The art of administration refers to the planning, organizing, and control of people, things, and
resources in order to accomplish goals or objectives. One who practices such art is an
administrator. Every human activity has an administrator. Public administration is the kind of
management that is used in any situation involving the government. Regardless of the country's
chosen form of government, it has universal applicability. Whether at the national, intermediate,
or local levels of government, it is the form of administration that is used.
Public administration was established in 1887 as a discipline rather than as an activity because,
as I indicated in my introduction, it has existed as an activity for as long as there have been
people. In order to create and implement policies, it examines and analyzes the workings of
government. From this analysis and study, new ideas are born, which are then implemented into
government operations to see if they actually boost efficiency. They are dependent on one
another as a result.
There are five stages in the chronology of the evolution of Public Administration as a discipline:
Stage 1: politics administration dichotomy (1887-1926)
Stage 2: principles of administration (1927-1937)
Stage 3: era of challenge (1938-1947)
Stage 4: crises of identity (1948-1970)
Stage 5: public policy perspective (1971 onwards)
Politics Administration Dichotomy (1887-1926)
The initial phase represented the realization of Woodrow Wilson's political-administrative
dualism (difference between two things as they are completely opposite). This resulted in a surge
in interest in its studies at various American and international colleges, and government reforms
were implemented, attracting experts to public administration with renewed energy.
Principles of Administration (1927-1937)
The Wilsonian public-administration dichotomy and the development of a value-neutral, or
better yet, value-free, science of management were hallmarks of the second stage of
administrative theory. It was held that there are some administrative principles (guiding/basic
notions) that apply to all organizations and will maximize efficiency for everyone. During this
stage of the Industrial Revolution, countries were only interested in maximizing production at all
costs in order to generate significant revenue. Additionally, the swift expansion of companies
throughout the Industrial Revolution created new management issues that were difficult to
predict and resolve. That's when F.W. Taylor and Henri Fayol stepped in and generated their
principles of administration/management. They were successful administrators in their own right
and therefore their views held a lot of water and were readily accepted by the industries world
over. Frederich Winslow Taylor and Henri Fayol advocated for adopting engineering based
scientific methods in the field of industrial work process in order to increase efficiency and
economy. These schools of thought are grouped under the Classical theory of administration.
Since, we are talking about the Classical theorists of Administration we have to make a very
important mention of Max Weber. His conceptual framework of bureaucracy deserves special
mention as it brought about a paradigm shift in the theory of public administration. He was the
first to provide the discipline with a solid theoretical base. He viewed bureaucracy as national
rules based central system that regulated the organization's structure and process accordingly to
technical knowledge and maximum efficiency. He was concerned about the evolution of modern
civilization with bureaucracies. All the three theorists mentioned above laid emphasis on the
physiological and mechanistic aspects of public administration and that is why this school of
thought apart from being called the Classical school of thought is also known as the Mechanical
theory of organization/administration.
Era of Challenge (1938-1947)
The third stage in the evolution of the theory of public administration is known as the era of
challenge because the abovementioned principles and iron cage/mechanistic view of
administration and workers were challenged. It emphasized on the human aspects of
administration that sprung from the Hawthorne experiments conducted by Elton Mayo and his
colleagues at Harvard Business School in the late 20's and early 30's of the twentieth century.
The main focus of study in this approach was to study the psychological and social problems of
the industrial workers. The scholars of this theory identified variables like informal
organization, leadership, morale and motivation for maximum use of human resources in
industries. This led to a far vast study by Herbert Simon and others that developed the
Behavioral Science theory. The behavioral science school of thought propagated by Herbert
Simon challenged the principles of administration and its mechanistic ways as mere proverbs
where one contradicted the other and thus are nothing more than general statements based on
person to person experience and lacking a theoretical foundation. Herbert Simon advocated that
decision analysis is what should be studied as decision making is the heart of administration
where a decision has to be taken at each and every stage of administration day in and day out and
administration is a series of decisions that lead to implementation and nothing more. According
to Simon if administrative behavior in an organizational setting has to be analyzed then that can
only be done by studying the decisions taken by the administrators.
Crises of identity (1948-1970)
The next stage that is the crisis of identity stage is set in the late 20th century where many parts
of the world were just out of wars and colonization called the developing nations. This phase
marked a debate for the return of values in public administration and cross cultural as well as
cross national study of administration. Thus, grew a need to reinvent public administration and
lead to a question as to whether public administration that had been known as it is till then was
relevant anymore.
Public Policy Perspective (1971 onwards)
This stage brought about democratic humanism and client orientation as well as the science
perspective in “New Public Administration”. Public policy is an attempt by a government to
address a public issue by instituting laws, regulations, decisions, or actions pertinent to the
problem at hand. It is policy that is made for the welfare of the people and their development. As
a discipline public policy perspective is the study of government. Here it has come closer to
political science again and also has incorporated many management principles to help public
administration cope up with the dynamics of its discipline and conduct.
