Public Adminstration

Administration is concerned with ‘what’ and ‘How’ of the government. The what is the subjectmatter, the technical knowledge of afield which enables the administrator to perform his tasks. The ‘How’ is the technique of management according to which co-operative programmes are carried to success.”

1.      n.) The act of administering; government of public affairs; the service rendered, or duties assumed, in conducting affairs; the conducting of any office or employment; direction; management.

2.      (n.) The executive part of government; the persons collectively who are intrusted with the execution of laws and the superintendence of public affairs; the chief magistrate and his cabinet or council; or the council, or ministry, alone, as in Great Britain.

3.      (n.) The act of administering, or tendering something to another; dispensation; as, the administration of a medicine, of an oath, of justice, or of the sacrament.

4.      (n.) The management and disposal, under legal authority, of the estate of an intestate, or of a testator having no competent executor.

5. (n.) The management of an estate of a deceased person by an executor, the strictly corresponding term execution not being in use.

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 [mental health] 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

 

The functions and impact of Theories of Public Administration as follows:

These seven types of functions which shows the impact in Public

Adminstration theories are as follows -

1. ‘P’ stands for planning

2. ‘O’ stands for organization

3. ‘S’ stands for staffing.

4. ‘D’ stands for Directing.

5. ‘Co.’ stands for Co-ordination.

6. ‘R’ stands for Reporting

7. ‘B’ stands for Budgeting

1. ‘P’ stands for Planning -

Planning is the first step of Public Adminstration. i.e. working out the broad outline of the things that need to be done.

2. ‘O’ stands for organization -

It means establishment of the formal structure of authority through which the work is sub-divided, arranged and co-ordinated for the defined objective.

3. ‘S’ stands for staffing -

It means the recruitment and training of the staff and maintenance of favourable conditions of work for the staff.

4. ‘D’ stands for Directing -

It means the continuous task of making decisions and embodying them in specific and general orders and instructions, and thus guiding the enterprise.

5. ‘Co’ stands for Co-ordination -

It means interrelating the various parts of organization such as branches, divisions, sections of the work and elimination of overlapping.

6. ‘R’ stands for Reporting -

It means informing the authority to whom the executive is responsible as to what is going on.

7. ‘B’ stands for Budgeting -

It means accounting, fiscal planning and control.

Evaluation -

POSDCORB Perspective about the impact and functions in Public Adminstration is limited and narrow. It stressed on the tools of Public Adminstration. It does not show the substance of administration. It is a technique oriented perspective, not a subject oriented.

Reference

Nigeria (2001) National Office of the Information Economy, Government Online, Online Survey Results, March 2001.

 Michael (1992) Breaking Through Bureaucracy: A New Vision for Managing in Government (Los Angeles: University of Ibadan Press).

 Michael (2001) The New Public Management: Improving Research and Policy Dialogue (Berkeley: University of Ibadan Press).

Bellamy, Christine and Taylor, John A. (1998) Governing in the Information Age (Buckingham: Open University Press).

Caiden, Gerald E. (1982) Public Administration, Second Edition (Pacific Palisades: Palisades Publishers).