NPA New Public Administration

The 1960s and 1970s were the periods of turbulence, instability in public administration. The earlier dogmas of public administration ‘economy’ and ‘efficiency’ were found inadequate and incomplete objectives of administrative activity. It began to be said that efficiency is not the whole of public administration. Man is the centre stage of all administrative activity who cannot be subjected to the mechanical test of efficiency. The term New Public Administration was used to describe the new trends in administration.

The two books “Towards a New public Administration, the Minnowbrook perspective” edited by Frank Marini and published in 1971 and “Public Administration in a time of turbulence” edited by Dwight Waldo and published simultaneously gave seeds of the concept of new public administration.

The major factors for the emergence of New public administration

    Philadelphia Conference
    Minnow brook Conference

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Comparative Public Administration (CPA)

COMPARATIVE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION (CPA)

Comparative Public Administration (CPA) is an applied, intercultural, interdisciplinary, explanatory field of study which carries out cross-cultural investigations in order to provide solutions for management problems sooner and develop management technologies further. It is no accident that the field focuses upon growth, reform and capacity building since CPA is in many ways about identifying those "best practices" which promote the most desirable organizational structures and processes. CPA attempts to find universal patterns and regularities through comparison, irrespective of level of development and irrespective of place and time, although it is certainly the case that CPA is the field in which the modernization vs. development debates took place from 1959-1973. Those debates crossed over the fields of sociology, political science, and public administration and involved argument over grand schemes of nation-building for making some parts of the world.

The comparative administration group of the American society for P A which was set up in 1963 under the chairmanship of F W Riggs to study the administrative problems of developing countries viewed in the systematic context of their social, cultural, political and economic environments has defined CPA as ‘the theory of P A applied to diverse cultures and national setting and the body of factual data, by which it can be examined and tested’

Features of C P A

    Studies different administrative systems in their ecological settings.
    It emphasized empirical study based on rigorous methods such as field observation, field experiments.
    It developed inter-disciplinary orientations
    It lays stress on the inter-action between administration and socio, economic, cultural and political phenomena.
    It highlights the multi-organisational nature of P A and importance of interaction among organisations at different levels of government.

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