The Scope of Public Administration, Essay Example

The Scope of Public Administration: A Focus on How Administrational Behavior is Controlled for the Sake of Producing Better Public Service

Introduction

Leading the public is certainly considered by many as a tedious and demanding task. Nevertheless, it is also considered to be the source of social stability that every community needs. This is where the different aspects that make up the scope of public administration operation comes in. Public administration, described as the system of handling public concerns under a particular form of governance is then also defined as a form of systematic operation that is utilized to fully condition a society towards development, progress as well as stability.

One specific matter about the scope of public administration is that it is mostly concerned on seeing what it can accomplish to assure that the public administrators sitting in their positions are able fulfill their responsibilities to the public. Politics is such a wide-range of operation that is enjoined in by people from different walks of life who for some reason are noted for their willing capacity to serve the needs and demands of the people. Question is, how could the possible weaknesses of these individuals be outweighed by their desire to serve so as to benefit the whole community of human individuals they promised to give assistance and attention to?

Public administration operations intend to create a specific condition for the public administrators to work with. This allows the public service system to become more about the people being served than about the people giving the service. Without this scope of public administration, creating a more refined environment for public administrators and the public to work together in union would be a hard task to accomplish. In the discussion that follows, a focus on how indications of relative public administration operation towards administrator-behavior issues shall be addressed. This shall include the manner by which the said system of operation tries to entrust the public’s welfare into the hands of the administrators as they are being commissioned to become the most efficient public servants that they could become.

Understanding Public Administration                

What does the public need and how could this need be met? The assumption of public demands and needs specifically boils down to the course by which leaders tend to see their role as mentors, as guidance and as providers for those whom they are trying to lead, in this case, the public. Politicians in short are then expected to be public servants, hence they are expected to serve the public. However, in a contradictory manner, there are instances when these same people who call themselves “public servants” lose sight of the reason why they have been placed in the position of authority. When this occurs, public administration becomes a weak source of social strength.

This is the reason why one specific scope of public administration is dedicated to assuring the bureaucratic position of the administrators and how they are able to proceed with their responsibilities especially when it comes to making decisions that would affect the society’s welfare as a whole. To be able to accomplish this task, the system that binds public administration tends to indicate on the matter being less individualized and more team-based. In a way it tends to establish camaraderie between the primary actors of the situation hence equipping the administrators the capacity to influence others and the people the capability to stand alongside the leadership of their authorities.

Theories that Bind the Scopes of Public Administration

For the function of the system to be fully recognized and realized, several theories of social development are considered. One of the said theories include the theory of structural functionalism. This theory is dependent on the cause behind the desire of promoting solidarity among those who are involved in the process of leadership and establish trust and loyalty among those who are being lead. From a micro-level orientation towards a macro-level effect, this system of administering the behavior of the leaders and the ones they are leading as well provides a considerable source of social confidence and stability .

Sourcing out from the term itself, structural functionalism intends to develop a sense of function where everyone takes a part of the task and this creating a structure that is solid enough to face both challenges and opportunities that come their way. In a way, public administration thrives in the application of such theory through identifying how much the administration is doing and how the society basically responds to the matter. Giving each side of the institution a functional role provides them a sense of belongingness and worth. This specific worth then transcends to be a source of structure that solidifies the unity between two opposite factors of the society.

Another theory to consider is that of the system function theory which is more dependent on the capacity of individuals to utilize systematic thinking as a viable source of good decision making. Notably, the systems function theory respects that capacity of humans to learn from experiences and interact with each other for the sake of developing such a source of confident learning. This then concedes to the fact that in public administration, human administrators are expected to make mistakes, nevertheless, they are also expected to learn from such. The society on the other end is also expected to learn from the past, be more enthusiastic in defining the administration that leads them through becoming more bold about their demands, their desires as well as their needs. This would allow the administrators to know what is needed to be done and thus coordinate well with the people. Getting the cooperation of a community composed of diversified individuals is not easy. Nevertheless, learning through time and understanding how they respond to particular situations would help so much in easing the tension involved in the situation.

Reflections and Understanding

The scope of operations by which public administration is based upon has been specifically defined within the context of this discussion to be strongly dependent on several social theories. Two of these theories include both structural functionalism and the systems function approach to public service and administration. Making use of these operative theories in the field of public administration has been relatively constructed to be adapted in actual situations through empowering not only the administrators but the people as well to establish a cooperative form of camaraderie among themselves hence promoting a more efficiently functioning society. With progress and development remaining as the primary goal, the administrators and the people they are leading are hoped to work together for the sake of gaining best results. The realization of the truth behind the application of these particular theories could only be tested through examining the actual effects that they have on particular sample communities. This is what is supposed to be suggested as the major aspect on the context of the final paper that is to be presented in relation to this draft.

References

Aucoin, Peter (2008). New Public Management and the Quality of Government: Coping with the New Political Governance in Canada, Conference on “New Public Management and the Quality of Government”, SOG and the Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 13–15 November 2008, p.14.

Dubois, Hans F. W.; Fattore, Giovanni (2009). International Journal of Public Administration. 32. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 704–727.

Haroon A. Khan.(2008).  Introduction to Public Administration. University Press of America. P. 33.

Startling, Grover. (2011). Managing the public sector. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth.