Woodrow Wilson and the classical foundations of American public administration

¶ … Public Administration and its Analysis

This is a paper on the concept and basis of Public Administration and the importance it holds in the field of management.

Defining the Breadth and Scope of Public Administration

In the early years of public administration was hailed as a strong and positive as a professional force for studying and putting into practice for the improvement and revamping of the administration of the federal, state and legislative government but also sure of the political and ethical authenticity of the field of public administration in performing that role.

In what is now known as the Classical period, the mind set of the people that were in the field of public administration were based on the resulting derivative of the theory and principles of values from the intellectual side of political science and, in the main part, from constitutional democratic theory. Woodrow Wilson is considered to be the academic founder of the American public administration system.

On the other hand, however, John Stuart Mill, who stressed that the character of administration was supposed to be politically neutral and the accountability of administrators to elected heads of government, spelled out the function of public administration in a democratic government. "Policy-administration dichotomy" was the expression that was used to illustrate the course of action by which political or "importance" issues are decided upon by elected officials and put into operation, with resourcefulness and in a dutiful manner, by expert appointees.

The structure that has been based upon accountability as implied by the dichotomy was a logical expansion of the theory of commissioned government, the elected representatives of the government are held responsible to the community at large by means of the ballot box; the administrators are held responsible to the representatives by the means of a pecking order system of controls, rewards, and punishments.

The confidence of the Classical public management in its legality as an academic enterprise that was used for professional purposes and was the end result of a for the most part acknowledged acceptance of the fundamental values of the representative government from which the organizational values are derived, as well as the fact that those values were to a certain extent easy and clear-cut. Nonetheless, difficult as these values may be to arrive at in practice, the ideals of good organization and duty are rather easy to understand.

The Major Concepts In Public Administration

The initial systems for the strategic planning process for business process were based upon the analysis of the organization and its environment (U.S. Census, 1996). The well tried SWOT, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats model, for instance, calls for the study of the out side environment to be aware of evolving threats and opportunities. This evaluation of the external environment is often known as environmental examination.

The internal operations and the activities of the organization are evaluated to make certain the strengths and weaknesses in the perspective of the external threats and opportunities. Regrettably, however, the initial strategic planning assumptions and practices were often inexperienced, assuming that the change that took place was linear and predictable, instead of being nonlinear and unexpected. The factors of internal and external resistance to planning and plans were often disregarded.

The failures of the strategic planning process soon became apparent (DeVita, 1996). Researchers began to inquire more deeply in order to find out the extent to which strategic planning had a say in the performance of the organization and the limits the strategic planning process had in determining the performance of the organization (Klay and DeHaven-Smith, 1997). This study has in an obvious manner exposed two main problems with the strategic planning process (Smith, 1996). The evaluations upon which the linear method of thinking was based on in the early strategic planning process were sometimes wrong.

Along with the fact that the strategic planning policies that were created by the dedicated planning units were at times formulated with little participation from others in organizations, these plans could not be put into practice on their own. The call for an improved theory became apparent by the late 1970s. The theory for the strategic planning process needed to be altered to provide better guidance to leaders who have to develop strategy under conditions in which forecasts can be wrong, in which the future can be one of surprises, and in which agreement to implement strategic plans cannot be taken for granted.

Later on, the theory of Strategic management, which was a reaction to the inadequacy of the strategic planning process, began to replace the strategic planning process (Karoly, 1996). It laid emphasis on the need to be able to get a feel for the nonlinear changes in an organization's environment and to set down the foundations for organizational transformation. The combination of the strategic planning theory with the theory of organization development in order to generate an continuing learning process that is both participative and anticipative was given emphasis on (Schacter, 1995).

The theory of strategic management also started to make out that business leaders face political restrictions. Business managers have to become strategists in political environments (Frederickson, 1997). The significance of making out and understanding the range of stakeholders in a business was also exposed. In a deviation from the previous theory of strategic planning, the theory of strategic management has not been put to an end. Most of the strategy-based literature that is available for the administrators and managers of today is more often than not just a mere refinement of the strategic management model.

Most of the standard model of strategic management for public organizations is based upon the concept of strategic management for businesses that was to a large extent in place by the early 1980s. Public administration theorists usually share with their business oriented colleagues a few suppositions and conjectures about the strategic management process.

These are theories that state that the organizations should be down to business and the leaders of the organization, whether a business organization or a public organization should not let themselves be weighed down with the requirements of the present. On the other hand, leaders should become skilled in their grasp of the external environment of their organizations and consider about what has to be done to position their organizations in a better way for a prospect that will be different from that of the present.

Most leaders have to gain knowledge of the organization itself to produce strategies that are based upon the strengths of an organization and should try to prop up its weaknesses.

The facets that make up an organization's strategies are the most vital to accomplish so that the organization is better positioned for the challenges of the future environment. However, this positioning is only going to be a success when the threats that the organization has from the external environment are averted and opportunities that are available are made out and followed.

Facets Of Public Administration That Need To Be Emphasized

Most strategies for change are often faced with resistance, due to this, some steps should be implemented in order to gain support for the change, and these steps can consist of involvement of the members of the organization in the process of putting together the strategies. A concept known as "Meta-planning," this is about the process of planning the strategic management process itself to earn support and to pick up the organization's ability to assess itself and its environment, is of significance for the strategic planning process. It is also important for the management and the entire organization as a whole to be adjustable to changes and new factors when they emerge in the scenario.

However, the theory of strategic management for businesses is inadequate for the needs of applications for the public sector. Business planning is usually concentrated on some deviation from a single objective, which is the return on investment. This results in practices like portfolio analysis that require businesses to disinvest themselves of activities that are not satisfactorily lucrative. As the field of public administration has become more widely applicable, theorists that were focusing on the public administration applicability of the strategic management (Bowden and Klay, 1996).

The managers of public institutes and organizations cannot get rid of their unsuccessful tasks and responsibilities. These public managers have to plan with the multiple objectives of their organizations in mind, even if these objectives are at variance with each other and may be inadequately defined in law or legislation. The influence of the electoral cycles and the short-term of most political executives make it hard for professional public managers to make a case for the significance of the long-term future of the organization. (Hanson, McLanahan, and Thompson, 1996)

The stakeholders in a public organization are more varied and touchy and public managers have to deal with them in the direct focus of public inspection. In governments that are intended to put a limit on the executive authority, the chief executives of the biggest government agencies have a lesser amount of decision-making authority than that of a usual corporate Chief Executive Officer. The political state of affairs of some public organizations results in reactive, rather than hands-on policy formulation (Noam, 1995)

Public sector strategic management theory has for this reason stressed the requirement to take political circumstances into consideration. This is carried out by "meta-planning," this is the process of drawing up planning processes that integrate the viewpoints of all the stakeholders. Public managers have to build up interpersonal networks with care, both side and outside their organizations, in order to get the support and contribution of the many stakeholders of an agency. In some recommendations that are made for the strategic management of the public sector, the assessment of the stakeholder takes priority over the analysis of all other features of the organization's environment.

Factors in Public Administration That Need To Be De-Emphasized:

The profession of public administration should be looked upon as neither an academic subject nor a field of application. Educational disciplines, as they are generally defined, are completely based on the model of study of positive science, which is not sufficiently able to assist, and in some ways takes away from the enhancement of the techniques and methodology in practice. Because of their active view of the actual practice, the applied fields of necessity deal ineffectually, when they do deal, with the basic moral and ethical fears. In view of the collapse of the policy-administration dichotomy, the administrative practice of the public administration should be accepted as connecting far more than the active achievement of pre-set targets. Managerial practice is a type of moral and committed action, the appropriate perception and assessment calls for combination of both the value theory and a theory of knowledge that is not voluntarily inferred from the traditional way of thinking.

The model of positive science is of uncertain use in improving administrative practice, it is also unqualified for figuring out the practice of public administration scientifically in the most significant aspect, as a form of social action.

Most leaders have to gain knowledge of the organization itself to produce strategies that are based upon the strengths of an organization and should try to prop up its weaknesses.

The facets that make up an organization's strategies are the most vital to accomplish so that the organization is better positioned for the challenges of the future environment. However, this positioning is only going to be a success when the threats that the organization has from the external environment are averted and opportunities that are available are made out and followed.

The way in which a government institution is administered is a place where a campaign for to begin or carry on a quest for an equitable social order. Even though a few specific theories and plans for bringing about wide-ranging political, social, and financial changes may s seem to be rationally convincing, they may not be feasible as a practical plan. In view of their comparative scarceness, all opportunities for social change should be taken hold of as soon as and where they appear, in spite of whether the measures taken in the light of those opportunities match to a grand plan.