Presented by J. B. Nangpuhan II (MPA Student) to Dr. C. G. Song, Professor of Public Administration at Chonnam National University, South Korea under 'introduction to public administration'. Date presented: 13Oct2010.
Key Terms:
1. organization
2. social equity
Objectives:
1. To present the author’s interpretation and synthesis of new Public Administration;
2. To describe how this interpretation and synthesis of new Public Administration relates to the wider world of administrative thought and practice; and
3. To interpret what new Public Administration means for organization theory and vice versa.
What is the classic concept of Public Administration?
SUMMARY[1]
Key Terms:
1. organization2. social equity
Objectives:
1. To present the author’s interpretation and synthesis of new Public Administration;
2. To describe how this interpretation and synthesis of new Public Administration relates to the wider world of administrative thought and practice; and
3. To interpret what new Public Administration means for organization theory and vice versa.
What is the classic concept of Public Administration?
Public administration is the efficient, economical, and coordinated management of the services like firemen, sanitation men, welfare workers, etc. The focus has been on top-level management (city management as an example) or the basic auxiliary staff services (budgeting, organization and management, systems analysis, planning, personnel, purchasing). The rationale for Public Administration is almost always better (more efficient or economical) management.
What is New Public Administration?
New Public Administration (NPA) adds social equity to the classic objectives and rationale. The Conventional or classic Public Administration seeks to answer: 1. How can we offer more or better services with available resources (efficiency)? 2. How can we maintain our level of services while spending less money (economy)? But NPA adds another question: Does this service enhance social equity?
Social Equity
Social equity is used here to summarize the following set of value premises. Social equity includes activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well-being of those in the minority (e.g farm laborers). Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. A fundamental commitment to social equity means that NPA is change. It seeks to change those policies and structures that systematically inhibit social equity. Decentralization, devolution, projects, contracts, sensitivity training, organization development, responsibility expansion, confrontation, and client involvement are the concepts of change in the new Public Administration that will enhance good management, efficiency, economy, and social equity. These concepts are all counter-bureaucratic in a traditional view but it will increase possibilities for social equity.
Some specific notions to achieve social equity are programming-planning-budgeting (PPB) systems, executive inventories, and social indicators. PPB aims to have better control to the uniformed services (based on McNamara’s study). The executive inventory seeks to alter the character of the top levels of a particular bureaucracy. Social indicators are designed to show variation in socioeconomic circumstances in the hope of improving the conditions of those who are shown to be disadvantaged. All of these three notions have a good management character for a better change.
New Public Administration’s Commitment
NPA seeks not only to carry out legislative mandates as efficiently and economically as possible, but rather to both influence and execute policies which more generally improve the quality of life for all. This concept is focusing on the administrative agencies as the basic policy battlefields that will involve public servants as advocates for change. NPA believed that social problems can be address more easily by modifying, developing, or changing institutions to achieve good management, efficiency, economic, and social equity. NPA puts it; “they are more concerned on defense than the Defense Department, more on manpower needs of administrative agencies and employment needs of the society than the civil service commissions, more on designing alternative means of solving public problems than building institutions.” It is the belief of NPA that entrenched and nonresponsible bureaucracies become greater problems than social situations.
Simon’s logical positivism and his call for an empirically based organization theory were accepted by the last generation of students of Public Administration. The idea is to focus on generic concepts such as decision, role, and group theory to develop a generalizable body of organization theory and come up with commonalities of behavior in all organization settings. The first subject matter is organization and the second is type of organization – private, public, voluntary. During this generation, the two main bodies of theory emerged are decision theory and human-relation theory – both are regarded as behavioral and positivist.
However, NPA advocates “second-generation behavioralism.” The second-generation behavioralist is less “generic” and more “public,” less “descriptive” and more “prescriptive,” less “institution oriented” and more “client-impact oriented,” less “neutral” and more “normative”, and it is hoped, no less scientific.
Organization Theory and New Public Administration
The classic Public Administration has never had either an agreed upon or satisfactory set of subfields. The “budgeting,” “personnel administration,” “organization and management” categories are too limiting, too “inside-organization” oriented, and too theoretically vacant. Thus, NPA calls for a different way of subdividing the phenomenon so as to better understand it.
1. The Distributive Process
This vital concern of NPA had to do first with the external distribution of goods and services to particular categories of persons, in terms of the benefits that result from operation of publicly administered programs.
v Cost-utility analysis or cost-benefit analysis is the chief technique for attempting to understand the results of the distributive process.
New Public Administration (NPA) adds social equity to the classic objectives and rationale. The Conventional or classic Public Administration seeks to answer: 1. How can we offer more or better services with available resources (efficiency)? 2. How can we maintain our level of services while spending less money (economy)? But NPA adds another question: Does this service enhance social equity?
Social Equity
Social equity is used here to summarize the following set of value premises. Social equity includes activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well-being of those in the minority (e.g farm laborers). Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. A fundamental commitment to social equity means that NPA is change. It seeks to change those policies and structures that systematically inhibit social equity. Decentralization, devolution, projects, contracts, sensitivity training, organization development, responsibility expansion, confrontation, and client involvement are the concepts of change in the new Public Administration that will enhance good management, efficiency, economy, and social equity. These concepts are all counter-bureaucratic in a traditional view but it will increase possibilities for social equity.
Some specific notions to achieve social equity are programming-planning-budgeting (PPB) systems, executive inventories, and social indicators. PPB aims to have better control to the uniformed services (based on McNamara’s study). The executive inventory seeks to alter the character of the top levels of a particular bureaucracy. Social indicators are designed to show variation in socioeconomic circumstances in the hope of improving the conditions of those who are shown to be disadvantaged. All of these three notions have a good management character for a better change.
New Public Administration’s Commitment
NPA seeks not only to carry out legislative mandates as efficiently and economically as possible, but rather to both influence and execute policies which more generally improve the quality of life for all. This concept is focusing on the administrative agencies as the basic policy battlefields that will involve public servants as advocates for change. NPA believed that social problems can be address more easily by modifying, developing, or changing institutions to achieve good management, efficiency, economic, and social equity. NPA puts it; “they are more concerned on defense than the Defense Department, more on manpower needs of administrative agencies and employment needs of the society than the civil service commissions, more on designing alternative means of solving public problems than building institutions.” It is the belief of NPA that entrenched and nonresponsible bureaucracies become greater problems than social situations.
Simon’s logical positivism and his call for an empirically based organization theory were accepted by the last generation of students of Public Administration. The idea is to focus on generic concepts such as decision, role, and group theory to develop a generalizable body of organization theory and come up with commonalities of behavior in all organization settings. The first subject matter is organization and the second is type of organization – private, public, voluntary. During this generation, the two main bodies of theory emerged are decision theory and human-relation theory – both are regarded as behavioral and positivist.
However, NPA advocates “second-generation behavioralism.” The second-generation behavioralist is less “generic” and more “public,” less “descriptive” and more “prescriptive,” less “institution oriented” and more “client-impact oriented,” less “neutral” and more “normative”, and it is hoped, no less scientific.
Organization Theory and New Public Administration
The classic Public Administration has never had either an agreed upon or satisfactory set of subfields. The “budgeting,” “personnel administration,” “organization and management” categories are too limiting, too “inside-organization” oriented, and too theoretically vacant. Thus, NPA calls for a different way of subdividing the phenomenon so as to better understand it.
1. The Distributive Process
This vital concern of NPA had to do first with the external distribution of goods and services to particular categories of persons, in terms of the benefits that result from operation of publicly administered programs.
v Cost-utility analysis or cost-benefit analysis is the chief technique for attempting to understand the results of the distributive process.
Advantages:
o This form of analysis presumes to measure the utility to individuals of particular public programs.
o Cost-utility analysis is the very central part of NPA because it attempts to project the likely cost and benefits of alternative programs.
o This analysis provides a scientific or quasi-scientific means for attempting to “get at” the question of equity.
o The emergence of “programming-planning-budgeting (PPB) systems” attempts to demonstrate the impact of policy advocacy of the various bureaus and departments of government on society in terms of utility.
o Cost-utility analysis can be an effective means by which inequities can be demonstrated. It is a tool by which legislatures and entrenched bureaucracies can be caused to defend publicly their distributive decisions.
o The informed public can demand change to glaring inequities.
Disadvantages: According to Wildavsky and Lindblom
o Rational or cost-utility analysis is difficult if not impossible to do.
o Rational decision making fundamentally alters or changes our political system by dealing with basic political questions within the arena of the administrator.
v Benefit Analysis or Utility Analysis is known in political science as “policy-outcomes analysis.” This is less prescriptive and more descriptive in form. It is useful in NPA but only as a foundation or background.
o It attempts to determine the basic factors that influence or determine policy variation. Example, “outcomes analysts” sketch the relationship between variations in public spending (quantity) and the quality of nonspending policy outcomes.
o Analysis is commonly based on relatively out-of-date census data.
v Emergence of newer form of distributive analysis focuses on equity in the distribution of government services. For example, in a certain jurisdiction, the newer form of distributive analysis will ask these questions:
o Does a school board distribute its funds equitably to schools and to the school children in its jurisdiction? If not, is inequity in the direction of the advantaged or disadvantaged?
o Are sanitation services distributed equitably to all neighborhoods in the city? If not, in what direction does inequity move and how is it justified?
o Is state and federal aid distributed equitably? If not, how are inequities justified?
v In NPA, the internal distributive process is likely to involve somewhat less readiness to make incremental compromises or “bargain” and somewhat more “administrative confrontation.”
v On a negative side, it is difficult to predict the possible consequences of having generalist public administrators who are prepared to rationalize their positions and decisions on the basis of social equity. And if he do, the present theory does not accommodate well what this means for the general political system.
2. The Integrative Process
This is a process which aims to modify traditional hierarchic systems by integrating a number of personnel to accomplish either long term or short term goal. Below are the techniques.
v Project or matrix technique. The team will work on a certain project in a specified time so it is temporary.
o The project manager and his staff are a team which attempts to utilize the services of regularly established hierarchies in an on-going organization.
o The manager must get his technical services from the technical hierarchy, his personnel services from the personnel agency, his budgeting services from the budget department, and so forth.
o In case of conflicts between the needs of the project and the survival needs of established hierarchies, top management of the organization must consistently decide in favor of the project.
o It has a collapsible nature, can be reestablish, useful for a “one time” hardware or research and development, or capital improvement efforts.
o It is useful as a device by which government contracts with industry can be monitored and coordinated.
v Group-decision-making model. The aim of this model is to come up to an equitable decision as efficient as possible.
v Link-pin function. It is about those roles in an organization (e.g. supervisors) that exert leadership in their own group and maintain effective membership and influence in a higher level in the organization.
v Dialectical organization. The ideal-type opposite of bureaucracy. Its goals, use of authority, structure, organization, location, staffing, client relationships, & operating procedures are antithetical to the bureaucratic form.
v True decentralization. Considered a fundamental modification hierarchy. Its aim is to distribute the administrative functions or powers of (a central authority) among several local authorities.
Disadvantages of the Integrative Process:
v There may develop a lack of Public Administration specialists who are essentially program builders.
v There may be an inherent conflict between higher- and lower- level administrators in less formal, integrative systems.
3. The Boundary-Exchange Process
v This process describes the general relationship between the publicly administered organization and its reference groups and clients. These include legislatures, elected executives, auxiliary staff organization, clients (both organized and individual), and organized interest groups. It also accounts for the relationship between levels of government in a federal system. This is because publicly administered organizations become more competitive in a political, social, and economic environment so they tend to seek support.
v This process is called client-oriented. There is considerably higher client involvement on the part of those minorities (e.g. farmers). The deprived-minority-client form of involvement will support the interests of deprived minorities, even if these decisions are difficult to justify in terms of either efficiency or economy.
· In a very general way, this kind of decision making occurs: 1.) in time of war with respect to military decision making; and 2.) decision patterns in the Apollo program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These two examples characterize crash programs designed to solve problems that are viewed as immediate or pressing. It involves backward budgeting with blocks of funds are available for the project and the detailed accounting occurs after spending.
· This logic is also applicable to the ghetto by establishing a temporary project. In here, the project manager and his staff will work with the permanently established bureaucracies in a city to design a crash program centered on employment, housing, health, education, and transportation needs of the residents of that ghetto. The maximum-feasible-participation notion gave the residents of the ghetto at least the impression that they had the capacity to influence publicly made decisions that affected their well-being. However, it did not enhance the efficiency or economy of OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity) activities.
4. The Socio-emotional Process
v This process requires both individual and group characteristics that differ from those presently seen by the use of sensitivity training, T techniques, or “organizational development.” These techniques include lowering an individual’s reliance on hierarchy, enabling him to tolerate conflict and emotions, and prepare him to take greater risks.
v These socioemotional-training techniques are fundamental devices for administrative change. Thus, it strengthens or redirects on-going and established bureaucracies.
v The study of Chris Argyris in the US Department of State concluded some pathologies within the “State” thus recommended the following:
· A long-range of change program should be defined with the target being to change the living system of the State Department;
· The first stage of the change program should focus on the behavior and leadership style of the most senior participants within the Department of State;
· Simultaneously with the involvement of the top, similar change activities should be initiated in any subpart which shows signs of being ready for change;
· The processes for organizational change and development that are created should require the same behavior and attitudes as those we wish to inculcate into the system (take more initiative, enlarge responsibilities, take risks).
· As the organizational development activities produce a higher level of leadership skills and begin to reduce the system’s defenses in the area of interpersonal relations, the participants should be helped to begin to reexamine some of the formal policies and activities of the State Department;
· The similarities and interdependencies between administration and substance need to be made more explicit and more widely accepted;
· The State Department’s internal capacity in the new areas of behavioral-science-based knowledge should be increased immediately; and
· Long-range research programs should be developed, exploring the possible value of the behavioral disciplines to the conduct of diplomacy.
Conclusions:
The search for social equity provides Public Administration with a real normative base. What are the likely results for a practicing public administration working form such a normative base?
v First, NPA might have to trade support from its traditional sources for support from the disadvantaged minorities to justify or rationalize its stance on the basis of social equity.
v Second, there should be greater legislative controls over administrative agencies and particularly the distributive patterns of such agencies.
v Third, NPA might well foster a political system in which elected officials speak basically for the majority and for the privileged minorities while courts and administrators are spokesmen for disadvantaged minorities. As administrators work in behalf of the equitable distribution of public and private goods, courts are increasingly interpreting the Constitution in the same direction.
v Public organization theories with social-equity commitments could create models that are less fixed on the market environments or individual-utility maximization and more on the equitable distribution of and access to both public and private goods by different groups or categories of people.
v “Public administration” is made up of public-management generalists and some auxiliary staff people (systems analysis, budgeting, personnel, and so on).
v “Public service” is made up of professionals who man the schools, the police, the courts, and so on.
v What does NPA mean for the academy?
· Progressive public administration programs in the academy will build firm and permanent bridges to the professional schools where most public servants are trained.
· In some schools, the notion of Public Administration as the “second profession” for publicly employed attorneys, teachers, welfare workers will become a reality.
· The return of policy analysis is certain in both kinds of schools.
· Good management is less and less important to today’s student.
· Programs that openly seek to attract and produce “change agents” or “short-haired radicals” are light years away from the POSDCORB image.
[1] Korean Association for Public Administration (1980). Selected Readings in Public Administration. South Korea: Da San Publishing Company. 66-85
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