IMs for PUAD 20013
Lesson 1
Dimensions of Philippine Public Administration and Governance
Lesson Objective:
Discuss and explain the dimensions and perspectives of Philippine Public
Administration and Governance in the context of bureaucracy.
Meaning of Public Administration
Public administration is both an academic discipline and a field of practice
.
Public administration houses the implementation of government policy and an
academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for
this work.
PA as a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its fundamental goal is to advance
management and policies so that government can function.
Bureaucracy in the Philippines
Government relies on the formal organization, more popularly known as bureaucracy to
carry out its functions and perform its role in society. Government activities are
discharge out by these organizations which vary in sizes and functions but have
common goals – that is to protect and promote the welfare of the people.
In our country, one major element that comprises the bureaucracy is the large number
of issue networks that have the capabilities and means to influence policymaking and
other governmental processes. In reality, to borrow Robert Dahl’s concept, the whole
Filipino society may be considered as one big issue network—as the “prime movers,”
meaning, everyone can impinge the way the government works, because all of us have
a stake in it.
However, we tend to look upon those in the government as the only prime movers
because they are the ones who stand out, meaning they are the dominant actors or
decision makers. Actually, those people are only part of
those issue networks that were able to rise into power and became the “policy
politicians who are experts in using experts.”
We all have a role to play in our society, and we all know the fact that there are so many
problems and issues that the bureaucracy has to address; but it does not necessarily
mean that we have to bombard the bureaucracy with tons of policy agendas because
that will not help in solving the problem.
In fact, too much policy agendas may become unmanageable, and it may even produce
conflict with other policy agendas, thus causing more dissension, instead of consensus.
Lesson 2
Perspectives in Public Administration, Governance and Development
Lesson objective:
Understand and develop appreciation on the different theories in public administration
as benchmark of the present Public Administration and Governance.
Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy
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.
Public administration has no generally accepted definition, because the scope of the
subject is so great and so debatable that it is easier to explain than define.
Public administration is a field of study (i.e., a discipline) and an occupation. There is
much disagreement about whether the study of public administration can properly be
called a discipline, largely because of the debate over whether public administration is a
subfield of political science or a subfield of administrative science.
Woodrow Wilson’s Dichotomy of Public Administration
In the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson is considered the father of public
administration. He first formally recognized public administration in an 1887 article
entitled "The Study of Administration." The future president wrote that "it is the object of
administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully
do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency
and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy”.
Wilson was more influential to the science of public administration than Von Stein,
primarily due to an article Wilson wrote in 1887 in which he advocated four concepts:
Separation of politics and administration;
Comparative analysis of political and private organizations;
Improving efficiency with business-like practices and attitudes toward daily
operations;
Improving the effectiveness of public service through management and by
training civil servants, merit-based assessment;
The separation of politics and administration has been the subject of lasting debate. The
different perspectives regarding this dichotomy contribute to differentiating
characteristics of the suggested generations of public administration.
By the 1920s, scholars of public administration had responded to Wilson's solicitation
and thus textbooks in this field were introduced. A few distinguished scholars of that
period were, Luther Gulick, Lyndall Urwick, Henri Fayol, Frederick Taylor, and others.
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), another prominent scholar in the field of administration
and management also published a book entitled ‘The Principles of Scientific
Management’ (1911).
Frederick Taylor Scientific Management
Frederick Taylor believed that scientific analysis would lead to the discovery of the ‘one
best way’ to do things and /or carrying out an operation. This, according to him could
help save cost and time. Taylor’s technique was later introduced to private industrialists,
and later into the various government organizations (Jeong, 2007).
The separation of politics and administration advocated by Wilson continues to play a
significant role in public administration today. However, the dominance of this dichotomy
was challenged by second generation scholars, beginning in the 1940s.
Luther Gulick's fact-value dichotomy was a key contender for Wilson's proposed
politics-administration dichotomy. In place of Wilson's first-generation split, Gulick
advocated a seamless web of discretion and interaction.
Taylor's approach is often referred to as Taylor's Principles, and/or Taylorism. Taylor's
scientific management consisted of main four principles (Frederick W. Taylor, 1911):
Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of
the tasks;
Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively
leaving them to train themselves;
Provide ‘Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance
of that worker's discrete task’ (Montgomery 1997);
Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the
managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the
workers actually perform the tasks.
Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system (approach). It is only
through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements
and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured.
And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests
with management alone.
Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick
Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick are two second-generation scholars. Gulick, Urwick,
and the new generation of administrators built on the work of contemporary behavioral,
administrative, and organizational scholars including Henri Fayol, Fredrick Winslow
Taylor, Paul Appleby, Frank Goodnow, and William Willoughby. The new generation of
organizational theories no longer relied upon logical assumptions and generalizations
about human nature like classical and enlightened theorists.
Gulick developed a comprehensive, generic theory of organization that emphasized the
scientific method, efficiency, professionalism, structural reform, and executive control.
Gulick summarized the duties of administrators with an acronym; POSDCORB, which
stands for planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and
budgeting. Fayol developed a systematic, 14-point, treatment of private management.
Second-generation theorists drew upon private management practices for
administrative sciences. A single, generic management theory bleeding the borders
between the private and the public sector was thought to be possible. With the general
theory, the administrative theory could be focused on governmental organizations.
The mid-1940s theorists challenged Wilson and Gulick. The politics-administration
dichotomy remained the center of criticism. In the 1960s and 1970s, government itself
came under fire as ineffective, inefficient, and largely a wasted effort. The costly
American intervention in Vietnam along with domestic scandals including the bugging of
Democratic party headquarters (the 1974 Watergate scandal) are two examples of self-
destructive government behavior that alienated citizens.
