Global Issues in Public Administration

Global Issues in Public Administration

Globalization is a controversial issue perhaps because it is not yet fully understood. And while the term has recently been tossed around by businesses, sociologists, scholars, journalists and others, there is still confusion as to what globalization means. Some have claimed that globalization will "erode the sense of community and urban power structure" and others worry that through globalization new "suprastate governing agencies" will supplement or even "supplant" the other nation states that are not powerful enough to stand on their own (Farazmand, 1999). But the actual benefits and positive changes that globalization potentially offers for public administrators is the subject of this paper in terms of how my future career as a public administrator will be impacted.

Meanwhile, which globalization issues from the readings will affect my work and my career in the next five years?

Clearly globalization will have an effect -- and is having an effect -- on much of what ordinary citizens are doing in their day-to-day lives. I am working my way into a career as a public administrator in New York State, and I already see that the innovations in information technology -- that are part of everyday experiences -- have made the job of managing public policies easier. Given that Farazmand's article is 13 years old there are many advancements that relate to globalization that have appeared subsequent to the article. That said Farazmand is correct when he explained in 1999 that capitalism "…needs a strong state and a stable environment to prosper" and governments, nongovernmental organizations and individuals the world over are linked in a way they never have been linked before to bolster governments and organizations.

That means that as a public administrator in New York State I can, with the click of a computer mouse, interact with a human resource manager in Germany, or a budget director in London, or even a city administrator in Israel, and share ideas and find solutions, communicate helpful resources from New York or receive resource support

The public administrator is put in that position in order to take political decisions from his or her superiors and transition those decisions into the competent management of public programs. As Yilin Hou and colleagues explain, globalization has created an "…increasingly interdependent" world and a "vast array of emerging issues" (energy and environmental issues; ethnic conflicts; diseases that are pandemic and epidemic; and economic crises) are now shared across oceans and borders (Hou, et al., 2011).

Hou sees a "transformed Public Administration field" that does not view the scope of public issues in the same light as they used to be viewed. There must be a new global perspective, Hou continues, and in my future work I can see clearly that when Hou talks about avoiding making judgments about other societies in terms of "…one's own cultural assumptions or bias," he is talking about an end to cultural bias and discrimination.