Trace the movements in American Public Administration Theory (PAT) from the
Progressive Era to contemporary times, paying special attention to the on-going themes/paradoxes that have existed in Public Administration over time (responsibility accountability, legitimacy, democracy vs. bureaucracy, economy and efficiency, technology,
PA vs. the New Public Management, etc.).
In 1887, Woodrow Wilson published the article that many see as the birth of the academic study of Public Administration. “The Study of Administration”, published in Political
Science quarterly, outlined his revolutionary theory of the politics-administration dichotomy.
Although this is cited as the start of Public Administration as a discipline, Public Administration as practice is as old as government (Cox, Buck, Morgan, 2011). He was the first writer to try to understand and define Public Administration as a separate field from politics. Wilson believed that government should find a way to divorce politics from administration. Politics has to do with policy and administration is the execution of policy. In his article he said, “Administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions.
Although politics set the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices.” Wilson was arguing for an administrative model that was devoid of the meddling of politics. This arose from a normative concern of the era that American bureaucracy served as a stronghold for political patronage. This independent administrative state would be bound to the individual interests of elected officials. Wilson called for a science of administration and promoted the end of spoils and a move to a responsive civil service based on merit.
Wilson’s original essay disappeared from the literature until it was republished in
Political Science Quarterly in 1941. This caused argument in academia regarding the legitimate influence Wilson’s writing had on the early development of the field since the article didn’t have a wide impact until the 1940’s.
Frank Goodnow is considered the second intellectual ancestor of the politicsadministration dichotomy. In 1900 he published Politics and Administration: A Study of
Government . In this work, Goodnow advocated that the theory of politics-administration dichotomy was justified to promote efficiency and effectiveness. Goodnow criticized the constitutional separation of power between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and suggested instead a two-part division between politics and administration. His system would free up administration from political interference, allowing administrators wide discretion to regulate the complex modern economy without interference from politicians. Goodnow believed that politics was polluted and full of bias, whereas administration was all about the pursuit of truth. In his argument he said, “The great complexity of political conditions makes it practically impossible for the same governmental organ to be entrusted in equal degree with the discharge of both politics and administration.” He called for a powerful, central bureaucracy, insulated from political control and equipped with expert authority to enact and enforce regulations.
Frederick Taylor, a mechanical engineer by trade, was the next Progressive Era intellectual leader who continued the efficiency movement. Taylor was searching for a way to improve industrial efficiency and was the first to turn the focus inward toward to the management class. He shifted Public Administration theory to focus on the managing and organizing within the public (as well as the private) sector. He is considered the father of
Scientific Management. Taylor recognized the need for labor-management cooperation, for controlling costs, and analyzing work methods. In 1911, he published The Principles of Scientific

Management. The application of science to business problems, and the use of time-study methods in standard setting and the planning of work, was pioneered by Taylor. Taylor worked with factory managers and from the success of these discussions wrote several works proposing the use of wage-contingent performance standards based on scientific time study. At its most basic level time studies involved breaking down each job into component parts, timing each part and rearranging the parts into the most efficient method of working. By counting and calculating,
Taylor wanted to transform management, which was essentially an oral tradition, into a set of calculated and written techniques. This also became known as Taylor’s Principle or Taylorism.
Taylor placed emphasis on the content of a fair day’s work, and sought to maximize productivity irrespective of the physiological cost to the worker. For example, Taylor thought unproductive time usage to be the deliberate attempt of workers to promote their best interests and to keep employers ignorant of how fast work could be carried out. This instrumental view of human behavior by Taylor prepared the path for human relations to supersede scientific management in terms of literary success and managerial application. This began to see application later in Public Administration and included Taylor’s theory of “one best way.” He believed that his methods of scientific analysis would lead to the discovery of the ‘one best way’ to do things and /or carrying out an operation.
In 1922, Max Weber, a German historian and sociologist, argued that all institutions have fallen under the control of large bureaucracies whose expertise is essential to the management of contemporary affairs. To Weber, bureaucracy constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized, and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies were necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency, and eliminate favoritism. Weber defines an ideal for bureaucracy, characterized by an elaborate hierarchical division of labor directed by explicit rules impersonally applied, staffed by fulltime, lifetime, professionals, who do not in any sense own the means of administration, or their jobs, or the sources of their funds, and live off a salary, not from income derived directly from the performance of their job.
Through his study, Weber developed the Central Tenets of Bureaucracy. This list of standards dictates how a bureaucracy should function.
1.
Regular activities required in a bureaucracy are distributed in a fixed way as official duties.
2.
Authority to give commands is distributed in a stable way and is delimited by rules.
3.
There are principles of hierarchy and levels of graduated authority.
4.
The management of the office is based on written documents.
5.
Office management presupposes expert training.
6.
Official activity demands the full attention of the official.
7.
There are stable rules that can be learned on how to manage the office.
8.
Knowledge of the rules represents a special technical learning.
Weber’s work was not translated and made available in the US until 1947.
While these previous theorists started to bring attention to Public Administration as an academic discipline, Luther Gulick was the first to codify it as a self-contained discipline with its own separate values, rules, and methods. Gulick believed that adherence to a core set of management principles would help organizations achieve optimum performance in working toward their goals. He developed six facets of an effective organization: 1. Division of work 2.

Coordination of Work 3. Organizational patterns 4. Interrelation of systems of departmentalization. 5. Coordination by ideas. 6. Change. These principles of coordination morphed into what we know today as POSDCORB (planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting). This list was designed to call attention to the various functional elements of work of a chief executive.
Gulick was also an early writer on the subjects of human relations and leadership. In his
1937 seminal article “The Papers of Administration” he says that governments are made of human beings, run by human beings and their main job is helping, controlling and serving human beings. He considers human beings as the major and essential variables for understanding the nature of Public Administration today and into the future. In this same article, he also talks about the theme of leadership saying that management of the future looks more like leadership and less like authority as the primary means of coordination. Much of Gulick’s work was featured in the
Brownlow Commission of 1937 that promoted economy and efficiency.
These five authors comprise what is known as classical public administration. Next we move into the behavioral approach to public administration and the hierarchical model. The
Behavioral approach studied the actual behavior of people in organizations; is multidisciplinary; and uses scientific methods to describe intent. Follet, Mayo and Barnard are early theorists of this movement and Simon built upon their works.
Mary Parker Follet was the first to advocate a different viewpoint regarding empowerment of the worker. She is well known is organizational theory literature and was part of the early movement away from the positivist paradigm in public administration. In her work, she highlights the importance of two-way communication and respect to the effectiveness of meeting organizational goals. This helped her to develop a management philosophy based on individual motivation and group problem solving.
Constructive conflict was one of the theories discussed in Follet’s 1924 book, Creative
Experience . Follet believed that collective bargaining was a divisive process that emphasizes differences, rather than common purpose, and one that ultimately results in compromise, rather than an integrative solution focused on that common purpose and goals. She conceptualized effective management to be "power with" rather than "power over" others as the key to social progress and business success. Follett advocated employee empowerment, constructive use of conflict in labor–management relations, and flatter organizational structures. Follett believed that harmony could be achieved from the proper use of conflict (a theory that was politically incorrect for in its era and even incomprehensible in an era dominated by men who believed the purpose of conflict was to vanquish the other party). She believed there were four means of conflict resolution: voluntary submission of one party; struggle and victory of one party over another; compromise; and her favored "integration," which in involved finding a solution that satisfied both parties without compromise or domination.
Elton Mayo (1933) is known as the founder of the human relations movement and was most famous for his work on the Hawthorne Studies at the Western Electric Company where he examined the relationship between work environment and productivity. He carried out a number of investigations to look at ways of improving productivity, for example changing lighting conditions in the workplace. What he found however was that employees worked harder if they received added attention, if they thought that the managers cared about their welfare, and if supervisors paid special attention to them and their work. Where norms of cooperation and higher output were established because of a feeling of importance, Mayo found that physical conditions or financial incentives had little motivational value. He concluded that people's work

performance is dependent on both social issues and job content. Organizations that do not pay sufficient attention to people and cultural variables are consistently less successful than those that do. He also coined the term “Hawthorne Effect” which is the confounding that occurs if individuals alter their behavior because they know they are being studied.
The systems approach to organizational theory was created in 1938 by Charles Barnard in his work The Functions of the Executive. In it he proposed that organizations were cooperative systems in which the functions of the executive were to maintain a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of the individual. Barnard believed it was of critical importance to have willing cooperation in organizations. He is credited with three contributions to the literature of organizational theory: 1. Organizations are systems and need to be studied as systems 2.
Organizations by their nature are cooperative structures with both formal and informal structure.
3. The leader of an organization needs to establish a ‘moral code’ and to referee disputes.
Barnard also formulated two interesting theories: one of authority and the other of incentives.
Both are seen in the context of a communication system.
Post World War II Public Administration was reshaped by Herbert Simon through his writing on crisis decision making. He was one of the most influential social scientists of the 20 th century. With a background in cognitive psychology, Simon paid particular attention to how people make decisions. In 1946 Simon attacked the principles approach to management as often being inconsistent and inapplicable in his article, The Proverbs of Administration , namely,
Gulick’s idea of POSDCORB. In this paper, Simon says that for almost every principle one can find an equally plausible and acceptable contradictory principle. These proverbs suggested the best ways of organizing and structuring large government agencies.
In his classic Administrative Behavior from 1947, Simon again criticized the principles approach to management. Like Barnard, Simon advocated a systems approach to administration and the study of decision making. He encouraged managers to abandon a single-minded focus structure and replace it with concern for behavior of individuals and groups. Employees who would agree with these new goals would have better rate of success. This led to Simon’s theory of bounded rationality. This hypothesis said that people are nearly, but not fully, rational, so that they cannot examine every possible choice available to them, but instead use simple rules of thumb to sort among the alternatives that happen to occur to them.
In 1948, Dwight Waldo published The Administrative State . In it, Waldo argued that administrators were underpinned by professional and political bureaucracies and that scientific management and efficiency were not the core functions of a legitimate government bureaucracy, but rather it should be service to the public. Waldo’s central themes of participation, decentralization, and representative bureaucracy showed that it was less a science, and more a political theory. Waldo also took the politics-administration dichotomy to task saying that public servants hold political positions that require more than merely implementing policy most efficient means of achieving set by elected officials.
Waldo was the first theorist to insist that analysts see administration in terms of its environment because it enables us to understand differences in administration between different societies which would be inexplicable if we were limited to viewing administration analytically in terms of the universals of administration itself. In other words, similar administrative acts can be performed differently in different cultures. The central theme of Waldo’s work is the

importance of history with the most important lesson being the techniques of administration are at the center of the political-government evolution.
Charles Lindblom’s most influential work was his 1959 essay “The Science of Muddling
Through.” In it, he attacked the rational models of decision making in government and discussed the incremental nature of public administration. This work highlights the challenges faced with reforming government, in that incremental adjustments are the best option for outcomes, and the most efficient means of achieving these outcomes for government as a whole. Lindblom suggested that planning should be incremental, opportunistic, and pragmatic. Planning in the real world is not rational and comprehensive but disjointed and incremental. This means that problems are solved through a series of policies at different points in time, rather than all at once.
Aaron Wildavsky was a noted scholar on budgeting. He is associated with the idea of incrementalism in budgeting, meaning that the most important predictor of a future political budget is the prior one; not a rational economic or decision process undertaken by the state. To manage risk, you need a dual approach of anticipation and resilience. His book Politics of the
Budgetary Process (1964) highlighted the extent to which budgeting was a political and economic process rather than a mechanical one.
The writings of these three scholars led to the next paradigm shift, New Public
Administration. Under the direction of Waldo, young scholars gathered at the Minnowbrook
Conference in 1968 to critique American Public Administration for ignoring values and social equity and accepting the status quo. This is where the term New Public Administration was coined. This movement was designed to help public administrators cope with social turmoil of the 1960’s and 1970’s. It injected a new value into the profession, social equity. The basis of
New Public Administration is the rejection of neutrality of the administrator and the professional role of the administrator based on professional standards and as the advocate for the disenfranchised. The three most well-known writers from this era are Waldo, Lindblom and
Wildavsky. Writers of New Public Administration criticized value neutral, efficiency oriented, and descriptive features of behaviorism and pursued democratic values (from functionalism) such as social equity and being customer oriented.
Michael Lipsky’s 1980 work on the street level bureaucrat was a bottom-up perspective for organizational theory, public policy, and public administration. Lipsky looked at how certain public employees make policy judgments during transactional events with the citizen base. The important role of this person, who is at the bottom of the hierarchy, should not be overlooked according to Lipsky because often he/she had the most intimate knowledge of the clients, potential problems/fixes, and was the heart of the bureaucracy.
The 1980’s saw another paradigmatic shift in the field of public administration with the creation of New Public Management. NPM had five key elements.
1.
Small government through downsizing personnel, budget, and organizations.
2.
Deregulation through using the market mechanism in providing services.
3.
Outcome oriented evaluation to increase competition between sectors.
4.
A customer oriented approach by treating the citizens as clientele.
5.
Empowerment, responsibility, and openness.

This theory of reform of bureaucracies argued for the privatization of many government services so that they are provided by the market, creating competition among agencies and sub-agencies within the bureaucracy to stimulate a market, focusing on customer satisfaction (including surveys), and flattening administrative hierarchies to encourage more team-based activity and creativity.
Guy Peters wrote about six shared values of New Public Management which included analytic techniques, policy and decision making, contracting out, limiting the scope and reach of the government, renewed emphasis on public choice goals of economy and efficiency, and entrepreneurship. Peters’ was critical of New Public Management because he felt it failed to acknowledge political and sociopolitical values such as democracy and ethics. To him, citizens should be separate from government. People who consume services, not decide how they should be administered.
During this time period we also see the evolution of Public Choice Theory. Borrowing from neoconservative economic theory, this attempted to use economic tools to solve political problems. Its claim was that voters, politicians, and bureaucrats were mainly self-interested.
Public administration was wasteful and inefficient and private means needed to be replace government through privatization of all government activities. This was the basic principle of
Reaganomics.
In 1993 the National Performance Review (a Clinton initiative aimed at making bureaucracy more responsive) prompted the Reinventing Government movement. It emphasized empowerment and decentralization to enhance performance of government agencies by reducing red tape, putting customers first, and eliminating wasteful spending. Contracting out through public-private partnerships saw a rise in popularity during this period, but only where it cost less and performed better according to Osborne and Gaebler. In 1993 David Osborne and Ted
Gaebler published Reinventing Government in an attempt to empower government officials to bring business techniques to public service. They believed that a civil society couldn’t function effectively without an effective government. This bureaucratic reform adopted by the Clinton administration, emphasized empowerment and decentralization to enhance performance of government agencies.
Current theories of ethics, management and leadership are closely related. Discuss the intersections of those literatures.
There are many intersections in the literature between ethics, management, and leadership. One of the most obvious is the role of managers (leaders) and workers (followers).
Most discussions of leadership focus on the desired characteristics and behaviors of the individual who sits at the top of an organization and leads its articulation of a mission, and sets the goals to be achieved to fulfill the mission. Institutional leadership is important to the success of any organization in fulfilling its mission and achieving its goals; through the expression of individual leadership an organization finds its direction and moves forward.
This notion is the core of James MacGregor Burns’ (1978) classic definition of leadership. Leaders induce followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations—the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations—of both leaders and

followers. Successful leadership inspires the members of the organization to embrace shared values and to move together toward shared objectives.
How do theories of leadership influence the quality of public management?
To understand the influence of leadership on public management, we must start with an overview of the literature on the subject. The concept of leadership was first developed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Frederick Taylor’s scientific management in 1911 identified the distinction between managers and workers. Max Weber in 1922 (or 1946) created the “ideal type bureaucracy” which stated there are three types of social leaders: charismatic, traditional, and legal rationale (most stable). Gulick’s command approach (1937) rounds out some of the early public administration literature that touches on leadership. All three focused on control and power from the top, down and subordinates were under the submission of the leader.
The first time we start to see followership pop up in the literature is from Mary Parker
Follet in 1930 and Charles Barnard in 1968. They challenged the approach of the top down leadership model.
Selznick 1957
In 1961 Douglas McGregor wrote The Human Side of Enterprise. In it he proposed his
Theory X and Theory Y relating to leadership. Theory X was McGregor’s traditional view of management whereby it assumed that workers generally dislike work and must be forced to do their jobs (this later relates to Burns’ transactional leadership). Theory Y was a philosophy of management suggesting that under the right circumstances, people are fully capable of working productively and accepting responsibility for their work. This assumes people have a need to work and seek achievement and responsibility.
In 1978 James MacGregor Burns’ developed his classic definition of leadership. Leaders induce followers to act for certain goals that represent the values and the motivations, the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations, of both leaders and followers. In Leadership Burns introduced the concepts of transactional and transformational leadership.
Transactional leadership exhibits leaders who exchange tangible rewards for the work and loyalty of followers. Leadership is responsive and works within the organizational culture.
Employees achieve objectives through rewards and punishments set by the leader. This motivates followers by appealing to their own self-interest. It works because of economic exchange and establishes value of work.
Transformational leadership exhibits leaders who engage with followers, focus on higher order, intrinsic needs, and raise consciousness about the significance of specific outcomes and new ways in which those outcomes may be achieved. Leadership is proactive and works to change the organizational culture. Employees achieve objectives through higher ideals and moral values. Leadership motivates by encouraging the organizational culture to put group interests first. Transformational leadership is able to change the culture by thinking about the future. It emphasizes vision, mission, empowerment, trust and participation. It uplifts the follower to seek universal principles of liberty, justice, and equality.
There are four facets of transformational leadership.

1.
Idealized influence which establishes positive attitudes in employees toward each other, work, and themselves. There is charisma and risk-taking. The leader is a rolemodel.
2.
Intellectual stimulation, where leaders challenge their own assumptions and encourage new approaches.
3.
Inspirational motivation where leaders present clear vision which is creates a desirable future for employees.
4.
Individualized consideration where leaders consider each individual’s needs and abilities while supporting development and mentoring.
To Fred Fiedler (1987), stress is a key determinant of leader effectiveness. In stressful situations, leaders dwell on the stressful relations with others and cannot focus their intellectual abilities on the job. Thus, intelligence is more effective and used more often in stress-free situations. Fiedler concludes that experience impairs performance in low-stress conditions but contributes to performance under high-stress conditions. As with other situational factors, for stressful situations Fiedler recommends altering or engineering the leadership situation to capitalize on the leader’s strengths. Fiedler’s situational contingency theory holds that group effectiveness depends on an appropriate match between a leader’s style (essentially a trait measure) and the demands of the situation. Fiedler considers situational control the extent to which a leader can determine what their group is going to do to be the primary contingency factor in determining the effectiveness of leader behavior. Fiedler’s contingency model is a dynamic model where the personal characteristics and motivation of the leader are said to interact with the current situation that the group faces. Thus, the contingency model marks a shift away from the tendency to attribute leadership effectiveness to personality alone.
This relates a few years later to Douglas Kiel’s writing (1994) on chaos theory. Chaos is there and leaders need chaos and the observation of it to take action. The key is to look for underlying order and focus on it. He defines new leadership in relation to orientation and behavior saying that new leaders will be optimists, risk takers, and mission driven. New leaders will be able to handle multiple scenarios, constant evaluation, and focus on short term plans.
In 1988 Robert Behn published Leadership Counts: Lessons for Public Managers.
Behn’s analysis spans the spectrum of managerial tasks and examines elements of leadership, creating successful programs, and putting theory into practice. Leadership requires an idea of what you want to accomplish and a sense of how you plan to accomplish it.
David Carnevale in 1995 wrote about the trustworthiness of leaders. He said that ethical behavior is the creator of trust. Trust and ethics are both acts and are linked in the quality of individuals. Trust is about the attempt to be ethical. It must be observable and outsiders must know that if you have a job to do, you will do it. Trust is the basis of relationships with citizens, superiors, and peers and it holds an organization together. The problem with trust that is the general population doesn’t trust public organizations. The attempt to restore trust faces several barriers.

Joanne Ciulla (2002) believed in empowerment through sincerity, truth, and as a reciprocal moral agreement. She created the three facets of leadership in her book Ethics: The
Heart of Leadership. The included:
1.
The ethics of means (the moral relationship between leaders and followers)
2.
The ethics of person (self-interest)
3.
The ethics of ends (doing what will serve the greatest good)
Milner and Joyce (2005) created a normative model of leadership that included vision, strategic decision making, partnership, and organizational capacity-building. They also outlined lessons for public organization leaders. In public services leadership is important to clarify the strategic mission in order to make change. Leaders communicate the vision who can see possibility of change. Leaders need to be honest, have integrity and be inspiring. Leaders who express genuine interest in staff have more impact on followers. Leader need political skill to be successful leaders.
Does structure affect the operation of an organization? The simple answer is yes, but at a deeper level the answer may be “no”, or at least a highly qualified “maybe”. From a variety of theoretical standpoints structure is specifically intended to dictate operations
(practices, procedures); yet diametrically opposing theories have been presented as the
“solution” to organizational operations. What theories of organization can be applied to assert both a positive and a negative response to the effect of structure on organizational operations?
Public sector ethics has been taught from a variety of perspectives, but two schools of thought seem to be dominant; the “anti-corruption”, legalistic approach, and the normative approach. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each perspective. How would you teach ethics to public administrators to maximize the influence on behavior of those administrators?
The term “bureaucracy” has become a caricature of itself, a bumbling hierarchy more interested in rules than mission. Yet, no one has ever effectively refuted Weber’s assertion that bureaucratic structures are needed in a complex world. Weber was not a fan of hierarchical structures, merely resigned to their necessity. Over the last six decades a long literature has offered mechanisms, perspectives and organization processes to mitigate the
“problems” of bureaucracy. Citing that critical literature, develop an organizational model that accommodates both the strengths and weaknesses of bureaucracy.
Ralph Hummel argues in a long debate with Charles Goodsell that bureaucracy has negative results. How does this relate to what Goodsell has to say about civil service?
ALT VERSION: Ralph Hummel and Charles Goodsell have debated the effects and utility of bureaucracy. Explain the main points Hummel makes about the negative aspects of bureaucracy, and explain what position Goodsell takes in his polemic. Which is the most persuasive view? How do these two perspectives on bureaucracy and government affect and influence other theories of public administration?

What is bureaucracy? It’s an organization based on rationality, having a clearn division of labor, written rules, hierarchical lines of authority, and selection and promotion based on competence. How does bureaucratic influence impact government decisions? It is through the interaction between constitutionally mandated institutions and the bureaucracy.
Both Ralph Hummel and Charles Goodsell assess the state of bureaucracy: Hummel in his 1977 work The Bureaucratic Experience and Charles Goodsell in his 1983 book The Case for
Bureaucracy . Hummel is critical of bureaucracy and Goodsell sees it positively.
Hummel’s book contends that bureaucracy is dehumanizing. For example, it deals with cases instead of people and it focuses on efficiency at the expense of other human values, including the paradox of needs. These human needs are interrelated and bureaucracy only focuses on one need at a time, rather than the whole self. The example provided is a welfare mother receiving money to meet her cash needs but not caring about her need for dignity.
Life in bureaucracy is radically different from life in regular society. There are unique social, cultural, psychological, linguistic, cognitive and political pressures and there is often conflict between each of these. These pressures shape the bureaucrat’s life and determine what he or she will become. Hummel believes that bureaucrats must ignore the broader dimensions of the human situation because the underlying principle of bureaucratic organization demands a rational division of labor that focuses only on narrow aspect of a series of situations with widely varying degrees of human complexity. To be functional in bureaucracy, administrators must be brainwashed into new norms, become dependent rather than self-oriented, learn a new language, submit to power, and lose empathy. Bureaucratic culture frees them from concerns about values.
Hummel contends that this leads to bureaucrats who know a great deal about a specific task, but not much about the totality of what they do. Hierarchy leads bureaucrats to seek impersonalized goals rather than helping the actual person in a bureaucratic encounter. Hummel then believes that this extends outside of the professional work into personal lives because bureaucracy changes the way human beings relate to one another as social beings. Bureaucracy replaces ordinary social interaction.
Hummel blames this impersonalization on Taylor’s theory of scientific management. The hierarchical structure of scientific management remains entrenched in our thinking about organizations. The continuing priority on organizational control, the divide of employees into workers and managers, and the use of hierarchical structure are part of most modern government organizations. Taylor’s “one best way” made bureaucracy more like a machine and less capable of treating citizens as more than just a case number.
There seem to be some problems with his argument. Because bureaucracy is assumed to be dehumanizing, it would stand to reason that all bureaucrats are in denial and suffer from a false consciousness. He offers little evidence that clients are either unhappy with the services they receive or their desire for alternate arrangements. He also makes expertise almost a negative quality by saying that expertise allows a bureaucrat to cloak their actions, but Goodsell would say that could also allow them to make positive changes. Lastly, Hummel accuses bureaucrats of being out of touch with those that they serve. Broadly, that’s a very difficult statement to prove.
There are also many strengths in his argument. He shows potential problems with the concept of dehumanizing encounters. He shows how bureaucratic language can distort situations.
He is also a voice for the frustrated bureaucrats who must deal with large numbers and impossible situations without adequate funding or support.
Goodsell advances arguments against a number of commonly held charges (many by
Hummel) made about bureaucracy and does it with a variety of data. His thesis is that there is a

gap between bureaucracy’s reputation and its track record. He cites citizen satisfaction studies to show that people are generally happy with public agency performance and that it compares well with private counterparts. This combats the idea that bureaucrats are poor performers. As far as bureaucrats being inflexible power seekers, he again cites studies that show bureaucrats as being innovative when addressing problems. He rejects the accusation that bureaucrats are elitist and racist by showing that there is more diversity in public sector than the private. Goodsell cites multiple studies of bureaucrats enjoying their work to show that the bureaucratic personality is far healthier than portrayed by Hummel and other critics.
One of the most often cited arguments against government is that bureaucracy is too big.
Goodsell’s argument here is more subjective, but shows growth is not out of control. He links the swelling of bureaucracy to the growth of public demand. When services are suggested for cutting, there is a public outcry. Goodsell’s downfall in his argument may be his optimism about the state of bureaucracy. He is very accepting of public perceptions about bureaucratic performance.
Supporters of Goodsell’s work agree that there is damage done to public service and agencies by constant attack of bureaucracy. This drives good people out and makes it difficult to retain talent or recruit talent. To these supporters, democracy depends on bureaucracy and its support of the individual as well as the citizenry as a whole.
A point that perhaps both Goodsell and certainly Hummel don’t cover in as much detail as possible is political interference with the bureaucracy. Osborne & Gaebler start to cover this in
Reinventing Government where they say that many of the supposed failures of government are due to restraints placed upon the bureaucracy.
Hummel and Goodsell’s argument influences the writings of the reinventing government movement. This bureaucratic reform adopted by the Clinton administration, emphasized empowerment and decentralization to enhance performance of government agencies. The gist of
“reinventing government” is that government can become more efficient and effective if it acts more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic. To be efficient is to produce the same intended result with less time.
Which is the more persuasive view?
What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of qualitative versus quantitative research?
(Accuracy, comprehensive, access, etc.) What is the optimal use of the two basic types of research in public administration?
Although Public Administration has not always been comfortable with the notion, the discipline now acknowledges the influence of politics on public management practices.
Discuss how politics contributes both positively and negatively to management practice.
Many argue that ethics is relative; that, because the divergent cultural perspectives of the persons involved and the variability in the “situation” encountered, there is no underlying and unifying ethical perspective. Discuss.
Ethics in public administration has no system treatise. It is implausible to have one since its scope is ambiguous, ideas from which it would be based are unreliable, and its facets are too complex. Public morality, one of its subjects, is a complicated issue. Public morality concerns decisions made and action taken directed toward the good of collectivity or the public.

What is intriguing about it is that not all decisions or actions undertaken in behalf of the public interest are moral if seen in an individual’s point of view. To make the point clear, let’s take capital punishment as an example. With an enabling death penalty law, the government can sentence a rapist to death. It is justified as an act of duty to preserve the peace and order situation in the nation
But if you’re one of the relatives of the rape victim and you want to take revenge, can you punish the rapist by killing him with your own hands? Yes you can. But, by doing so, you’ll commit homicide or murder. The society dictates that it’s morally wrong.
To better understand ethical behavior in public administration, Waldo created a map or an outline of the ethical obligations in which public administration must respond to.
Public administrators, due to the fact that they are employed in the government, have ethical obligations more complicated than that of any ordinary citizen. Waldo cited a dozen of these ethical obligations that confront public administrator from day-to-day. These obligations are as follows:
Obligation to Constitution
Obligation to Nation or Country
Obligation to Democracy
Obligation to Organizational-Bureaucratic norms
Obligation to Profession/Professionalism
Obligation to Family and Friends
Obligation to Self
Obligation to Middle range collectivities
Obligation to Public Interest or General Welfare
The crux of the matter is, with these conflicting obligations, the administrator must decide which one to adhere to. Which one must he prioritize, his responsibility to the country or to his family? Mind-boggling isn’t it.
Note that the list is not fixed. It can undergo some revisions—like addition of new items, removal of old ones or division of broader items to smaller parts, etc. Therefore, the list may go from either twelve to twenty-four or to six. The items are also not arranged according to order of importance on the grounds that every individual has different degrees of priority on each item.
Public bureaucrats are always seen in a bad light. But, we should also consider how difficult their tasks are. They need to confront decision-making, implementation, public budgeting and the like every day.
Let us also consider how they manage to respond to conflicting ethical issues with a dozen or more demands laid down on their noses. It will really cause a headache on which one to prioritize. Take for instance, an increase in minimum wage would make the laborers elated but would cause resentment from the business sector. The administrator will be torn between the interests of the workers and the business sector.
Public administrators also face public morality at odds with private morality. How will a public administrator manage to carry out a policy in conflict with his deeply held belief? This is

what happened to Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York. Although a devout Catholic, he carried out an abortion policy of the government. His justification is “it is by oath to the constitution that
Cuomo defines his public obligation when it conflicts with private morality.”
We must give credit to the ability of public administrators to handle situations like these.
Very few people have the strength to handle moral complexities in the government. In spite of the fact that the field of ethics is vague, administrators still tolerate this extraordinary condition.
Discuss the impact upon the field of public administration of the "businesslike government" and the "politics-administration dichotomy" emphasis suggested by Wilson and others. To what extent is each of those ideas relevant to today's public organizations?
To what extent are they unintentionally weakening the efficacy of the public sector? What are their specific manifestations in terms of the current political agenda?
What is the difference between virtual and actual representation? Which is most important for a public administrator? Defend your choice and provide references to the literature. In addition, include who the main scholars are in this discussion.
Early translations of the work of Max Weber implied that he was an advocate of bureaucracy. Later translation suggested that he studied bureaucracy as an organizational type, but was less convinced of its ultimate efficacy for the public sector. Discuss his views.
John Rohr many years ago drew the distinction between “high road” and “low road” to distinguish between ethical approaches that emphasize normative and those that emphasize legal compliance. Using the broad literature on ethics, discuss the role of both normative and legal approaches in defining and understanding ethics in government.
The literature on ethics dates as far back as ancient Greece with the writings of Aristotle in the 300 BC era. Aristotle had many beliefs about ethics, but at the heart he believed in learning, experience, and action. Praxis, one of his most famous teachings, embodies these three beliefs. Praxis is the inter-relationship between theory and practice. Theorizing informs practice and practice affirms theory. To Aristotle, ethics is what we do. Action is not just thinking, but creating a good living. Ethics is learned by doing it in relation to praxis, but learning must be involved at the theoretical level. Aristotle did have issues with teaching ethics. First, learning comes from the teaching of experts, yet how do we know someone is ethical. Second, is a theory of ethics sufficient? Third, experience is vital not only to act, but also to judge. Lastly, ethics is not imparting a particular skill, but rather a way of thinking that controls a way of acting.
Aristotle saw politics as the action piece of ethics because the government is responsible to make conditions suitable for citizens to be able to reach contentment, because this is a declaration of social well-being. Aristotle called this opportunity to reach happiness and contentment ethical or moral virtue. To become the best human being possible one must achieve justice through intent, deed, and action; achieve prudence through the pursuit of excellence, and wisdom through experience and knowledge seeking. To Aristotle it’s not about the giver, it’s about the recipient.
That’s justice.

In 1795 Immanuel Kant wrote Perpetual Peace , the next step toward our modern concept of ethics. Kant was known for treasuring intellectual and moral integrity. He believed that each person has intrinsic value and should not make decisions based on utility or the end result. Kant was responsible for the theory of the categorical imperative and deontological ethics.
Deontological ethics is a system of ethics based on the writings of Kant where the morality or rightness of any decision is judged by an examination of the nature of the action and the will of the agents rather than on the goals or outcomes of that action. This is where we get the saying,
“the ends don’t justify the means.” The categorical imperative judges as an act as immoral if the rule that made it ok cannot be a rule all humans can follow. Universal principles hold true in every situation and morality is known through natural law. Kant believed it took courage to use your own understanding and maturity to be able to make your own decisions. Kant also introduced the concept of Transcendentalism saying free will is essential to ethical behavior and to understanding what is good.
Although they were nearly two millennia apart, we can learn shared themes from Kant and Aristotle in regards to ethics. First, public values are paramount. They are the basis for social interaction. Second, the action is a very important, if not “the” most important part of ethics.
Ethics is an act, not a thought. Lastly, ethical actions are not the easy path. It takes courage to make right decisions.
In the late 1700’s early 1800’s we see the birth of utilitarianism with the writings of
British social reformer Jeremy Bentham. Utilitarianism followed the logic of teleological ethics, an ethical theory that holds that the ends or consequences of an act determine whether an act is good or evil. It placed primary value on the outcomes or consequences of our actions rather than our moral intentions. Bentham’s belief was that the seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain governed most human behavior. Pain was considered evil and the ultimate end is an existence full of pleasure and free of pain. This was in contradiction to Aristotle’s teachings.
Bentham designated seven dimensions of pleasure and pain. Intensity, duration, certainty, remoteness, fecundity (will similar sensations follow), purity, and extent (how many people will experience either pleasure of pain). Utilitarian ethics cared about ethics by numbers using pleasure/pain calculus and benefit/cost analysis. Bentham also coined the greatest happiness principle saying that people must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason.
In 1863, Bentham’s student John Stuart Mill expanded on his teachings, but focused more on the quality of pleasure by saying that some kids of pleasure are more desirable than others. Mill said that intellectual and moral pleasures (higher pleasures) are superior to more physical forms of pleasure (lower pleasure). This is in direct contrast to Bentham’s statement of quantity of pleasure, being equal; games are as good as poetry. Mill saw added value in higher art forms like opera, poetry, theatre and music and simple games as not as important. Why is this important? Because this starts to relate to the ideas of management practice. Bentham believed it was imperative upon society to devote more resources to propagating lower pleasures because they serve a higher amount of people, where Mill believed in extending resources to higher pleasures because they receive a higher rate of pleasure.
Interestingly, Mill and Bentham both had strong feelings about social reform. Bentham was a champion for women and for homosexuals (although this work wasn’t printed until 1931), and Mill supported legislation that would have granted extra voting power to university graduates based on their better position to judge what is best in society. Mill believed that education itself qualified them to have more influence in government.

A discussion about ethics wouldn’t be complete without Waldo, Weber, and Walzer. He may be best known for his 1948 seminal work The Administrative State, but in Dwight Waldo’s lesser known essay “Public Administration and Ethics: a Prologue to a Preface.” Waldo asserted that moral or ethical behavior in public administration is a chaotic, complicated matter. He created an ideological framework of ethics in Public Administration. It was comprised of The
Great Society, business civilization (corporatism), urban, American constitutional limitations, technology and science, specialization, progress, and gospel of efficiency. To better understand ethical behavior in public administration, Waldo created a map or an outline of the ethical obligations in which public administration must respond to. Public administrators, due to the fact that they are employed in the government, have ethical obligations more complicated than that of any ordinary citizen. Waldo cited a dozen of these ethical obligations that confront public administrator from day-to-day. These obligations are as follows: Obligation to Constitution,
Obligation to Nation or Country, Obligation to Democracy, Obligation to Organizational-
Bureaucratic norms, Obligation to Profession/Professionalism, Obligation to Family and Friends,
Obligation to Self, Obligation to Middle range collectivities, and Obligation to Public Interest or
General Welfare. Max Weber introduced his ideal-typical model to explain how structures affect what you do and why you do it by classifying events by human interactions on organizational structures. Michael Walzer’s 1971 work Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands said that actions required by public officials are not required in everyday life. To do the right thing for the public, an official must violate private morality. Politicians refuse absolutism, but don’t deny the moral dilemma.
In 1978 we saw works from two important ethics writers; John Rohr and Sissela Bok. In
Bok’s seminal work Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, she outline a social model for decision making: consult your conscience, seek alternatives, and conduct conversations. Bok defines lying as an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement and posed the question, why do we lie? She argues that there are seven reasons we lie.
1.
To save face
2.
To get out of trouble
3.
With intent
4.
Because we see no harm will be done
5.
To avoid hurting someone
6.
Because it’s their own fault
7.
The benefits outweigh the costs.
Bok’s principle of veracity stated that not all lies are condemned; however they must be proven to be a necessary last resort. When we deceive, we are coercing others to act in a way they wouldn’t have acted if they had known the truth.
Bok’s justification model says that lying must be justified by the liar who accepts responsibility for proving lying was required and says to ask:
1.
Are there alternative actions to the lie?
2.
What is the context of the lie?
3.
What good or bad will result from your lie?
4.
What are the effects of your lie on the general practice of truth-telling?
In addition, Bok gave guidance on whistleblowing, saying it was have immediacy and specificity and must have the possibility of concerted public response. If someone is considering whistleblowing they should know the proper criteria, make sure this is for the best benefit of the public, minimize the breach of loyalty, and compensate for bias.

In John Rohr’s 1978 essay “Ethics for Bureaucrats”, Rohr establishes his theory on high and low road ethics. Low road ethics places an understanding of what not to do in order to steer clear of trouble. This approach does not assist an employee in providing a standard for what is truly ethical behavior. High road ethics, on the other hand, stipulates that the basis of decisions upon a pursuit for social equity is based on political philosophy and humanistic psychology.
In 1983 Peter French gave legitimacy to the use of theory in making ethical decisions. He said ethical theories can serve many significant functions in the development of reasoning skill.
They expose options and justifications of behavior that night otherwise escape serious consideration. A mature, moral person holds a set of moral beliefs, make moral judgments that are derived from those moral beliefs, and can provide convincing arguments in defense if challenged.
In 1999 Rohr published Public Service: Ethics and Constitutional Practice. This work took what he knew best (the Constitution) and combined it with his theories on ethics. To Rohr, ethical practice demands an immersion in the specifics of our constitutional tradition, and he offers a guide to attaining a greater sense of those constitutional principles that can be translated into action. For civil servants, the Constitution is the supreme symbol of political morality and constitutional issues are addressed by them every day. Rohr challenges public servants to reflect on constitutional principles and events to learn and apply them to the decisions they make.
Glenn Tinder in 1995 wrote about tolerance and its role in ethics. Tinder believed that there can be no community where the truth cannot be told. Community is realized in the act of sharing the truth. Such sharing is impossible in absence of sharing. Tinder developed three elements of civility in his work Tolerance and Community including historical autonomy, comprehensive communality, and exemplary action.
In 2001, Gueras & Garofalo published Practical Ethics in Public Administration. They understood the challenges of being a public administrator, especially the ability to confront ethical issues. This is partially because ethics play a different role in the public sector than in the private sector. The work of a public agency expresses more directly the values of the society as a whole because they are created and funded to perform a function that the society deems important enough to merit government attention.
Gueras and Garofalo believed there were five general ethical theories: relativism, teleology, deontology, virtue theory, and intuitionism. Relativism meaning that there are no objective moral truths. People’s views are relative to their upbringing, education, and experiences. What is deemed right is merely what you have been trained to see as right. Virtue theory ethics is an approach that deemphasizes rules and consequences and places the focus on the kind of person who is acting and their personal character. Intuition based ethics solve dilemmas by following intuition to determine right action from wrong action. Gueras and
Garofalo created a system of ethics called the Unified Ethic that combined teleology, deontology, intuitionism, and virtue ethics. By combining the best traits of each theory, a framework is created to make informed and well-reasoned decisions. Integrating such a framework into an organizational culture would lower stress on public administrators because they could have confidence in the legitimacy of the framework.
More current leadership literature comes from Rosemary O’leary and Donald Menzel.
O’Leary’s 2006 text The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government describes actions of career public servants who work against the wishes of their supervisors. This form of dissent is

typically carried out by those who are dissatisfied with the actions of public organizations, programs, or people, but who typically, for strategic reasons, choose not to go to the public with their concerns. These tensions between career bureaucrats and political appointees yield immense ethical management challenges. If channeled appropriately, these tensions can tell us something is awry.
Donald Menzel’s 2007 work Ethics Management for Public Administrators outlined five points on the state of ethics in America:
1.
Scandal is often a catalyst for ethics reform.
2.
Ethics are not just an issue in America and what works here won’t necessarily work everywhere.
3.
“One Shot” intervention strategies will not work for organizations with integrity.
4.
Rule based approaches are an insufficient and may do more harm than good.
5.
There is no “silver bullet” or single managerial tool that can be used to achieve an ethical organization.
Is public management different from business management? Graham Allison said that they are the same “in all the unimportant ways”. Yet, first scientific management, then the generic management movement and now the “new public management” presume the opposite. Discuss both sets of literature, then, explore how an adherence to one or the other of the two views would affect practice.
From Woodrow Wilson‘s call in 1887 for a field of study called administration based upon the principles of business to the Reinventing Government Movement of the 1990‘S and
NPM, public administration can trace its link in the intellectual history of the field to business administration.
Woodrow Wilson, with public administration in mind, stated: The field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics; it at most points stands apart even from the debatable ground of constitutional study. It is a part of the life of society, only as machinery is part of the manufactured product. Wilson, in his essay The Study of
Administration (1887) links the establishment of a science of administration to the study of it. It was essential, he stated, that it was the ―object of administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and secondary, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost; either of money or energy. By focusing on the efficiency aspect and the expense of money in this statement, Wilson is setting the stage of administrative study to mirror the study of business. The statement itself sets up the declaration Wilson later makes that the ―field of administration is a field of business.
Frederick Taylor, the pioneer who developed time and motion studies and is generally considered to be the father of scientific management provided the impetus around which classical organization theory would evolve according to Shafritz and Hyde in Classics of Public
Administration. Scientific management was about efficiency and at its inception was about preserving effort. The transfer of Taylor‘s principles to the field of public administration is

another example of the field adapting techniques and concepts from the world of business to governance.
One of the four assumptions of Leonard White‘s Introduction to the Study of Public
Administration (1926) was that the study of administration should start from the base of management rather than the foundation of law. White, in that assumption about the study of administration from his text, lays a foundation for the basis of administration and lays that foundation at the feet of the field of management. By doing so, and thus impacting the study of the field of public administration from the beginning, White helps loosely connect the field of business and administration through the link of tenets rooted in techniques of management.
Another example of the study of administration‘s connection to the field of business is the adoption by the field of public administration of the work of Mary Parker Follett whose contributions on how organizations work in The Giving of Orders, gave insight into the actions of the individual in the organization. For example, Parker Follett, writing in a voice intended for the business community states: Business administration has often to consider how to deal with the dissociated paths in individuals or groups, but the method of doing this successfully have been developed much further in some departments than in others. We have hardly recognized this as part of the technique of dealing with employees, yet the clever salesman knows that it is the chief part of his job.
Graham T. Allison, in Public and Private Management: Are They Fundamentally Alike in
All Unimportant Respects?, provides an insightful analysis that frames the overall perspective of public management and thus, New Public Management by looking at similarities and differences in public and private management. Allison takes the term management to mean the organization and direction of resources to achieve a desired result. The challenge for both the public and private manager is to integrate the numerous aspects of decision-making so as to achieve results.
Allison states that private management success is due, in large part, to an increase in the articulation of a general management point of view and the willingness of managers to absorb that point of view and act upon it in their official functions. Conversely, public management has had to battle the perception that ―common sense alone is enough to achieve acceptable results.
In fact, Allison borrows from Rufus Miles in ―
The Search for Identity of Graduate Schools in
Public Affairs ‖ when he states: The skills of effective management require a good deal of uncommon sense and uncommon knowledge.
Thus, the essence of public and private management is similar. It requires a desire for the acquisition of knowledge and the exercise of that knowledge. The difference, as Allison points out, is the context in which the decisions are made.
The National Performance Review (NPR) was an attempt to act on ideas relevant to public service as the operation of government. It was an effort to overhaul the Federal government and instill mechanisms of administrative management that focused on initiative and empowerment.
The essence of The National Performance Review was to identify what it called performance deficits within the federal sector. It faces what it called the central problem facing government today: How it does its business. The National Performance Review bridged a gap between public administration and business administration. It did so by stating that it is time for government to do more, to treat taxpayers like customers. It identified four key principles by which The
Performance Review chose to define its perspective:
1. Cutting red tape
2. Putting customers first

3. Empowering employees to get results
4. Cutting back to basics: producing better government for less. (Ibid.)
It is clear that public administration as a field searched for beginning in the middle of
1880‘s. The onus for the beginning was reform and providing the ladder up was the practice of business. From Woodrow Wilson in 1887 to The Brownlow Report in 1937 that fifty-year period has come to be known as the period orthodoxy, according to people like Dwight Waldo and
Howard, McCurdy. It is the orthodoxy which created a bond between the scholarships of public administration and business administration in order to articulate the praxis of public administration. It was an orthodoxy looking to move forward as the running of government grew and changed. The scholarship of business in a silly way, lent the orthodoxy of public administration the shoes so that it could keep up with those running. A new, mini or quasiorthodoxy, such as the Reinventing Movement of the 1990‘s, returns public administration to the field of business in order to seek guidance and ground theory in practice with the hope of meeting new challenges.
By tracing this discussion of public administration/business administration relationship it is important to note how much that public administration owes business administration for essence of how the scholarship of public administration came to be defined. Until Paul Appleby, in Big Democracy (1945), declared that ―government is different‖ much of what was considered good for business was good for public administration. In part, perhaps, because the beginnings of the field as a line of inquiry declared, through Woodrow Wilson, that ―the field of administration is a field of business.
Does postmodern public administration offer necessary answers or methods of dealing with multi-cultural social issues? Why or why not and how? What would you add to contemporary theory to enhance its relevance?
It is difficult to have one agreed upon definition for postmodernism. Jay White recognizes the diversity of themes and ideas it entails and therefore generally defines
Postmodernism as ―the recognition that the Enlightenment‘s promises of universal truth, justice and beauty would not be realized in modern society‖ (White, 1999, pg.153). Some of the major postmodern philosophers are Jacques Lacan, Michael Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Richard
Rorty, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard (Fox & Miller, 1998). White states that four major themes of Postmodernism have direct influences on public administration. First, there is a question of PA legitimacy due to the lack of a grand narrative. Second, linguistics constitutes the basis to all claims of knowledge. Third, the poststructuralist question whether valid knowledge is attainable and fourth is the understanding that philosophy and science are conversations based on common linguistic characteristics of the inquirers. David Farmer states that ―postmodernism is skepticism, properly understood‖. Furthermore he argues that it: negates the core mind set of modernity. It denies the centered subject, the foundationalist and epistemological project, the nature and role of reason, macrotheory, grand narratives, and macropolitics. It speaks of the end of history, and it denies the distinction between reality and appearance (Farmer, 1995, pg.157).
While postmodernism rejects all moderns concepts it does not want to back to a premodern stage. It recognizes that there is no Archimedean point, any grand narratives and rejects logical positivism. Instead it acknowledges that linguistics constitutes the base to all knowledge, that every conversational community has their own local narrative, and the existence of multiple language games, which are ―forms of life through which we live and experience the world‖

(White, 1999, pg. 96). However this fragmented and disassociated state is not without its problems. Conflict arises when narratives conflict, for example war and anti war groups, or narratives fall apart, for example the end of the League of Nations. When this happens people are left in confusion and do not know what and who to believe. White and Adams argue that the public administration has always had traces of postmodernism, as scholars have always engaged in multiple discourses in attempt to formulate theory and make sense of the field. They admit that the postmodern condition leaves public administration researchers confused and conflicted and urge for interpretivism and critical theory as alternatives for theory building.
David Farmer (1995) projects that if public administration is enthralled with postmodernism, it will no longer exist as a field saying that in the postmodern situation, scientific inquiry will lose its status as a provider of epistemologically privileged information…Postmodernity does spell the end of disciplinary autonomy as the age of artificial academic boundaries finishes. The structure of public administration collapses as the walls between disciplines and specialties fall…Theorizing as it is known terminates.
Even though this might seem confusing and threatening to some, Farmer sees the resulting period of multiple discourses as an opportunity to push public administration thought beyond the grip of our unconscious mindset. As a summary it can be argued that postmodern public administration is everything contrary to orthodox thought. It is fragmented into multiple conversational groups. One can participate in any of those as long as one learns the rules of the language games within which postmodern public administration operates.
In addition, one can observe that modernity influence the field of PA through its instrumental rationality. Even though positivism, as a modern logic of inquiry has shaped the field and is still considered the mainstream in PA research, it has some serious limitations that decrease its ability to improve the field. This disability is shown clearly through applying the scientific principles in political situations where PA usually has in practice. This problem drew a particular framework in the field and created a main concept of politics-administration dichotomy which categorized the field into two major groups in terms of their views to the role of values in research.
Postmodernism could be the right treatment to solve the problems in PA. However, postmodern approach also has its own limitations that make it even problematic for PA.
Therefore, it sounds that the field needs to keep the canals of communication open between all the different contradictory research groups, especially modernists and postmodernists. The field needs the contributions and experiences of all the different logics of inquiries that aim to improve PA. According to Bogason (2001), postmodern analysis of public administration is no threat to mainstream research [positivism]. So mainstream researchers should stop ignoring it and instead actively discuss the challenges, realizing that the agenda is different from the traditional disagreement among researchers.
Postmodernism is generally considered to be a movement whereby there is recognition that the promises of the age of enlightenment (universal truth, justice) will not be realized within our time in modern society. Further, meaning concepts, views and thoughts can never be precisely defined. Thus, with no precise definition there is never any real truth. The challenge of postmodernism and implications for public administration are enormous. Jay White, in Taking
Language Seriously: A Narrative Theory of Knowledge and Use for public Administration, identified four themes of postmodernism which he states have a direct bearing on theory and practice of public administration:

First is the lack of a grand narrative to govern.... the second theme is the postmodern linguistic foundation of all forms of knowledge even scientific knowledge... the third theme is the poststructuralist question of the very status of knowledge in any discipline or field of endeavor… the fourth theme is the reconstruction of the logic of philosophy and science as a conversation based on common linguistic and practices shared among a group of inquiries
(White, 1998, p.67).
The four themes have a pertinent and direct bearing on the field of public administration research and practice. For example, Charles J. Fox and Hugh T. Miller, in Postmodern Public
Administration: Toward Discourse, suggest an alternate mode of administration for the public.
They ask: Lacking sovereign will legitimacy, top-down bureaucratic rule is petty autocracy.
Worse, the postmodern condition that we describe deprives the culture at large of any robust basis in shared reality from which the sovereignty of the whole people might be reasserted.
Increasingly we traffic in symbol without experiential referents.... What should we do next?
And they answer: Let‘s move away from hierarchical bureaucracy. No legitimate democratic input energizes it from the top. Let‘s move toward discourse, an inherently democratic structure of will formation. Now moving away from bureaucracy is no simple matter. We see our task as theorizing its transcendence. This requires, in turn, a kit bag of conceptual tools, some borrowed, and some re-forged for the task at hand. We call the kit bag constructivism (Fox and Miller,
1995, xv.)
Gerard Delanty, in Social Science - Beyond Constructivism and Realism , characterized constructivism as the maintenance that social reality is not something outside the discourse of science but partly constituted by science. ―In constructivism, the subject is an active agent as opposed to the passive conception of subjectivity in the value-free social science of positivism and hermeneutics‖ (Delanty, 1997, p.112).
Fox and Miller are suggesting a form of de-construction mixed with constructivism techniques. They suggest that the tools they offer are engineered to break down that aging rusting machine and the institutional parts of which it is composed (Fox and Miller, p. xv). However, they go further to suggest a form of constructionist technique by asking ―instead of looking at policy and administration processes as a series of power transactions between walled institutions, we propose instead an energy field conceptualization‖ (Ibid.). They base their question on
Habermas‘ ―ideal speech‖ discourse and call it ―warrants for discourse.‖ The end result of which is the formation of a model that is truly democratic in nature. The implications for public administration, according to Fox Miller, are participatory in nature. They suggest that ―to correct the inadequacies of the overhead democracy model by engaging the citizenry in direct participation‖ (Ibid., p.129). The measure of the success of direct participation in modes of citizen participation is judged by the distance that participation is from the discourse.
The greatest implication for the public administrator from a postmodernist perspective is that increased importance placed upon the administrator to listen actively. Fox and Miller term it proactive listening and suggest it as a responsibility. Further, they adapt an analogy, utilized by
Cam Stivers in Gender Images in Public administration: Legitimacy and the Administrative
State, and credited to Doug Morgan and Henry Kass to the role of the public administrator in a postmodern discourse that is of midwife. The image of the midwife is of a skilled and caring person who facilitates the emergence of new possibilities (Stivers, 1971, p.132). Fox and Miller suggest the analogy to define the role. That role is ―to facilitate the discourse by getting disparate subgroups to speak the language of the public interest‖ (Fox and Miller, p.158).

The postmodern implications for the scholarship of public administration might best be conveyed by the thoughts of Henry A. Giroux, in Towards a Postmodern Pedagogy . It is Giroux who suggests a ―border pedagogy‖ that would reject many of the traditional aims of education.
Education, for him, is a political process aimed at producing a democratic egalitarian society.
Giroux calls for a critical pedagogy that embraces a number of tenets - central to that notion is that a postmodern notion of difference is combined with a feminist emphasis on ―the primacy of the political.‖
Giroux is suggesting that by educators taking up the notion of the relationship between the personal and the political in a way that does not collapse the political into the personal ―but strengthens the relationship between the two so as to engage rather than withdraw from addressing those institutional forms and structures that contribute to racism, sexism and class exploitation
General Notes from Ethics
Ethics is a way to think about problems. Paths to solutions can be shaped by cultures, socially constructed behavior.
Core of ethics is survival (social). Acting out variations of what’s right.
We all have different backgrounds which lead to different moral codes.
Rules trump individual behavior.
Being ethical is looking for the least harmful choice that makes sense.
The goal of ethics is to do what’s right, not what’s good.
A lot of the problems in society come from making decisions based solely on the descriptions. Ethical judgment must come next.
Moral descriptors permit us to satisfice ethics and to find the first answer that seems workable.
Ethics is based on a social framework.
To Aristotle it’s not about the giver, it’s about the recipient. That’s justice.
Understanding is the exercise of wisdom. Ethics is in the understanding.
Theory------------ understanding---------- Judgment-------- practical application
What happens to you due to my actions is ethics. There is no individual center in ethics.
Ethics is about making right decisions. The themes of ethics in the public sector are law, justice, morality, responsibility, reason and social constructs.