Que. Identify and explain the various phases in the growth of the discipline of public administration.

ans:- Public administration simply means governmental administration that operates in a political setting. Its
focus is specifically on public establishments. The
study and practice of public establishment is called public administration. It encompasses the management of
public agencies that carry out public policies in order to fulfill state purposes in the public interest. since
government provides services for the people in the public interest, the administration of governmental affairs is
known as public administration. Public administration can also be seen as the activities of groups
cooperating to accomplish the common goals of government. by safeguarding such frontiers as maintenance of
law and order,
communications, public health, education, etc. In managing public affairs, public administration focuses princi
pally on the planning, organising, directing, coordinating and controlling of governmental operations.

THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

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 (1970 onwards)

Politics Administration Dichotomy (1887-1926)

The first stage was the manifestation of Woodrow Wilson's view of politics - administration dichotomy
(difference between two things as they are completely opposite). This led to a spurt in the interest of its studies
in various American as well as universities around the globe and reforms were made in government and thus
scholars were attracted to public administration with a new vigor.

Principles of Administration (1927-1937)

The second stage of administrative theory was marked by the same favor of reinforcing the Wilsonian view of
Public Administration of public-administration dichotomy and evolve a value neutral or rather value free
science of management. at this stage the public aspect of public administration was virtualy dropped and now
entire focus was on efficiency. this stage can be called the stage of orthodoxy, as efforts were underway to
delineate firmly the boundries of new discipline of 'management'. public administration merged into the new
science. scientific management to efficiently handle the business became the slogan. 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. the most notable contribution was from the famous HAWTHORNE
EXPERIMENTS 1920- shook the foundation of scientific management by focusing on the powerful influence
 of social and psychological factors on the work situation, this led to the 3rd stage of evolution if public
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 above mentioned principles and iron cage/mechanistic view of administration and workers were challenged.
It emphasisied 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 organisation, 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. 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. in the same year robert a. dahl also countered the
claim of principles of public administration as a science in his article 'the science of public administration:three
problems' as three important problems in the evolution of public administration- 1. the place of normative
value made clear, 2.the nature of man in the area of public administration is better understood and his conduct
is more predictable; and 3. there is a body of comparative studies from which it may be possible to discover
principles and generalities that transcend national boundaries and peculiar historical experiences.” The same
theme was reflected by Dwight Waldo’s in his book “The Administrative State” (1948) when he ‘attacked the
notion of unchanging principles of administration, the inconsistencies of the methodology used in determining
them, and the narrowness of the values of economy and efficiency that dominated the field’s thinking.’

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 colonisation 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. During this period two developments took place –the
growing use of the Case Study Method and the rise and fall of Comparative and Development Administration.
its linkages either with Political Science or Management, the essential thrust was one of Public Administration
loosing its identity.

Public Policy Perspective (1970 onwards)

This stage brought about democratic humanism and client orientation as well as the science perspective in
“New Public Administration”. The overall focus of NPA movement was to make administration less generic
and more public, less descriptive and more prescriptive, less institution-oriented and more client-oriented, less
neutral and more normative, but it should be no less scientific all the time. 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.

In the late 1980’s New Public Management (NPM) theory advocated by David Osborn and Ted Gaebler in
their book Reinventing Government emphasized the use of private society style models, organizational ideas
and values to improve the service and service orientation of the public sector. Further, in the late 1990’s, In
response to the dominance of NPM Janet and Robert Denhardt proposed a new public service model known as
digital era governance. It focused on themes of reintegrating governmental responsibilities, and digitalization
exploring the transformational capabilities of modern IT and digital storage. The Public Choice Approach of
Vincent Ostrom underlined the fact that an era of State Minimalism has started in the 21st century which
demand small but effective government from public administration.

Thus the period of evolution of public administration as a discipline is very important to understand and not to
repeat the previous mistakes and learn from them for the better administrative practices in this new era. as an
academic discipline, it is still in its evolutionary stage and the frontier of discipline has been expanding
phenomenally in response to societal needs and demands and democratic upsurge. Moreover, the post-
globalization period has brought a paradigmatic shift in the discipline and the emerging needs has replaced the
government with the governance, which is more comprehensive and result oriented one.