: a demanding person,
mixing shyness and distant style of leadership, who had to struggle
in a world and at times when it was not obvious for women to make it
in academia, at least in her native country. I was surprised by such
a perception. This was not what I had experienced about her since 40
years. Renate is somebody who may behave in a very warm way, feeling
close to people, willing to laugh and talk about good life. One
factor may explain this difference. It is better not to be a German
active in Germany and talking in German with her. Be a French or in
Italian, build up a personal encounter opportunity with her, and
speak Italian or French with her. She will respond and become as
Latin as yourself.
While Professor Mayntz is an immense figure in German academia,
Renate is also a heroin in contemporary German literature. I was
told (but I shall protect my 'deep throat' source of information)
that a famous writer wrote a criminal story in which a professor of
sociology is a key figure. In the story, the person is a male. But
all experts recognized Renate in him. On top of that, the writer
himself was a student of her and later became a professor who even
attended EGOS colloquia. For non-natives this suggests many possible
interpretations of the German academic context which I leave open
for further inquiry.
Dear Renate, we are proud to have you with us, and EGOS is aware
of the fact that your honorary membership strengthens our scientific
legitimacy. Please, accept our gratitude. We know that our
scientific debt is huge and long lasting.
A sample of relevant publications
- Mayntz, Renate and Fritz Scharpf (1975): Policy-Making in
the German Federal Republic. Amsterdam: Elsevier
- Mayntz, Renate (ed.) (1983): Implementation politischer
Programme II – Ansätze zur Theoriebildung. Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag
- Mayntz, Renate (1985): Sociologia de la Administracion
Publica. Madrid: Alianza Universidad
- Mayntz, Renate and Berndt Marin (eds.) (1991): Policy
Networks: Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Considerations.
Frankfurt a.M.: Campus
- Mayntz, Renate and Fritz Scharpf (eds.) (1995):
Gesellschaftliche Selbstregelung und politische Steuerung.
Frankfurt a.M.: Campus
- Mayntz, Renate (1997): Soziale Dynamik und politische
Steuerung. Theoretische und methodologische Überlegungen.
Frankfurt a.M.: Campus
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