Father Saturnino Urios University

Graduate Studies
Butuan City

PA 501A: Group Thought Paper Date: November 22, 2019

Name: Adalid, Karen A.; Narzoles, May M.
Re: Lesson 1 Research

What is Public Administration?

“Public Administration is a field of business which is removed from the
hurry and strife of politics and stands apart from the debatable ground of
constitutional study.”
- Woodrow Wilson –
“Public Administration the management of men and materials in the
accomplishment of the purposes of the state. It relates to the conduct of
government services to the conduct of the affairs of any other social
organization, commercial, philanthropic, religious, or educational, in all of
which good management is recognized as an element essential to success”
- Woodrow Wilson –
“Public Administration a detailed and systematic execution of law. Every
particular application of law is an act of administration.”
- Leonard White –
“Public administration is concerned with action in particular concrete
situations, but in accordance with long-range objectives.”
- Leonard White –
“Whenever there is government there is public administration . . . . . .
(it) refers to cooperative human action to achieve the purpose of
government.”
- Raul P. de Guzman –
 “Public administration . . . . . is the action part of government, the means
by which the purposes and goals of government are realized.”
- Corson and Harris –
“Public administration is the art and science of management as applied
to the affairs of State.”
- Dwight Waldo –
“Public administration is concerned with ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the
government. The ‘what’ is the subject matter, the technical knowledge of a
field, which enables the administrator to perform his tasks. The ‘how’ is the
technique f management, the principles according to which co-operative
programmes are carried through to success. Each is indispensable, together
they form the synthesis called administration.”
- M.E. Dimock –
“Public administration is a broad-ranging and amorphous combination
of theory and practice; its purpose is to promote a superior understanding of
government and its relationship with the society, it governs, as well as to
encourage public policies more responsive to social needs and to institute
managerial practices attuned to effectiveness, efficiency and the deeper
human requisites of the citizenry.”
- Nicholas Henry -
Development of Management Theory
Henri Fayol
Henry Fayol was born in Istanbul in 1888 and published his
comprehensive theory of administration in which he described and classified
administrative management activities, functions, and principles.
Fayol developed the following doctrines of organization, which are
principles of management:
 Specialization of labor – The organization of the major operating tasks
of the organization should be divided into an exhaustive set of discrete
 or specific tasks that require a particular skill set not shared by all
members of the production process. Specialization enhances efficiency
and effectiveness by utilizing expertise in each discrete area in an effort
to maximize effectiveness. Other effect of specialization is that it
encourages continuous improvement in skills and the development of
improvements in methods.
 Division of Works – Complementing the idea of specialization, the
division of work principle leads to arrangements wherein the work of
complex organizations should be divided into discrete or distinct tasks.
Workers should be trained for an assigned to tasks in a way that allows
the organization o benefit from specialization.
 Authority and responsibility – The authority to direct the activities of
other members of the organization is coupled with the responsibility to
ensure compliance.
 Discipline – It is the responsibility of leaders and managers to ensure
consistent, if not unyielding compliance with the rules, responsibilities,
and obligations of the organizations.
 Unity of command – Each member of the organization should have one
and only one boss. Having multiple supervisors undermines coordination
and authority and reduces efficiency.
 Unity of direction – Final planning and decision making are carried out
by single individuals in order to ensure consistency and continuity.
 Subordination of individual interests – The resources of the organization
are committed to the objectives of the organization and not extraneous
goals or individual members’ goals. Ideally, workers would not utilize
their organization’s resources towards their own interests or concerns.
 Remuneration – Employees should receive fair and standard payment
for services. Payment should be sufficient to act as an incentive for high
performance.
  Centralization – Management functions, such as direction and
supervision, should be consolidated in a central source. Decisions should
be made at the appropriate level of the organizational hierarchy.
 Scalar chain 9(lines of authority) – Organizational hierarchy follows
chain of command running from the top to bottom of the organization.
All communication runs from one level to the next, whether ascending
or descending, rather than skipping levels.
 Order – All resources of the organization are allocated and maintained
in a standard prescribed system.
 Equity – All members of the organization should be treated in a fair and
consistent way.

Classical
According to Polya Katsamunska, the classical or traditional period in
public administration is generally characterized as an administration under the
formal control of the political leadership, based on a strictly hierarchical model
of bureaucracy, staffed by permanent, neutral and anonymous officials,
motivated only by the public interest, serving and governing party equally,
and not contributing to policy but merely administering those policies decided
by the politicians.

Political/Administrative Dichotomy
Woodrow Wilson introduced the theory of “politics and administration
dichotomy” which signalled the separation of the field of public administration
from political science. More than the separation of these disciplines, he went
on to assail even the separation of the practice of “administration” and
“politics”. He based his idea in separating these practices on their functional
definitions which look at “administration” as the “detailed and systematic
execution of public law” and “politics” as the “complex process of passing of
public law”. With the separation of the two practices, Wilson believed that
corruption and other negative bureaucratic behaviour can be avoided in the
process.

Bureaucratic Theory
According to Weber, the government is essentially identical to the
concept of bureaucracy which is the ideal and rational way of doing business
in the government. He identified several characteristics which should be
present in all institutions of the government such as: a well-defined hierarchy,
division of work and functional specialization, a framework of fixed rules,
employment of proper and scientific section of individuals, and use of an
impersonal approach in the organization.
Max Weber’s concept of bureaucracy is closely related to his ideas on
legitimacy of authority. To him, a person could be said to poses power, if in a
social relationship, his will could be enforced despite resistance. Such exercise
of power becomes controlled. Authority manifests when a command of definite
content elicits obedience on the part of specific individuals. For Weber,
‘authority’ was identical with ‘authoritarian power of command’ (Prasad,
et.al.p.77). Authority is state of reality where a person willingly complies with
legitimate commands or orders because he considers that a person by virtue
of his position could issue orders to him. Unlike in ‘power’ there is willing
obedience on the part of clientele to legitimise authority.
Weber identified five essential components of authority. They are:
1. An individual or a body of individuals who rule,
2. An individual or a body of individuals who are ruled,
3. The will of the ruler to influence conduct of the ruled,
4. Evidence of the influence of the rulers in terms of the objective degree
of command and
 5. Direct or indirect evidence of that influence in terms of subjective
acceptance with which the ruled obey the command.
While explaining authority in various organizations, Weber concluded
“all administration means dominance” (Prasad. et.al. p. 77). Weber
categorized persons in the organizations in to four types:
1. Those who are accustomed to obey commands,
2. Those who are personally interested in seeing the existing domination
continue,
3. Those who participate in that domination and
4. Those who hold themselves in readiness for the exercise of functions.
Weber classified authority into three ‘pure’ or ‘ideal’ types based on its
claim to legitimacy. They are: (1) traditional authority, (2) charismatic
authority and (3) legal-rational authority.

Neo-classical
Scientific Management Theory
Frederick Taylor believed that there is “one best way of doing a job”.
The principle that Taylor developed in his theory were not from the public
sector but from the private sector which came to be the focus of the search of
the American government for some general administrative techniques during
that time. Realizing the implications of this theory, the American government
adopted his principles in order to enhance the efficiency of its operation. In
the years that followed, the principles of Taylor became the same standards
which the American government implemented throughout its administration.

Administrative Management
Drawing inspiration from the scientific management movement, divided
work according to a master plan. The essence of this theory lay in the division
of work and coordination of the parts with the whole.
Human Relations Movement
Emerged in the late 1930s as an outgrowth of scientific management.
This movement came from number of sources: psychologists, sociologists, and
anthropologists who were critical of the narrow and limited concept of
organization held by the scholars who contributed to the classical theory. They
were mainly against the de-humanization of organization and against treating
human beings as cogs in the machine.
George Elton mayo is considered as one of the pioneers of the HRM to
organization. His main hypothesis is that relations between employers and
employees should be humanistic, not mechanistic. Employees and workers
deserve to be treated as individuals with dignity and self-respect rather than
as factors of production or inter-changeable elements of the productions
system.

Contingency Theory
Contingency theory, or structural contingency theory, emerged in the
late 1950s and 1960s and reflects thinking both from behavioural theories and
from systems theories. The term was coined by Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch
in1967, who argued that the amount of uncertainty and pace of change in an
environment impacts the development of internal features in organizations.
The central claim of contingency theory is that there’s no best way to
structure an organization. Contingency theorist argue that earlier structural
theories, especially rational or classical theories such as Max Weber’s
bureaucracy and Frederick Taylors’s scientific management, fail in practice
because they attempted to apply abstract, universal structural principles and
neglected that organizational structures are and should be influenced by
various aspects of the environment – that is contingency factors. In other
words, there could not be one of the best way for leadership or organization.
Systems Theory
System theory views organizations ass dynamic and interactive system
in which each part is dependent upon another for its inputs and outputs.
System theory is often traced back to Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the late 1920s
and was then expanded upon by Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn. In the 1920a,
Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management has grown with the understanding
that each component of an organization could be understood and controlled
independently and linealy. Von Bertalanffy disagrees with this understanding
and instead claims that an organization is a system in which various
individuals and components – internally and externally – interacts together to
accomplish outcomes and depends upon such interactions within an
environment for growth and success.

Reassertion of Democratic Idealism

Public Administration witnessed a more intense outpouring of
antistatism literature than from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. The reasons
for the outbreak of rabid antistatism during that generation remain unclear
even today. Perhaps it was caused by a backlash to perceived administrative
misdeeds in Vietnam or Watergate.
The 1968 Minnowbrook Conference best symbolized the starting point
of this shift towards democratic idealism within Public Administration. It was
named for Syracuse University’s Minnowbrook Conference Center, where the
meeting took place during the warm summer of 1968. Their conference paper
that were later published argued for the field to adopt fresh intellectual
perspectives, or for a “new public administration,” based on ideals of
participation, consensus-building, sharing ideas, mutual trust, and even “love
for man-kind” (Marnini 1971). These “young turks” exhibited particular
hostility towards traditional public administration aimed at state-building and
towards enhancing administrative efficiency, economy, and effectiveness as
embodied in POSDCORB, as well as newer rational techniques such as
operations research, decision-sciences, systems theory, PPBS, MBO, or other
techno-professional inventions stressing rationality, science, behaviourism,
realism, or any sort of hard empirical quantitative methodologies.

Streams of Philippine Public Administration

Philippine Public Administration has navigated on four streams:
Traditional Public Administration (TPA), Development Administration (DevAd),
New Public Administration (New PA), and Public Administration and
Governance (PAG). A stream designates a particular set of convergent
concepts and approaches in the teaching, research, and practice of Public
Administration. When dominant at a particular time, it would be recognized as
“mainstream” even though flows of other streams may join it as backdrop,
assumptions, or factors in the environment rather than as core objects of
study.

Traditional Public Administration

The main field of traditional public administration is a colonial society
where the colonial government has little role in the betterment of the people.
In fact, all the earlier administrative systems were also traditional. For the
absence of economic complexity minimum scientific can technological growth
and due to the very nature of agrarian society – traditional administration then
existed with its tradition. In the ultimate analysis, the societal condition and
the more or less simple international relationship confirm the existence of
traditional public administration. This is the difference between development
administration and traditional public administration. It has only the objective
of keeping the system going on as it is at present. Its main focus is to uphold
the status quo. It is almost clear to say that the traditional bureaucratic
system existed mainly for upkeep law and order, justice and collection of
revenue whether done on behalf of a monarch or a colonial power.

Development Administration
The concept of development administration gets momentum in such a
situation where nation states exist in the ecology. When people are in the
backward states in all respects in an independent nation them development
administration emerges. Development of science and technology often
accentuates it the main ground of development administration lies in the social
instability and higher demand. The objective of development administration is
the total change of the system in a much planned way for giving up the
socioeconomic and political condition of the country. The terminal condition of
development administration is the image of a good society which is
multidimensional in nature.

New Public Administration

New Public Administration is an anti-positivist, anti-technical, and anti-
hierarchical reaction against traditional public administration. A practiced
theory in response to the ever changing needs of the public and how
institutions and administrations go about solving them.
The term new public administration simply means that there was a
public administration which was old. Literally this is correct. But the fact is
that with the change of all the major and minor aspects of society the
administration of society has undergone changes, because the public
administration is to cope with the changes. Otherwise it cannot meet the basic
necessities of society. In our analysis of the evolution of public administration,
we have already noted that towards the end of the sixties of the last century
people experienced in administration developed, new paradigms of public
administration were devised, and these were suggested to meet the new
challenges of society. It has been suggested that the administrators must find
out new methods of administration, otherwise the administrative structure will
not be in a position to keep the momentum of change.
Whatever may the form of government be, there must exist an admin-
istration. This is a fundamental notion and from this comes the notion of new
public administration. It is to be noted here that the concept of new public
administration first arose in America. Nicholas Henry says that in 1968 some
enthusiastic administrators took an initiative to hold a conference for finding
out ways which would be capable of dealing with new changes plaguing the
administration of American society.

Public Organizations
Public organizations reflects the society they serve. In an age of intense
public scrutiny, rapid technological advancements, and changing
organizational demographics, administrators face many complex challenges,
requiring them to wear many hats.
The root word of public is populous, which essentially means “the
people”. The root word of administration is minos which means “detail and
service.” So in essence, public administration means “the details or service of
the people.” Public administration is part of our government system, and
public organizations, which carry our policies and implement programs, reflect
the underlying values, laws, ideologies, structures, and technologies.
Public organizations exist within the context and the people in the
organization are a product of this culture as well. Public organizations operate
in fairly transparent goldfish bowls.
Paul Appleby described the distinction between public and private
organizations when he explained that public servants must possess a
“government attitude” in which the public’s needs are put first, there is a sense
of action, an there is a feeling of the need for decisions. Appleby argued that
government is different because government is politics. He insisted that to
have a governmental processes that were not political contradicts the
experience of being American. He stated, “Governments exist so that there is
someone in society charged with promoting and protecting the public
interest”. It is within the context that we find public organizations.

Similarities: How are Public and Private Management Alike?

Gulick summarized the work of the chief executive in the acronym
POSDCORM. The letter stands for
 Planning
 Organizing
 Staffing
 Directing
 Coordinating
 Reporting
 Budgeting
With various additions, amendments, and refinements, similar lists of
general management functions can be found through the management
literature from Barnards to Drucker.
These common functions of management are not isolated and discrete,
but rather integral components separated here for purposes of analysis. The
character and relative significance of the various functions differ from one time
to another in the history of any organization, and between one organization
and another. But whether in a public or private setting, the challenge for the
general manage is to integrate all these elements so as to achieve results.

Differences: How are Public and Private Management Different?

John T. Dunlop’s “impressionistic comparison of government
management and private business yields the following contrasts:
1. Time Perspective. Government managers tend to have relatively
short time horizons dickered by political necessities and the political
calendar, while private managers appear to take a longer time
perspective oriented toward marker developments, technological
innovations and investment, and organization building.
2. Duration. The length of service politically appointed top government
managers is relatively short, averaging no more than 18 months
recently for assistant secretaries, while private managers have a
longer tenure both in the same position and in the same enterprise.
A recognized element is the responsibility to train a successor or
several possible candidates while the concept is largely alien to public
management since fostering a successor is perceived to be
dangerous.
3. Measurement of performance. There is a little if any agreement on
the standards of measurement of performance to appraise a
government manager, while various tests of performance – financial
return, market share, performance measure for executive
compensation – are well established in private business and often
made explicit for a particular managerial position during a specific
period ahead.
4. Personnel constraints. In government there are two layers of
managerial officials that are at time hostile to one another: the civil
service (or now the executive system) and the political appointees.
Unionization of government employees exists among relatively high-
level personnel in the hierarchy and includes a number of supervisory
personnel. Civil service, union contract provisions, and other
regulations complicate the recruitment, hiring, transfer, and layoff or
discharge of personnel to achieve managerial objectives or
preferences. By comparison, private business management have
 considerable greater latitude, even under collective bargaining, in the
management of subordinates. They have much more authority to
direct the employees of their organization. Government personnel
policy and administration are more under the control of staff
(including civil service staff outside an agency) compared to the
private sector in which personnel are much more subject to line of
responsibility.
5. Equity and efficiency. In governmental management great emphasis
tends to be placed on providing equity among different
constituencies, while in private business management relatively
greater stress in placed upon efficiency and competitive
performance.
6. Public processes versus private processes. Governmental
management tends to be exposed to public scrutiny and to be more
open, while private business management is more private and its
processes more internal and less exposed to public view.
7. Role of press and media. Governmental management must contend
regularly with the press and media; its decisions are often anticipated
by the press. Private decisions are less often reported in the press,
and the press has a much smaller impact on the substance and timing
of decisions.
8. Persuasion and direction. In government, management often seek to
mediate decisions in response to a wide variety of pressure and must
often put together a coalition of inside and outside groups to survive.
By contrast, private management proceeds much more by direction
or the issuance of orders to subordinates by superior managers with
little risk of contradiction. Governmental mangers tend to regard
themselves as responsive to many superiors while private managers
look more to one higher authority.
9. Legislative and judicial impact. Governmental managers are often
subject to close scrutiny by legislative oversight groups or even
judicial orders in ways that are quite uncommon in private business
management. Such scrutiny often materially constrains executive
and administrative freedom to act.
10. Bottom line. Governmental managers rarely have a clear bottom
line, while that of a private business manager is profit, market
performance, and survival.
 References

Verma, B.K. (2014). Public administration today. Vardan House, Ansari

Road, Daryagnj, New Delhi: ASTHA Publishers & Distributors.
Pershing, S.P. & Austin, E.K. (2015). Organizational theory and governance
for the 21st century. United States of America: CQ Press
Stillman II, R.J. (2010). Public administration: Concepts and cases (9th
edition). Boston, USA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Sharfitz, J.M. & Hyde, A.C. (2012, 2007, 2004). Public administration:
Classic readings (7th edition). International Edition: Wadsworth
Reyes, D.D., Tapales, P.D., Domingo, M.Z. & Mendoza, M.V. (2015).
Introduction to public administration in the Philippines: A readers (3rd
edition). National College of Public Administration and Governance:
University of the Philippines Diliman
Bihasa, C.S. (2015). Introduction to public administration. Mandaluyong
City: Books Atbp. Publishing Corp.