Evolution of Public Administration as a Discipline( UPSC CIVIL SERVICE EXAM PREPARATION FOR OPTIONAL SUBJECT ( PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PAPER -1)

 Evolution of Public Administration as a Discipline 

The Beginning 

Woodrow Wilson's famous 1887 essay " The Study of Administration " was published in political science quarterly.The publication of Wilson's essay is generally regarded as the beginning of public administration as a specific field of study. Wilson sought to move the concerns of public administration to investigation the organization and methods of government offices toward:

1. What government can properly and successfully do; 

2. How it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or energy.

In his,  Wilson is also credited with positing the existence of major distinction between politics and administration. Wilson had started what become known as the politics-administration dichotomy. Politics and administration could be distinguished, he argued, as the expression of the will of the state  (politics ) and the execution of that will  (administration ).

The evolution of public administration as a specialized field of study falls into six critical paradigms:

Paradigm 1: Politics -Administration Dichotomy, 1900-1926

An examination of the politics-administration dichotomy was offered by Frank J. Goodnow in his book, politics and administration  (1900). To Goodnow,  modern administration presented a number of of dilemmas involving political and administrative functions that had now supplanted the traditional concern with the separation of powers among the various branches of government.

While Woodrow Wilson provided the rationale for public administration to be an academic discipline and professional speciality, it remained for Leonard D. White to most clearly articulate its preliminary objectives. In his pioneering 1926 book, Introduction to the Study of Public Administration,  first text in the field, he noted the critical assumptions that formed the basis for the study of public administration. 

Paradigm 2: The principles of Administration,  1926-1937

After world war 1 public administration changed inexorably. The United States and western Europe were changing from a rural agricultural society to an urban industrial nation. This required a considerable response from public administration because so many new functions and programmes would be established. As the population became increasingly urban,vastly expanded programmes would be needed in public works, public health, and public safety. Public administration as an activity was booming all during the 1920.

Period of orthodoxy 

Public administration theorist, such as Dwight Waldo, Nicholas Henry, and Howard McCurdy, would describe the pattern of development within public administration between the world wars as a period of orthodoxy. The synonymous, or at least reconcilable, that the work of government could be neatly divided into decision making and execution, and that administration was a science with discoverable principles. A critical linkage for the study of administration was its concern, with organization and control. By definition, control was to be built into organizational structure and design to assure both accountability and efficient. In fact, early management theorist assumed that organization and control were virtually synonymous. 

Scientific management 

At about the same time Woodrow Wilson was calling for a science of management, Frederick W. Taylor was independently conducting some of his first experiments in a philadelphia steel plant.Taylor, generally considered the Father of Scientific Management pioneered the 1911.In the principles of scientific management, premised upon the notion that there was " one best way " of accomplishing any given task, scientific management sought to increase output by discovering the fastest, most efficient, and least fatiguing production methods. The job of the scientific manager, once the one way found, was to impose procedure upon all the workforce . 

Classical organization theory would evolve from this notion. 

Under the influence of the scientific management movement, public administration became increasingly concerned with understanding bureaucratic forms of Organization.  The division of labour;  span of control;  organizational hierarchy and chain of command;  reporting systems;  departmentalization;  and the development of standard operating rules, policies, and procedures became critical concerns to scholars and practitioners in the field. 

Other significant works relevant to this phase were Mary Follett's Creative Experience  (1924), Henry Fayol's Industrial and General Management  (1930), and James D. Mooney Andalan C. Reiley's and principles of Organization  (1930).

POSDCORB 

In 1937, Luther Gulick's and Lyndall Urwick edited a collection : papers on the Science of Administration. Overall, the papers were a statement of the state of the art of Organization theory. It was here that Gulick introduced his famous mnemonic, posdcorb which stands for the seven major functions of management -Planning,  Organizing,  Staffing , Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting. 

One of the most famous management studies ever reported of the period, was conducted by Elton Mayo and his associates from the Harvard Business School  (the human problems of an industrial civilization, 1933). The decade -long series of experiments started out as traditional scientific management examination of the relationship between work environment and productivity. But the pexperimenters came upon a finding that factories and other work situations are, first of all, social institutions. Mayo's work was one of a studies known as the Hawthorne Studies which are generally considered to be the genesis of the human relations school of management thought. 

The Challenge to Paradigm 3,1938-1950

Chester I. Barnard followed Follett's major themes with a far more comprehensive theory, the Functions of the Executive  (1938).Barnard saw organizations as Cooperative systems Where the function of the executive was to maintain the dynamic equilibrium between the needs of the organization and the needs of its employees. In Order to do this, management had to be aware of the interdependent nature of the formal and informal organization. Barnard emphasised the significance role of informal organizations. The most serious challenge came among others from 

1. Paul Appleby, Big Democracy  (1945).

2. Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior : A Study of Decision-making Process in Administrative organization  (1947).

3. Robert A. Dahl, the Science of Public Administration : Three Probles  (1948).

4. Dwight Waldo, Administrative State : A Study of the political Theory of American Public Administration  (1948).

Administrative behaviour of Herbert Simon was perhapsthe most significant landmark in the public administration world of the 1940s. He urged that a true scientific method be used in the study of administrative phenomena, that the perspective of logical positivism be used in dealing with questions of policy making,  and that decision making is the true heart of administration. It was here that Simon refuted the principles approach to public administration that then dominated administration thinking.  Simon examined Gulick'sPOSDCORB and its associated components and  foundthem to be inconsistent, conflicting, and inapplicable to many of the administrative situations facing public administrators. He introduced his concept of "bounded rationally", the idea that people are rational decision makers - within limit.

For Simon, a new Paradigm for public administration meant that there ought to be kinds of public administrationistsworking in harmony and reciprocal intellectual stimulation:

1. Those scholars concerned with developinga pure science of administration based on a thorough grounding in social psychology and;  

2. A larger group concerned with prescribing for public policy.

Paradigm 3. Public Administration as Political Science, 1950-1970

By the end of the Second World War, public administration in the US and other western countries had been transformed into a modern bureaucratic state. But the principles of administration as espoused by scientific management proved to be increasingly inadequate when gauged against the size and complexity of modern governments. In the post-war period, new challenges to the traditional themes of administration prevailed. Most prominent were the familiar issues of the nature and effects of bureaucratic organizations and the political dimensions of the new administrative state. 

The new deal and World War 2 Keynesian economic theory were significant influences on the theory and practice of public administration. While those wars against depression and oppression were primarily economic and military operations, they were also immense managerial undertakings. The experience of those years called into question much of what was then the conventional wisdom of those years administration. The politics -administration dichotomy of reform movement lost its viability amid the new deal and war  effort. It was simply not possible to take value-free processes of business and apply them to government . Government, in  free. During this period public administration returned to the fold of political science.