UGBS 105 Introduction to Public

Administration

Session 1–The Meaning and Nature of Public Administration

Lecturer: Dr. Thomas Buabeng, UGBS

Contact Information: [email protected]

College of Education
School of Continuing and Distance Education
2016/2017 – 2017/2018
 Session Overview
❑ The general objective of this session is to introduce you to the
nature of Public Administration as a field of practice.
❑ The specific objectives are to help you understand:
❑The meaning of the concept of Public Administration:
traditional and modern perspectives
❑The scope of Public Administration as a field of practice:
❑The main characteristics of Public Administration:
❑The importance of Public Administration for development

Dr. Thomas Buabeng, UGBS Slide 2

 Session Outline
The key topics to be covered in the session are as follows:
❑The concept and practice of public administration
❑The main characteristics of public administration.
❑The importance of public administration.
❑Major concerns of public administration as a practice

Dr. Thomas Buabeng, UGBS Slide 3

 Reading List
❑ Dear student, to deepen your understanding of the issues that
we have discussed in this session, I urge you to read the
following:
Required:
❑Buabeng, T. (2020): Fundamental of Public Administration
and Management
Supplementary
❑Rosenbloom, D. H. et al. (2009). Public Administration:
Understanding Management, Politics and Law in the Public
Sector. 7th Edition. McGraw-Hill Publications. Chapter 1
❑Kettl, D. F. (2012). The Politics of the Administrative
Process. 5 th Edition. Sage: Los Angeles. Chapter 2
Dr. Thomas Buabeng, UGBS Slide 4
 Topic One

The concept and practice of public administration

Dr. Thomas Buabeng, UGBS Slide 5

 What is Public Administration?
❑ Public Administration covers a very wide range of issues
which makes it difficult to find a single worldwide accepted,
definition for it.
❑ Dwight Waldo “no single, and authoritative definition of
public administration is possible”.
❑This is due to its eclectic nature –
❑It has a broad scope and so debatable
❑The definitions are often skewed depending on who does
it – sociologist, economist, psychologist, and political
scientist.
❑To properly understand it therefore implies that one must
view it from different dimensions.
Dr. Thomas Buabeng, UGBS
 What is Public Administration?

❑Attempts made by scholars to define what is meant by

Public Administration has followed the path taken by
the six blind-folded men who tried to describe the
nature of an elephant by touching different parts of the
elephant

Slide 7
 What is public administration?

❑ It would also be useful to at public and later administration

❑ What then is public?
❑ Something that is open
❑ Communal
❑ Unrestricted
❑ Easy access
❑ Berkley and Rouse in their book “The Craft of Public Administration”
see public simply as the citizens of a given area i.e., the people of a
town or country.
❑ Public in general terms refer to something that belongs to the
people.
 What is administration?

❑ Administer originated from two Latin words – ad meaning to

and ministrare meaning serve or attend
❑ Administer therefore means to look after or serve people
❑ ‘The organization and direction of human and material
resources to achieved desire ends.’ (Pfifner and Prethus –
Public Administration)
❑ ‘Consist of systematic ordering of affair and the calculated use
of resources aimed at making those things happen which we
want to happen and simultaneously preventing developments
that fail to square with our intentions.’ (Fritz Morstein Marx
1946)

Dr. Thomas Buabeng, UGBS

 Cont .
❑ The technology of ensuring harmonious combination of men and
material resources to produce expected results is what we call
administration.
❑ It is a collective activity towards the realization of defined goal
through rational organization and management of men and material.
❑ This may occur at all levels ranging from social clubs, individual
businesses, corporations, educational institutions, the state etc.
❑ Administration may therefore be private, club, companies, or public –
state, regional, local government levels
 Cont.

❑Administration generally refers to the day-to-day

management of activities to achieve a goal.
❑Administration is to care for or to look after people,
to manage affairs (E.N. Gladden).
❑Herbert Simeon et al, define administration in an
opening sentence as ‘When two men cooperate to
roll a stone that neither could have moved alone,
the rudiments of administration have appeared’.
❑Thus, administration was born when two people
decided to take an action from one place to
another.
 Cont.

❑This means that for any two people to act for a

fruitful aim, the following ingredient of
administration must be in place.
❑ -People - must be present and agree to take the
action
❑-Action - A step must be taken regarding what to do.
❑-Interaction - The two must agree to relate and
combine their efforts to take action.
❑Administration also refers to the activities of group
of persons cooperating among goals.
 Cont.

❑ The administrator is therefore concerned with a cooperative

activity. They interact with others to accomplish tasks.
❑ This is not to say that every activity that involves the
interaction of people is administration.
❑ Administration is a process which involves human beings
jointly engaged in working toward common goals.
❑ Administration therefore takes place in human society.
❑ When ever an activity involves more than two people it
becomes complex.
❑ To be an expert in administration one should know the
principles.
❑ This principles work in any form of administration.
 What is Public Administration?
❑ Public administration may be defined as the action part of
government the means by which the purposes and the goals of
government are realized.
❑ Inferring from the above definition several others, Ghana's public
administration system is therefore the part of government through
which the government of Ghana actualizes whatever vision, goals,
objectives it sets for itself.
❑ Public administration is therefore the management of the scarce
resources, that is, financial, human and material of a community
by elected and unelected public officials to benefit the community
in question.
❑ Public administration is an art, which strategically combines these
resources to maximize their utilization in the interest of the citizens
within a governed jurisdiction.
 Selected definitions

❑ Grover (1998: 10) stated that public administration is the process by

which resources are marshaled and then used to cope with the
problems facing a political community;
❑ David (1986: 6) sees it as “the use of managerial, political and legal
theories and processes to fulfill legislative, executive and judicial
governmental mandates for the provision of regulatory and service
functions for the society as a whole or for some segments of it”.
❑ Leonard (1955: 3), broadly defines it as “consisting of all those
operations having for their purpose the fulfillment or enforcement of
public policy”.
 Cont.
❑ "Public Administration is detailed and systematic execution
of public law. Every particular application of law is an act of
administration" - L.D. White.
❑ Public Administration is "the art and science of management
applied to the affairs of the State" - D. Waldo.
❑ "By Public Administration is meant in common usage the
activities of the executive branches of the National, State
and Local Governments'' - H. Simon.
❑ It is a means by which the policy decisions made by the
political decision makers are carried out.
❑ It is the action part of the government, the means by which
the purposes and goals of the government are realized.
 Topic two

The main characteristics of public administration.

Slide 17
Characteristics of Public Administration

❑ The 'Public' aspect of Public Administration gives the discipline a

special character. It may be viewed to formally mean government.
So
❑ Public Administration is government administration, the focus
being specifically on public bureaucracy.
❑ It is a cooperative group effort in a public setting.
❑ It covers all three branches –legislative, executive and judicial - and
their interrelationships.
 Cont.
❑It has an important role in the formulation of public
policy and is thus a part of the political process.
❑It is different in significant ways from private
administration.
❑It is closely associated with numerous private groups
and individuals in providing services to the
community.

Slide 19
 Cont.
❑It has two main identities as
❑An academic discipline and field of study
❑As a practice with professional career in the field
❑As a practice, it 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.“

Slide 20
 Cont.
❑The domain and scope of Public Administration both as a
discipline and practice is very complex.
❑The practice of public administration involves the
complex of governmental activities that are undertaken
in public interest at different levels such as the national,
regional or state and local.
❑The discipline of PA aims at a systematic study of these
activities.
❑It is widely acknowledged that the scope of the discipline
of PA must be wide enough to respond to the complex
social realities of today.
 Topic three

Importance of Public Administration

Slide 22
 Importance of Public Administration
• Public Administration is the instrument of national
governance for initiating and implementing public
policies to optimize the welfare of citizens in society.
• Public Administration creates legally binding institutions
that regulates the behavior and development of all actors
in the society in a coordinated manner.
• Public Administration is as an instrument for enacting
and enforcing rule of law to ensure peaceful
development.
• Public Administration promotes equity and fairness in the
distribution of resources, especially in welfare states

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 Topic four

MAJOR CONCERNS

Slide 24
 concerns of public administration

There are five main concerns of public

administration as a practice:
❑Promoting Publicness
❑Policy Sensitivity
❑Implementation Capability
❑Shared understanding of social reality
❑Administration as a learning experience
 Promoting Publicness

❑In a democratic society, PA has to be explicitly 'public' in

terms of democratic values, power-sharing and
openness.
❑This calls for a new climate in the bureaucracy.
❑PA in practice must absorb the principles of democracy as
an overarching form of the government.
 Policy Sensitivity

❑As governments are called upon to play increasingly

active roles in times of rapid changes and social crisis,
innovative and timely policy formulation becomes a
prime necessity in the government.
❑This would necessitate a new preparedness within the
administrative set-up that had hardly any precedence in
the past.
 Implementation Capability

❑ Effective policy implementation is a test kit for the coping capacity

of the governments in today's complex situations.

❑ Goals must be clearly set; planning, programming and projections

must be followed step by step; and project management in all its
ramifications has to have top priority in government.

❑ The strength of administration and the legitimacy of the

government itself depend more and more on the administration's
capacity to deliver the goods in time and in response to the
demands of the citizens.
 Shared understanding of social reality

❑ The capacity to cope with social and administrative complexity

can be enhanced by a deliberate policy of organizational
openness.
❑ The underlying assumption here is that the administration
needs to understand the diverse interests and influences.
❑ In today's complex administrative world, construction of
administrative reality must be based on the shared
understanding of its actors such as the top and middle
managers, the employees, and the citizens.
❑ The centralized bureaucracy does not fit in with the
contemporaneous socio-administrative reality.
 Administration as a learning experience
❑Shifting social reality and complex environmental
conditions impose certain rigors on PA today.
❑Rusted 'principles' of the past or the administrative
recipes of bureaucratic routine are no longer appropriate
tools for analysis and problem solving.
❑Public Administration in modern time must be proactive,
innovative, risk-taking, and often adventurous.
❑This new, entrepreneurial zeal is expected to transform
'bureaucracy' into a new kind of learning organization,
more adaptable to changes, more open to new insights
and innovations, and more accessible to the clientele.
 Cont.
❑ These are the major concerns of government in all democratic
countries.
❑ In the developing countries like Ghana, these have added
significance, as PA has a pivotal role to play in the socio-economic
reconstruction of post-colonial societies and post military regimes.
❑ The discipline cannot live in isolation but has to develop in close
association with the dynamic social changes.
❑ As a body of knowledge, it must develop explanatory strength to
analyze socio-economic complexity and assist in the ushering in of
a new society free of exploitation and corruption, human misery,
poverty and deprivation as well as discrimination on basis of
gender, ethnicity, religion and other demographic factors of the
past era.
 Conclusion

❑We conclude that public administrators use their

legitimate monopoly of final authority to enact binding
regulatory rules and enforce compliance of laws, policies
and programs to promote social, economic, and political
development in society.

Slide 32
 References
Required:
❑ Buabeng, T. (2020): Fundamental of Public Administration and Management
❑ Supplementary
❑ Rouse, J., Meyer, C. K., Noe, L., & Geerts, J. (2016). The craft of public
administration. Des Moines: Millennium HRM Press.

❑ Kettl, D. F. (2012). The Politics of the Administrative Process. 5th Edition. Sage:
Los Angeles. Chapter 2

❑ Shafritz, J. M., et al. (2012). Introducing Public Administration. 8th Edition.

Person Longman: New York.
❑ Shafritz, J. M., and Hyde, A. (2011). Classics of Public Administration. 7th Edition.
Wadsworth: Boston.

❑ Rosenbloom, D. H. et al. (2009). Public Administration: Understanding Management, Politics

and Law in the Public Sector. 7th Edition. McGraw-Hill Publications. Chapter 1

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