Meaning, scope, and significance of Public Administration

INTRODUCTION to Meaning, scope, and significance of Public Administration:

The scope of public administration deals with two aspect:

• As a discipline, what should be the subject matter of enquiry
• As an institution, what activities it should perform.

THE BODY PART: Scope of public administration is so wide that it lacks consensus among scholars about its scope. However, its scope can be coined into:

• As activities: – – Managerial and Integral perspectives – Narrow and Broader perspectives
• As Discipline: – – POSDCORB and subject matter view

SUBJECT MATTER VIEW • According to subject matter view, public administration deals not only with administrative technique such as POSDCORB, responsibility, accountability, and transparency, but also with the substantive fields of administration such as defense, education, public health, social welfare, agriculture, police, fire protection & so on.

 

In summary, by analysis of all these approaches, we find after the broader view, integral view, subject matter and POSDCORB taken together, the scope of Public Administration is linked with the scope of the affairs of the state. Whatever the state performing as its functions, that becomes its scope and that’s why its scope is considered very wide and dynamic.

[Note: No need to elaborate all the view unless the directive is to discuss the scope of public administration.]

Factors which make it difficult to properly define the scope of public administration:

1. Since PA deals with the affairs of state which are very dynamic, therefore , the subject also becomes very dynamic. It is due to dynamic nature that we find six overlapping paradigms in public administration.
2. It has experienced many developments in public administration field such as organisation theory, public policy, personnel administration, financial administration etc.
3. Time to time the affairs of state have changed from laissez-faire era to Welfare Era to cooperative competitive era, which has also brought changes in its scope because public administration institution would remain relevant only when it deals with the affairs of the state of that particular time.
4. There are many other approaches in public administration which have made it more inter interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary in nature.

CONCLUSION:

Since, it is dynamic and deals with the affairs of the state which keeps changing, Waldo said that we should not define Public Administration as it could result into mental paralysis. Still we can say that the core of public administration scope remains largely stable, but it’s periphery keeps changing in terms of NPM, Post0NPM models etc. , which may not remain there after sometime. For instance, Development administration was once very relevant but today it is not as relevant.

 

 

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