(Frontier of Public Administration)

1. Basic to Public and Decision Making in Public Administration
Public Policy/Public Administration is the scientific study of the politics of institutions, structures and
organizations. The study of public policy focuses on the analysis and explanation of government and
non-government responses to public problems. It seeks to explain how institutions, organizations,
and the public interact within various governance structures to develop the policies that they do. It is
also concerned with the evaluation and impact of these policies on citizens, governing institutions,
and organized interests. Public administration is concerned with the organization, activities, and
behavior of administrative agencies and officials in the conduct of government. Public administration
includes the study of how bureaucracies interact with other political institutions, the political and
legal context of administration, and how organization structures and governance structures affect
the actions of government. Both Public Policy and Public Administration cut across the traditional
fields of American politics and comparative politics.
The public policy and public administration faculty at Texas A&M seeks to train scholars for positions
at research oriented universities. As such the program stresses theory and appropriate methods for
investigating major questions in the area.
Decision-Making: In Public Administration:
The decision-making as a process of administration has a wide range of application mainly in
public administration and at the beginning of the fifties of last century it came to the limelight.
Behind this the work of a celebrity of public administration was active and he was H. A. Simon.
His renowned work—Administrative Behavior; A Study of Decision-Making Process in
Administrative Organization was published in 1948.
Herbert Simon divided the concept into two main parts—one is decision— being arrived at and
process of action. Mere making of decision is not enough and therefore its implementation. So
both these sections are interconnected and important. Herbert Simon once said: a theory of
administration should be concerned with the processes of decision as well as the processes of
action. Simon pointed out that for the proper management of an organization a policy of
comprehensive in nature is required to be adopted.
So decision-making is a very important part of an organization. Herbert Simon, in fact, is the
pioneer in the field of decision-making concept because he felt that if decision were not taken
properly and timely that may spoil the objective of the business organization and keeping this in
mind it is essential that an organization will resort to utmost caution as to the adoption of
decision and at the same time will focus on the implementation of the decision. So both taking
and implementing decision are important.
Definition:
“Decision-making is usually defined as a process or sequence of activities involving stages of
problem recognition, search for information, definition of alternatives and the selection of an
actor of one from two or more alternatives consistent with the ranked preferences”.