II.            COURSE DESCRIPTION 

This seminar is intended to provide a broad overview of the academic discipline of public administration.  All students in the PhD program take this seminar regardless of their chosen specialization.  The goal of the seminar is to provide students with the intellectual tools and perspectives necessary to understand how the field of public administration fits within the social sciences and how “academic” public administration influences not only the theory of practice, but the actual practice of disciplines/professions such as planning, management and policy analysis. 

The perspective for this seminar is historical and epistemological.  Considerable emphasis is placed on the intellectual origins and antecedents of current theory and practice.  As a seminar, there will be considerable opportunity for exchange of views and beliefs.  As with most academic disciplines the underlying principles and theoretical perspectives in public administration has changed and evolved considerably since the first academic programs were created more than eight decades ago.  There is no set theory that dominates and unifies the field.  This is both the strength and the weakness of public administration.  It is possible to demonstrate what constitutes “practice”, but it is never easy to succinctly summarize the theories that help explain those practices.  

More than twenty-five hundred years ago the Greeks developed the concept of praxis.  This concept defined the inter-relationship between theory and practice.  It affirmed that theory-building was useful only to the extent that it served to change practice, but also that practice is based upon implicit, if not explicit, theoretical assumptions.  The task of academic public administration, and thus this course, is to explore theory in the expectation of improving the quality of public enterprise and also to examine the explicit and implicit theories that currently constrain our ability to change practice. 

III.         COURSE OBJECTIVES 

A.                 Entrance Competencies: 

1.                   General knowledge of organization practices 

2.                   Basic knowledge of the theories and perspectives that distinguish public administration from business administration 

3.                   Capacity to understand the underlying principles and theories that shape organizational behavior and practice 

4.                   Capacity to independently conduct research 

B.                  Exit Competencies: 

1.                   Understanding of praxis 

2.                   Ability to trace the intellectual origins of the development of public administration as an academic discipline 

3.                   Ability to analyze organization practices to uncover the constraints and limitations of current practice 

4.                   Sense of the future theoretical and intellectual directions in the field 

5.                   Understanding of the relationship between academic public administration and the various professional elements of public administration practice 

6.                   Command of the literature of the field 

IV.            COURSE ACTIVITIES TO MEET OBJECTIVES 

A.                 Students are expected to read and study assignments prior to the class period in which they are presented or discussed. 

B.                 Students will conduct research related to a current issue specific to public and/or non-profit sector management. The research will integrate both the theoretical and practical and relate to the student’s own career, dissertation topic, or the public sector in general. 

C.                 The research will serve as the basis of a paper. The paper will be due on the last day of class. 

D.         The standard for the research paper to which each student will be held is that of a "publishable quality" paper. That standard means among other things that each student must fully and completely adhere to the ethics requirements outlined in the University Graduate Bulletin and Department Handbooks. As important, this standard is a statement of the level of excellence to be achieved in the development and production of the paper. The paper must conform to the expectations of academic journals in terms of length, clarity, structure and grasp of the current literature as well as advance the community's knowledge on the topic. While we do not expect that every paper produced in this, or any other class, will be published, we do expect that every paper will be of sufficient quality to be given serious consideration by reviewers, if it is submitted to a journal. We fully expect that learning how to create publishable quality research is an evolutionary process. Over time our expectation of the quality and depth of your research will improve and that before the completion of your coursework you will be producing works worthy of publication. 
 
 

V.            GRADING CRITERIA 

Grades will be assigned accordingly: 

94 - or higher             A 

90 - 93%            A- 

87 - 89%            B+ 

84 - 86%            B 

80 - 83%            B- 

77 - 79%            C+ 

74 - 76%            C 

70 - 73%             C- 

Less than 70%             F 

The final grade will be based upon three criteria: 

Class participation (25%) 

Research paper (75%). 

VI.            REQUIRED AND SUGGESTED READINGS 

Required Readings: 

Stillman                 Preface to Public Administration 

Ostrum                  The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration                 0-8173-4821-2 

Waldo                    The Administrative State 

Peters                    The Politics of Bureaucracy                                                         0-8013-1168-3 

Allison                    Essence of Decision                                                                            0-316-03436-3 

Bozeman                Bureaucracy and Red Tape                                                       0-13-613753-9 

Lynn                       Public Management as Art, Science and Profession                             1-56643-034-8 

Gerth and Mills                From Max Weber                                                                                           0-19-500462-0 

Moore                    Creating Public Value                                                                         0-674-17558-1 

Carnevale                Trustworthy Government                                                                   0-7879-0062-1 

Recommended Readings 
Perrow                   Complex Organizations (3rd)                                                        0-394-34497-9 

Hummel                                The Bureaucratic Experience (4th)                                                   0-312-09554-6 

Cooper                  An Ethic of Citizenship for Public Administration                      0-13-290248-6 

Burns                     Leadership                                                                                          0-06-131975-9 

Wamsley, et. al.                Refounding Public Administration                                                      0-8039-3723-7 

Gulick                    The Science of Administration 

Simon                    Administrative Behavior 

Goodsell                               The Case for Bureaucracy (4th)                                                 1-56643-007-0 

Holzer                    Public Service                                                                                  0-8133-6826-X 

Goodnow             Politics and Administration 

Crenson                                The Federal Machine 

Taylor                    Principles of Scientific Management 

McKevitt            Managing Core Public Services                                                0-631-19312-X 

Kiel                  Chaos Theory and Government 

Svara                Facilitative Leadership in Local Government 
 
 

VII.            DISCUSSION AND READING SCHEDULE 

Weekend #1 (May 16-17) 

Discussion: Introduction to the field of public administration as an academic discipline and as practice; Evolution of the field and the implications of the directions taken, and those not taken; Fundamental questions 

Readings: Required 
Stillman, Preface to Public Administration 
Ostrum,  the Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration 
Waldo, The Administrative State 

Suggested 
Gulick, The Science of Administration 
Goodnow, Politics and Administration 
Crenson, The Federal Machine 
Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management 
Simon, Administrative Behavior 

 
Weekend #2 (June 13-14) 

Discussion: Scope and nature of the field; Perspectives and ideologies; Practical and intellectual constraints 

Readings: Required            Peters, The Politics of Bureaucracy                                                                                          Allison,             Essence of Decision 

Bozeman, Bureaucracy and Red Tape 

                            Suggested            Perrow, Complex Organizations (3rd) 

                                    Goodsell, The Case for Bureaucracy (4th)                                                                                           Hummel, The Bureaucratic Experience (4th) 

Weekend #3 (July 11-12) 

Discussion: Management and decision-making in public and non-profit organizations 

Readings: Required            Lynn, Public Management as Art, Science and Profession                                                 Gerth and Mills,             From Max Weber 
Moore, Creating Public Value       
               Suggested            Holzer,             Public Service 

Burns, Leadership 

Wamsley, et. al., Refounding Public Administration 

Kiel, Chaos Theory and Government 

Svara, Facilitative Leadership in Local Government 

Weekend #4 (August 8-9) 

Discussion: Waldo and Weber redux; Ethical perspectives; Future directions; Summary 

Readings: Required            Carnevale, Trustworthy Government 

    Suggested            Cooper, An Ethic of Citizenship for Public Administration