NORTHERN CHRISTIAN COLLEGE
“Institution for Better Life”
GRADUATE SCHOOL
Laoag City
Name : Joselito De Vera
Subject : PA 202- Theory and Practice of Public Administration
Professor : Norberto S. Galiza, Ed.D.
Part III The Study and Practice of Public Administration
MAJOR ORIENTATION IN THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
As mentioned in the preceding topic, public administration is considered as a practice and as a
field of study at the same time.
Public Administration is used to delineate both an aspect of governmental activity and
an academic field of study.
As a practice, Public Administration emerged during the development of early civilizations of
the world. Although unknown to many public administration as a practice has touched almost all
sectors of the early civilizations. The organization of people through governments in the olden
time presage the coming of the discipline only that it took two centuries before the concept of
public administration was developed (Rutgers, 2010) . This was followed by several discoveries
of artefacts which later proved that the practice of public administration was very much alive
during the olden time.
As a field of study, public administration can be traced back either in Europe or in the United
States which called actively for the separation of the field from its parent-origin, the discipline of
political science. In the United States, public administration as a field of study started with a call
from Woodrow Wilson asking for the separation of public administration from political science.
Wilson discussed that it was high time for the discipline to leave its comfort zone and develop its
own niche and consciousness about the science of administration. The call for the separation of
public administration as a discipline since then generated much support from other disciplines.
Evolution of Public Administration as a Practice
As an aspect of governmental activity, Public Administration is very old as much as human
history (civilization).
In European languages, the term Public Administration began to creep in during the seventeenth
century to separate the absolute monarch’s administration of public affairs from the
management of his private household.
This was a period when the church was separated from the state and government was
superimposed on all other societal institutions within a definite territory.
In contemporary societies there are some activities like maintenance of law and order, and
security carried out in the interest of the citizens.
Public Administration is the means through which such tasks are undertaken.
At the present stage of civilization, Public Administration as governmental activity has proven to
be indispensable in the conduct of human affairs.
Besides maintenance of law and order, revenue collection and security functions, it
operationalizes a vast array of public laws, provides public services like post and telegraphs and
transport facilities in cities and towns, and is the main instrument of socioeconomic
transformation in modern societies.
Evolution of Public Administration as a Field of Study
Public Administration as an academic discipline is a little over a hundred years old and hence
one of the younger social sciences.
It is only during the last half-century—or so it seems—that much academic attention has been
given to administrative activity that dates back to the beginnings of civilization.
Its developmental phase began to take shape in the USA towards the end of the nineteenth
century.
The evolution of Public Administration as an academic discipline falls into a number of
periodical stages.
We'll be taking a close look at these periods in the following discussion, with special emphasis
on the United States of America.
1. The first stage: Wilsonian politics-administration dichotomy
The symbolic beginning of Public Administration as an academic discipline, can be traced back
to the seminal essay authored by Woodrow Wilson , published in the Political Science
Quarterly in 1887.
In this essay, entitled “The Study of Administration”, Wilson had introduced the doctrine of
politics-administration dichotomy by making a distinction between political activity and
administrative activity.
He referred to Public Administration as the implementation of public laws which are determined
by political officers.
He treated Public Administration as the business and operational side of government removed
from the hurry and strife of politics.
Wilson’s essay thus laid the foundation for the systematic study of Public Administration in the
United States of America.
Wilsonian’s 1887 essay symbolized the beginning of what was later to be an autonomous
academic field of inquiry.
Thus, Wilson is regarded as the founding father of the discipline of Public Administration.
Frank J. Goodnow, another eminent author, who endorsed the Wilsonian theme of politics-
administration dichotomy in 1900, elaborated further on the theme by conceptually
distinguishing the two functions.
According to him, “Politics has to do with policies or expressions of the state will,” whereas
“administration has to do with the execution of these policies.”
Apart from this, the institutional location of these two functions were differentiated.
The location of politics was identified with the legislature and higher levels of the government
where major policy decisions were taken.
The location of administration was identified with the executive branch of the governmental and
the bureaucracy.
In 1926, Leonard D White wrote Introduction to the Study of Public Administration which was
recognized as the first textbook on the subject.
This book, while advocating a politics-administration dichotomy, stressed the human side of
administration dealing comprehensively with administration in government.
2. The second stage
The second stage of evolution was heralded by the tendency to reinforce the idea of politics-
administration dichotomy and to develop a value-free science of management.
The central belief of this period was that there are certain principles of administration which was
the task of scholars to discover and advocate.
W. F. Willoughby’s Principles of Public Administration in 1927 was the inauguration of the
principle approach.
Other important works of this period stressing this approach were:
Principles of Organization by James D. Mooney and Alan C. Riley, Creative Experience
by Mary Parker Follett ,Henri Fayol’s Industrial and General Management and Papers on the
Science of Public Administration by Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick.
In all these works, empirical studies were undertaken to find a scientifically accurate method of
organizing human relationships in large-scale organizations ‘the one best way’ to achieve a
desirable level of organizational efficiency and economy.
With the help of scientific management methods, the leaders of Public Administration tried to
discover certain principles of Public Administration which could be of universal applicability.
Division of work, specialization, coordination, scalar principle, unity of command and span of
control were some of the principles developed by them.
Luther Gulick and Lyndal Urwick coined the word POSDCORB to promote some of these
principles of administration.
POSDCORB stands for Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting and
Budgeting.
These maxims of administration were said to be of universal applicability in all organizations.
3. The third stage
The third stage in the development of the discipline of Public Administration was characterized
by the rise of the Human Relations School led by Elton Mayo.
While the classical writers emphasized the structural aspects of organizations, the Human
Relations School focused on the importance of human factor and human relations in
organizations.
Mayo’s famous Hawthorne experiments revealed the powerful influence of social and
psychological forces on the work situations.
These studies also draw attention to the formation of work groups in organizations and the
importance of group behaviour to management.
In other words, the work in organizations gets affected by the attitudes, feelings, sentiments, and
other social relations of the workers.
Thus, the Human Relations School led to the discovery of the effect of the informal organization
on the formal structure.
4. The fourth stage
In the fourth stage the growth of the study of Public Administration was greatly influenced by
the behavioral approach started after World War II.
Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon, Robert Dahl, Chris Argyris , Douglas Mc Gregor and Rensis
Likert are prominent among the behavioralists.
In his Functions of the Executive, Barnard stressed the behavioral factors in analysis of
organizations. However, the behavioral approach was ushered in by the publications of Herbert
Simon’s Administrative Behavior and Robert Dahl’s The science of Public Administration:
Three problems.
These two writers criticized the core beliefs of the pre-war orthodox Public Administration. They
showed its inadequacies and limitations.
Simon argued that Public Administration has not become a science and regarded its principles as
little more than contradictory proverbs and maxims of folk wisdom. He emphasized decision-
making as the central aspect of administration.
He therefore, laid emphasis on logically precise approaches to studying behavior as the best way
to develop a sound administrative theory.
Robert Dahl showed reasons why Public Administration could not claim to the status of a
science. In his opinion the problems of creating the science of Public Administration were
immense because subject matter was involved with values, the social framework, and individual
personalities and behavior.
The other behavioralist argued for a more humanitarian problem. They have attached great
importance not only to the human behavior in organizations but also to the development of
human personalities in the organization.
They have stressed such psychological problems as the need of the employees for recognition,
security and ego-satisfaction. Thus, the psychological character of organizations forms the
foundations of their theories.
In this new era of behavioral revolution in social sciences Fred W. Riggs concentrated on
studying administrative behavior in other cultures and settings, especially the developing nations.
As a result of these studies new and flourishing sub-fields of development administration and of
comparative administration have developed within Public Administration proper.
Thus, the scope of the study of Public Administration has extended to the “varying historical,
sociological, economic and other conditioning factors”.
It has also become interdisciplinary by accepting contributions from sociology, social
psychology , anthropology, economics and computer science.
5. The fifth stage
In the fifth stage, the study of Public Administration and its evolution have been greatly
influenced by the developments in computer technology, and the invention of analytical
techniques such as PERT (Programme Evaluation and Review Technique) , PPBS (Planning
Programming Budgeting System) and OR (Operations Research) .
As a result of these developments and of the changes occurring in social sciences there has
emerged the concept of generic administration.
Generic administration refers to the idea that all administration, whether public or private, is
essentially the same and utilizes much the same knowledge and processes.
Consequently, ‘Management Science’ approach to Public Administration has come into vogue.
Academic Programmes have also been developed with the object of training administrators for
both public and private sector management.
Exactly at this stage of its development Public Administration was experiencing the crisis of its
identity.
6. The final stage
In the final stage, the study of Public Administration and its evolution has exhibited much
interest for public policy analysis.
As governments seek to formulate and implement more and more welfare programmes, policy
making and decision making have become the primary areas of study in Public Administration.
Writers in Public Administration have also shown much interest in the related areas of policy
sciences, political economy, the public policy making process and its analysis, and the
measurement of policy outputs.
By adopting policy analysis approach Public Administration has gained in social relevance and
has become realistic. It has also become interdisciplinary.
As an eminent scholar had noted, “the problem of crisis of identity has been resolved with the
recognition and acceptance of the field as interdisciplinary and an applied subject”.
The social and political upheavals of the 1960s created a general spirit of criticism of the field of
Public Administration demanding reform.
In 1968 some young Public Administration academics and practitioners, who gathered at
the Minnowbrook conference sponsored by Professor Waldo, expressed their views on the state
of Public Administration and its future.
The genre of criticism and contributions made by them came to be called the New Public
Administration .
To bring this discussion to a close, the brief exploration of the growth and evolution of the study
of Public Administration reveals that Public Administration has withstood certain circumstances
and stands the test of time.
It has evolved to earn its place as the machinery for policy implementation, decision making,
goals and objectives formulation, etc.
Today, it is inter-disciplinary and heterodox and hence its boundaries are vague and
indeterminate.
Nevertheless, Public Administration today has acquired a more or less standard disciplinary
appearance, despite much diversity in its development as a discipline.
The Science of Public Administration
The effort to create a science of public administration has often led to the formulation of
universal laws or, more commonly, to the assertion that such universal laws could be
formulated for public administration.
The basic problems of public administration as a discipline and as a potential science are
much wider than the problems of mere administration.
The first difficulty of constructing a science of public administration stems from the
frequent impossibility of excluding normative considerations from the problems of public
administration.
A second major problem stems from the inescapable fact that a science of public
administration must be a study of certain aspects of human behavior.
And lastly, there can be no truly universal generalizations about public administration
without a profound study of varying national and social characteristics impinging on public
administration, to determine what aspects of public administration, if any, are truly
independent of the national and social setting.
Public administration, as a design science, exists at the nexus between the inner and outer
environments of public organizations. As such, it integrates and synthesizes theories and
propositions from other disciplines including the behavioral sciences, the system sciences, and
the natural sciences. In addition to being concerned with descriptive aspects of the field, public
administration scholars must be willing to prescribe, to design, and to redesign public sector
systems. A framework for assessing design opportunities is developed, and the questions raised
by this approach are addressed.
As many of the participants were preparing for the first Minnowbrook Conference in the spring
of 1968 in order to craft the “new” public administration, Herbert Simon was presenting a set of
invited lectures, entitled “The Sciences of the Artificial,” at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Simon proposed a new model of inquiry for man-made or “artificial” sciences. He
argued that man-made disciplines, such as engineering, medicine, architecture, and management,
are inherently different from the natural sciences yet they are often forced to adhere to the same
scientific norms and models of inquiry. “The genuine problem [with artificial sciences] is to
show how empirical propositions can be made at all about systems that, given different
circumstances, might be quite other than they are. ”
Public administration clearly fits Simon's definition of an artificial science, given that the issues
and problems it confronts are molded by the environment in which they exist. In fact, a recurring
problem with public administration theory is that changes in the practice of administration often
force a reorientation of theory. Public administration also can be described “in terms of
functions, goals, adaptation.”For example, the “new” public administration, as defined by
Frederickson, includes functions (“. . . to carry out legislative mandates …”), goals (“… to
change those policies and structures that systematically inhibit social equity …”), and adaptation
(“… change is basic to new Public Administration”).
Unfortunately, the tools and approaches common in the appraisal of natural systems, while
certainly useful for artificial system design and assessment, are inadequate for the tasks that
confront public administration. The Bielefeld Interdisciplinary Project, one of the most
comprehensive compilation of writings on the public sector in this decade, concludes that “A
major question that we face at this juncture in history is whether we have the rudiments of
knowledge to undertake the design of human institutions and what limits apply to such design
capabilities. ”
Societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and
choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident
and force.” Throughout history, many scholars have been concerned with the problem of
designing “good” government. The architecture of the U.S. Constitution is perhaps one of the
greatest design achievements. The redesign of the U.S. Civil Service system through the Civil
Service Reform Act of 1978 is a familiar, recent example this challenge.
In his 1885 dissertation at Johns Hopkins University, Wood-row Wilson evaluated the cost and
effects of the public decision-making system built around the U.S. Congress, then the principal
decision making and implementation body at the federal level. He argued that concentrating
public sector decision making in the politically oriented unit of government weakened the
administration of government. He later recommended a design for governmental systems that
called for a careful separation between politics and administration.
Like the framers, Wilson was an organizational architect. As such, by focusing on the design of
decision-making mechanisms for the public good, Wilson was an early scholar in what has come
to be seen as the “design science” of public administration. He evaluated the structural and
decision-making flaws inherent in the U.S. government of the late nineteenth century. Drawing
from his knowledge of human behavior and the changes in society at the time, Wilson set out to
design an alternative system in which the national will would be determined in the arena for
political conflict (Congress) and the implementation of that will could be carried out by the
executive branch.
Since Wilson, much of the focus of public administration as a field has moved from
governmental, system-level issues to the design, development, and analysis of decision-
making institutions and mechanisms within agencies and programs. This transition,
however, has not changed the fundamental purpose of public administration as the
discipline charged with the design of adaptive public sector institutions and tools,
particularly in terms of administering and managing public enterprises.
An analysis of textbooks in public administration illustrates the evolution of design
activities. Early textbooks often focused on infrastructure and public works issues,
including the design of roads and sewers. In fact, civil engineering courses were an
integral component of many graduate-level public administration programs. White, for
example, emphasized the design and structure of institutions, especially fiscal and
personnel management subsystems. With Waldo's Administrative State, the focus shifted
to the system level and considered topics such as “who should rule,” “the separation of
powers,” and “centralization versus decentralization.”
More recent textbooks have retained the professional training emphasis with only slight
shifts in topical coverage. For example, newer texts often include a chapter on
information management. An element that is often missing in current texts, however, is
the integration and synthesis of public management research into prescriptions for public
managers.
