Chinese public administration: misunderstanding and implications

This paper argues that current research works on Chinese public administration are atheoretical or pre-theoretical, that findings generated could not serve as a basis for the development of a general (or medium-range) theory of Chinese public administration or Chinese bureaucratic behavior, and that atheoretical or pre-theoretical research contributes very little to advancement of usable knowledge for problem-solving. The foci of the discussion in this paper are four major fallacies and problems, namely, over-simplification of causes, misformation of concept, stereotyping, and non-usable knowledge. It is concluded that China scholars should be more theoretically rigorous and work with their counterparts in China in order to contribute to theory-building and practical problem-solving.     

Public administration in hong kong: Crises and prospects

Current studies on Hong Kong public administration have overlooked three emerging crises of the administrative system -- the crises of mediocrity, the public service, and the metapolicy -- which may result in a complete collapse of the colonial regime. The analysis reveals the following. Firstly, operating within a paradoxical context, civil servants find it difficult to maximize their contribution. Hard pressed by the delimma of “to strive for excellence or to observe medicoirty,” many choose the latter. Thus, the overall performance of many Hong Kong public agencies and civil servants is unacceptable. Secondly, at the absence of a political theory which redefines the relationship between the political system and socio-economic system and thus the mission of the public service, many civil servants lack commitment to the public service and therefore the norm of medicority is reinforced. And thirdly, the government has reformulated its metapolicy in a way that system overloading is likely, thus making Citizen insubordination probable. It is conclusded that the future of Hong Kong is bleak and that remedial actions are awaiting: the first task is the quest for a new set of political ideology and public philosohgy; the next is reformulation of a new metapolicy, followed by forceful pulbic sector management reform.     

Teaching public administration,public management and policy analysis: some international comparisons

This article compares the design and content of domestic and foreign programs for teaching public administration and management. At the Master's level, curriculum designers, irrespective of location, emphasize organization theory, personnel, policy analysis, and microeconomics. However, domestic programs place much more emphasis on research methods and budget management. International programs place more emphasis on public law and management information systems. At this time, neither domestic nor international programs report much required training in leadership, bargaining, or institutional design.     

City management,public administration and the American enlightenment

As the cost and size of government continues to escalate, there is a growing concern over increasing the efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of public services. Productivity bargaining as one tool has Cained the attention of a small but growing number of public officials who see this technique as one rational method of resolving the conflicting pressures generated by the demand for government services on the one hand and limited resources on the other. The experience of one large metropolitan area with productivity bargaining is reviewed at some length.     

The ideology of professionalism in public administration: implications for education

One of the most influential themes in contemporary public administration is the focus on professionalism. As Dwight Waldo has argued, public administration should act as if it were a profession even if there is hardly any chance of becoming one. This article will explore the pedagogical implications of the ideology of professionalism on education, and how it has impacted the intellectual development of the field. It will be argued that the intellectual baggage of professionalism poses critical challenges to the meaning and substantive purpose of public administration.     

Luther gulick,public administration and classical management

The late Luther Gulick (1892-1993), often known as the dean of U.S. public administration, left behind him an enormous and wide-ranging literary corpus, but no single systematic work. This essay presents both a personal and an intellectual portrait of Gulick. The personal portrait is accomplished primarily through Gulick's own words derived from relevant published works, autobiographical fragments, and a series of interviews with the author. The intellectual portrait concentrates on a single stream. of thought--classical organization theory and design--and outlines the evolution of Gulick's thought through time, with comments here and there.     

The world's trading system in the post cold war era: implications for public administration

The authors of this article argue that the world is evolving into a regional bloc trading system with important public policy implications. Recent developments in North America and Europe suggest that regional integration is becoming an alternative approach to the multilateral trade deliberations under the auspices of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The reasons for the evolution are suggested in this article, and arguments are presented on how the negative implications of this trend in world trade can be countered effectively by constructive domestic and international government action.     

Value orientation and value profile of nigerian public managers: implications for management practice

Using England's personal value questionnaire the value orientations and value profile of public managers at the state level in Nigeria were analyzed. The analyses revealed that most of these managers have a pragmatic value orientation. Implications for management practice and management development in the Nigerian public sector were discussed. Future research directions were also suggested.     

Roward a public philosophy of public administration: a civic perspective of the public

The thesis of this article is that a publicphilosophy of public administration needs to be formulated. It must not be based upon romantic and technocratic approaches as past efforts have been. It must rest instead upon a revitalized concept of the public that stresses the importance of public interdependency, public learning, public language, and a critical evaluation of the relationship between the role of the state and public administration. This emphasis has important implications for the respective responsibilities of both academicians and practicing administrators.     

Ethical implications of the new managerialism: conflicting loyalties: normative pluralism in modern public administration one australian perspective

As public resources are not unlimited, choices have to be made between various community goals and the extent of their fulfilment. There is no necessary conflict between managing and attempting to allocate public resources amongst competing and sometimes conflicting goals in a more efficient, effective, economic and accountable manner on the one hand and contributing to society's overall wider goals on the other. Attention is drawn, however, to the need to deal in a balanced way with the requirements of equity, probity, fairness, impartiality, ethical considerations, public accountability, the public interest, and the exercise of public trust as well as, for example, deficiencies in data. A sound ethical basis is essential for workable and good administration.     

Professionalism and public administration: A bibliography

Abstract

This paper tests public budgeting to ascertain if it has both a long‐run equilibrium and short‐run incremental process. In the model, the decision‐maker strives to achieve budgetary balance over the long‐run but is constrained in the short‐run and follows incremental decision‐making. The interaction between expenditures and revenues, along with several control variables, is tested for each of the Canadian provinces using data between 1961 and 2000. The results show that in the long‐run, expenditures force the budget toward balance in all the provinces with the exception of British Columbia. In that province, there was a fiscal synchronization of revenues and expenditures working in combination. In the short‐run, incrementalism occurs in nine of the ten provinces.     

Trends in teaching public administration: a view from the proceedings of the national conferences on teaching public administration

This article identifies trends in research on teaching public administration. Topics receiving substantial amounts of attention within years, within multiple years, and across time are identified. Cumulation of research on certain topics is identified. This study is based on data from the Proceedings of the National Conferences on Teaching Public Administration between 1978 and 1989.     

Ethics and public administration: critique and reconstruction

In the post-Watergate era, many observers saw the renewed interest in administrative ethics as a passing fad. Now, over a decade later, the continued interest in this area belies this judgment. Indeed, this increased concern with administrative ethics is rooted in the realization that administration is as much an ethica, as technical pursuit. One cannot read John Rohr's "Ethics in Public Administration: A State of the Discipline Report," delivered at the 1986 ASPA Conference, without receiving the distinct impression that administrative ethics is an area of practice and study that is experiencing a profound upheaval. Views are diverse and often inchoate. Assumptions behind ethical prescr- ptions are still frequently unstated and unexamined. In addition, we still continue to seek techniques that will ensure administrative ethicality without understanding the nature of the ethical problems confronted in public administration and the reasons they are confronted. In short, there exists a need for theoretical clarification and classification in the area of ethics and public administration.     

Foundations of public administration: Introduction to the symposium

The nature of retrospectives on the literature of public administration has taken a turn in recent years away from polite respect for our heritage, and toward a belief that the older literature can solve some of our most pressing current problems in administration. Specifically, modern works often bemoan a lack of fundamental purpose or moral direction for administration, and these were among the strongpoints of more dated literature. The articles of this symposium largely seek to find current answers in the investigations of long ago.     

Control versus consent in long-term care case management programs: implications for public policy

Case management programs for long-term care include the dual public policy goals of providing access to services and ensuring the efficient and effective application of public funds. We will use a paradigm for social policy development that proposes a conflict between control and consent motives of social policy makers. Illustrations of the limitations and positive elements of control versus consent as applied to case management will be presented.

We will discuss how the tension between these approaches can be used to develop policy that balances the goals of access and cost-effectiveness.     

Symposium: Professionalization and professionalism in public administration

The Symposium on Professionalization and Professionalism in Public Administration, contained in this volume of The International Journal of Public Administration, presents some of the most recent outlooks of prominent scholars and practitioners in the field. They have offered their research and insights into a subject of perennial importance. They have charted the significant progress being made in public administration toward its professional development. This collection of refereed articles is a survey updating the evolution of the field in this regard. Several features are noteworthy. First, the articles are arrayed from general to specific--that is, from theoretical presentations and overviews to case studies. Second, the case studies have been arranged from the federal level to sub-national jurisdictions. Third, the Symposium examines not only professional developments in public administration but also the mechanisms engendering and supporting such changes--namely, associations and formal higher education.

In addition to their other relationships, the articles also bear epistimological links to one another. A precis of these contributions makes this point evident. The first article, “Specifying Elements of Professionalism and the Process of Professionalization” by John J. Gargan, offers an interdisciplinary perspective on these two concepts. His coverage suggests that characteristics of a profession are no different for public administration than they are for other disciplines in the social sciences or in the natural sciences as well, although the seventh essay in this symposium challenges this perspective. Gargan posits that all professions, developed as well as evolving, concern themselves with three broad issues: (1) theory generation (the creation of basic knowledge and the formation, alteration, or replacement of paradigms); (2) theory translation and advocacy (the establishment of education processes); and (3) theory implementation and routinization (the applications of knowledge to human affairs through standardized practice). All three processes are concomitants of one another, and public administration has been no exception.

The second contribution, “Public Official Associations and Professionalism” by Jeremy F. Plant and David S. Arnold, develops the second and third issues presented in Gargan's essay. They focus on the roles of associations as illustrations of a genre of education processes and as vehicles for bringing a greater degree of homogeneity to the field of public administration. Furthermore, they postulate that, in seeking to fulfill these roles, associations have been moving toward convergence. Their typology stipulates the existence of two kinds of public administration associations: (1) professional-specialist and (2) political-generalist. The first type, made up of public servant careerists, including members of federal and state senior executive services, has been becoming more political whereas the second kind, consisting of elected political officials (especially governors, mayors, and legislators) has been proceeding in a managerial direction, regardless of party affiliation and ideology. Both types of organizations are melding since they have become increasingly symbiotic hybrids. The authors captured this trend when they commented: “As players in the policy arena, professional association and generalist, political associations are increasingly finding ways to work together.”

The third essay, “The Ideology of Professionalism in Public Administration: Implications for Education” by Curtis Ventriss, also extends Gargan's work but in a narrower way than the Plant-Arnold article. Ventriss focuses on theory translation and advocacy not from an associational standpoint but from the vista of higher education. He fears that the pedagogical regime for public administration is succeeding too well in professionalizing the field and in thus making it more valuable in serving the state. He argues that professionalism tends to constrain thought in the discipline so that it cannot readily conceive of purposes apart from such service. This alleged parochialism detracts from what Ventriss thinks the primary purpose of public administration ought to be: the inculcation of citizenship. Radically, he proposes an end to traditional public administration instructional programs but scattering their elements among other disciplines. He questions implicitly the distinction, going back to Woodrow Wilson, between techniques, which can be value neutral, and their applications, which can involve normative choices. Stated another way, he asks whether public administration can be made safe for democracy because he doubts but hopes, like Frederick Mosher, that universities can perform such a function.

The fourth article, “The Future of Professionalization and Professionalism in Public Administration: Advancements, Barriers, and Prospects” by the co-editors of this symposium, is the last presentation falling within the framework of Gargan's piece. Whereas Gargan sought to delineate the nature of professional status, Gazell and Pugh examine the extent to which the field has reached this long-sought goal. They explore six broad areas of advancement and an equal number of obstacles and conclude that, despite widespread popular animus toward governments at all levels, the prospects of the field are favorable, mainly because of an expanding public need for its services. The authors view professionalization (process) and professionalism (result) as fully compatible with the achievement of a genuinely democratic state. In fact, the authors see professional status for public administration as necessary for making representative governments effective enough either to survive or become more democratic. There is always a risk that professional development could eventually become an end in itself, threatening the achievement of a pervasive democratic order. Implicit in the article are the ideas that the nexus between effectiveness and democracy is curvilinear but that the quest for effectiveness through professionalism has not yet reached a point of diminishing returns--that is, threatening democratic evolution.

The fifth presentation, “Professionalizing the American States in the 1990s” by Beverly A. Cigler, is the first of a series of essays reporting on the progress of professionalism in government at various levels. The author furnishes an overview of professional developments in state governments throughout the nation. In particular, she meticulously catalogs efforts toward professionalism in the executive branches of such governments, although coverage of the judicial and legislative branches would be necessary for a complete picture. However, such an expansion would have taken her far beyond the scope of her article. Especially notable is her exploration of executive reorganizations, commissions on effectiveness, and multi-agency initiatives. She sums up a potpourri of efforts, often gubernatorially inspired and sustained, by remarking: “Collectively, the various activities pursued by the states have the potential to change what government does and how it operates.” She sees executive-branch professionalization and professionalism as steps toward revitalizing (or reinventing) government at the state level.

The sixth article, “Professionalization within a Traditional Political Culture: A Case Study of South Carolina” by Steven W. Hays and Bruce F. Duke, represents a specific example of what Cigler covers generally. Hays and Duke make at least three significant contributions. One is that they chronicle the earliest movements toward professionalism in a state, leading to the possibility that it has had similar origins in other jurisdictions at this level of government. A second contribution is that such change can take place despite a spate of systemic obstacles such as decentralized personnel systems, fragmented political authority, and an absence of gubernatorial support. A third feature is the presentation of an interstate model for measuring professional development, including such criteria as public management certification, graduate degrees, and formal ethical codes. Despite various structural problems the authors argue: “Considering the distance traveled and the obstacles overcome, there is no disputing the conclusion that tremendous progress has occurred over the past two decades [in South Carolina].”

The seventh study, “Professional Leadership in Local Government” by Ruth Hoogland DeHoog and Gordon P. Whitaker, presents an overview of professionalization and professionalism at the local level. What is novel here is the suggestion that professionalism at this level of government may be different than at other realms of government and than in the private sector. Broadly speaking, the primary difference is that professionalism in the public sector, especially in government, involves less autonomy because of greater accountability for appointed and elected officials. In particular, there are three salient distinctions: a respect for expertise on the part of elected officials, deference to their legitimacy and authority, and an additional acceptance of responsibility to the people at large (that is, the public interest). Also stressed is a greater role of ethics in professional development with a highlighting of the role of the International City Management Association's efforts to bring improvement in this area. For instance, the authors point out: “Managers must learn these values through professional education, professional association contacts, and work with other professionals in local government.”

The eighth article in this symposium, “The Possibility of Professionalism in County Management” by James H. Svara, complements the DeHoog-Whitaker essay by providing a case study focusing on local public management in one state: North Carolina. Svara interviewed a cross-section of county executives and concerned himself with the extent of their professionalization and professionalism. To illuminate these developments, he compared the positions of county and city managers, using the latter as a model towards whom the former aspire. Generally, he found, that county executives have less authority (that is, fewer administrators under their direct control) than their municipal counterparts. However, he also discerned a narrowing gap between these two kinds of officials because of similar pre-job and in-service training received by them and the elected officials to whom they report. In addition, he noted that almost all of the counties in this state now have professional executives and that their advancement has been substantial.

The ninth--and final--contribution, “Decentralization and Initiative: TVA Returns to its Roots” by John G. Stewart and Rena C. Tolbert, is significant in at least four respects. First, the essay presents another case study of professional development--but at the local headquarters of a federal agency: Knoxville, Tennessee. Second, this research centers on professionalization and professionalism in a third (or mixed) sector organization--namely, a public corporation rather than a governmental agency. Third, the professional development of the TVA is distinctive because it has been internally generated, especially due to the efforts of its early leaders (David E. Lilienthal and Gordon R. Clapp), rather than externally imposed, as in the previous case studies. This provenance is analogous to what often takes place in the corporate sector. Lilienthal was instrumental in promoting organizational decentralization and grass-roots democracy as approaches toward improving the viability of a controversial governmental innovation, one widely regarded as “socialistic” at and after its inception. Clapp fostered a managerial culture promoting employee initiative, easy access to top executives, organizational teamwork, labor-management collaboration, and partnerships with states and localities through councils and conferences. Fourth, the authors traced professional development in the TVA through what in this symposium is a unique pattern: strong early efforts, retrenchment through bureaucratization, and, recently, a return to the agency's roots.     

Modernizing the public service in latin america: faradoxes of latin american public administration

This article presents impediments to the moderization of the public bureacracy in the Latin American region. These impediments are presented as paradoxes in order to emphasize both the contradications found in, and the America. The article presents examples from various cases it central and South America in order to show the lack of a public service tradition, the obstacles of patronage and corruption, the Opportunity costs of bureacratic development, the difficulty of reform, and the drawbacks of professionalization. It concludes with some suggestions, groped under the general strategies of insulation and fortification, about how to evercome these impeciments.     

Reconciling public administration and democracy: the role of the responsible administrator

This article considers whether the individual responsibilities of bureaucratic officials provide a useful means for reconciling the tension between democracy and bureaucracy. Three questions central to the proper definition of bureaucratic responsibility are examined: (1) What is the relation of bureaucratic responsibility to the view that proper bureaucratic conduct is essentially a matter of ethics and morality? (2) If the appeal to moral values does not ordinarily offer an acceptable guide to proper bureaucratic conduct, upon what principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? (3) What issues arise in putting responsibility into practice within a complex organizational setting? The article concludes that a democratic, process-based conception offers the most useful way of thinking about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials.

The tension between democracy and bureaucracy has bedeviled public administration. However one defines democracy, its core demand for responsiveness (to higher political authorities, the public, client groups, or whatever the presumed agent of democratic rule) does not neatly square with notions of effective organization of the policy process and efficient delivery of goods and services, which are central to the definition of bureaucracy. Responsiveness need not guarantee efficiency, while bureaucratic effectiveness and efficiency often belie democratic control.

This tension between democracy and bureaucracy persists, but that it is the individual administrator who directly experiences the tension is especially important as a guide toward a resolution of this conflict. Since divergence is central to this tension between democracy and bureaucracy, speculation about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials—their individual places within the bureaucracy, particularly the administrator's thoughts, choices, and actions—provides fruitful terrain for resolving the question of bureaucracy's place within a democratic system of rule.

Three questions need to be addressed if one accepts the premise that individual responsibility is central to locating the place of bureaucracy in a democratic order. First, what is unique about bureaucratic responsibility, especially in contrast to the view that these are largely ethical problems that can be resolved by appeal to moral values? Second, if dilemmas of bureaucratic conduct are by and large not resolvable through appeal to moral values, upon what other principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? Third, what issues arise in putting responsibility into practice, especially within a complex organizational setting? This list of questions is not meant to be exhaustive but only a starting point for discussion.