Meaning, Nature and Scope

Public Administration
What is Public Administration
• Basic meaning :
• Public administration is an all- pervasive organization performing a
wide range of tasks at all levels of government like, budgeting,
legislation, policy framing, policy execution, and administering
government branches and agencies.
• Administration term came out of two latin words :
Latin words ‘ad’ and ‘ministaire’, which means to care for, manage, and
direct
• Public means ‘government’
Definitions by various theorists
• Woodrow Wilson:
detailed and systematic execution of public law. Every particular
application of general law is an act of administration.
• L.D White:
activity required for the implementation of public policy.
• Luther Gullick:
administration which has to do with Government and thus concern itself
primarily with the executive branch where the work of the Government is
done.”
• Herbert Simon:
Executive branch of national, state and local government.
Modern view of public administration by F.A.
Nigro and L.G. Nigro
• Involves group effort in cooperative setting
• Covers all three branches of govt. : executive, legislative and judicial
• Main role in formulation of policy
• Closely associated with private groups and individuals from providing
services to a community
• Different from private administration
Features of pub ad
• Non-political bureaucracy
• Deals with implementing ends of state
• Concerned with policy making and policy execution
• Covers all branches of govt but concentrated on executive branch
• Aim is to provide service to the electorate
Nature of Pub Adm
• Two views:
1. Integral view on nature of public administration and
2. Managerial view on nature of public administration
Integral view on nature of public
administration
• Public administration refers to all activities from clerical to managerial
activity of the administration.
• That means integral view proposes that administration is the sum
totals all activities of manual, clerical or managerial.
• In simple we can say, all the work process done by the government
official from peon to executive officers are the part of public
administration.
• L.D White and Woodrow Wilson main supporters.
Managerial view on nature of public administration

• Public administration refers to only managerial activity of the

administration.
• That means in this view administration constitutes of the work of only
those person who are performing managerial functions.
• Activities of clerical, manual and also technical departments are
excluded from the range of public administration.
• Luther Gulick Herbert Simon are the main supporters of the
managerial view.
Scope of Public Administration
• There are also two views in the scope of public administration. These
are the
1. POSDCORB view and
2. Subject Matter view
POSDCORB View
• Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick
• administration has should seven elements
1. P- Planning– It is the task of managers of every administration to
plan everything that needs to be done and the methods for doing
them to accomplish the purpose set for the enterprise.

2. O- Organizing- Every organization needs to be well organized.

Managers should allocate the task to their employee and others
subordinates by the proper techniques.

3. S- Staffing- Staffing refers to the whole personnel function of

bringing in and training the staff and maintaining favorable
4. D- Directing- It refers to the continuous task of making decisions
and embodying them in specific and general order and instructions
and also serving as a leader to the enterprise.

5. CO- Coordinating- It is the important duty of the manager to

coordinate between coworkers and executives.

6. R-Reporting- It is referred to inform every report of the work to the

executives.

7. B- Budgeting- All that goes with budgeting in the form of fiscal

planning, accounting and control.
Subject Matter View
• Subject matter view in scope of public administration simply refers to
the subject matter of public administration.
• administration is concerned with ‘What’ and ‘How’ of the government
• ‘What’ is the subject matter, the technical knowledge of a field,
which enables the administrator to perform his task.
• how’ is the technique of management, the principles according to
which the co-operative programs are carried to success.
1. Organization theory
Formal structure, functioning and performance of organization
2. Public personnel management
Manpower related planning like recruitment, training, pay scale,
promotion
3. Public financial administration
Preparation and execution of budget, accounting and auditing.
4. Comparative public administration
Cross national administrative studies on various policies.
5. Development administration
Administration of development plans
6. Public policy analysis
Analysing Content, implementation and output of policy.