It is interesting to note why and how Public Administration has gained a place in the field of study. Woodrow Wilson is credited for his writing The Study of Administration and perhaps this was a starting point in the United States, in other countries like India, Germany Public Administration was known long back owing to influences of Arthashashtra and Kameralwissenschaft.

Later half of twentieth century saw many improvements and bureaucratic internationalization between European countries in reference to Euro-zone and also to all other countries of the world with transnational organizations like World Bank, Interpol and International Court of Justice.

These changes which came about after 1960s were basically administrative reforms implemented by the legislative to make administration more decentralized, accountable and efficient. But, on the other hand some other reforms were pushed aimed at giving more control to policy makers of the bureaucracy while avoiding all the responsibilities.

It was imperative to look how these two different situations affected Administration as a whole in different countries. The best way to look at this was through scientific study of comparative public administration. It is also a way to identify best practices in Public Administration so as to achieve maximum result most efficiently and to build a solid organizational structure and processes.

It will be wise to understand here that simply importing those practices which have served well in other countries will not suffice, since people in general are different and they react different to same stimuli. So, what works best in one country might not work at all in other countries.

Most commonly used model for Comparative study has been to compare and contrast western and non-western methods and styles. This model has created dualistic concepts like diffused – specific, universalistic-particularistic, etc and often tends to favor one end of spectrum towards another. But, these do not help in study of development or how to increase quality of life in third world countries. The other and better method used is called description.

It is more suitable for cross-cultural analysis as it relies on facts of a situation and get at the all-important aspect of context. But, it too cannot be used directly as a solution to problems faced by other societies. All the other frameworks deals with certain units of analysis or tools which help in gathering and categorizing facts efficiently they are:

• Individuals – the study of behaviors of officials, leaders and elites
• Groups – the study of social movements of parties and interest groups
• Organizations – the study of functions and capacities of cities and regions
• Bureaucracy – the study of the efficacy and performance of whole government executive branch

Clearly within the last decade there has been a very significant rise in CPA as results obtained through it are if nothing, interesting.

Many international organizations have come forward and joined their hands in CPA. For example, The international Public Management Network includes individuals from many countries and they publish international public management journal to provide a forum for sharing ideas, concepts and results of research and thinking about alternative approaches to problem solving and decision making in public sector.

An open system is a system which interacts and exchanges matter with its environment, imagine a pond while a closed system remains isolated from its environment; think an aquarium. While studying complex organizations American sociologist James D Thompson published a book in 1967 called Organization in Action in which he analyzed the behaviors of the complex organization as entities in action. He studied the organization in the light of their technologies and environment and thus he came to identify the meaning of a closed and open system within organizational context.

According to Thompson, an organization is called a close system when:

• The resources of an organization are employed in a functional manner
• Each component of the organization contributes to the logic of the system where controlled mechanisms are employed to diminish uncertainties

The examples he gave of a closed system were Taylor and his Scientific Management, Weber’s concept of beurocracy and Gulick and Urwick’s Administrative Management.

Thompson also defined an open system with respect to organizations, he said that: The complex organization is a set of interdependent parts which together make up a whole because each contributes something and receives something from the whole which in turn is interdependent with some larger environment. So an open system is dynamic, full of surprises as well as uncertainties. Systems keep evolving through a continuous process of development and strive to attain homeostasis or the state of equilibrium.

An important case study was carried out by Philip Selznick in 1940s to study the open system approach to organizational analysis. He conducted his research on the emerging Tennessee Valley Authority entitled TVA and Grass Roots (1949).

He focused his research on the aspects of decentralization and involvement of already existing local and state agencies, with a view, to practice democratic planning. It was during this case study that he defined an open system also known as the institutional approach, about which we know from the previous chapter.

According to Selznick, an organization is understood to be a means to achieve goals but the members of the organization act more than just means; they participate whole heartedly with each individual equipped with different skills, expertise, motivations and desires.

An organization also needs to interact with parties, interest groups and other agencies, which communicate and influence the organization; and each other.

From the managerial context, an organization cannot take only one strict approach that is, either of an open or a closed system, it needs to keep switching positions as and when need arises to achieve the stability and certainty required to perform jobs and deliver goals.

Gulick and Urvick were born in faraway lands from each other, Gulick in Japan while Urvick in Britain. Gulick completed his studies from the Columbia University, served on the National Defense Council during the First World War. He served as the administrator of the New York City for 2 years during 1954-56 and was also the president of the Institute of Public Administration, New York from 1962-82. He was also the author of several books like Administrative Reflections of World War II, Metropolitan Problems and American Ideas, Modern Management of the City of New York and Papers on the Science of Administration.

Urwick completed his education from Oxford University and like Gulick served in the First World War as the Lt. Col of the British army. Urwick was also associated with several international management institutes and published several books like The Management of Tomorrow: The Making of Scientific Management, Leadership in XX Century Organizations, The Patterns of Management and also worked as an editor of several papers on science of administration. He was also a well reputed and renowned industrial consultant who worked extensively for introducing the management education in UK.

Urwick edited the most important work, Papers on the Science of Administration presented by Gulick in 1937. Both of these thinkers were greatly influenced by Fayol and Taylor and the idea of machine model of the man. All this combined with their respective military and industrial background led them to propose the Classical Theory of Management or the Administrative Management Theory. The classical theory projects public administration as a science. Both these authors argued that like the stream of engineering became science through methods of empirical observation, systematic finding and recordings over a period of time similarly, public administrators can create the science of administration.

Both the authors also stressed on the importance of the structure of the organization. Urwick wrote that lack of structure can lead to a lot of inefficiencies and confusion within an organization and Gulick went ahead to identify 10 principles on which the organizational structure can be designed. Below are the 10 principles as listed by Gulick:

• Division of labor or what we call specialization
• Departmental Organization
• Hierarchical coordination
• Deliberate coordination
• Creating coordination committees
• Decentralization
• Unity of command
• Staff and Line
• Delegation and Span of Control

The last principle regarding the span of control of a senior executive or a leader, acted as a stimulant for other authors on writing about leadership. According to this last principle, the executive should have less number of people directly reporting to him to increase his efficiency.

Urwick believed that there are 8 principles on which an organization can function, the important points being:

• The objective of the organization
• Authority and responsibility
• The principle of span of control
• Coordination
• The principle of definition amongst other principles

And lastly, we can end the discussion without writing about Gulick’s POSDCORB, each word signifying the various executive functions:

• P – Planning
• P – Organizing
• S – Staffing
• D – Directing
• CO – Coordination
• R – Reporting
• B – Budgeting

Management students shall find the above terms quite familiar, relevant and of everyday use. In the next section, we shall be talking about the Human Relations Theory. The reader is now getting a chance to understand in individuality and detail that how the progresses made in other streams had an influence on the thinkers of public administration.

Max Weber was a German political economist, philosopher and a social scientist who along with Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx is considered to be one of the three founding pillars of sociology. Weber was a student of law and history throughout his career and later joined the Berlin University as a faculty and lectured and consulted for the Government. Weber was greatly influenced by the Neo-Kantianism wave that swept Germany during the 1860s. Heinrich Rickert the foremost scholars of Neo-Kantianism in Germany was a professional colleague of Weber in the University of Freiburg.

The Neo-Kantianism or the Back to Kant movement of 1860s was to revisit the theories of Immanual Kant the most important and influential of German philosophers and scholars of the 18th century. The scope of this article is limited to throw light on Kant and his philosophies however it is advisable to the readers to read a little about Kant and his work to get a better understanding regarding Neo-Kantianism.

Influenced by Heinrich Rickert and Kant, Weber came to a central core of his theories and that was Rationalization. Weber promulgated rationalization in all areas of life like economy, politics, society, culture and even religion. He went on further to say that Rationalization was the basis of the modern western society. Having said that, let us now make an effort to understand Weber’s work in the areas of social sciences.

In his seminal work Economy and Society, Weber goes to extreme lengths to trace the evolution of bureaucracy and the State and their relations with each other. He cites the Chinese and the African empires that degenerated because of the lack of bureaucracy and methods of administration and the ancient Roam Empire which disintegrated because of increasing bureaucratization.

According to Weber, the need for bureaucratization in the ancient empire state arises from the maintenance of armies, public finances and most importantly power and politics. In the modern times however, the complexity within the civilization is ever increasing and therefore the demands from the administration are also getting complex.

Weber also emphasizes the importance of communication in running the bureaucracy of a State and adds that they act as pacemakers and are the prerequisites of the possibility of bureaucratic administration.

Trained bureaucracy is superior to other kinds of administration in many ways like efficiency, accuracy or precision, unity, discretion, continuation, cost and reducing overall friction in the government functioning. Weber went on to characterize a bureaucratic state by certain behavioral and structural features like:

• Division of Labor
• Hierarchy
• Rules and Rationality
• Impersonality
• Rules Orientation
• Neutrality

Weber also came up with the term called Rational-Legal authority which characterizes the modern liberal states. The tripartite classification of authority proposed by Weber explains that the states travel from Charismatic Authority to Traditional Authority and finally arrive at Rational-Legal Authority. The Rational-Legal Authority upholds that an individual or an institution has powers emanating from the legal offices that they hold. Once they leave, the power is lost as the power is associated with the office and not the office holder.

The above Rational-Legal power lies at the core of the modern bureaucracies and is practiced widely across the world. The writing of constitutions and documents, establishing offices and institutions and holding elections are all in conformity to this kind of authority practiced by political systems in mature states.

Based on the distribution of authority, there are two main systems namely Bureau System and the Board or Commission system within departments. When all the administrative authority is invested in a single individual within the department then the system is Bureau.

When a plural body is vested with all the administrative power then the system is known as Board or Commission. Now, the next obvious question that comes into the mind is how to decide which system to use. According to author Raj Kumar Pruthi, in his book Administrative Organizations, there are conditions that determine the choice of systems:

• If the department is to carry out work of administrative character, the Bureau system is more appropriate. He further explains that for the administrative functions the speedy decision making, unity of command and promptness is required for efficient performance and it can be achieved only when the responsibilities and power are invested in a single individual.

• When the nature of work is such that a lot of discretion and care is to be maintained with respect to information which affects a large number of people, like the drafting of policies, rules and regulations, the Board or Commission kind of system works best.

  Also, when an organization has to perform both kinds of functions, then in such cases as well, the Board systems works better.

  To sum up, for services and functions that require collective intelligence, holistic view points, mature decision making, a Board system works well as there are more members to arrive at balanced decisions.

The Board or Commission system is followed under following conditions:

• Organizations that perform quasi-judicial and quasi- legislative functions like the Railway Board of the Government of India

• Organizations which exercise large discretionary powers to perform their duties like the Public Service Commission

• Organizations which need representation from different groups to be able to function objectively like the Arbitration Board of Industrial Dispute

• In countries like USA, where representation of the opposition party is also included. The e.g. is the Tariff Commission of the USA

There has been a lot of debate amongst the scholars regarding whether the public organizations and their structures inherently differ from those of private organizations.

Some support the argument saying that it does and some say that through the difference is there but it is only in the presence of red tapes in the public organizations.

Those who oppose the statement argue that, the public organizations are very different from the private organization in terms of lack of flexibility, excessive government control, lack of clear performance indicators like profit and loss and a lot of emphasis on rules and hierarchy.

Some researchers like Pugh, Hickson and Hinnings pointed out that the size of the organization and technological developments are other important determinants of the structures and hierarchy of any organization.

The modern democracies have the legislatures playing an important role in the managing of public finances. The taxes that are collected and the revenues that are generated by the government through several means are to be used for the development and welfare of the society. The emergence of the Welfare State made it important that the government money is being judiciously used to better the living conditions of society in general and the marginalized sections in particular.

The process of budgets fulfills important functions in the economy of the nation. They act as a means to carry out several objectives of the public organization. Some of the important roles of budget in the national economy are:

• Prioritization of the allocation of the public resources

• Achieving policy goals through prudent financial planning

• Establishing accountability regarding the usage of the tax payers money

• Financial controls also ensure compliance to rules and increase in efficiency

In some countries, the executive part of the government also plays an important part regarding the revenues and expenditures of the government and the legislative is reduced to just an approving and reviewing authority, e.g. in UK where the budget process is primarily dominated by the executive (the House of Commons).

A more balanced approach of distributing power is practiced in the USA where the legislature can review and make changes to the budget presented by the President and the President finally approves it after satisfactory checks and balances are concluded.

The dominance of executive or legislature in the budgeting process is a matter of debate as many consider the legislative to be an obstacle in the fast paced globalized economy where foreign direct investment and monetary funding from organizations like IMF and World Bank is of crucial importance to several democracies. There are several measures suggested to expedite the decision making process from fixing the term of the legislatures, introducing citizen panels, attaching funding power at local levels to bringing in two year budgetary cycle and special legislation regarding expenditure management.

The government expenditure is funded by a common pool of tax payer’s money and the policies that are formed with this money are further used to fund projects. The catch here lies in the fact that the people who actually are paying for these policies are the larger group while the people who benefit from these policies might be a much smaller group, which translates that one might not be enjoying the benefits for which one is paying money. Such scenario leads to an excessive spending of public money on policies which are not beneficial to the society as a whole. Such situations are prevalent in democracies which are multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and divided on the basis of regions, religions and other factors.

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:

• The literature that has been written on the topic stays away from being prescriptive. It follows a descriptive course with an exception to the studies carried out in the areas of motivation
• Individuals were paid attention to and aspects like motivation, decision making, authority and control were brought into focus
• The informal aspects of an organization and communication patterns amongst the members were emphasized
• The effort was to identify operational definition of terms and a lot of empirical study like field study, laboratory study and statistical methods were conducted
• It borrows a lot from other social sciences, social psychology and cultural anthropology

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.

One can easily infer that the approaches to study this field would also be as varied and as vast as the subject matter itself. And indeed so, that there are many approaches to public administration as we shall read about in consecutive articles.

For the moment, we would take a step back and try and understand the reason behind so many approaches to this field of study and why were they required.

Public administration as a serious subject which required scientific attention was first promulgated by Woodrow Wilson and as we read in the Wilsonian vision of Public Administration he fiercely recommended that there should be more scrutiny and debate and studies carried out in this area to make it more efficient and robust.

However, it was only during the beginning of the twentieth century that American Universities introduced Public Administration as a subject of academic study influenced by L.D White’s important book called Introduction to the Study of Public Administration.

There were also attempts made by scholars to differentiate between politics and administration, hence comparative study of two to understand Public Administration better came into existence.

Sometime later the Principles approach to public administration was introduced. This approach was influenced by W. F. Willoughby’s work called Principles of Public Administration in 1927. His work emphasized that scientific study and research of administration can help derive fundamental principles regarding the same.

This approach was championed by other authors and scholars like Fayol, Mooney, Lyndall, Urwick etc. So, resorting to scientific method of exploring, researching, observing, recording, classifying etc was used to study Public Administration.

By this time, some important work had started happening in the areas of Human Relations by the likes of Elton Mayo, his Hawthorne experiment threw interesting light on social and psychological forces in work situations.

So the importance of attitudes, feeling, sentiments and social relations, work group dynamics etc started influencing the vey formal structure and way of working; present and preferred by the public organizations.

After the Second World War, behavioral sciences were quite a hot debate in the academics with a lot of research and work carried out in the field. Herbert Simon’s Administrative Behavior and Robert Dahl’s, The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems; critically questioned the inadequacies and limitations of the orthodox public administration of the pre war days.

Simon focused on the aspect of decision making in Public Administration and stressed on the need to develop a robust and relevant administrative theory based on precise and logical study of human behavior.

And recently with the advent of technology in every walk of life and a common consensus amongst authors and scholars that both public and private administration are similar in many manner, the management science approach to public management came into existence.

The newest approach is that of policy analysis approach since the Government is venturing into new areas and different activities with increased involvement in welfare programs, the process of making public policies and its analysis, the measurement of the output etc became the new areas of study for the scholars and subject matter experts.

In the subsequent articles we shall dwell deeper into some of these approaches described above and see how they shaped and influenced the study of Public Administration.

His body of work covers topics from administration to cognitive psychology to artificial intelligence. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his most important work, the decision making process of the organizations. Therefore, for the sake of our discussion we shall refer to the theories and concepts provided by Simon for the administrative decision making.

In his book Administrative Behavior: a Study of Decision Making Processes in Administrative Organizations, he makes a very remarkable statement that decision making is the heart of administration. He went on to add further that the logic and psychology of human choice determine the administrative theory.

The entire premise of Simon’s work is based on the logical rational model as mentioned earlier, but it is important to understand rationality within this particular context of decision making.

In Simon’s work, rationality becomes a variable and he was aware of the limitations of human rationality as well which are not static but depend on the environment of the organization in which the decisions take place.

According to Simon, the task of the administration should be to design such an environment in which the individual approach becomes as rational as practicably be possible.

To understand the concept, we need to understand three important aspects:

• The Economic Man
• The Administrative Man
• Organizational Perspective

The Economic Man is all about the ideal and rational model of decision making. In an organization the decisions are made on empirical and normative elements, these premises can also be called the factual or the value premises.

The factual premise is nothing but all the information and knowledge regarding the organization and its environment.

The value premises on the other hand are the morals and legal constraints.

A rational decision is to choose those alternatives which are appropriate to reach the desired end. The means and ends have to be connected in the organizational hierarchy.

The Administrative Man depicts the objective rationality, determining whether the selected alternative’s course of action is good enough. The administrative man’s approach to the world is simplistic and would take into account only a few most relevant and critical factors unlike the economic man for whom knowing all the alternatives and its consequences is a complex task.

Lastly, the Organization Perspective criticizes the earlier established principles of administration which were:

• Specialization
• Hierarchy
• Span of control

Simon argues that the applicability of administrative principles needs to be based on an underlying understanding of the administrative decision making. Organization manifests its influence through five mechanisms as identified by Simon. These are:

• Authority – It is defined as the decision making power which in turn guides the actions of other people. This kind of relational transaction happens in case of a superior and a subordinate in the organization.

• Communication – It comprises of both the formal and informal communication in an organization.

• Training – This is to enable individuals to reach satisfactory decisions without constant authority and guidance. This can be both pre service (educational qualification) and in service (day to day supervision at work).

• The Criterion of Efficiency – This basically suggests that out of two alternatives which would bear same cost, the one which shall attain more organizational goals should be chosen and if the two alternatives are achieving the same degree of organizational objectives, then the one which does so in lesser cost should be chosen.

• Organizational Identification and Loyalty – An organization consists of several groups and a person thinks himself to be part of group when in the process of evaluating alternatives he/she weighs the option in terms of its consequences on the entire group.

Therefore, the decision making within an organization is a complex process which is influenced by several factors. It is advisable to the readers to study more about Herbert Simon and his work on decision making to be able to appreciate the vastness and complexity of the decision making process in administrative organizations and economy.

As the world around us is changing with concomitant changes in politics, business, economics, and society, the field of public administration cannot be aloof from the need to innovate and change.

As the public sector in many developed countries feels the need to move beyond the static and machine bureaucratic paradigm, the public sector in the third world and the developing countries is also in the throes of adapting to the broader changes happening in society.

With the increased awareness among the citizenry and the rapid spread of information along with use of technology and social media, the public sector in the west and the east has to wake up to the new realities and cannot be an ostrich or a fossil among the nimble and agile private sector. This is the key theme of this article that looks at the future of public administration around the world in an era of rapid change. There cannot be a more compelling case for proactive public sector rather than a reactive public sector as the future catches them and they can only survive by adapting to the future.

Need for Change and Innovation

The Great Recession of 2008 put paid hopes to the public sector in the west as the bureaucrats were suddenly faced with shrinking budgets, downsizing, and a general tendency to squeeze the public sector to get “more bang for the buck”. This meant that the public sector in the west had to innovate to cope with the broader changes in the countries.

Innovation is often defined as the ability to create something new and find newer ways of doing things. This means that the public sector in the west had to find innovative ways to save money, cut down on costs, and generate more returns for their investments.

On the other hand, the public sector in the east had to contend with radical changes as the long-suffering masses who were frustrated with red tape and bureaucrats finally summoned the courage to use technology and protest to fight against them.

Further, many governments in the developing world faced pressure to divest their stakes in the public sector and make the bureaucrats more accountable as they needed to generate funds for the other items on their agendas. The net result of all these pressures meant that the public sector in the east had to change fast as otherwise they would be faced with disruption and obsolescence.

Ways to Innovate and Change

The ways in which the public sector can innovate include using technology more proactively, collaborating and communicating within and with the external world, adopting a more humane approach to administration and attending to the grievances of the citizenry, and most importantly “walking the talk” which meant that they had to not only declare their intent but also have to act accordingly.

In other words, merely having a gazette is not enough and the public servants have to follow it in the spirit of the law as well as the letter of the law.

As for using technology and social media, the public sector and the public managers are gradually taking to IT to communicate and collaborate among themselves as well as with the external world. The other key imperative here is that public sector managers must not initiate a change and then give up midway because of resistance from vested interests and those with hidden agendas. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing public sector managers is that they plan to work but not work to the plan.

Some Recent Trends in Public Administration

In the United States, there has been a lot of criticism on the bureaucrats who were seen as holding up approvals and sanctions to the projects initiated by the private sector.

Further, with outsourcing and Offshoring of many routine activities as well as the use of contractors to get the job done, the public sector in the United States has been forced to embrace innovation and change.

As many experts aver, the government of the future is simpler, leaner, and more nimble rather than the behemoths that they are at the moment. The outcry against big government has reached such a crescendo that the Defense Department in the United States has more or less outsourced almost all peripheral activities and has only retained its core staff for the managerial and the combat functions. This example illustrates how the public sector in the United States is operating in the context of the changing governmental landscape.

The Government of the Future

The first item for the government of the future would be to remove the opaqueness and the secrecy surrounding its activities and instead embrace accountability and transparency as the motto. For instance, the government of the future is one where the citizenry is made aware of the decisions taken by it rather than hiding under archaic laws and regulations in the name of confidentiality.

Apart from this, the government of the future is one that is proactive instead of reactive where it anticipates the changing trends and responds accordingly instead of knee jerk reactions to events and incidents. This means that the public servants have to be responsive to all the stakeholders including their superiors, the elected representatives, and most importantly the citizenry instead of favoring a particular section over the other.

In other words, the government of the future would be responsive instead of secretive and accountable instead of resorting to blame game, and would be transparent instead of being opaque.