Key Concepts, Theories of Public Administration

Key Concepts,
Theories in Public
Administration

The history of public administration as
a field of action is inextricably linked to
theories of knowledge. The earliest writing,
dating from the late nineteenth century,
parallels the emergence of positivism as
the dominant research foundation. In
recent writings the importance of
pragmatism, bureaucratic politics, post-
modernism, and governance are explored
themes.

As is generally accepted, familiarity
with the leading writers in the field is a
primary way to ground sound study in
public administration. Many leading
scholars serve as mentors in leading the
next generation of thought leaders.
Learning how they developed their
intellectual identities will be a beneficial
experience as is the basis of the creation
of this course.

This session aims to refresh students
to the key concepts and theories in the
discipline of public administration and to
provide students with a foundation
relating to the other courses of the
program.

Definition and Concepts
what is public
administration?
what is administration?
The universality
administration
Characteristics of
administration
Organization
Management
what is public?
Other ways the define
public administration
Approaches to public
administration?
Pillars to public
administration
Interdisciplinary Interface of
public administration
public administration as
management
Public and private
interest
Public goods
Distinctions of public
and private interest

What is Public Administration? "A
Plethora of Voices".
It is certainly not so surprising either,
that the appreciation of the term has
changed and shifted over time, evolving
gradually from one perspective to another.
In its generic sense, public administration is
understood today both as an academic
subject matter, and as the activities and
dynamics of the management of public
organizations.

The practice of the profession. But even
the understanding and appreciation of its
meaning, its scope, coverage and foci
have remarkably expanded in recent years
in three respects, one, from being simply
the study of institutions limited to the
executive branch of government and the
bureaucracy to one that encompasses the
dynamics of administrative processes in
the legislative and judicial departments;

• Two, from simply being concerned with the
internal affairs and operations of government to
one that addresses the social milieu and the
impact of government administration on its
public, a feature that evolved and gained
currency in the client cantered philosophies that
started in the seventies; and
• Three, from a definition that refers only to the
operations of government to one that has
become a distinct field of study.

• The science and art of policy
administration is definable, describable,
replicable, and cumulative.
• Because the field is both
interdisciplinary and applied, a single
theory derived from a contributing
discipline, i.e. market model from
economics, may be informative and
useful.

As an Art
PA involves creativity, leadership,
a good sense of the intangibles in
administration. This view is closed
related to the practice of PA.

 How a policy is made and implemented
 The inter relationship between government
institutions
 Human resource development
 Impact of environmental regulation on
communities and economic activities
 The behavior and attitude of public officials as
they performed their duties
 Leadership styles of public managers
 Mechanisms adopted by poverty focused
programs
 The relations of government and the citizens
Examples of PA as a field of Study:

• But much of PA cannot be described,
explained, or accounted for by using the
market model.
• No theory standing alone is capable of
accounting for the complexity of the field.
• Taken together, however, the theories
significantly contribute to what we know and
understand PA to be.
Examples of PA as a field of Study:

The interaction between those who
study the subject and those who practice
resulted in more intensive experimentation
that has been possible in some social
sciences: political science, physiology,
anthropology, geography, history,
information science and economics

PA as a Science
• Public administration is a comprehensive,
interdisciplinary approach that draws on
knowledge sources across the social sciences
(with Political science, History, Economics,
Sociology, Psychology, laws, ethics, business
management) . Its increasing interdisciplinary
nature implies that it draws upon other social
sciences and applies in its study the knowledge,
insights, techniques and tools developed by
them

• Public administration is one of the main
branches of political science, and can be
broadly described as the development,
implementation and study of branches of
government policy. The pursuit of
the public good by enhancing civil society and
social justice is the ultimate goal of the field.

Approaches to PA
•The approaches to the study of
Public administration can be
categorized from many angles such
as normative approach and
empirical approach. Normative
approach concentrates on what
public administration should be.
Empirical approach sets its eyes on
description and analysis of actual
administrative situations. Another
classification of approaches is
based upon the objects of study the
individual scholar seeks to
emphasize, such as;
Philosophical approach
Legal approach
Historical approach
Scientific approach
Case Method Approach
Institutional and
Structural Approach
Behavioral Approach
Consensus approach

The approaches to the study of public
administration can be summarized as
• Historical approach is also a fascinating area
of study. Many lessons can be learnt by
studying the history of administration.
• Institutional approach is to study the
structure. It deals with the study of organs of
the State.
• The Behavioral approach claims to explain
administrative processes that are common to
many forms of organization. The focus is on
human behavior, including Psychology,
Sociology and anthropology.

The approaches to the study of public administration can be
summarized as
• Public administration was studied from the background of
administrative law .The emphasis in this jusrisdical
approach is on formal structures both constitutional and
administrative. It has been concerned with officers, with
duties, limitations, prerogatives and disabilities of officers
and with legal, litigation and rights of Citizen.
• In the comparative public administration approach
stimulated by the United Nations, the emphasis is on
understanding the problems of administration operating
under different socio –political and cultural settings.
• Another approach is to study public administration in
relation to political parties and pressure groups.

• In these and countless examples, the
elemental features of PA permeated
social development; indeed it is
argued that civilization requires the
elemental features of PA. (Waldo
1946/1954)

The elemental features of PA would include,
following Weber (1952):
 Some basis of formal authority with claims to obedience;
 Intentionally established laws and rules, which apply to
all;
 Specific spheres of individual competence, which include
task differentiation, specialization, expertise and/or
professionalization;
 The organization of persons into groups or categories
according to specialization;
 Coordination by hierarchy;
 Continuity through rules and records; The organization
as distinct from the persons holding positions or offices in
it; and
 The development of particular and specific organizational
technologies.

The approach can be compartmentalized into three
approaches: classical, modern and postmodern theories,
and evaluates the theoretical implication and challenges
of these approaches at each stage of its development
classical
• successful
management
process and its
focus on
organization
dynamics.
modern
• identifies human
factors as the basis
for the optimal
performance of an
organization has
been critically put in
perspective
postmodern
• seeks to bridge the
useful parts of
classical and
neoclassical
recommendations in
view of
contemporary
organizational
challenges.

• Frederickson, et al (2012) declares the underlying
utility of any theory is its capacity to describe,
explain, and predict. He maintains that a theory
should parsimoniously and systematically describe
the phenomenon under study and logically connect
its elements into a clear understanding of the actors,
institutions, and processes involved. Knowing how
to evaluate a theory is an important skill in deciding
which framework is most appropriate for examining
a given situation. Alternately, if you must use a
weak theory, at least you will know the precautions
for interpreting its data including limitations and
biases.
The Use of Theory

• The validity and usefulness of any theory
depends on its capacity to describe, to explain,
and to predict.
• A theory, to be useful, should accurately describe
or depict a real world event or phenomenon.
• Most important PA phenomena are complex,
therefore description is an abstract representation
of phenomena.
• All descriptions require that the analyst decide
which elements in a complex phenomenon to
emphasize.
• All descriptions are distortions of reality and are
relative to the circumstances prevailing at the
time of the description.
The Use of Theory

• In PA, there were, and some would say
still are, essentially the same two positions
regarding empirically based theory – the
classical or traditional, and the scientific or
behavioral.

• In PA, the descriptive features of theory
helps us to see; the explanatory features of
theory helps us understand.
• If theory helps us to see and understand PA
phenomena, should theory, therefore, help
us to predict?
• Yes. Herbert Kaufman’s (1969) theory of
cyclical change from a professionally based
and neutrally competent PA to a politically
responsive and partisan PA. Kaufman’s
theory contains strong properties.

• PA theory derives from historical analyses,
institutional study, and philosophy is now
understood to be as legitimate as PA
theory derived from statistical analysis and
mathematical models
• theory in PA can differ depending on
whether the subject is generally
organizational, operational, managerial, or
generally policy-specific.

• Finally, we come to the uses or purposes
to which theory in PA may be put. There
are countless examples of PA theory
applied to less than wholesome purposes,
i.e. the program-planning-budgeting
system devised to make it appear that US
was winning the war in Vietnam.

 A government that separates political officials from
civil administrators
 Profound element: the distinction between politics
and policies, principles and operations.
 Appreciation of the realistic ground of government
needing a partnership of the elected and the appointed

• When the civil service was in early stages,
Woodrow Wilson set out the most formal
and rigid version of the dichotomy by
arguing in his seminal essay on modern
PA that politics should not meddle in
administration, and administration should
not meddle in politics. (1887, 1941)

• The significant control of bureaucracy
theory is that it provides for the analysis of
PA by making distinction between either
political and administrative acts or actions
and/or by making distinctions between
political and administrative actors

• These distinctions are especially
useful analytically because they
provide for using variables on the
basis of politics (independent
variables) and administration
(dependent variables).

• Weber’s bureaucracy was more popular
with academics than with practitioners,
and it is a theory of management only in
the sense that it describes what he
identifies as characteristics commonly
found in large and complex organizations
that have endured

• As theories of political control of
bureaucracy indicate, to unbundle politics
and administration is a key to
understanding how politics controls
bureaucracy, and how bureaucracy
influences politics and policy

• It has been more than half a century since
scholars such as Waldo and Gaus
exposed the rickety foundations of the
politics-administration dichotomy and
made a convincing brief that administrative
theory had to share common ground with
political theory.

• The public in public administration is to be
broadly defined here. Public is used in its
pregovernmental meaning to include
governments and nonprofit, not-for-profit,
nongovernmental, parastatal, and other
organizations having a clear public
purpose other than what is generally
understood to be commerce or business.

• Most theories of management assume a
contained or bounded institution with
managerial responsibilities for directing
the day-today internal functioning of the
organization as well as responsibility for
conducting boundary transactions that
link the organization to other
organizations and to its publics

• For the first 50 years of the field,
management was at the core of PA.
Because management is what most PA
professionals do, theories of management
fundamentally informed the practices of
PA.
• But at about mid-century, American PA
scholars lost interest in management
theory and turned to theories of rational
choice and decision-making, loosening
much of the early close connection
between theory and practice.

• During this period, the field of business
administration, as well as social scientists
in middle-range theories – group theory,
role theory, communication theory – were
busy developing management

Management Theory
• Management theory may have elements of
problem solving, but it is ordinarily
understood to have to do with the study
and description of directing ongoing
routing activities in purposeful
organizations

• Management theory, control is exercised
by policy, rules, regulations, and oversight.
In group theory, the effective group will
develop shared goals and values, norms
of behavior, customs, and traditions.
(Homans 1950)

• Traditional management theory has its
origin with Frederick Taylor and his
influential “The Principles of Scientific
Management” (1911).
• His subject was business, particularly the
shop. His purpose was to move from rules
of thumb, customs and traditions, and ad
hoc approaches to business management
toward a body of scientific principles

Scientific Management Theory
• Scientific management theory, in its
original Taylorist sense and its modern
TQM sense, is generally in the family of
decision theory.
• The purposes and characteristics of
decision theory are essentially problem
definition and problem solving, i.e. how to
control air traffic, how to operate an
efficient sanitary sewer and treatment
system.

• According to the bureaucratic theory of
Max Weber, bureaucracy is the basis for
the systematic formation of any
organization and is designed to ensure
efficiency and economic effectiveness.
• It is an ideal model for management and
its administration to bring an organization's
power structure into focus
• Control of bureaucracy theory is an
approach to PA theory particularly
associated with matters of compliance or
responsiveness.

Theories of Client
Responsiveness

Theories of Client Responsiveness
• A local government cousin of theories
of bureaucratic capture are theories of
client responsiveness.
• In these theories, it is assumed that
jurisdictions establish institutions, i.e.
police departments, welfare agencies,
and schools.

Elected political leaders set policy and
establish budgets and use some form of
merit-based civil service system to employ
the large groups of bureaucrats whom
must carry out the work – ordinarily direct
service to such clients as school children,
the poor, victims of crime, or those
suspected of violating the law.

• Client responsiveness theory is essentially
traditional PA theory emphasizing agency
effectiveness and the instrumental values of
efficiency, economy, and equity.
(Frederickson 1997).
• Ordinarily, those who directly serve the
clients are professionals or semi-
professionals (i.e. school teachers, social
workers, police officers) all having a distinct
client-serving orientation.
• The training and education of these
professionals puts a much greater emphasis
on how to serve client needs than on how to
respond to political principals or policy
directives.

• It is often true that these bureaucrats see
themselves as professionals providing a
direct service and ordinarily do not see
themselves, at least primarily, as public
officials or public servants. (Gruber 1987).
• These bureaucrats greatly value autonomy
and the widest possible range of discretion
in responding to client needs. (Lipsky
1980; Gruber 1987)

1st, the seminal research on client responsiveness
theory was done by Michel Lipsky in his Street-
Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in
Public Service (1980).
– Resources are chronically inadequate;
– The demand for services tends to increase to
meet the supply;
– Under conditions of scarce resources and high
demand, bureaucrats ration services;
– Goal expectations for agencies tend to be
ambiguous, vague, or conflicting;
– Performance oriented toward goal achievement
tends to be difficult, if not impossible, to measure;

Agency Theory
• Principal-agency theory, or simply agency
theory, has been widely applied to studies
in the influence of principals, particularly
Congress and the president, and agents,
namely, the civil service.
• The initial premise in this theory was that
bureaucracies are either out of control or
at least very difficult to control.

• Agency theory posits a process of
interaction between principals and agents
that is dynamic, evolving thru time.
• Throughout the process, bureaucracies
have distinct informational and expertise
advantage over politicians. They
understand the policy and the
organizational procedures to implement it

• The assumption is that the relationship
between elected leaders (principals) and
civil servants or bureaucrats (agents) is
hierarchical and could be understood to be
a series of contracts or transactions
between a buyer of services and a
provider of services

• Agency theory is an especially useful way
to understand the relationship between
time, politics, and bureaucracy.
• Legislators wishing to move bureaucracies
towards their favored positions are
controlled by past coalitions and the
legislation resulting from those coalitions.

• Principal-agent theory, has been of particular
interest to scholars seeking to build knowledge of
organizational and managerial behavior in the
public sector.
• Principal-agent theory has made an important
contribution to understanding of political control
of bureaucracy, and has generally demonstrated
that political principals do control administrative
agents and has added to the knowledge of some
of the nuances of political control and
administrative responsiveness. Bur this theory
appears to be less useful as a basis for
management theory in the public sector.

The Theory of
Representative
Bureaucracy

The theory of representative
bureaucracy thus begin with the
assumption that there are good reasons
for public agencies to be organized the
way they are, and that these
undemocratic agencies exercise
considerable political power

• Kenneth Meir (1975) said that the theory
of representative bureaucracy begins by
recognizing the realities of politics. In a
complex realities such as the US, not all
aspects of political decisions are resolved
in the “political” branches of government.

• The “reinvention” movement of the Clinton
administration, for example, sought to
eliminate hierarchy, to put “customers”
first, and to prize performance over
accountability. Yet the reinvention
movement also ran into political obstacles

From Organizations to Institutions
• In the classic study of PA, organization
theory is the body of knowledge to which
scholars turn to understand the structures
and relationships between structures and
outcomes.
• Most modern organization theory is based
on the study of firms, and what we know
about structures tend to come from that
literature.

• Many of the same variables –
centralization, decentralization, costs,
productivity, and hierarchy- are as
applicable to the study of organizations in
the public sector as to private firms.
• But there are important differences in the
public and private sectors, and these are
reflected in the differences between
organization theory and institutional
theory.

Institutional Theory
• The golden age of PA hegemony disintegrated in
the 1950s. Entering the 20th century, a NPA
hegemony based on a broadly accepted
institutionalism is emerging.
• Institutionalism is not a theory in the formal
sense. It is instead the framework, the language,
and the set of assumptions that hold and guide
empirical research and theory building in much
of PA.
• It begins with an argument about the salience of
collective action as a basis for understanding
political and social institutions, including formal
political and bureaucratic organizations.

• The term “institution” is used here to
include public organizations that stand in a
special relationship to the people they
serve. They can invoke the authority of the
state and can, thereby, enforce their
decisions.
• Public organizations can claim legitimacy
because of what they presumably
contribute to a larger, often indivisible and
difficult-to-measure public interest.

• Scott contends the three pillars of institutions – regulative,
normative, and cognitive.
• Regulative:- includes common elements of organization
theory, i.e. rules, laws, sanctions, a distinct inclination toward
performance or results, a workforce defined by experience,
forms of coercion, routines resting on protocols, SOPs,
governance systems, and systems of allocating power and its
exercise. These features are the same as those in modern
organization theory. (Rainey 1997; Denhart 1993)
• Normative:- includes the logic of appropriateness as against
rational goal-driven choice making, social expectations and
obligations based on these expectations, patterns of
certification and accreditation, and an emphasis on
conformity and the performance of duty.

• Especially important to PA are values and
legitimacy of the public service in carrying put
the democratic moral order, or democratic
regime values.
• Cognitive:- includes patters of behavior based
on established categories and routines, patterns
of institutional adaptation, innovation based on
mimicking, a decided tendency toward
institutional isomorphism, and tendencies to risk-
aversion and orthodoxy.
• The legitimacy of cognitive patterns in PA traces
to broad-based political and even cultural
support. Again, there appears to be little
significant distinction between organization
theory as that phrase is generally understood in
PA, and Scott’s conception of the cognitive
aspects of institutional theory.

• Weber, in his brilliant early description of
bureaucracy, argued that in the modern world the
organizational and managerial characteristics of
bureaucracy are so universal and compelling that
these bureaucracies can become iron cages that
are hard to change.
• DiMaggio and Powell found “iron cages of
isomorphism” in corporate America in which firms
were influenced by crisis, proximity, prestige, and
other forces of diffusion and, over time, came
increasingly to resemble one another.
• Institutions, they found, will borrow from, copy or
mimic the technology, management style, and
structural qualities of other institutions perceived
to have either greater success or greater prestige.

• The possibilities and limitations of institutional
theory are in some ways a microcosm of the
development of public management theory itself.
• There is growing theoretical structure, a
commonly accepted set of definitions and agreed-
upon premises, an elaborate if somewhat opaque
vocabulary, and an increasingly iterative and
cumulative body of knowledge.
• Above all, institutional theory highlights the unique
properties and characteristics of public institutions
and their problems and promises.

• Institution theory captures and comprehends
long series of scholarship on coproduction,
multiple stakeholders, PPP, privatization and
contracting, and the increasingly fuzzy
distinctions between things public and things
private.
• Institutional theory has the particularly useful
capacity to describe favorably the linkages,
networks, and couplings of institutions coping
with fragmentation, disarticulation, asymmetry
between public problems and public
jurisdictions, and high independence.

• Vantages of organization theory from
sociology, market theory from economics,
theories of democratic control of
bureaucracies from political science, and
perhaps above all, theories of bounded
rationality, all mixed, clashed and
combined in the interdisciplinary and
cross-disciplinary considerations of
complex organizations

Big Tent Theory
of Institutions

• Today we are all institutionalists. It is easy to
defend the claim that we are institutionalists
because we subscribed to the “big tent theory of
institutions.”
• Under the institutional theory big tent one finds
scholars studying institutions from at least the
following conceptual frameworks”:
– The structural theorists, including those studying
Westminster, presidential, and hybrid national forms
and the associations between those forms and
bureaucratic functioning. (Weaver and Rockman 1993)
– The organizational design theorists working on
centralization, decentralization, devolution, and other
structural variations, all in the “institutions matter”
tradition. (Hood and Jackson 1991)

– Theorists working on the democratic control of
bureaucracy, including the accountability
scholarship; the principal-agent scholarship;
and the working, shirking, moral hazard, rent
seeking, and associated political economy
scholarship. (Behn 2000, etc)
– The many scholars working from the
bureaucratic or administrative behavior
perspective (as distinct from the managerial
behavior perspective). (March and Simon
1993; March and Olsen 1989, 1995)

– The managerialism or new public management
scholars, both in the US and abroad. (Barzelay
1992)
– Those working on performance, outcomes,
program evaluation, and results. (Forsythe 2001)
– The politics of bureaucracy scholars. (Fesler and
Kettl 1996)
– Those working on privatization, contracting out, an
non-profit organizations. (Light 1999; Kettl 1993);
and
– Institutionalists working primarily from the poltiical
economies and rational choice perspectives.
(Eggertsson 1990, etc)

• Institutionalism assumes the centrality of
leadership, management, and
professionalism; it comprehends theory
development all the way from the
supervision of street-level bureaucrats to
the transformational leadership of entire
institutions. (Smith and Lipsky 1993)
• Institutionalism recognizes the salience of
action or choice, and defined choice as
expressions of expectations of
consequences. (March and Olsen 1984)

• Some of the most advanced thinking in
contemporary PA is being done by formal
modelers using assumptions of
cooperation, order, principals and agents,
hierarchy, institutional responses to
contextual influences, networks, and
governance – all essentially institutional
assumptions. (Hammond 1993, 1996)

Challenges: Intergovernmental
Relations
Intergovernmental Relations (IGR),
interagency Co-ordination

Theories of Public Management
• Theories of public management are
described in four categories:- traditional
management theory, thrust forward;
leadership as public management; theory
derived from the longer-standing practice
of conducting public management by
contract; and theories of governance that
explains important features of public
management.

• NPM or new managerialism is the second
contemporary form of management theory in PA.
Like earlier reforms, it is partly imported from
business management.
• Some of the business management theories of
the 1960s and 1970s colonized PA, i.e.
management by objective and TQM. The work of
the middle-range theories has been widely
adopted in the reemergence of management
theories in PA.
• Like earlier reforms, NPM and managerialism
has often been the work of consultants,
journalists, and politicians rather than the work of
scholars

• There is little doubt that NPM has reconnected
theory to practice. At all levels of management,
public managers are reinventing government,
reengineering government, attempting to be
enterpreneurial, attempting to better serve their
customers, attempting to be more innovative,
attempting to take risks, and attempting to add
value.
• Although it may not be good science, at least in
the positivist conception of social science, the
NPM is influential. It has replaced the old
principles of PA with a new set of principles or
doctrines.

• In management theory, the NPM doctrines
are the contemporary “winning arguments”
concerning how to manage government
agencies.
• These winning arguments have more to do
with the received wisdom, and shifting
metaphors, and with presentation and
packaging than with objective, scientifically
verifiable evidence.

• Public management is taken to mean the
formal and informal processes of guiding
human interaction toward public
organizational objectives. The units of
analysis are processes of interaction
between managers and workers and the
effects of management behavior on
workers and work outcomes.

Challenges: Public Management
Values
Values of public management: New
Public Administration (fairness,
equity), New Public Management
(efficiency, effectiveness), New Public
Service (participatory, responsive,
accountable)

• Group Theory. Theories of groups are
primarily theories of organization rather
than theories of management, but group
theory has important implications for public
management. Most of these implications
have to do with contrasting approached to
managerial control.

• Effective management in the context of
group theory nurtures, cultivates, and
supports group goals and norms that are
compatible with and supportive of
institutional purposes and missions.
• Most aspects of group theory are now
embedded in public management
literature, and many public managers seek
to develop the kinds of group goals,
motivation, and commitments that support
public institutional goals

• Role Theory. Social psychologists tend to define all
human organizations as role systems. In observing
organizations in action, what are actually organized are
the acts of individuals in particular positions or offices.
• In role theory, each office or position is understood to
be relational; that is, each office is defined in its
relationship to others and to the organization as a
whole, and often to the organization’s purposes.
• Persons in roles exhibit essential persisting features of
behavior, i.e. behavior of school superintendents,
prison warden, or data entry workers.
• Role theorists observe and measure the persisting
patterns of behavior of persons in common roles; they
especially study the relations between persons in
particular roles, both inside and outside the
organization.

• Henry Mintzberg used the concept of roles to
identify the three primary managerial roles, a
set of categories now widely used in
management theory for business but equally
applicable to management in PA.
• Managers in their interpersonal roles can act
as figureheads performing primarily symbolic
duties, as leaders building relationships with
subordinates, or as a liaison emphasizing
contracts at the edges of the organization

Decision Theory
• In the place of principles of management,
which Simon found theoretically wanting,
he developed what has become decision
theory.
• Decision theory has had a profound
influence on PA,
• Rational choice theory and decision theory
trace to the same origin. Both are
associated with the early work of Herbert
A. Simon (Administrative Behavior 1947).

• Rational choice theory is an application of
decision theory that is heavily influenced by
economics and the logic of markets. It tends to
use mathematical models to test the
relationships between preferences, or
objectives, and alternative courses of action.
• It is the most obviously multidisciplinary body of
theory in PA, influenced by economics,
organizational sociology, and political science.
• The relative maturity of decision theory is
characterized by a generally agreed-upon set of
conceptual categories and the use of a distinct
language to explicate those categories.

• After 50 years, has the positivist decision theory
founded by Simon met the promise of a body of
empirically verified theory?
• Christopher Hood and Michael Jackson (1991)
argue that the results disappoint on three counts:
– The old principles of management – Simon’s
proverbs (maxim, axiom adage) –persist and even
flourish;
– There is not now a commonly accepted or agreed-
upon theory or paradigm of management in PA
based on decision theory; and
– The positivist administrative science of decision
theory appears to have had little effect on the day-
to-day practices of public management in public
organizations remain surprisingly “proverbial”
(recognizable, common, known, memorable).

• Building on his earlier “science of muddling
through” critique of decision theory, Charles
Lindbloom with David Cohen (1979), found
that “professional social inquiry” such as
decision-science seldom influences either
public policy or PA.
• Instead, an interactive process of
argument, debate, the use of ordinary
knowledge, and a form of social or
organizational learning is not only a more
commonly found form of social problem
solving, it is also safer and less inclined to
large-scale risk or error.

• In decision theory perspective, the
decision is the focal point of understanding
adminIstration. Thinking precedes
deciding, and deciding precedes action.
• Decision theoretic logic is built on
assumption of instrumental rationality
insofar as it is possible to calculate the
relationship between means and ends.

• In their rules, decision makers will
rationally seek efficiency in the direction of
preferred objectives, determined by some
measure of the extent to which goals are
being achieved. (Harmon and Mayer,
1986)
• Although modified over the years by
satisficing and bounded rationality,
decision theory nevertheless understands
the decision to be the key unit of analysis.

• Simon’s administrator was a satisficer, not
a maximizer; that is, a decision-maker
equipped with limited information, driven
by habits and values, who settled for
decision that were “good enough” to deal
with the situation at hand, not those that
maximized individual utility (1947)

Action theory
• Action theory, the interpretative theory
alternative to decision theory, claims that:
– The epistemological distinction between
values and facts reflects an artificial
reconstruction of the process by which the
social world is constituted, maintained and
contested.
– The possible existence of the transcendent
moral good inheres in the process by which
social life is construed rather than in the ends
that are ostensible informed by values.

• In action theoretic perspective,
organizational purpose and values can only
emerge from social processes based on
interactive patterns of action and the values
attached to them.
• The good, and the extent to which that good
is being organizationally furthered, is a
process of conscious interpretation on the
part of those in the organization. It is also a
process whereby researchers seeking to
understand administrative behavior and
interpret actions and their meanings.

Critical Theory
• Denhardt’s application of critical theory:
– A critical theory of public organizations would
examine the technical basis of bureaucratic
domination and the ideological justifications for
this condition, and would ask in what ways
members and clients of public bureaucracies
might better understand the resultant limitations
placed on their actions and in turn develop new
modes of administrative praxis.
– Critical theory is especially influenced by Jurgen
Habermas (1970, 1971) and the distinction
between instrumental, interpretative and critical
reasoning.

• The notion of emancipation is described
as the empowerment of workers. It is thru
authentic discourse that truth claims can
be tested and refined in the search for
hermeneutics (the study of the
relationships between reason, language,
and knowledge) truth.

• the modern principles of enterpreneurial
public management are now nearly a
hegemony in the practices of PA.
• These doctrines have been given, or have
taken, the name “New Public Management
(NPM)”, and are sometimes referred to as
the “new managerialism”.
• They have a particularly strong base in
Western Europe, Australia, and New
Zealand, and the US.
• The Organization of Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) us a strong
advocate of the NPM and encourages
countries to adopt its principles.

Communication Theory
• Communication Theory. Much of what is
understood to be public management
depends upon effective communication.
• Communication theory is a mix of cybernetics,
linguistics, and social psychology. The
language of communication theory resembles
the language of systems:- inputs, throughputs,
outputs, feedback loops, entropy, homeostasis
(equilibrium).

• Although communication is always individual
or singular, communication theorists tend to
regard the work group or the organization as
their unit of analysis, and in doing so, they
anthropomorphize the organization.
• Anthropomorphic thought promotes
organizational memory, consciousness,
culture, will, and especially learning – all of
which are based upon communication. This
logic is particularly helpful in building a
management theory of communication, now a
considerable body of knowledge. (Garnett
1992).

• The 1960s and 1970s saw some interest –
particularly in the new PA – in theories of
democratic administration, including flat
hierarchical, worker self-management,
project management, matrix organizations,
and the elimination of competition as an
incentive for work. (Marini 1971)

• Luther Gulick (1957), one of the founders
of modern PA, embraced the orthodoxy of
scientific management, applied it to
government, and introduced POSDCORB
– which represents his theory of the seven
major functions of management: planning,
organizing, staffing, directing,
coordinating, reporting, and budgeting.
• Until the mid- to late 1950s, any treatment
of management in PA was essentially an
elaboration of POSDCORB

Social Equity Theory
• These theories have some effect on
practices and are commonly found in
contemporary “good public management”
models.
• The social equity theory in the new PA of
the 1960s and 1970s has also had a long
shelf life. It came along at a time of high
concern for fairness in the workplace,
equal employment opportunities,
affirmative action, and comparable worth

Theories of Public Organization
• Theories of public organization have to do
with the design and evolution of the
structural arrangements for the conduct of
PA and with description on theories of the
behavior organizations as the unit of
analysis

• Postmodern PA theory had its origin in
the pioneering work of Chester
Barnard (1948) and his interpretation
of the results of the Hawthorne
experiments.

• From the Minnowbrook Conference and other
subsequent gatherings, there emerged a set of
concepts that challenged the orthodoxy, and created
the NPA:
– Public administrators and public agencies are not and
cannot be either neutral or objective;
– Technology is often dehumanizing;
– Bureaucratic hierarchy is often ineffective as an
organizational strategy;
– Bureaucracies tend toward goal displacement and
survival;
– Cooperation, consensus, and democratic adm are more
likely than the simple exercise of administrative authority
to result in organizational effectiveness; and
– Modern concepts of PA must be built on postbehavioral
and postpositivist logic- more democratic, more
adaptable, more responsive to changing social,
economic and political circumstances (Marini 1971)

• Classical principles of scientific management
and formal hierarchical structure were
challenged by the human relations school of
management theory, a body of theory
particularly influenced by Douglas McGregor.
• McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y represented
an especially important change in management
theory (1960).
• Theory X managers emphasize elaborate
controls and oversight, and they motivate by
economic incentives. Theory Y managers seek
to integrate individuals and org’l goals and to
emphasize latitude in performing tasks; they
seek to make work interesting and thereby
encourage creativity.

5. Many people have the capacity to
exercise a high degree of creativity
and innovation in solving org’l
problems.
6. The intellectual potential of most
individuals is only partially used in
most organizations.
Theory X Theory Y
1. Average
person dislikes
work and will try
to avoid it.
1. Most people don’t inherently
disliked work; the physical and
mental effort involved are as natural
as play or rest.

• Rational choice theory is thus anchored to the
belief that the central behavioral assumption of
the neoclassical economic paradigm is universal.
• Self-interest drives our decisions and actions,
whether these are purchasing a car, voting or
formulating a public budget.
• From the starting point, it is a short step to the
notion of markets for public services, a situation
where citizen-consumers shop for the public
goods and services they most prefer, and
producers of these services are competitive
organizations whose self-interest is coupled to
the need for efficient response to consumer
demand.

• The impact of rational choice has been felt in
three primary areas:
– Organizational Behavior: Rational choice theory
offers a comprehensive framework to answer the
question of why bureaucracies and bureaucrats do
what they do ;
– Public Service Delivery: Rational choice theory offers
an explanation of how public goods are produced and
consumed, and from these insights favors a series of
public sector reforms that run traditional PA
presumptions and prescriptions on their heads; and
– A claim for new orthodoxy: Advocates of rational
choice theory have argued that it is the natural
successor to the Wilsonian/Weberian ideas that have
dominated a century’s worth of intellectual
development in rational choce.

Rational choice theory has provoked some of the
most contentious and controversial debates in PA
scholarship; but it has also provided the discipline
with a little-rivaled intellectual stimulant.
Regardless of whether the purpose was to
advocate the theory or to expose its faults, some
of the most original and valuable contributions to
PA knowledge comes from those working from a
rational choice foundation.
The attraction of rational choice theory (especially
in formal applications) are not only its internal
consistency but also its ability to generate logically
deduced empirically testable propositions.

• The term “governance” is increasingly a
surrogate or proxy for “public
administration” or “public management” in
the discipline’s leading literature. (Kettl
2000)
• The linguistic morphing of PA into the
study of governance acknowledges the
new realities of administrative state and is
argued by some to herald a new and
theoretical orientation for the discipline.

- ADB (1995) advanced 4 elements:
accountability, participation, predictability
(rule of law) and transparency
- ADB defines governance as the manner in
which power is exercised in the
management of a country’s social and
economic resources for development

- UNDP (1997): Sound governance means
public resources and problems are
managed effectively, efficiently and in
response to critical needs of society, and
should lead to development that gives
priority to Sustainable Human
Development (SHD) (i.e. pro-people, pro-
jobs, pro-nature; addresses poverty
reduction, productive employment, social
integration, and environmental
regeneration)

2005: reinventing governance as a
process of policy making through
cohesive discussion among policy
makers who are interconnected
through a broad range of
NETWORKS = a web of relations

Types of Governance (UNDP)
• Economic Governance
• Political Governance
• Administrative Governance
• Systemic Governance

Characteristics of Good Governance
• Participatory
• Sustainable
• Legitimate and acceptable to the people
• Promotes equity and equality
• Able to develop the resources and methods of governance
• Promotes gender balance
• Tolerates and accepts diverse perspectives
• Able to mobilize resources for social purposes
• Operates by rule of law
• Strengthens indigenous mechanisms
• Efficient and effective in the use of resources
• Engenders and commands respect and trust
• Accountable
• Able to define and take ownership of national solutions
• Enabling and facilitative
• Regulatory rather than controlling
• Able to deal with temporal issues
• Service oriented

Defining Roles: State
• Create a conducive economic environment
• Protect the vulnerable
• Improving government efficiency and
responsiveness
• Empowering people and democratizing the
political system
• Decentralizing the administrative system
• Closing the gaps between rich and poor
• Encouraging cultural diversity and social
integration
• Protecting the environment
• Upholding gender equality

Defining Roles: Private Sector
• Ensuring competitiveness
• Technology development and sharing
• Large industries should help develop the small
and micro-enterprises
• Generate employment opportunities
• Promote equitable access to market
opportunities
• Help in wealth generation
• Human resource development

New Challenges for
Governance
• Environmental degradation
• Economic globalization
• Collapse of communism
• Strategic multi-polarity
• Religious and ethnic tensions
• IT governance – E-corruption the 21st
century

Defining Roles: Civil Society
• Building social capital which stimulates and
sustains economic growth, social progress and
democracy
• Ensuring democratic processes are upheld
• Facilitating flow of information
• Channels by which voice of the people are
heard (the minority, vulnerable, disadvantaged
groups)
• Work with other institutions to develop human
resources
• Checks on government transactions

Shifts in Global Governance
• Public Administration
• Centralized, uniform, top
down service delivery
• Self sufficiency
• Hierarchical control
• Upward accountability
• Standardized procedures
• Apolitical civil service
• Individual skill building
 Public Management
 Decentralized, diverse,
localized service delivery
 Interlinked sectors
 Empowerment
 Outward accountability
 Performance orientation
 Advocacy-oriented civil
service
 Organizational
competence

Challenges: Collaborative Governance
Networks and Collaborations:
networked governance and
collaborative public management,
public administration in the age of
globalization

PA application:
• Traditional and self-aware PA with its emphasis
on management, expertise, and professionalism
• It has practical use for government, particularly
in improving government performance
• It prepares person for careers in public service
and trains them to be good public administrators
• In the reform era and the early decades of PA, it
was probably assumed that administration
entailed a generous range of discretion that held
open the doors for technical expertise and
administrative efficiency.

• The modern PA is the continuing
improvement of PA geared on result
oriented, focusing on clients, the
facilitation of positive outputs and
outcomes
• Public policy is important in stimulating
and developing the country. To revisit
country’s policies for public welfare
(responsive and not limiting to the needs
of the people). Repeal laws that are
irrelevant and burdensome to citizens.

• PA must focus in fiscal administration , better
judicial administration, bureaucratic efficiency
and innovation, improved public
accountability and transparency
• PA engages the public to participate at all
levels for a more effective citizens
engagement

Reference
The Public Administration Theory Primer by H.
George Frederickson and Kevin B. Smith, 2003

Key Concepts, Theories of Public Administration

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Key Concepts, Theories of Public Administration

Similar to Key Concepts, Theories of Public Administration (20)

More from Jo Balucanag - Bitonio

More from Jo Balucanag - Bitonio (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Key Concepts, Theories of Public Administration