INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Applications of post-positivism to public administration were informed by phenomenology, the philosophical argument that reliable scientific inquiry cannot be based on external observation by outside researchers. The actions of persons in collective settings can be understood only from the standpoint of the actors themselves. The phenomenological approach seeks to determine how actors interpret their circumstances, the meaning they attach to those circumstances, and the patterns of interpretation between actors in collective settings. The answer is A

As a separate and distinct approach to public administration theory, the interpretive/action theory concept had limited traction. The ideas and concept upon which interpretative action theory is based, however, became central to what eventually became postmodern public administration theory. The answer is C.

The public administration theory is the language of public administration. The reflective language paradigm is, following David John Farmer, “a process of playful and attuned dialogs with the underlying content of the language of public bureaucracy . . . an art that seeks to draw out and use the consequence of hermeneutic, reflexive and linguistic character of the way in what we should understand and create public administration phenomenon”.

The feminist perspective in public administration probably traces to the work of Mary Parker Follett. Parker Follett argued that administrative processes are more important than hierarchy and authority, that the exercise of power is a central feature of bureaucratic behavior, and that the analyst view of reality is more an interpreting function of practical experience than a pursuit of objective findings

Virtually all the aspects of the application of science to public administration were debated over fifty years ago by the two giants of the field at the time: Dwight Waldo and Herbert Simon. The answer is B.

Particularism in postmodernity is overly preoccupied with efficiency, leadership, management, and organization. It is everywhere evident that science has had a lot to do with developing contemporary public administration theory. Science is also used more casually in public administration, simply as a word to lend importance to an idea or to cover a hypothesis or perspective with what are presumed to be the qualities of science. Public administration has always been associated with ways to organize and ways to manage. Defined in its broadest sense, this is the technology of public administration. All modern social systems tend to wish to find technological answers to social, economic, and political questions. Postmodernists describe modern life as hyperreality, a blurring of the real and the unreal. Mass media, information systems, and technology are new forms of control that change politics and life. Postmodernity is the process of destroying meaning. The ideals of truth, rationality, certainty, and coherence are over because, for Baudrillard, history has ended. Postmodernity is characteristic “of a universe where there are no more definitions possible”.Answer is E.

Virtually all the aspects of the application of science to public administration were debated over fifty years ago by the two giants of the field at the time: Dwight Waldo and Herbert Simon. Thus, it is argued that public administration theory is, in fact, the language of public administration. The reflective language paradigm is, following David John Farmer, “a process of playful and attuned dialogs with the underlying content of the language of public bureaucracy . . . an art that seeks to draw out and use the consequence of hermeneutic, reflexive and linguistic character of the way in what we should understand and create public administration phenomenon”. The answer is A.

One of the more interesting characteristics of postmodern public administration theory has to do with its approach to methodology. The most complete description of this methodological perspective is naturalistic inquiry which is as follows:

Particularism in postmodernity is overly preoccupied with efficiency, leadership, management, and organization. The current emphasis on performance measurement is illustrative of the functional nature of modernist public administration. Especially interesting is that measures of performance seldom ask the fairness question, performance for whom? The postmodernist would insist on asking that question.

The answer is B)

are the core ideas,Technology is considered as often dehumanizing, but in option B. the idea that Technology  enhances a citizen’s community and political involvement is not correct, therefore the answer is B.

Adherents to the phenomenological approach to research and theory in public administration tend to be grouped into the interpretive theorists’ camp, represented by Michael Harmon, and the critical theorists camp, represented by Robert Denhardt and Ralph P. Hummel. The answer is A.

The feminist perspective in public administration probably traces to the work of Mary Parker Follett. Parker Follett argued that administrative processes are more important than hierarchy and authority, that the exercise of power is a central feature of bureaucratic behavior, and that the analyst view of reality is more an interpreting function of practical experience than a pursuit of objective findings. All these theoretical perspectives are thought to be more feminine than masculine. Professions are important features in the evolution of the public service public engineers being mostly men, teachers mostly women, for example. From the feminist perspective, images of the public administrator as guardian, hero, or high-profile leader are masculine. The application of fairness, compassion, benevolence, and civic-mindedness are thought to be more feminine. The administrator is citizen rather than leader in feminist logic.

In public administration, according to postmodernists, the concern for others needs to be shifted from the abstract idea of nonspecific “others” to concrete, live, actual “others.” The answer is B.

In contrast to the emphasis on formal organizational structure and the principles of management in very early public administration, Chester Barnard described organizations as highly social environments in which workers are as interested in recognition and psychological support as they are in salary and favorable working conditions.

Individuals in organizations, McGregor argued, are naturally inclined to work, to seek responsibility, to cooperate, to be productive, and to take pride in their work.

From the Minnowbrook Conference and many subsequent gatherings emerged a set of concepts that challenged the orthodoxy of the day. Among the concepts and assumptions that emerged from Minnowbrook and the so-called New Public Administration that are now core ideas in postmodern public administration are these:
1. Public administrators and public agencies are not and cannot be either neutral or objective.
2. Technology is often dehumanizing.
3. Bureaucratic hierarchy is often ineffective as an organizational strategy.
4. Bureaucracies tend toward goal displacement and survival.
5. Cooperation, consensus, and democratic administration are more likely than the simple exercise of administrative authority to result in organizational effectiveness.
6. Modern concepts of public administration must be built on post-behavioral and postpositivist logic—more democratic, more adaptable, more responsive to changing social, economic, and political circumstances.

Applications of post-positivism to public administration were informed by phenomenology, the philosophical argument that reliable scientific inquiry cannot be based on external observation by outside researchers. The actions of persons in collective settings can be understood only from the standpoint of the actors themselves. The phenomenological approach seeks to determine how actors interpret their circumstances, the meaning they attach to those circumstances, and the patterns of interpretation between actors in collective settings.

Denhardt’s application of critical theory states that a critical theory of public organizations would examine the technical basis of bureaucratic domination and the ideological justifications for this condition, and would ask in what way members and clients of public bureaucracies might better understand the resultant limitations placed on their actions and in turn develop new modes of administrative praxis.

Modernity is the Enlightenment rejection of premodernity, of myths, mysteries, and traditional powers based on heredity or ordination.

Modernism is the pursuit of knowledge through reason, and knowledge thus derived is simply assumed to be factual and therefore true.

Hermeneutics (the study of relationship between reason, language and knowledge) concerns texts; it is concerned with interpreting, with specifying significance, with achieving intelligibility.

Modernity, in the postmodern perspective, is primarily concerned with objective knowledge and its development. Postmodernity is more concerned with values and the search for truth than in characterizations of knowledge. D. Farmer describes modernity as expressions of the limits of particularism, scientism, technologism, and enterprise.

From the postmodern perspective, criticisms of modernist public administration include (1) its overreliance on the logic and epistemology of objective rational social science; (2) its implicit support for authoritarian, unfair, and unjust regimes; (3) its bias toward American particularism; (4) it’s too-great attachment to functional management and organization technologies; and (5) its willingness to be overly influenced by the capitalist logic of enterprise.

Its bias is toward American, not European particularism; therefore, the correct answer is C.