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1. Defining Public
Administration
By
Padmini Naik
Lecturer in political science

2. WHAT IS ADMINISTRATION?
The word ‘administer’ is derived from the Latin word
administere, which means to care for or to look after
people, to manage affairs. Administration may be defined as
“group activity which involves cooperation and
coordination for the purpose of achieving desired goals or
objectives”.
Broadly speaking, the term administration appears to bear
at least four different meanings or different senses
depending upon the context in which it is used:
(1) As a Discipline: The name of a branch of learning or
intellectual discipline as taught and studied in colleges and
universities.
(3) As a Process: The sum total of activities undertaken to
implement Public Policy or policies to produce some
services or goods.

3. Noted below are definitions by a few
famous writers.
L.D. White
“The art of administration is the direction, co-
ordination and control of many persons to
achieve some purpose or objective”.
Luther Gullick
“Administration has to do with getting things
done, with the accomplishment of defined
objectives”.

4. What is Public Administration?
(Public = Government usually).
Is the study of the management of the public
agencies that carry out/implement public
policies to achieve the public interest.
Public administration is "centrally
concerned with the organization of
government policies and programs as well as
the behaviour of officials (usually non-
elected) formally responsible for their
conduct".

5. Definitions of Public Administration
“Public Administration is a detailed and systematic
application of law.” by Prof. Woodrow Wilson
“Public Administration consists of all those
operations having for their purpose the fulfillment
of public policy as declared by authority.” by L. D.
White.
“By Public Administration is meant the activities
of the executive branches of the national, state, &
local governments.” by Simon.
“Public Administration is the art and science of
management as applied to the affairs of the state.”
(Waldo)

6. Political Definitions of Public
Administration
Public administration is implementing the
public interest.
The public interest is the universal label in
which political actors wrap the policies and
programs that they advocate.
The public interest is a commonly accepted
good.
The rise of administrative discretion in the face
of legislative vagueness means that the job of the
anonymous administrator is to define the public
interest.

7. Legal Definitions of Public
Administration
Because public administration is what a state
does, it is both created and bound by an
instrument of the law.
Public administration is the law in action.
Public administration is inherently the execution
of a public law.
Every application of a general law is necessarily
an act of administration.
In the United States, the Constitution of 1787 is
the law of the land. All legislation must conform.

8. Managerial Definitions of
Public Administration
Public administration is a management
specialty.
Top managers make the big decisions and are
responsible for the overall success of the
organization.
Public administrators are found in middle
management, the group responsible for the execution
and interpretation of top management policies and
the day-to-day operation of an organizational unit.

9. Importance of Public
Administration
the basis of government (contributing in
social fairness).
Important role in the life of the people.
Executing policies, regulations, and
programs in the country or city.
Providing public goods and services
(such as water).

10. NATURE OF PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
There are two views regarding the Nature of Public
Administration, that is, Integral and Managerial.
According to the integral view, ‘administration’ is
the sum total of all the activities – manual, clerical,
managerial, etc., which are undertaken to realise
the objectives of the organisation. In this view all
the acts of officials of the government from the
Attendant to the Secretaries to the government and
Head of the State constitute Public Administration.
Henri Fayol and L.D. White are the supporters of
this view.

11. According to the managerial view of
administration, the managerial activities of
people who are involved in planning, organising,
commanding, coordinating and controlling
constitute Public Administration. This view
regards administration as getting things done
and not doing things. Luther Gullick, Herbert
Simon, Smithburg and Thompson are the
supporters of this view. The managerial view
excludes Public Administration from non-
managerial activities such as manual, clerical and
technical activities.

12. SCOPE OF PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
By the scope of Public Administration, we mean
the major concerns of Public Administration as
an activity and as a discipline.
Scope of Public Administration as an activity
Broadly speaking, Public Administration
embraces all the activities of the government.
Hence as an activity the scope of public
administration is no less than the scope of state
activity. Public administration covers every area
and activity within the ambit public policy.
Thus, the scope of public administration is very
wide in modern state.

13. Scope of Public Administration as a Discipline
The scope of public administration as a discipline, that is
subject of studies, comprises of the following:
The POSDCoRB view
Several writers have defined the scope of public
administration in varying terms. Gullick sums up the
scope of the subject by the letters of the word POSDCoRB
which denote: Planning, Organisation, Staffing, Directing,
Co-ordinating reporting the Budgeting.
Planning means the working out in broad outline the things
to be done, the methods to be adopted to accomplish the
purpose.
Organisation means the establishment of the formal
structure of authority through which the work is sub-
divided, arranged, defined and coordinated.

14. Staffing means the recruitment and training of the
personnel and their conditions of work.
Directing means making decisions and issuing orders and
instructions.
Coordinating means inter-relating the work of various
divisions, sections and other parts of the organisation.
Reporting means informing the superiors within the
agency to whom the executive is responsible about what is
going on.
Budgeting means fiscal planning, control and accounting.
According to Gullick the POSDCoRB activities are
common to all organisations. They are the common
problems of management which are found in different
agencies regardless of the nature of the work they do.

15. The Subject Matter View
We all know that public administration deals
not only with the processes but also with the
substantive matters of administration, such as
Defence, Law and Order, Education, Public
Health, Agriculture, Public Works, Social
Security, Justice, Welfare, etc. These services
require not only POSDCoRB techniques but
also have important specialised techniques of
their own which are not covered by POSDCoRB
techniques.

16. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
ADMINISTRATION
Public administration is governmental
administration concerned with achieving state
purposes, determined by the state. Private
administration, on the other hand is, concerned
with administration of private business
organisation and is distinct from public
administration.

17. DISTINCTION BETWEEN PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE ADMINISTRATION
According to Simon, the distinction between
public and private administration relates mainly
to three points:
Public administration is bureaucratic whereas
private administration is business like;
Public administration is political where as
private administration is non-political; and
Public administration is characterised by red-
tape where as private administration is free from
it.

18. The more important distinguishing features of Public
administration may be described under the following
sub-heads:
Political Direction: Public administration is political,
while private administration is non-political, public
administration takes place in a political context.
Absence of profit motive: The absence of profit motive
from the Public administration is another feature,
which distinguishes it from the private administration.
The primary purpose of governmental organisation is
to provide services to the people and promote social
good.
Prestige: Public administrators who serve in the
Government enjoy high status and prestige in
comparison to their counterparts in private enterprises
especially developing countries.

19. Similarities between Public and
Private Administration
Both public and business administration rely on
common skills, techniques and procedures.
In personnel management, the private organisations
have been influenced greatly by the practices of public
organisations.
There is a similar type of hierarchy and management
systems, both in public and private sectors. Both have
same kind of organisation structure, superior –
subordinate relationships, etc.
Both Pubic and private administration carries on
continuous efforts to improve their internal working
and also for efficient delivery of services to people or
customers.

20. Evolution of public administration
Developmental phases
Phase I: The Politics/Administration
Dichotomy (1887- 1926)
Phase II: The Principles of Administration
(1927-1937)
Phase III: Criticism and Challenges (1938-
1950
Phase IV: Crisis of Identity (1950-1970)
PhaseV: Public Administration as an
Independent Discipline (1970 Onwards)

21. Phase-I:The Politics/Adminis tration
Dichotomy (1887-1926)
Woodrow Wilson was the first scholar who
mainly set the tone for the early study of Public
Administration through his essay entitled „The
Study of Administration‟ appeared in 1887 in
which he emphasized the necessity of developing
the scientific foundations of the discipline. He
originated the ‗politics/administration
dichotomy‘- the distinction between political
activity and administrative activity in public
organization by observing that it ―is getting
harder to run a constitution than to frame one.

22. PhaseII:The Principles of Administration
(1927-1937)
▪ During this phase, scholars believed that Public
administration is a separate activity with its own well
marked field and principles. In 1927,W.F.Willoughby‘s
book „Principles of Public Administration‟ was published
in which he asserted that ―in administration there are
certain fundamental principles of general application
analogous to those characterizing any science.‖ They could
be discovered and administrators would be expert in their
work if they learned how to apply these principles.
Further, they propounded the famous concept of
POSDCORB – final expression of these principles.
Resultantly, Public Administration touched its zenith and
this phase is regarded as a golden era in the evolution of the
discipline.

23. PhaseIII: Criticismand Challenges
(1937-1950)
In the very next year (1938),the
mainstream Public Administration was
challenged with the publication of Chester
I. Barnard‘s „The Functions of the
Executive‟. The challenge came basically in
two forms: first, rejection of the idea of
politics administration dichotomy and
second, principles of public administration
lacking in scientific validity

24. PhaseIV:Crisis of Identity
(1948–1970)
The discipline was in quandary and suffered from the
crisis of identity due to the abandonment of politics-
administration dichotomy and the principles of public
administration. So the scholars of public
administration reacted to this crisis by reestablishing
the linkages of Public Administration first with
Political Science and then with the Management.
Speaking in terms of Political Science, it can be said
that most of the writings on Public Administration in
the 1950‘s spoke of the field as an emphasis,‘ and
area of interest‘ or even as a synonym‘ of Political
Science.

25. PhaseV:Public Administration as an
Independent Discipline(1970Onwards)
However, even when the discipline of Public
Administration was at its lowest ebb, it was sowing
the seeds of its own renaissance. Couple of factors,
complimentary to each other, contributed in this
process. The first was the development of
interdisciplinary programs focusing upon policy
science. In this regard three distinct inter
theoretical linkages – a) politics-administration
union, b) Economics-administration confluence,
and c) organization theory-administration
intermixing -- can be identified.

26. The second was the emergence of New Public
Administration (NPA) – an outcome of first
Minnowbrook Conference held in 1968 sponsored
by Dwight Waldo -which put more emphasis on
values replacing the traditional goals of efficiency
and effectiveness.
The overall focus of NPA movement was to make
administration less generic and more public, less
descriptive and more prescriptive, less institution-
oriented and more client-oriented, less neutral and
more normative, but it should be no less scientific all
the time.
All these developments led to the rise of an
independent field of public administration