Public Administration

Public administration houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal... is to advance management and policies so that government can function." Some of the various definitions which have been offered for the term are: "the management of public programs"; the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day"; and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies."

Public administration is "centrally concerned with the organization of government policies and programmes as well as the behavior of officials (usually non-elected) formally responsible for their conduct" Many unelected public servants can be considered to be public administrators, including heads of city, county, regional, state and federal departments such as municipal budget directors, human resources (H.R.) administrators, city managers, census managers, state directors, and cabinet secretaries. Public administrators are public servants working in public departments and agencies, at all levels of government.

In the US, civil servants and academics such as Woodrow Wilson promoted American civil service reform in the 1880s, moving public administration into academia. However, "until the mid-20th century and the dissemination of the German sociologist Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy" there was not "much interest in a theory of public administration." The field is multidisciplinary in character; one of the various proposals for public administration's sub-fields sets out six pillars, including human resources, organizational theory, policy analysis and statistics, budgeting, and ethics.

Read more about Public AdministrationDefinitions, Approaches, Core Branches, Decision-making Models, Academic Field, International Public Administration

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Social Equity - Public Administration
... The National Academy of Public Administration defines the term as “The fair, just and equitable management of all institutions serving the public ... of social equity and put it forward as the 'third pillar' of public administration." Frederickson was concerned that those in public administration were making the ... as economy and efficiency as values or principles to which public administration should adhere." ...
International Public Administration
... The Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management CAPAM http//www.capam.org/ is perhaps the most diverse, covering the 54 member states of the Commonwealth from India to Nauru ... Its biennial conference brings together ministers of public service, top officials and leading scholars in the field ... knowledge and practices to improve the organization and operation of Public Administration and to ensure that public agencies will be in a position to better respond to the current and future expectations and ...
Louis Brownlow - Honors Named For Brownlow
... Since 1968, the National Academy of Public Administration has recognized outstanding contributions to the literature of public administration through presentation of the Louis ... an exceptional contribution to the study of governmental institutions or public administration problems ... The American Society for Public Administration also bestows its Louis Brownlow Award on the best article written by a public administrator to appear in the journal Public ...
Ladipo Adamolekun - Research - Selected Books
... Public Administration in Africa Main Issues and Selected Country Studies ... ISBN 0-8133-3653-8 Politics and Administration in Nigeria ... Nigeria's ombudsman system Five years of the Public Complaints Commission ...
Manuel S. Enverga University Foundation - History
... Meanwhile, the Environmental Science and Public Administration programs were offered in school year 2000-01 in response to the growing need for professionals in environmental management and preservation and ... education, physical education, business administration, public administration, and computer studies, and undergraduate programs in the arts and sciences, public ...

Famous quotes containing the word public:

    Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.
    Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)