Historical and Legal Approach to the Study of Public Administration
The study of History is often cited as important to understand the present as well as the future. The study of public administration also cannot be complete without understanding the evolution and progress of civilizations. The Historical approach to public administration focuses on the administrative systems, process and policies practiced in the past and then […]
Talent Agility A Systematic Approach to Business Agility
Well, until a few years ago, talent management was just a function of HRD. And even the largest of the organizations didn’t focus much on managing and developing their talent. However, with increasing challenges and extreme volatility in business environment, companies are now realizing that they cannot just rely on their capital and automated systems. […]
Problems Faced by Less Developed Countries
Population Growth Among all the developing countries, population growth remains one of the reasons for these countries to remain poor. To take specific examples, both India and China have historically been among the poorer countries because of their huge populations. It was only after the economic liberalisation and opening up of their respective economies that […]
Why we Need more Emotionally Intelligent Leaders and Managers in Chaotic Times
What is Emotional Intelligence and Why we need more High EQ Leaders and Managers Emotional Intelligence is defined as the art and science of managing one’s emotion and that of the others. Emotionally Intelligent individuals are those who are good at controlling their emotions and learning to defer gratification till the work is done, empathise […]
Improve Communication Skills of an Individual
An individual might have an extremely pleasing personality, in depth knowledge of the subject, a good and a very strong network but if he doesn’t have effective communication skills, he fails to prove his worth and his charm and talent go simply unnoticed. A person without effective communication skills will never be able to carve […]
The behavioral approach to public administration owes its genesis to the Human Relations Movement of the 1930s.
The movement started off as a protest to the traditional approaches to public administration that focused on organizations, institutionalization, rules, and code of conducts etc with absolutely no mention of people who are the center of all these activities.
The pioneering work done by Taylor and the emergence of Scientific Management created quite stir not just in the industrial sector but also in management and study of public administration.
Henry Fayol worked on his Fayolism at around the same time as Taylor and came up with different set of functions and principles for the management bringing in terms like discipline, unity of command, equity and team spirit.
Herbort Sumon was one of the torch bearers of this moment and stated that administrative behavior is part of behavioral sciences and the study of public administration cannot be complete without the study of individual and collective human behavior in administrative situations. The behavioral approach has certain salient features like:
This approach made more sense and had greater relevance than earlier approaches as it took into consideration the fact that the political, social, economical and psychological environments have an effect on human motivation and which ultimately has an effect on the work output of an individual.
It also helped to develop an understanding of what, how and why of the way the public administrators act. It showed that the way administration is conducted is influenced by human sentiments, presumptions biases and perception, which many of us may have experienced firsthand during our interaction with government organizations and public administrators.
Behavioral approach has contributed to the study of public administration in many ways like the scholars started studying cross-structural and cross-cultural administrative behaviors and which further paved the way for the comparative study of public administration.
Like all new things, this approach too has its fair share of criticism and the critics have ruthlessly questioned the utility of this approach in the analysis of administrative problems.
They find it limited in scope and of little use. The study of public administration goes beyond small social groups and deals with large communities and therefore the behavioral approach falls short.
The modern behavioral approach is leaning towards becoming more action oriented and prescription format nevertheless. Roscoe Martin and his Craft Perspective define the shift better.
It concerns itself with the decisions, outcomes and the political skill needed to perform a particular managerial job.
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