Public Administration: An Art or a Science

At a first glance it seems easier to accept public administration as an art. It is just the administration of Government
affairs and for most part it does not follow the laws of Science like absence of normative value, predictability of
behavior and universal application. So, does that mean we cannot list it into a respectable category of scientific
subjects?

There are many authors who ferociously defended it and argued that public administration as an area of study is
indeed a Science. The earliest of them was Lorenz von Stein an 1855, a German professor from Vienna who said
that public administration is an integrated Science and viewing it just as administrative laws was a restrictive
definition.

In modern times, categorizing public administration as Science found favor with many, the most important one being
the father of American public administration, President Woodrow Wilson. We shall read more about the Wilsonian
view of public administration in the next article, however he mainly emphasized that the objective of administrative
study is to discover what government can properly and successfully do and how it can do those things with utmost
efficiency with least possible cost of money or energy.

After Wilson another important argument came from Frederick Taylor who wrote a book called The Principles of
Scientific Management (1911) in which he proposed to discover one best way of doing things/operation and thus save
on cost on time and energy.

Luther Gulick and L Urvick collectively published, Papers on the Science of Administration which reaffirmed its status
as a Science.

W F Willoughby stated that public administration like Science has certain fundamental principles which can be
generally applied and therefore it is a Science.

However, there still remain certain aspects to be established before public administration can be actually and in real
terms, be classified as a Science. The places of normative values in public administration should be clearly defined.

More efforts should be put in to understanding the human nature and dynamics at play in public administration. Lastly,
the principles of public administration should derive references from across the worlds, cultures, type of states etc to
make them more universal and free of cultural, religious and political biases.

The advent of the modern welfare state itself has added, to the changing approach to public administration. The kind
of activities and sphere of works have never been more varied and dynamic and there has been a never before
interest in actually improving the efficiency of the government.

Subject matter experts like Frederick Taylor have opened ways to exploration, experimentation, observation, collection
of data and analysis based on which principles and laws can be made. There are increasing number of authors like
Metcalfe, Fayol, Emerson, Follett, Mooney, and more recently Drucker etc who have written on the subjects of
administration.

In-fact Drucker wrote a book called “The Age of Discontinuity” and one of the chapters of the book called The
Sickness of Government became the basis of the New Public Management theory popular in 1980s which
emphasized the market oriented management of the public sector.

So, one can safely say that with the changing times and more and more studies carried out in the field of social
sciences, administration and human relations, the subject of public administration can no longer take the shelter
of art and would have to emerge stronger with relevant and fundamental principles like that of Science.

Approaches to Public Administration

We have come across a number of times during our exploration of the topic, that it is somewhat difficult to define
public administration in concrete terms. It has close association, interaction and influences from several fields of
studies like law, political and social science administrative science and human relations and even behavioral science
for that matter. One can easily infer that the approaches to study this field would also be as varied and as vast as the
subject matter itself. And indeed so, that there are many approaches to public administration as we shall read
about in consecutive articles. For the moment, we would take a step back and try and understand the reason behind
so many approaches to this field of study and why were they required.

Public administration as a serious subject which required scientific attention was first promulgated by Woodrow Wilson
and as we read in the Wilsonian vision of Public Administration he fiercely recommended that there should be more
scrutiny and debate and studies carried out in this area to make it more efficient and robust.

However, it was only during the beginning of the twentieth century that American Universities introduced Public
Administration as a subject of academic study influenced by L.D White’s important book called Introduction to the
Study of Public Administration. There were also attempts made by scholars to differentiate between politics and
administration, hence comparative study of two to understand Public Administration better came into existence.

Sometime later the Principles approach to public administration was introduced. This approach was influenced by W.
F. Willoughby’s work called Principles of Public Administration in 1927. His work emphasized that scientific study and
research of administration can help derive fundamental principles regarding the same. This approach was
championed by other authors and scholars like Fayol, Mooney, Lyndall, Urwick etc. So, resorting to scientific method
of exploring, researching, observing, recording, classifying etc was used to study Public Administration.

By this time, some important work had started happening in the areas of Human Relations by the likes of Elton Mayo,
his Hawthorne experiment threw interesting light on social and psychological forces in work situations. So the
importance of attitudes, feeling, sentiments and social relations, work group dynamics etc started influencing the vey
formal structure and way of working; present and preferred by the public organizations.

After the Second World War, behavioral sciences were quite a hot debate in the academics with a lot of research and
work carried out in the field. Herbert Simon’s Administrative Behavior and Robert Dahl’s, The Science of Public
Administration: Three Problems; critically questioned the inadequacies and limitations of the orthodox public
administration of the pre war days. Simon focused on the aspect of decision making in Public Administration and
stressed on the need to develop a robust and relevant administrative theory based on precise and logical study of
human behavior.

And recently with the advent of technology in every walk of life and a common consensus amongst authors and
scholars that both public and private administration are similar in many manner, the management science approach to
public management came into existence.

The newest approach is that of policy analysis approach since the Government is venturing into new areas and
different activities with increased involvement in welfare programs, the process of making public policies and its
analysis, the measurement of the output etc became the new areas of study for the scholars and subject matter
experts.

In the subsequent articles we shall dwell deeper into some of these approaches described above and see how they
shaped and influenced the study of Public Administration.

Extract of sample "The Scientific Approach and Its Impact on American Public Administration"

The paper 'The Scientific Approach and Its Impact on American Public Administration' is a delightful example of a
research proposal on politics.

Public administration is intended to aid the functions of governance by allowing an academic investigation into best
practices for implementation. Given the wide scope of public administration, its importance to any society is central
to ensuring good governance and the achievement of collective goals (Menzel and White). A number of different
approaches have been utilized over the years to bolster public administration outcomes including the scientific
approach. In comparison to other approaches, the scientific approach relies on the acquisition of facts through
organized research in order to bolster functioning. It is common for most advanced nations to utilize the scientific
approach in public administration to some degree. American public administration is also influenced in large part by
the scientific method with methods such as measurement of work, cost accounting, time and motion studies, etc.
being employed.
Research Questions

The research questions for the proposed research are as follows:

What major impacts did the scientific method have on public administration in the eyes of public managers?

What is the prevalence of scientific methods utilization in public administration based on organization size?

What are the major differences in public administration before and after the implementation of the scientific
method in America?

Research Methodology

In order to carry out this research, various forms of data collection will be utilized. The first phase will rely on
gathering the projected impacts of the scientific method on public administration by interviewing public managers.
The contention is to develop a set of broad impacts that will be investigated later in the research. The interviews will
be conducted one on one with public managers using an already developed interview format.

The results of the interviews will be used to gather broad impacts that will be investigated for their prevalence in
public administration domains depending on organization size. Questionnaires will be developed to assess the
prevalence of the scientific method impacts in American public administration. These questionnaires will be
administered to all levels of public managers in public organizations keeping organization size in perspective. Results
from these questionnaires will be investigated using statistical methods such as regression and correlation to
examine how prevalent scientific methods impacts are in public administration in small, medium and large public
organizations.

The results of the questionnaires will be manipulated to bring out the impacts of the scientific method depending on
organization size for public administration. The projected impacts will be utilized in order to form comparisons for
public administration before and after the implementation of the scientific method. Data collection will be made
complicated by the schedules of top-line managers in public organizations. Ample time must be provided to
respondents to fill out questionnaires given their tight daily schedules and responsibilities.

Data analysis in the interview stage will be complicated by the presence of differentiated opinions. However, once
major impacts are classified from the interview results, questionnaire development will become much easier. Results
from the questionnaires would be easier to analyze given their quantitative nature. The overall scope of data
collection will allow for insight and findings while being manageable in daily work schedules.
Read More

Frederick Winslow TAYLOR -So we find that scientific management wants to achieve three objectives at a time:

(a) improvement in management,

(b) rise in this total amount of wages or salary of workers, and

(c) The total workload shall be distributed among all the workers in a scientific or rational way. In this case, personal
liking or disliking must not be allowed to interfere,

(d) There is also a duty of the management and this, according to Taylor, is that management must cooperate with
all the workers and a good or cordial relationship must develop between management and workers,

(e) Taylor had also suggested that the entire volume of work should be distributed among all the workers properly.
In other words, some workers shall not be over-burdened. If this is not done some of the workers shall be aggrieved,

(f) The concept of scientificity, rationality and keenness shall be propagated among all the workers and they shall be
inculcated,

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(g) The entire work-load of the organisation shall be over- administrative theories hauled, standardised and be made
up-to-date. While doing this the working condition of the management shall be thoroughly checked and unnecessary
elements which are also harmful shall be removed from the premises of the organisation,

(h) There shall be created favourable working conditions which will inspire the workers to work in a happy mood,

(i) It was also suggested that the attitude and mentality of the workers shall be properly considered and investigated
and the authority must try to know what the workers like or dislike.

Frederick Taylor claimed that if all these methods are judiciously applied that would undoubtedly ensure the working
condition and improvement of the organisation. One important figure of management theory, Herbert Simon, called
the principles of Taylor “physiological organisation theory” because the purpose of Taylor was to change the
physiological environment of the organization. Taylor recognized that workmen were working their machines, or
themselves, not nearly as hard as they could (a practice that at the time was called "soldiering") and that this
resulted in high labor costs for the company. When he became a foreman he expected more output from the
workmen. In order to determine how much work should properly be expected, he began to study and analyze the
productivity of both the men and the machines (although the word "productivity" was not used at the time, and the
applied science of productivity had not yet been developed). His focus on the human component of production
Taylor labeled scientific management

Louis D. Brandies - well known for his time as a U. S. Supreme Court Justice, was also very influential in promoting
the
virtues of Scientific Management in its early period of development while America was
experiencing
progressivism.
- His most famous case involved his insisting that railroads could gain profits through efficient
business practices versus unpopular rate hikes. Brandeis’s seemingly incredible claims of how
applied efficiency techniques he referred to as “Scientific Management,” could save the
Eastern railroads vast amounts of money caught the attention of the American media and the
public and overnight made the Scientific Management movement and its contributors very
well known.
- Indeed, long before he joined the high court, Brandeis made an indelible mark on the law. As
a Boston lawyer, he became known as the “people’s attorney” for his noted pro bono work in
the public interest. He supported workers’ rights, championing fair wages and working hours.
Gantt chart- The Gantt chart is a tool that provides a visual (graphic) representation of what occurs over the course
of a project. Gantt charts help teams to plan work around deadlines and properly allocate resources. Projects
planners also use Gantt charts to maintain a bird's eye view of projects. They depict, among other things, the
relationship between the start and end dates of tasks, milestones, and dependent tasks.

- a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its popularizer, Henry Gantt, who
designed such a chart around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency
relationships between activities and the current schedule status, His two major contributions were the Gantt
chart and the task and bonus system, both of which will be discussed next. Much of what Gantt developed
during this time was considered groundbreaking, and it revolutionized scientific management. Many of his
ideas are still widely used in project management today.

Public administration - is a field in which leaders serve communities to advance the common good and effect
positive change. Public administration professionals are equipped with skills to manage at all levels of government
(local, state, and federal) as well as nonprofit organizations.

principles of public administration that are widely accepted today. “These principles should include transparency and
accountability, participation and pluralism, subsidiarity, efficiency and effectiveness, and equity and access to
services”.

Principles of Administration: The central belief of this period was that there are certain 'principles' of administration
and which is the task of the scholars to discover and applied to increase the efficiency and economy of Public
Administration.Apr 24, 2013