The Spirit of Public Administration

by H. George Frederickson

Book Overview

In this field-defining, broad approach to the study and practice of public administration, H. George Frederickson, one of the field's most respected scolars, carefully measures the meets and bounds of public administration and fixes its place in the context of changing politics, values, and ethics. He describes a robust and exciting public administration that includes, but is much more than, effective government management. The Spirit of Public Administration...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0787902950
• ISBN13: 9780787902957
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Doom of Public Under High-Pressure Business Rhetoric

Management is management everywhere, in public or private organization, but the principles you must be loyal to, the context you are faced with, and certainly means to be used depend on the setting, where you are in. So far, much was written about creating high-performance government organizations by making public organizations much more like business, that is, it was thought to apply business- oriented models to government organizations. This process gained the moment with the splendid study, reinventing government, of Osborne and Gaebler,. Following this book, lots of book took the turn to advance the reinventing voice and as time passed, incredible propositions were presented in order to transform public sector into a new structure similar to that of profit sector. This book is an investigation on the spirit of public administration. Professor Frederickson tries to persuade readers about why public administration should be thought of and approached to differently. The relationship of public administration with democratic principles is told in the book. In classic public administration theory, much emphasis was given to efficiency, economy and effectiveness and these performance guides were accepted as surrogates to evaluate how much public organizations are successful. Given this, public administrators were assigned the role to implement policy decisions, imposed by elected officials, with the maximum efficiency and economy. Author tells that these are important, but not sufficient, and another third surrogate -EQUALITY- must be added. Not only equality between people of today generation, but also between future and today generation is considered important.Recent years witnessed an increasing accentuation in literature on governmental ethics partly due to ethical breaches increment in last years. Author explains these ethical transgressions with the increasing privatization, contracting out (outsourcing), third-party government. To prove this, author presents research findings and literature sources. According to the author, increasing privatization substitutes "idealism" with "careerism". Resulting from this radical shift, private benefits and values dwarf ideals of public administration based mostly "patriotism of benevolence". Author strongly advocates that public organization is efficient and effective at least as is business organization. Bureaucrat-bashing reformist rhetoric created some prejudices about public organizations in the minds of citizens and caused people think that public organizations are unnecessary burdens on whole society although people are glad from their close relationships with public organizations in their neighborhood. This is explained in the book with the term "distance of paradox". People do not make a distinction between public officials and elected officials and both are gathered in one category, which is "public". Failure of political officials is connected to whole public sector, elected or appointed.