Public Administration : An Image Problem

One way to see public administration in action is by attending a city council meeting, whether it be in an urban or rural area, public administration still has a part in each event. As Kettl (2018; p. 244) referenced in his book, there is not a civil system that would be sustainable without strong leadership. This paper will discuss the author’s description, observation, and reflection during a city council meeting.

This paper will discuss various aspects of public administrative environments. First, it will determine one specific leadership theory and two public leader styles that would be most beneficial for the Director of Public Health and related agencies in addressing the issues. Next, this paper will recommend one specific leadership theory and two public leader styles that would be most beneficial for the School Board in addressing the issues presented. Also, it will determine the essential manner in which the leadership from the Department of Public Health, the School Board, and the various other government departments impact the leadership of the City Manager’s and his or her ability to carry out government operations. Finally,

According Thornhill et al (2014:15) Public Administration is a study that ensures that there is a governing body or a course of action that is in place to ensure that the people in the institution or organization perform the very work or duties that are assigned to them, and if one does not perform his or her duties to the fullest capacity one will be held

Public sector services are complex by nature by that I mean that they are difficult to manage and lead. It can be argued that there are many reasons for these complexities, notwithstanding the influence of context i.e. the outside dynamic environment punctuating public sector organisations globally.

New Public Management has emerged as a reaction to the exiting bureaucratic model in public administration in the twentieth century. (Matei L 2006,p. 143)

Since Woodrow Wilson (1889) published the article, “a study of public administration”, the main question in the field of public administration is how to govern a democratic and political entity. Given public administration conventionally concerns about civil servants and agencies in the executive branch, one among diverse and essential subfields is bureaucracy and organizational theory. In general, the development of studies on bureaucracy and organizational theory has gone through the period of classical theory to modern theory, and from modern theory to the advent of post-modernism and post-positivism. After historically reviewing the growth of knowledge on this subfield, forces behind the progress are the product of countless and

First, let us think of an administration. We all know and appreciate that for an effective and efficient leadership, there needs to be a strong leadership and also the management characteristics of the administration in place need to be performing greatly (Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (U.S.), 2017). Another aspect that is supposed to be considered in the field of public administration and specifically government

Max Weber went on to define administration as legal rationale, as actions in pursuit of conscious purpose of an organized system of affairs and applying operational efficiency to making them happen as one wanted (Stillman, 2010). Marshall Dimock made two common observations made about public administrations depending on the type of work one was responsible for which included the managerial views and the integral view. The managerial view suggested that only managerial responsibilities were included in public administration. The view on integral suggested that public administration incorporated managerial, technical, clerical, and manual responsibilities consisting of employees of all levels.

It is becoming increasingly evident that hierarchical public administration is inconsistent with the demands of civil society. And the reason for this dissatisfaction is not fiscal nor political, but as Huntington (1968) suggested is also administrative. Although economic and political resources are scarce, this limitation may be overcome by efficient use by the state. Hence the managerial public administration emerged as an answer to the crisis of the state. By using a strategy of administration the managerialist approach makes the delivery of the huge services offered by the state less expensive and more efficient. In addition it tries to protect public patrimony against corruption.

This complexity also raises a predicament in the public administrators operating in such settings as they have multiple points of managerial influence. This also creates an interesting situation which Grodzin (1960) calls “administrators wearing several governmental hats”. He argues that complexity confounds and confuses public administrator’s roles and responsibilities to an extreme degree. The City Manager is an example of an administrator wearing “several hats”.

The goals and methods of public administration have changed since Woodrow’s classification of traditional public administration in 1887 to the present era of new public administration. The management transformed from a bureaucratic system, marked by weak performance, and excessive rules and regulations to a democratic citizenship, marked by transparency, efficiency, and social equity. These changes have in turn refined the image of a public servant from the era of traditional PA to New PA.

During the 1980’s and 1990’s the New Public Management approach placed focus on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of government organizations, instruments and programs, and higher quality service delivery. This new model of public sector management, often regarded by many authors as "not a reform of the traditional public administration, but a transformation of the public sector and its relationship with government and society” (Hoos, J., G.Jenei and L. Vass, 2003) emerged in the most advanced countries in addition to many developing ones.

The term public service can be conceptualized in two ways. First it refers to the body of officials that are involved in the administration of the agencies, services, programmes and policies of the public sector. That is, the public servants that manage the entirety of public services. In the second sense, the concept refers to the organizations, agencies, structures, departments and units which are charged with and involved in public or governmental tasks, activities and functions. These include the Civil Service, Commissions, Boards, Directorates, Parastatals, etc that are publicly owned, funded and directed (Ikelegbe, 1995). The public service as established by

“Administration is ordinarily discussed as the art of “Getting things done,” (Simon, 2013). This quote is important to help understand the goals of the four theoretical contributions and the importance of these theories from a historical and managerial perspective. The theoretical contributions to focus on consist of Scientific Management, Administrative Theory, Bureaucracy and Organizational Structure, and Administrative Behavior. Ideally, all of these concepts have the same simple objective, to get things done and to make organizations as efficient and functional as possible. With this in mind, each theory will show how it’s different structure, concepts, and views of its organization can affect an individual worker, an employer, and the organization as a whole and how these theories are adapted over time.

The dichotomy has been one of the most important concepts in the field of public administration. Even though for more than a century it has been the most debatable with ‘disreputable issues’ in the field. Svara and Overeem (2006), state that the dichotomy expands and contracts, rises and falls but never goes away, that is to say that the heat may wear off once in a while but the debate is always there and has never been forgotten, it is one of the primary debates of public administration. The dichotomy was not a construct until the late 1940s which is when it became an important issue of literature in public administration (Tahmasebi and Musavi, 2011:131). Many scholars have traced this construct back to Woodrow Wilson who is also known as the ‘Godfather’ of Public Administration, who according to Tahmasebi and Musavi intended to protect administration from political