PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 

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CHAPTER THREE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

INTRODUCTION

There are various forms of contemporary public administration. Some institutions and organisations are partly autonomous but all deliver public services and respond to social issues. These organisations are not mutually exclusive because they have to depend on each other, and must work together to tackle complex situations in order to cope with varying levels of uncertainty, brought about by changing needs of the communities in which they operate. The biggest challenge that is constantly faced by these organisations is to ensure high quality public administration.
Public Administration in broad terms can be described as the development, implementation and study of government policy, Public Administration Review, (1996:247). It is concerned with the pursuit of the public good and the enhancement of civil society by ensuring that the public service is well-run, fair, and that the services are effective in meeting the goals of the state. As a discipline, Public Administration is linked to the pursuit of public good through the enhancement of civil society and social justice in order to make life more acceptable for citizens through the work done by officials within government institutions and to enable these institutions to achieve their objectives at all three levels. Du Toit and Van der Waldt (1999:93) indicate that for any government to govern the majority of society‘s needs must be met wherever possible and by so doing public administration will take place.
Public administration as an academic field is relatively new in comparison with related fields such as political science. However, it is a multi-disciplinary field which only emerged in the 19^th century. Concepts and theories from economics, political science, sociology, administrative law, management and a range of related fields are used to enrich this field of study. The goals of the field of public administration are related to the democratic values of improving equality, justice, efficiency and effectiveness of public services.
In this chapter the evolution of public administration as it refers to translating out of time, focuses on administrative phenomena by means of looking into the past in order to learn about the present. Caldwell, (1955:458); Raadschelders (1998:7) and Hood, (2000:16) argue that there are many examples of the use of historical research in studying public administration that could further our understanding of contemporary administration. The ongoing debates on the nature and legitimacy of public administration shall be elaborated upon as well as how public management relate to educational management. The environment in which public administration takes place as well as principles that govern the conduct of public functionaries shall be highlighted.

Definition of public administration

There is not yet general consensus about the definition of public administration, Fesler (1980:2); Bayat and Meyer (1994:3); Coetzee (1988:16); Fox, Schwella and Wissink (1991:2) indicate that it was difficult to define and describe public administration. Several examples are given about what public administrations are, and Coetzee (1988:16) says that ―examples cannot be equated to definitions‖. However, a number of definitions exist, such as the wide meaning that could be ascribed to public administration based on an open system approach (Fox, Schwella and Wissink, 1991:16) where public administration is said to be:
that system of structures and processes  operating within a particular society as environment  with the objective of facilitating the formulation of appropriate governmental policy  the efficient execution of the formulated policy. Coetzee (1988:18-20) provide some of the definitions of public administration as:

1. ―The executive branch of government; civil service; bureaucracy; the formulation, implementation, evaluation and modification of public policy. The term represents a broad ranging, amorphous combination of theory   and   practice   whose   objectives   are   to   promote understanding of government and its relationships with society, to encourage public policies that are more responsive to social needs, and to institute managerial practices in public bureaucracies that are designed to achieve effectiveness and efficiency and, increasingly, to meet the deeper human needs of citizens. The term also refers to all employees of government except members of the legislature, the chief executive, and judicial officials, or high-level employees of government departments or agencies that make non-routine decisions that set standards to be carried by subordinates‖.
2. ―Public administration is decision making, planning the work to be done, formulating objectives and goals, working with the legislature and citizen organisations to gain public support and funds for government programs, establishing and revising organisation, directing and supervising employees, providing leadership, communicating and receiving communications, determining work methods and procedures, appraising performance, exercising controls, and other functions performed by government executives and supervisors. It is the action part of government, the means by which the purposes and goals of government are realised‖.
3. ―Public administration is a comprehensive and peculiar field of activity, consisting of numerous activities, processes or functions performed by public officials working in public institutions, and aimed at producing goods and rendering services for the benefits of the community. These activities or functions can be classified into three groups:

• The generic administrative activities or functions of policy- making, financing, organising, staffing, the determination of work procedures, and the devising of methods of control.
•  Functional activities peculiar to specific services such as education, nursing, public works, or defence.
•  The auxiliary functions such as decision making, data processing, planning, programming and communication, which are necessary to simplify or expedite the execution of the generic administrative functions and the functional activities‖ Coetzee (1988: 18-20).

The conclusion that could be drawn from summing up of the above-mentioned definitions could be that public administration consists of activities that form part of the executive, as opposed to the legislative and judicial powers of the administrative side of government. Its main objective should be to marshal human and material resources in order to achieve the objective of public policy. That is, the production of certain products and the rendering of services for the benefit of society in order to provide for an acceptable way of life for that society. The success or failure of these activities of the state depends upon how efficient public officials implement policies. Fox, Schwella and Wissink (1991:16) point out that the environment in which these officials perform their activities has a bearing on their ability to achieve goals and objectives of the government.
It should, however, be borne in mind that there are various definitions of what administration and management is and some authors indicate that there is no essential difference between administration and management, but that the difference lies only in their fields of application. Van der Westhuizen (199:33) indicates that administration applies to civil service while management is a term used in industry, but both concepts refer to the same activity. The study of public administration could be approached from a historical perspective and by looking at the three categories that management/administration can be divided into i.e. functional, structural and administrative functions.
Among the few authors to define administrative history as a field of study, Caldwell (1955:455) defines it as ―the study of the origins and evolution of administrative ideas, institutions and practices‖. While Raadschelders (1998:7) say administrative history is ―the study of structures and processes in and ideas about government as they have existed or have been wanted in the past and the actual and ideal place of public functionaries therein‖.
One could argue, though, that the focus of administrative history should not be what it is; rather the primary questions should address what public administration is and how that should be researched. The text below attempts to put forward arguments that indicate that the study of public administration is intrinsically historical, aimed at grasping reality of the past.
There are various viewpoints on what public administration is and how it came to being as both a discipline and as a practice. Hanekom and Thornhill (1988:46) state that public administration developed historically within the framework of community services. This indicates that public administration as a practice could be traced to the historical epoch by looking at the literature that contributed to making public administration a science.
It was necessary to briefly look at the early writers on public administration in this study as some of their views could have had an influence on administration and policy development in South Africa and in education in particular.

Views on public administration

The historical development of public administration could be traced to the generations of writers on the subject. These generations of writers consist of

• the pre-generation, (ii) the first generation, (iii) the second generation, and
• the third generation. Shafritz and Hyde 1997 listed these authors in a chronological order according to their contribution to the development of public administration as a field of study and classified them into five parts

where (i) Part One is referred to as ―Early Voices (1880 to 1920s)‖. These were authors like Von Stein and Woodrow Wilson, who argued that the object of administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy.
(ii) Part Two was referred to as ―The New Deal to Mid-Century‘‘ (1930 to 1950). The contributors were E. Pendleton Herring (1936); Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick (1937); Louis Brownlow, Charles E. Merriam (1937); Chester I. Barnard (1938); and Herbert A. Simon (1946) who advocated a rational approach to decision making, and Dwight Waldo (1953). Part Three was the period between 1950 and 1960. Contributors during this period are grouped according to particular themes on which they wrote, for example, Frank J. Goodnow, Paul Appleby and Herbert Kaufman concentrated on ‗The Political Context of Public Administration‘. This theme has a profound influence on policy development because policies of government are in essence policies of the ruling party and the administration is formed by men and women who are voted into power by the electorates. A theme on ―bureaucracy‖ received special attention from writers like Max Weber, Robert K. Merton, Downs, A, and Lipsky, M. (iv) Part Four commenced 1970 and ended in 1980. During this period authors wrote on a variety of themes. For example, H. G. Frederickson‘s work was on ‗Toward a New Public Administration‘, while Naomi Caiden authored ‗Public Budgeting Amidst Uncertainty and Instability‘. Topics like ‗The Possibility of Administrative Ethics‘ by Dennis F. Thompson and ‗The Seven Deadly Sins of Policy Analysis‘ by Arnold J. Meltsner contributed to shaping public administration theory and practice in order to address the challenges of the 70s and 80s. Part Five is regarded as ‗The Transition to the New Century‘. During this period, authors such Camilla Strives; Patricia Wallace Ingraham; Michael Barzelay; and The National Performance Review, wrote on the following ‗Towards a Feminist Perspective in Public Administration Theory‘; ‗Changing Work, Changing Workforce, Changing Expectations‘; ‗Breaking Through Bureaucracy‘; and ‗From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less‘, respectively.
When considering the ‗Four Generations‘ as indicated in Wikipedia and the four parts detailing the chronological listing by Shafritz and Hyde, it is evident that those who contributed to the literature on public administration when writing, were influenced by the problems they perceived as having an influence on how they were governed. The emphasis during the pre-generation was on the problems of morals and politics as well as on the organisation of public administration. The operation of the administration received very little attention at the time. After the birth of the national state, writers on public administration stressed the need for a model of the administrative organisation that would be able to (1) implement law and order, and (2) be able to set up defensive structures. This led to the birth of a modern science of public administration.
The works of Lorenz von Stein on public administration was considered as the first science of public administration because he integrated views from sociology, political science, administrative law and public finance and showed that public administration as a discipline was an interaction between theory and practice. These views are most relevant to this study because the success of any policy proposal is determined by how well it addresses the needs of those it was developed for, since policy implementation is the interface between the policy proposal and service delivery.
Woodrow Wilson who is also classified as one of the ‗First-Generation‘ writers is considered to have influenced the science of public administration because of his arguments for:

1. the separation of politics and public administration
2. consideration of the government from commercial perspective
3. comparative analysis between political and private organisation and political schemes
4. indicating that effective management could be reached through training civil servants and assessing their quality.

Woodrow Wilson who wrote ―The Study of administration‖ in 1887 was of the idea that civil servants should be knowledgeable on taxes, statistics and administration because policies of governments largely depended on revenue generated through tax and the spending was guided by the number of individuals that the policy is intended to address. His idea that there should be separation of politics and public administration influenced the writers who are classified as the Second Generation, such as Gulick and Urwick who believed that both private and public institutions could be improved through the application of Henri Fayol‘s scientific management theory.
The Third Generation writers questioned the idea of separation of politics and public administration. During this era there was a plea for bureaucracy, particularly in the United States after the Watergate scandal and the unsuccessful American intervention in Vietnam. Some authors argued that national bureaucrats might seek to increase their budgets while the pluralist maintained that officials are more public interest-oriented; that the spending might be more in areas of police and defence but not in areas like welfare state spending. This could be true in the case of public schools and the resources allocated to them.
The arguments brought up by these ‗generation‘ authors as it were, were that the science of administration should focus primarily on governmental organisation and that public administration should be bureaucratic, raised a number of questions regarding public administration.

CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL ORIENTATION 
1. Introduction
2. Motivation for the research
3. Problem statement
4. The objectives of the study
5. Definition of concepts
6. Literature review
7. Limitations
8. Methodology
9. Proposed structure
10. Conclusion
CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 
1. Introduction
2. Types of research
3. Research design
4. Purpose of the study
5. Population for the study
6. Sample
7. Construction of the questionnaire
8. Validity
9. Reliability of the measuring instrument
10. Conclusion
CHAPTER THREE: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 
1. Introduction
2. Definition of public administration
3. Views on public administration
4. Functional definition
5. Administrative structure
6. The political and administrative system
7. Teachers and bureaucracy
8. Political and socio-economic factors
9. Conclusion
CHAPTER FOUR: PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS 
1. Introduction
2. Policy statement
3. Policy definitions
4. Policy impact
5. Policy phases
6. Policy content
7. Policy –making process
8. Public Policy-making in South Africa
9. Policy implementation
10. The policy implementation process
11. Critical variables in the implementation of public policy
12. Conclusion
CHAPTER FIVE: NATIONAL CURRICULUM STATEMENT POLICY 
1. Introduction
2. Rationale for the introduction of the NCS
3. Educators and the Curriculum
4. The National Curriculum Statement and the Constitution
5. Assessment
6. Educator assessment practice
7. Legislative considerations
8. Recording
9. Reporting
10. Planning for assessment
11. Conclusion
CHAPTER SIX: DATA ANALYSIS 
1. Introduction
2. Quantitative information
3. Biographic information
4. Conclusion
5. Qualitative research
6. Conclusion
CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUDING REMARKS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 
1. Introduction
2. Policy implementation
3. The objectives of managing the implementation of NCS
4. Managing implementation
5. Administration of the NCS
6. Principles on which the new policy is based
7. Determining the standard of attainment
8. Empirical research
9. The structural frame in which the school exists
10. General remarks
11. Obstacles encountered
12. Recommendations
13. Concluding remarks
14. Conclusion
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