CONTROVERSIES IN

PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION:
Reforming the Bureaucracy

By Leny-Lyn J. Molina, MPA Student

 INTRODUCTION
•The reform of bureaucratic institutions remains a prominent and recurring concern in the study and
practice of public administration. A vast and prolific amount of literature in the discipline has been
produced addressing the already convoluted and often cumbersome problematic of reforming
governments and their bureaucratic machineries in both developed and developing societies.

•Raging controversies on the subject have spawned intense and colorful debates on how public
bureaucracies are to be transformed to adapt to the demands of an increasingly volatile
information age characterized by enterprise economies, much innovation and rapid technologies.

•Morgan proclaimed over a decade ago that “the bureaucratic, control-oriented ethos which
underlies the drive to overcome problem through a redundancy of parts, is not well equipped to
deal with conditions of turbulences”. There is now an emerging consensus that contemporary
bureaucratic models have become obsolete, resembling the extinct Brontosaurus, a creature from
the Mesozoic period pictured as having “a large body and a small brain” (Green and Hubbell 1996;
57).

Controversies in Public Administration

• The challenge has become increasingly acute and almost overwhelming as
bureaucracies today remain to be perceived by their publics as ill-adapted to the
vicissitudes and realities of prevailing market and enterprise dynamics.

• Reform efforts in the Philippines and their fatal obsession with reorganization or
organizational restructuring have undoubtedly time and again merely accentuated
operational discontinuities without instituting genuine transformation because
they have often been launched without a solid philosophy anchored on sound
assessments and studies of the system dynamics besieging the bureaucratic
milieu. A monograph released by the Presidential Committee on Streaming the
Bureaucracy (PCSB) and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM)
proposed and outlined a new paradigm of government.

Controversies in Public Administration 3

UNRAVELING
UNSETTLED
QUESTIONS IN
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION

Controversies in Public Administration 4

• The publication of Woodrow Wilson’s celebrated treatise calling for fuller civil
service reform during the stormy years of the American progressive movement.
He prescribed the scientific study of administration to separate administrative
functions from the hurry and strife of politics (Wilson 1887).
• Wilson wrestled with the fundamental issues of “running a constitution” much
as what we are today, and asserted that the field of administration must be
transformed into a field of business.
• Public administration today continues to be confronted by unsettled alternatives
that remain unwieldy in spite of the wealth of experience and wisdom that have
accumulated through the years.
• Public administration literature has been drenched with a flood of concepts that
have circulated about in fashionable and fancy labels as “reinventing”,
“reengineering,” “refounding,” and “reframing”.

Controversies in Public Administration 5

• Public management reforms in the United States have often been
marked by three characteristic; they have been based on an
inadequate or inaccurate view of what public organizations really do,
they have failed to recognize the very fundamental constraints that
civil service systems place on public managers and their activities,
and that they have been almost exclusively on models borrowed from
the private sector.

Controversies in Public Administration 6

Why is bureaucracy in most governments today not living up to
expectations and what are we going to do with it?
• Many of the issues that are currently explored in the arena of bureaucratic reform
represent enduring and unsettled ones that have been redefined to suit the temper of
present challenges and opportunities.
• Staple concerns as efficiency, effectiveness and economy that have serve as guiding
principles in public administration theory and practice for almost a century are
perceived to remain relevant, but have been claimed to be inadequate to meet the
current stress for bureaucracies (Rosenbloom and Ross 1994; Wamsley 1996)
• 3-Es is dangerously incomplete without normative grounding on important democratic
values such as the 3-R’s of responsiveness, representativeness and responsibility
(Wamsley 1996: 355; RosenBloom and Ross 1994: 156)

Controversies in Public Administration 7

• Values from earlier in this – economy and efficiency – are central to many of the
reform ideas.’

• The prominent distinction lies in the fact that virtually most of these reformist
visions have required “new flexibility and discretion” in contrast to cherished
traditions of standardization, stability, complex rules and regulations and routine
(Ingraham and Romzek 1994: 2)

• Reform efforts have been characterized by a steady filtering of those that remain
important and need to be reconciled with present realities, side by side with a
rejection of those deemed incompatible such as the fascination for hierarchical
and centralized systems that have been the hallmark of administrative structures
during the early periods of public administration orthodoxy.

Controversies in Public Administration 8

 APPROACHES TO
BUREAUCRATIC REFORM: A
NEW DICHOTOMY

Controversies in Public Administration 9

What is Bureaucracy Reform?
• Bureaucracy Reform means the program designed to ensure that state apparatuses are
improved through bureaucracy reform to enhance the professionalism of state
apparatuses and to create better governance, both at the national and the regional
levels, and to be able to support successful development of other sectors, and set forth
or referred to in the Borrower’s Law No. 17/2007 dated February 5, 2007 and
Regulation No. PER/15/M.PAN/7/2008 dated July 10, 2008.

Controversies in Public Administration 10

Complex issues are generally pieced together to form
one synthesis and pitted against antithesis. Current
propositions and their ensemble of concepts can
likewise be analyzed in this manner for the sake of
conceptual convenience, and admittedly, it is not
difficult to fall into this kind of typologizing since the
polarization of concepts offers a distinct opportunity to
weigh the merits of each proposition.

Controversies in Public Administration 11

Two competing perspective
• Micromanagement approach – which essentially
highlights the managerialist or agency perspective – the
constitution-based initiative for change.
• Macromanagement approach – argues that no
significant improvement in the affairs of the bureaucracy can
be accomplished without taking into account the larger
political environment

Controversies in Public Administration 12

Two dominant and contradictory
perspective “models”
• Administrative efficiency “the greatest output at the least
cost”

• Pluralist-democracy model “multiple, diverse, and competing

interest groups in the political process”

Controversies in Public Administration 13

Reinventing
Micromanagement in
Public Agencies

Controversies in Public Administration 14

• Micromanagement in the discipline perhaps represents, the response of American Public
Administration to the Wilsonian call for a scientific study of administration.
• POSDCORB proposition, the influence of Taylorism and of Weberian bureaucratic
principles, as well as behavioralist, its methods sought to focus on the organization as the
basic unit of intervention.
• Micromanagement has been resurrected with unanswered questions then and now. Robert D.
Behn suggests three consciously prescriptive questions:
(1)The micromanagement question asks how public managers can break the micromanagement
cycle of procedural rules, which prevent public agencies from producing results, which
leads to more procedural rules, which....
(2)The motivation question asks how public managers can motivate people to work
energetically and intelligently towards achieving public purposes.
(3)The measurement question asks how public managers can measure the achievements of their
agencies in ways that help to increase those achievements. Moreover, Behn argues, if the
study of public management is to become "scientific," it needs to focus on these and other
big questions.
Controversies in Public Administration 15
• Osborne and Gaebler “an essentially new form of governance drawn from the experiences of
public managers in the frontlines”

Controversies in Public Administration 16

o Reinventing finds affinity in
Hammer and Champy’s
concept of reengineering
“outdated rules and
fundamental assumptions
that underlie current business
operations”
o “the fundamental rethinking
and radical redesign of
business of performance,
such as cost, quality, service
and speed”.
o Reengineering aspires for
o Taylor’s Scientific
a review of prevailing
Management from the
work methods and systems
shop room and functional
among business
foremanship levels to
companies by recognizing
other dimensions of
and eliminating
managerial and business
unnecessary steps in
activities.
business processes, from
production to sales, from
marketing to distribution,
from financing to public
relations to make them
more competitive.
Controversies in Public Administration 17
ABSTRACT
o The reinventing government movement is compared with the new public administration
along six dimensions. A strongly felt need to change bureaucracy informed each
movement, although each would change bureaucracy differently. Both movements seek
relevance and responsiveness, but in different ways. Issues of rationality, methodology,
and epistemology are more important in the new public administration than in the
reinventing government movement. Both movements conceptualize organization similarly.
The reinventing government movement has a stronger commitment to market approaches
for the provision of public services and to mechanisms for individual choice. Reinventing
government is popular electoral politics for executives (presidents, governors, mayors) and
is more radical than new public administration. The new public administration prompted
subtle, incremental shifts toward democratic management practices and social equity. The
results of reinventing government, so far, are short-run increases in efficiency purchased at
a likely long-range cost in administrative capacity and social equity.

Controversies in Public Administration 18

The Macro Perspective
• Bureaucratic reform in a democratic framework would have to
find itself grappling and struggling with such highly charged
concepts as pluralism, citizen participation empowerment,
accountability, separation of powers and a whole menagerie
of values that cannot be compartmentalized in cozy
segmentations but would have to be treated together.

Controversies in Public Administration 19

• Blacksburg Manifesto by Gary Wamsley
attempt to raise our consciousness on these
issues. The Blacksburg Manifesto sought to
find “a legitimate role for bureaucracy in
democratic governance.

• To Wamsley, governing is the ability of the

political elites to create circumstances that
evoke the kinds of relations among citizens
that allow us to maintain a collective
coherence, establish our identities individually
and collectively, and generally faster
conditions that ultimately permit us to discover
ourselves and the meaning of our lives.

Controversies in Public Administration 20

• “Theorists of public administration” says Stivers, “are much
occupied these days with a quest for new bases of legitimacy”.
These legitimacy problems stem from what have been called
“contextual tensions”.

• The major agenda of government does not lie simply in making

bureaucracy work, of providing it with managerial techniques and
capabilities to contain spending, to check anomalies, or to deliver
services efficiently, but finding a balance on “how to govern a
political economy that requires a strong administrative system while
providing for as much democracy and efficiency as possible”.

Controversies in Public Administration 21

INGRAM and ROMZEK
o An accountability mechanism frequently presents a trade-off of
efficiency and flexibility for responsiveness and responsibility.
One stakeholder sees a particular personnel policy (the
employee’s right to a hearing before dismissal, for example) as
unnecessary and time-consuming; another sees the same policy
as essential to accountability.

Controversies in Public Administration 22

• Public administration is construed as “the administration of public
affairs in a political context”

• Public administrator must engage not in a struggle for markets and

profits but in struggle with other actors in the political and
governmental processes for jurisdiction, legitimacy, and resources.

• Public administration has been “criticized as consistently producing

knowledge that emphasizes control, order, and technical rationality at
the expense of politics, democracy, participation and representation”

Controversies in Public Administration 23

CONCLUSION
Many of these question will be left hanging. They will remain controversies that will always
haunt reformist visions. The important issue however is that bureaucratic reform must be
founded on serious, well-crafted strategies instead of “political moods dominating ideas”.
In pursuing reinventing in the American federal bureaucracy, the Clinton administration
through Gore’s committee, established what it calls “reinventing laboratories” in the agencies
it viewed much in the same manner that reengineering proponents seek the creation of
“reengineering teams” in companies that aspire to change their systems. The only problem in
this arrangements is that these initiatives appeared to have been more focused and limited to
consultants and federal employees and officials. The citizenry was left out, but then it can be
said that this may be part of the phase that can be undertaken later on. But one good thing
can be said about this: at least they have a plan and a philosophy of reform to talk and debate
about, to revise and redefine, and try to implement.

Controversies in Public Administration 24

PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION IN
A CHANGING
ENVIRONMENT

25
What is the role of public administration in
environment?
• Under environmental management, public administrators
are responsible for natural resources management. The federal
public sector works with the private sector, nonprofits and state
and local governments to administer proper judgments and
sustainable measures for natural resources management through its
employees.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CHANGING 26

ENVIRONMENT
Redesigning Public Administration In The Changing Global
Environment

•Public administration in a nation should be

so effective for its people that they should
be comparing efficiency by saying, as
good as government.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CHANGING 27

ENVIRONMENT
Introduction
• When thinking of redesigning public administration in the context of globalization, there
is often confusion over the role of public administration. From a domestic point of view,
public administration is, among other things, the means body during which nation-states
perform their business. This definition becomes more difficult, but together it begins to
consider it from a more global point of view.
• This is because globalization has not only fundamentally changed the way we see the
world, but has also 1 influenced how governments interact with their citizens, also
reflecting how they work with other governments. We do. In order to present the
challenges of globalization, the government should become more innovative and
proactive with establishing cooperation with various business communities around the
world. Encroachments with the non-profit and personal sector should not slow down.
Rather, the progress that has been made requires more than that.
• By establishing transnational and intercontinental relations with business, public
administration can be given the opportunity to supply practical leadership on government
processes, jargon and procedures. Today public administration is generally regarded as
having some responsibility for determining the policies and programs of governments.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CHANGING 28

ENVIRONMENT
Public Administration In The Changing Global Environment
• Administration is thus concerned with proper organization of men and
material to accomplish the desired ends. It contains 'doing the work' or
'getting the work done by others. The administration is an important
task of human beings. It may be called technology of social
relationship. The administration is a universal phenomenon and occurs
in diverse institutional settings.

• Public Administration is an aspect of the broader field of

administration. It exists in a political system for the achieved the goal
and objective formulated by the political decision-maker. Another way
say governmental organization because the adjective of 'public' in the
word 'public administration' means government's administration. so,
lastly focus of the public administration is on public bureaucracy, that
is bureaucratic organization of the government.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CHANGING 29

ENVIRONMENT
• Public administration is indeed interdisciplinary and appreciates borrowing for disciplined
etiquette rather than the previous incarnation when it was attracted to a wide range of principles
and remained 'incomparable'. Apart from the theoretically changed theoretical approach, the
focus of CPA has also undergone radical changes. Unlike the practices of the past when
bureaucracy remained the main focus of attention, public administration in the present day is a
multilateral one in which bureaucracy is a governance system.

• The major consequences of the Minnebroke Conference III is that administrative reform is not a
one-time event; It is a continuous process, in which the role of the system is equally important
and important, keeping the public bureaucracy aside. In the absence of bureaucracy in
developing countries, more attention is given to 'reasons for reform' rather than credited for the
failure of reform.

• The Minwainbrook Conference III emphasized the importance of 'government slack' or shi ally
governance against bureaucratic delays. In an interdependent world, collaborative governance
refers to determining institutionalization methods of coordination and decision-making
processes that operate in multi-organizational settings, like a network of state agencies.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CHANGING 30

ENVIRONMENT
• Difficulties caused by lack of synergy between government
institutions/agencies, the conference introduced a new concept of 'oper
interoperability', an idea borrowed from engineering science, which
referred to the ability of different systems and organizations to figure
together Does.

It is about the process of working together taking into account all

possible social, political and organizational factors that affect the
outcome. In the wake of the revolution in information and
communication technology (ICT), enter administration is value addition
in public administration through 'connected [or networked] systems that
facilitate better decision making, better coordination of state programs
and better services to citizens. Does. And businesses'.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CHANGING 31

ENVIRONMENT
Conclusion
• Thus, public administration has undergone changes in response to new voices coming from
contemporary socio-economic and political perspectives. The priority of administration is to be
accessible, transparent and accountable and where citizens are consumers. A vibrant, healthy and
informative business environment helps spread globalization.

Entrepreneurs and business leaders are able to act more confidently when entrepreneurs are less
ambiguous and vague. In this vein, public administration can ensure that the rapid spread of
globalization is managed more effectively and that it will be beneficial to a wider group of
communities.

Steps to implement this include new initiatives such as skill development and training, risk
management of chains and networks, investment in logistics systems and strengthening of
enterprise clusters. In short, public administration as an educational discipline has gone through
various 4 stages of its growth and development. The process of development reflects the
changing boundaries of the discipline in relation to constantly evolving social needs.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN A CHANGING 32

ENVIRONMENT
Thank you for listening ♥