Public administration houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal... is to advance management and policies so that government can function." Some of the various definitions which have been offered for the term are: "the management of public programs"; the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day"; and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies."

Public administration is "centrally concerned with the organization of government policies and programmes as well as the behavior of officials (usually non-elected) formally responsible for their conduct" Many unelected public servants can be considered to be public administrators, including police officers, municipal budget analysts, HR benefits administrators, city managers, Census analysts, and cabinet secretaries.Template:Kettl, D.F. and Fesler, J.W. (2009). ‘The politics of the administrative process.’ Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Public administrators are public servants working in public departments and agencies, at all levels of government.

In the US, civil servants and academics such as Woodrow Wilson promoted American civil service reform in the 1880s, moving public administration into academia. However, "until the mid-20th century and the dissemination of the German sociologist Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy" there was not "much interest in a theory of public administration." The field is multidisciplinary in character; one of the various proposals for public administration’s sub-fields sets out five pillars, including human resources, organizational theory, policy analysis and statistics, budgeting, and ethics.

Public administration is both an academic discipline and a field of practice; the latter is depicted in this picture of US federal public servants at a meeting.

See also

• Administration (government)
• Administrative law
• Budgeting
• Bureaucracy
• Civil society
• Doctor of Public Administration
• Municipal government
• Politics
• Professional administration
• Public management — focusing on the efficiency and effectiveness of a government
• Public administration theory
• Public policy
• Public policy schools
• Theories of administration
  • Max Weber

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : Public administration in the field of business

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : Public administration in the field of business