Class : Introduction : Paradigms

PARADIGMS IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE DISCIPLINE 

à"perhaps it is best if public administration is not defined, it is more an area of interest than a discipline, more an emphasis than a separate science. it is necessarily cross disciplinary.The overlapping and vague boundaries should be viewed as a resource rather than an irritant."----F C Mother

à"to understand the present status of the discipline we must know where it has been "---Nicholas Henry

NICHOLAS HENRY 

Paradigm 1. Politics administration dichotomy. 1900-1926
Paradigm 2. Principles of administration. 1927-1937
Sub-Paradigm. The Challenge.(humanistic challenge) 1938-1950
Paradigm 3. Public Administration as political science 1950-70
Paradigm 4. Public Administration as management. 1956-1970
Sub-Paradigm. Forces of separation. 
Paradigm 5. Public Administration as public administration 1970s......
Paradigm 6. Public Administration as governance. 1980s.......

àRobert Golembeiwsky has explained the evolution on two themes--LOCUS AND FOCUS 

The locus of the discipline is defined as the "institutional where" i.e where and in what institutions the area of inquiry of the discipline lies.In other words locus is the location of the sphere of study.

Focus is defined as the specialised "what" of a discipline. What special contribution does that discipline offer. In other words what is the aim behind the discipline's enquiry.

à" every time one of these (locus and focus) was sharply defined in successive stages of evolution, the other was relatively ignored and vice-a-versa "----- NICHOLAS HENRY

PARADIGM 1

Politics Administration dichotomy (1887-1926)

-Woodrow Wilson essay 'Study of Administration'
-Frank Goodnow 'Politics and administration'
During this era pub adm received first serious attention as a separate discipline and dichotomy between politics and public administration became the first identified theory of public administration. 
-L D WHITE'S book 'introduction to the study of Public administration'
The theme of this book is 2-fold
1) partisan politics should not intrude on administration 
2)administration lends itself to scientific study and is capable of becoming a value free science with missions of efficiency n economy. 

White's book provided a smooth thematic link between paradigm 1 and 2.

PARADIGM 2 

Era of principles of administration 

-William Willoughby 'Principles of Public Administration'
Provided initial thrust for second era.
4 points worth mentioning in this book.
1) certain scientific principles of administration existed
2)they can be discovered
3) they can be learnt
4) they can impart efficiency n expertise to adm functioning

In this paradigm certain principles of administration which overlap as principles of management from where they were essentially borrowed, started being visualised as 'ready made aids' for efficiency in administration. 

-Gulick n Urwick "Papers on the science of adm" -POSDCORB

Criticised by :
1) humanistic challenge -Elton Mayo
2) behaviouralist challenge 
Chester Barnard 
Herbert Simon

SUB PARADIGM -The Challenge 

-The humanistic challenge -hawthorne studies
-1938 Chester Barnard "The functions of the Executive"
-1947 Herbert Simon "Administrative Behaviour"

Latter two criticised Principles Approach on behaviouralist lines.
Merely through the description of efficiency in terms of principles, administrative efficiency could not be ensured because human behaviour could go along unpredicatble directions.
SIMON called those principles as merely proverbs.

In this context SIMON recommended as under --

" administration should be concerned with the development of a pure science of administration (this according to him called for a good grounding in psychology) 

" administration should deal with a broad range of values and working out prescriptions for public policy"

3 PROBLEMS: ROBERT DAHL

1) the normative consideration cannot always be excluded from public administration. "Scientific means to achieve efficiency must be founded on some clarification of ends."

2)Science of administration cannot escape from the fact that " it must involve the study of human behaviour in terms of certain aspects of human behaviour "

3) Conception of principles cannot remain narrow and parochial. 
" we are a long way from the science of public administration. As long as the study of public administration is not comparative claims of a science of public administration sound rather hollow "

Nicholas Henry suggests that as a result of this crisis of identity the discipline of Public administration reached its Nadir (absolute rock bottom) in the 1950s and early 60s till fresh momentum in the form the NPA gave it a renaissance identity in late 1960s.

SUB PARADIGM TWO: RESPONSE TO CHALLENGE 

Different scholastic responded differently to Simon and Dahl's challenges. In terms of Simons two fold perspective the following were the responses...

1) his prescribed of pure science of administration was seen with reference to more management. 
2) his recommendation of a thorough grounding in social psychology was seen with a lot of skepticism and insecurity.
Most of the public administration scholars had political science background and had no background in psychology and felt insecured by this idea.

Paradigm 3 – Public Administration as Pol Sc

 (1950 – 1970)

This paradigm begins with complete abandonment of Pol-Adm dichotomy. In this context JM Gauss made famous observation in 1950 “theory of PA means in our times a theory of politics also”. This was in sharp contrast to the hey days of dichotomy suggested by philosophers like Wilson and Goodnow and this comment is considered by Nicholas Henry as the last nail in the coffin of dichotomy.

During this era, PA re-established its links with Pol Science. In this context Martin Landau observed in 1962 “PA is neither a sub-field of Pol Sc nor does it comprehended it. It only becomes a synonym”. On a similar wavelength, William Siffin had also noted in '56 “the study of PA in US is characterized by absence of any fully comprehensive intellectual framework”. And also Roscot Marin had called for in 1952, continued domination of Pol Sc over PA. Thus in this era, many Pol Scientists gave to Pub Administratists what Dwight Waldo termed as a second class citizenship.

So much so that in 1977, Henz Eulau, the then President of APSA termed PA as intellectual wasteland meaning thereby that as a distinct discipline it has nothing to offer and has no new agenda other than the agenda which Pol Sc anyways had. During this period it was argued that core Pol Sc and Constitutional concepts like democracy, pluralism, equality, liberty etc should govern the wings of public administrationists as well as public administrators. Thus instead of administrative aspect of PA, the public aspect of PA was advocated. The newer public values actually came again to be defined later in the form of NPA themes of relevancy, values, equity and change. However, ideologically the publicness was highlighted with the following logic - “Bureaucracy in --- exists, not to serve the ruler but to serve the ruled.

Paradigm 4 – PA as Management (1956 – 70)

Towards the ending years of P-III, scholars started questioning the excessive Pol Sc orientiation of administration on the logic that PA as Pol Sc does not offer improvement in the actual functioning of administration. In other words from a standpoint of practical value addition, it was again argued that PA should be like management.

In this context a fundamental difference was pointed out by Coldwell as under “Pol Sc educates for intellectual understanding whereas PA educated for knowledgeable action.

Thus during this period, the broad theme that emerged was “alikeness of administration of all organisations whether public, for profit or non-profit”. In other words the action part or the operative part of any organisation whether public or private was described as similar.

In 1956, a major event happened which relinked administration to genuine management philosophies and presented it as a unifying branch of knowledge, studying the functioning of organisation and their administration. No matter whether they were government, private or non-profit organisations. The journal Administrative Science Quarterly was founded by PA scholars on the premise that public, private and non-profit administration is a false distinction because administration is administration.

On the theme of alikeness of administration in all organisations, Wallace Sayre has given the following observation “Public and private management are fundamentally alike in all **unimportant aspects meaning thereby that the action part of administration is similar even though the substantive goal can be dissimilar and it is this action part that administration stands to gain by aligning itself with management.

This alikeness was now described not only in terms of principles of management pertaining to the structure, process and behaviour but also in terms of other managerial philosophies and ideas like competition, quality of __ service, customer orientation, freedom of choice etc. These ideas arising in Paradigm IV describe wider focus as compared to Paradigm II and were explored in detail later in Paradigm VI mainly in the form of NPM perspective.

Rest of the paradigms-->

The following images will be edited soon and if time permits will be converted to text notes.