Public Administration: Meaning, Nature & Scope:

Public administration is a broad ranging and amorphous combination of theory and practice; its purpose is to promote a superior understanding of government and its relationship with the society it governs, as well as to encourage public policies more responsive to social needs and to institute managerial practices attuned to effectiveness, efficiency and the deeper human requisites of the citizenry.

Public Administration is a specialized academic field. It essentially deals with the machinery and procedures of government activities.

Public Administration is an aspect of more generic concept of administration. Administration is as old as civilization itself and public administration dates back to the origin of the state. As an aspect of government activity, public administration is as old as political society that is, it has been co-existing with every political systems, to accomplish the objectives set by the political decision makers.

Administration has been defined as a cooperative human effort towards achieving some common goals. Thus defined, administration can be found in various institutional setting such as a business firm, a hospital, a university, a government department and so on. As an aspect of this more generic concept, Public Administration is that species of administration which operates within a specific political setting.

It is a means by which the policy decisions made by the political decision makers are carried out. Public Administration is decision making, planning the work to be done, formulating objectives and goals, working with the legislature and citizen organizations to gain public support and funds for government programmers, establishing and revising organization, directing and supervising employees, providing leadership, communicating and receiving communication, determining work methods and procedures, appraising performance, exercising controls and other functions performed by government executives and supervisors.

Public Administration lend itself to two usages; it is an activity; and it also refers to the discipline (or subject) of intellectual inquiry and study. Maintaining law and order is an activity and is part of Public Administration. Public Administration is also a discipline like Economics, Sociology, History etc., and it studies these activities and functions, formulate concepts and builds models and theories.

Public Administration as an academic discipline is barely one hundred and twenty five years old. The publication of Woodrow Wilson’s Essay ‘The Study of Administration’ in Political Science Quarterly in 1887 is considered as the symbolic beginning of a fairly autonomous inquiry. Whereas public administration as an activity can be traced back to the earliest periods of human history when man started living in organized societies. Governmental administration of earlier times (ancient and medieval) however differed considerably in its structure and goals from state administration in the modern era.  

In every society, public administration began with its main focus on the performance of activities like maintenance of law and order, collection of revenue, defence, etc. The rise of the modern welfare state has expanded the importance scope of public administration. Besides law and order, revenue collection and security functions, it operationalises a vast variety of public laws, provides public services like post and telegraphs and transport facilities in cities and towns, educational and health services and is the main instrument of socio-economic transformation in developing societies. It has widened to the extent that now very few aspects of an individual life remained unaffected by public administration. This stands true for all societies. – Socialist, capitalist and so on.

Public administration as visible public serving activity is before everyone’s gaze. Public administration is a system of organization and action concerned with performance of public serving activities. It can best be looked at as an instrument that is used for the realization of the goals of the government. Just as societies have their political systems and economic systems, they also have their public administrative systems.

Meaning and Definitions:

WHAT IS ADMINISTRATION?

            The English word ‘administer’ is derived from a combination of two Latin words ad & ministrare meaning ‘to serve’ or ‘to manage’. Literally, the term ‘administration means management of affairs – public or private.

            Administration may be defined as “group activity which involves cooperation and coordination for the purpose of achieving desired goals or objectives”.

E.N. Gladden: “Administration is a long and slightly pompous word, but it has a humble meaning, for it means, to care for or look after people, to manage affairs….is determined action taken in pursuit of a conscious purpose.”

Felix A. Nigro: “Administration is the organisation and use of men and materials to accomplish a purpose.”

Herbert A. Simon: “In its broadest sense, administration can be defined as the activities of groups cooperating to accomplish common goals.”

John A. Vieg: “Administration is determination action taken in pursuit of conscious purpose. It is the systematic ordering of affairs and the calculated use of resources, aimed at making those things happen which we want to happen and simultaneously preventing developments that fail to square with our intentions. It is the marshalling of available labour and materials in order to gain that which is desired at the lowest cost in energy, time and money.”

Luther Gulick: “Administration has to do with getting things done; with the accomplishment of defined objectives.”

L.D. White: “The art of administration is the direction, co-ordination and control of many persons to achieve some purpose or objective.”

F. M. Marx: “Administration is determined action taken in pursuit of a conscious purpose. It is the systematic ordering of affairs and the calculated use of resources aimed at making those things happen which one wants to happen.”

J. M. Pfiffner: “Administration is the organization and direction of human and material resources to achieve desired ends.”

Therefore, the two essentials of administration are:

i)                    Cooperative effort and

ii)                  Pursuit of common objectives.

Thus, administration means a cooperative effort of a group of people in pursuit of a common objective.”

            Administration is a universal process and occurs in diverse institutional settings. Based on its institutional setting, administration is divided into public administration and private administration. The former refers to the administration which operates in a governmental setting, while the latter refers to the administration which operates in a non-governmental setting, that is, business enterprises.

DEFINING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

            Public Administration is an aspect of the larger field of administration. It exists in a political system for the accomplishment of the goals and objectives formulated by the political decision makers. It is also known as governmental administration because the adjective ‘public’ in the word ‘public administration’ means ‘government’.  The ‘Public’ aspect of Public administration attributes a special character and focus to it. So, public administration is government administration, government in action, or a socio-economic and politico-administrative confluence, the focus being especially on public bureaucracy. Hence, the focus of public administration is on public bureaucracy, i.e., bureaucratic organization of the government or the administrative organization.

            It is the action part of the government, the means by which the purposes and goals of the government are realized.

Encyclopedia Britannica defines public administration as ‘the application of a policy of a state through its government.’

Public Administration, therefore, refers to that part of administration, which pertains to the administrative activities of the government.

Now we will try to look into the definitions of Public Administration provided by various scholars.

Woodrow Wilson:

Public administration is the detailed and systematic application of law. Every particular application of law is an act of administration.

 L.D. White:

“Public administration consists of all those operations having for their purpose the fulfilment or enforcement of public policy”.

Luther Gulick:

Public administration is that part of the science of administration, which has to do with the government; it concerns itself primarily with the executive branch where the work of the government is done; though there are obviously problems also in connection with the legislative and judicial branches.

 J.M. Pfiffner:

“Administration consists of getting the work of government done by coordinating the efforts of people so that they can work together to accomplish their set tasks”.

H.A. Simon, D.W. Smithburg and V.A. Thompson:

“By Public Administration is meant, in common usage, the activities of the executive branches of national, state and local governments, government corporations and certain other agencies of a specialised character. Specifically excluded are judicial and legislative agencies within the government and non-governmental administration.”

Dimock:

“Public Administration is the fulfillment or enforcement of public policy as declared by the competent authorities…Public administration is law in action. It is the executive side of government.”

D. Waldo:

Public Administration is “the art and science of management applied to the affairs of the State.”

Percy Mc Queen:

Public administration is related to the operations of government whether local or central.

F.A. Nigro and L.G. Nigro:

Public Administration:

• is co-operative group effort in a public setting;

• covers all three branches-executive, legislative, and judicial, and their inter-relationships;

• has an important role in the formulation of public policy and is thus a part of the political process;

• is different in significant ways from private administration; and

• is closely associated with numerous private groups and individuals in providing services to the community”.

Thus, Public Administration is the management of affairs of the government. It operates within a political context. It is a means by which the policy decisions made by the political decision makers are carried out.

An analysis of the above definitions indicates that the term public administration has been used in two sense i.e., wider sense and narrow sense. In the wider sense (broader sense), public administration includes the activities of all the three branches of the government, that is, legislature, executive and judiciary. This view has been taken by Woodrow Wilson, Marshall Dimock, F.A. Nigro and Pfiffner. By contrast, public administration in the narrower sense includes the activities of only the executive branch of the government. This view has been taken by Simon, Gulick, Ordway Tead, Fayol and Willoghby.

NATURE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

There are two views regarding the Nature of Public Administration, that is, Integral and Managerial.

According to the integral view, ‘administration’ is the sum total of all the activities – manual, clerical, managerial, etc., which are undertaken to realise the objectives of the organisation. In this view all the acts of officials of the government from the Attendant to the Secretaries to the government and Head of the State constitute Public Administration. Henri Fayol and L.D. White are the supporters of this view.

Thus, administration, according to this view, depends upon the subject matter of the concerned agency, that is, it differs from one sphere to another sphere.

According to the managerial view of administration, the managerial activities of people who are involved in planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling constitute Public Administration. This view regards administration as getting things done and not doing things. Luther Gullick, Herbert Simon, Smithburg and Thompson are the supporters of this view. The managerial view excludes Public Administration from non-managerial activities such as manual, clerical and technical activities.

            Thus, administration according to this view constitutes the activities of only the top persons. Administration, according to this view, is same in all the spheres as the managerial techniques are same in all the fields of activities.

The two views differ from each other in many ways. According to Prof. M.P. Sharma the difference between the two views is fundamental. The integral view includes the activities of all the persons engaged in administration whereas the managerial view restricts itself only to the activities of the few persons at the top. The integral view depicts all types of activities from manual to managerial, from non-technical to technical whereas the managerial view takes into account only the managerial activities in an organisation. Furthermore, administration, according to the integral view would differ from one sphere to another depending upon the subject matter, but whereas that will not be the case according to the managerial point of view because the managerial view is identified with the managerial techniques common to all the fields of administration.

The difference between the two views relates to the difference between management and operation or we may say between getting things done and doing things. The correct meaning of the term administration would however, depend upon the context in which it is used.

Dimock, Dimock and Koening sum up in the following words:

“As a study public administration examines every aspect of government’s efforts to discharge the laws and to give effect to public policy; as a process, it is all the steps taken between the time an enforcement agency assumes jurisdiction and the last brick is placed (but includes also that agency’s participation, if any, in the formulation of the programme in the first place); and as a vocation, it is organising and directing the activities of others in a public agency.”

SCOPE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

By the scope of Public Administration, we mean the major concerns of Public Administration as an activity and as a discipline.

Scope of Public Administration as an activity:

                Broadly speaking, Public Administration embraces all the activities of the government. Hence, as an activity the scope of public administration is no less than the scope of state activity. In the modern welfare state people expect many things – a wide variety of services and protection from the government. In this context public administration provides a number of welfare and social security services to the people. Besides, it has to manage government owned industries and regulate private industries. Public administration covers every area and activity within the ambit public policy. Thus, the scope of public administration is very wide in modern state.

Scope of Public Administration as a Discipline:

The POSDCoRB view:

Several writers have defined the scope of public administration in varying terms. Gullick sums up the scope of the subject by the letters of the word POSDCoRB which denote: Planning, Organisation, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordinating reporting and the Budgeting.

• Planning means the working out in broad outline the things to be done, the methods to be adopted to accomplish the purpose.
• Organization means the establishment of the formal structure of authority through which the work is sub-divided, arranged, defined and coordinated.
• Staffing means the recruitment and training of the personnel and their conditions of work.
• Directing means making decisions and issuing orders and instructions.
• Coordinating means inter-relating the work of various divisions, sections and other parts of the organization.
• Reporting means informing the superiors within the agency to whom the executive is responsible about what is going on.
• Budgeting means fiscal planning, control and accounting.

            According to Gullick the POSDCoRB activities are common to all organisations. They are the common problems of management which are found in different agencies regardless of the nature of the work they do.

            POSDCoRB gives unity, certainty, and definiteness and makes the study more systematic. The critics pointed out that the POSDCoRB activities were neither the whole of administration, nor even the most important part of it. The POSDCoRB view overlooks the fact that deferent agencies are faced with different administrative problems, which are peculiar to the nature of the services, they render and the functions they performed. The POSDCoRB view takes into consideration only the common techniques of the administration and ignores the study of the ‘subject matter’ with which the agency is concerned. A major defect is that the POSDCoRB view does not contain any reference to the formulation and implementation of the policy. Therefore, the scope of administration is defined very narrowly, being too inward looking and too conscious of the top management.

The Subject Matter View:

        We all know that public administration deals not only with the processes but also with the substantive matters of administration, such as Defence, Law and Order, Education, Public Health, Agriculture, Public Works, Social Security, Justice, Welfare, etc. These services require not only POSDCoRB techniques but also have important specialised techniques of their own which are not covered by POSDCoRB techniques.

For example, if you take Police Administration it has its own techniques in crime detection, maintenance of Law and Order, etc., which are much and more vital to efficient police work, than the formal principles of organisation, personnel management, coordination or finance and it is the same with other services too. Therefore, the study of public administration should deal with both the processes (that is POSDCoRB techniques and the substantive concerns).

       We conclude the scope of public administration with the statement of Lewis Meriam: “Public administration is an instrument with two blades like a pair of scissors. One blade may be knowledge of the field covered by POSDCoRB, the other blade is knowledge of the subject matter in which these techniques are applied. Both blades must be good to make an effective tool”.

         

We may conclude the discussion with the observation of Herbert Simon who says that Public administration has two important aspects, namely deciding and doing things. The first provides the basis for the second. One cannot conceive of any discipline without thinking or deciding. Thus Public administration is a broad-ranging and an amorphous combination of theory and practice.