1. Assess the Progress in Public Administration within the last Century in the United States. 2. Examine the Validity of Seminal Scholars' Theories and Concepts in Today's Public Policy
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ResourcesA.12.docxResources
Assignment 1 (only 4 pages)
1. Dubnick, M. J. (2018). Demons, spirits, and elephants: Reflections on the failure of public administration theory...
https://doaj.org/article/957efecc0cfa448290379b5f3f156d44
2. Schachter, H. L. (2017). Women in public administration: Giving gender a place in education for leadership. Administration & Society, 49(1), 143-158.
https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy1.ncu.edu/doi/10.1177/0095399715611173
3. American Society for Public Administration. (2017). About ASPA [Web resource]. American Society for Public Administration.
Section 1: Public Administration History, Theories, Concepts, and Ethics
Welcome to Public Administration. In Week 1, you will learn about the foundations of public administration: the history, different theories, and the role ethics plays in public administration.
The study of public administration prepares the civil servant to implement government policy and academic disciplines for working in the public sector. The goal of public administration is to advance management and create policies to guarantee the government can function properly and efficiently.
Public administration consists of elected public servants such as a county sheriff, judge, and county commissioner, but also unelected public servants such as budget directors in a city, human resource administrators in a county, or state mental health directors. In general, public administrators work in public departments and agencies at the local, state, and federal level.
The roots of public administration can be traced to the scholars Woodrow Wilson, Max Weber, and Frederick Taylor during the early part of the 20th century. Weber’s work set forth the rational-legal model of bureaucracy while Taylor advanced a model of scientific management and together, these theories informed public administration literature for the first half of the 20th century.
A change in the theories occurred in the middle of the 20th century when Maslow and McGregor approached the inclusion of the private sector. With the advent of more humanistic management models, the field of public administration began to evolve rapidly to incorporate ideas from scholars such as Maslow and MacGregor, who wrote primarily for the private sector.
McGregor and Maslow contributed to the development of the management and motivational theory. McGregor is well known for his Theory X and Theory Y.
Theory X explains that people are work-averse and need a working environment where employees are motivated via authoritative direction and control. Employees have no ambition, do not want to take responsibility; therefore, they need constant supervision and control to ensure productivity. Workplaces applying this model require strict quotas, discipline, and provide rewards for performance to maintain the desired productivity (Miller, 2016).
Theory Y is the practical application of Maslow’s Humanistic School of Psychology applied to scientific management. Theory Y argues that humans will work on their own to meet their individual needs for self-respect and achievement. There is no need for strict supervision and discipline. Managers will encourage self-motivation to achieve company-wide goals and objectives. Theory Y is the most popular model for management and is implemented by Google and Facebook encouraging individual creativity and self-realization (Miller, 2016).
Ethics are an important component in public administration. Ethics define moral conduct necessary for good business practices while ensuring that the special needs of the community, state, or nation are met. Ethics are the framework to hold the administration accountable to the public by providing guidelines for integrity, thus creating trust in the community. A strong leader or administration follows a code of ethics setting a standard of high morale in their daily work and decision making.
The President’s Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform recommended in 1989 that individual agency standards of conduct should be replaced with a single regulation applicable to all employees of the executive branch. President Bush signed Executive Order 12674 on April 12, 1989. This Executive Order established 14 basic principles of ethical conduct for executive branch personnel and directed the Office of Government Ethics to establish a single comprehensive, concise set of executive branch standards for ethical conduct (United States of Government Ethics, n.d.).
References:
Miller, S. (2016). Theory X and Theory Y. Salem Press Encyclopedia.
United States Office of Government Ethics. (n.d.). Employee standards of conduct [Web resource]. USA.gov.
Note: Throughout this course and others here at Northcentral University, you are required to follow APA form and style when preparing assignments. Please visit APA Central, which is accessible through the Academic Success Center. APA Central offers several tutorials on scholarly writing, accessible within the Learn menu; you will need to create an account to access the material. Ethical Standards in Research and Writing and How to Avoid Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism are recommended. APA Central also offers self-quizzes to check your knowledge.
Getting Started with APA Style
The Academic Success Center also has weekly group sessions on synthesis/analysis, scholarly voice, and paraphrasing—all of which would be helpful to students who struggle with using their voice, correctly citing, and/or synthesizing. These group sessions and registration information can be found on the ASC homepage via the Group Session Calendar. Access ASC from the My Home page under The Center for Teaching and Learning or click on Course Essentials in the course.
Learn the basics of APA Style, including how to format a manuscript, understand the form and function of common manuscript parts, organize and express your thoughts clearly and precisely, employ the mechanics of style, use graphic elements effectively, credit sources and acknowledge the contributions of others, and construct a comprehensive and reliable reference list.
Public Administration History, Theories, Concepts, and Ethics
The History of Public Administration
This week, you will review some of the historical literature in addition to reading more modern works on how these ideas have been incorporated into the practice of public administration today.
Early application of public administration can be dated back to the Pharaohs, Kings, and Emperors who employed tax collectors and public servants to conduct the country’s business. Unfortunately, early public administration was fueled by nepotism, favoritism, political influences, and unethical behaviors. In Medieval times, public administrators were the privileged who could read, write and perform simple math. These skills transformed into record keeping, a forefront of our accounting, and paying and feeding armies like today’s systems do. As early as the second century, the Chinese government is credited with a highly centralized management system.
It was until the 18th century, when King Frederick William of Prussia, created and trained a new class of public administrators. Studies at the University of Frankfurt considered economic and social disciplines with the goal of social reform.
The German theorist Lorenz von Stain was considered the founder of the science of public administration. In the United States, Woodrow Wilson
promoted civil service reform in the 1880s, advancing public administration, including related programs in academia. Influenced by von Stain, Woodrow Wilson wrote an article applauding the following:
· Politics and administration should be managed separately.
· An item by item analysis of political and private organizations.
· Daily operations can be improved and become more efficient when business-like practices are implemented.
· Management and training of civil servants, including merit-based assessments, can improve the effectiveness of public service. (Wilson, 1887).
Other distinguished scholars included Luther Gulick, Lyndall Urwick, Henri Fayol, and Frederick Taylor. Taylor believed in scientific analysis as the best way to implement operations to save cost and time. The private industry and government organizations later adopted his theory. Gulick also believed in the scientific method, efficiency, professionalism, and structural reform. Gulick created the acronym POSDCORB, which stands for planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting, while Fayol developed a systematic, 14-point treatment of private management.
References:
Wilson, W. (1887). The study of administration. Political Science Quarterly, 2(2), 197-222.
Heads-Up to the Signature Assignment
In the final week of this course, you will submit the Signature Assignment. For this assignment, you will be asked to research and write about major arguments regarding globalization efforts in public administration. You are expected to synthesize all the material you will learn in this course for that assignment. Please take time to review the Signature Assignment so you can keep it in mind as you complete your weekly assignments. You can contact your professor if you have questions.
As part of this week’s assignment, you will need to complete a discussion. Review the materials carefully and submit the required assignment before 11:59 p.m. Arizona time on Sunday.
Be sure to review this week's resources carefully. You are expected to apply the information from these resources when you prepare your assignments.
Assignment 2
Second Assignment references
1. Bozeman, B., & Su, X. (2015). Public service motivation concepts and theory: A critique. Public Administration Review..
2. D’Aleo, P. (2018). Public administration and ethics: A problematic co-habitation. Juridical Current.
3. Keegan, B. (2018, July 6). Ethics in public service: The story of migrant children [Web resource]. American Society for Public Administration. https://ncuone.ncu.edu/d2l/le/content/202231/viewContent/1854077/View
Theories, Ethics, and Concepts of Public Administration
This week, you will learn about ethical behavior, one of the pillars of public administration. Every public servant who is elected or appointed is responsible for ensuring that the highest standards of ethics are set to maintain public trust. Specifically, law enforcement officers are held to a higher standard of ethics in their daily conduct with the community they protect and serve. Many public organizations have developed a code of ethics which all public servants are required to adhere to. Any impropriety or unethical conduct may result in serious penalties. Public officials represent not just themselves, but their constituents and the entire organization as well.
Throughout the centuries, researchers and philosophers have developed theories of distinguishing right from wrong and provided guidelines concerning ethical behavior. Normative ethics include virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism, which are among the most applied theories of ethics in the criminal justice system (Cline, 2018).
Public ethics is collective and distinct from private ethics and represents public interest and citizen’s responsibility. Ethics and transparency in public administration strengthen the public’s confidence (D’Aleo, 2018). Moral character matters in virtue ethics as well. Honesty, courage, wisdom, compassion, and temperance are the main categories of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics are necessary for any criminal justice organization to ensure due process and equal justice for all.
Normative properties depend on consequences, which is the view of consequentialism. For example, most people agree that lying is wrong. However, if an Environmental Protection Agency officer lies about the quality of the drinking water to help save people’s lives, then the consequentialist agrees that this officer took the correct course of action.
Duty is the base of morality as the basis for deontology theory. The deontologist finds and follows the rules of a moral life. For example, a police officer and a firefighter have the duty to act when arriving at an accident or fire scene (D’Aleo, 2018).
This week, as you explore the ethics sections of some of the most prominent organizations in this field, think about the unique ethical challenges public administrators face as cultural and social values evolve.
References:
Cline, A. (2018, June 11). 3 Types of ethical systems [Web article]. ThoughtCo.
D’Aleo, P. (2018). Public administration and ethics: A problematic co-habitation. Juridical Current, 21(2), 21-25.
Be sure to review this week's resources carefully. You are expected to apply the information from these resources when you prepare your assignments.
