Official Thread for Public Administration Optional - Questions & Answers

@doodlebean@IWRAplz have a look

@doodlebeanthank you maam....not getting words...you are a legend

@pubadmn
You’ve actually touched the soul of the question. Good work. However even if the content is good you haven’t elaborated it well. If I were to correct your sheet then goodness on content will balance out with poor presentation. Hence average marks.

P.s I may sound rude. But believe me my mentor was brutal. That’s how I learnt.

@Bhagat-singh
First part answered very well. Infact you’ve given me a new perspective to look at the question.
Second part ( which is the major part) - unsatisfactory.

@prowess
I’m waiting for your refined answer.

I’ll post my take on the questions discussed and answered all day (everyday) in evenings - post Office. Best wishes everyone. We will rock

@Hakunah_Matata

@doodlebeanThank you mam, you don't sound rude at all. Your suggestions are valuable to all of us and i am sure we will take your comments in right spirit.

@doodlebeanthank you mam. What shld come in second part .

@Bhagat-singh
I’ll post my answer in evening . Till then you start working on second question .

Question 1.a) "The scope of the discipline of Public Administration is determined by what an administrative system does." Does it mean that the scope of this discipline is boundaryless? Explain

Answer : Since in public administration, there is no unanimous definition, so there is no agreement on what public administration is and thus, its scope is also unsettled and undefined. Waldo says the since public administration deals with the government in action and as that remains ever-changing, the scope also remains ever-changing.

Various Schools of Thought attempted to delineate the scope of public administration as :

Narrow View v. Broad View

• Narrow View : The study of the executive branch of the government.
• Broad view : The scope of Public Administration includes the study of all the three organs of the state i.e. the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

Managerial View v. Integral View

There are certain theorists like Fayol, Gulick, Urwick etc. who fall under themanagerial schoolof thought. These theorists emphasized that public administration includes within its domain only the managerial activities because according to them,it is the managerial activity that enables an organization to appear one and directs the entire organization towards a single goal.
This view has been contested by theIntegral ViewTheorists like Dimock,Wilson etc. These theorists believe that public administration as a discipline includes within its ambit the study of all the activities of the organization such as manual activities, clerical activities and technical activities besides the managerial activities.
Similarly, if we take into account thePOSDCORB view, it emphasizes that public administration as a discipline means the study of tools and techniques of the administration. But, this has been contested by the Subject Matter View.The subject matter viewsays that public administration as a discipline includes within its ambit the study of public policies. But, it has some serious implications. It expanded the scope of public administration to such an extent that everything came under the umbrella of public administration and at the same time, it made public administration inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary in nature.

This resulted into a loss of boundary leading towards a crisis of identity because today the government or public policy extends to almost every area of human activity.

Waldo has appropriately responded to this concern. He says that public administration has a stable core though an oscillating periphery. The study of thestable coreimparts it, its identity and the study of the oscillating periphery further enriches it. No discipline today is uni-disciplinary, every discipline is multi-disciplinary. As,being uni-disciplinary is death and being multi-disciplinary is growth and prosperity.

Public administration carries a wider scope and it is the study of government in action. Government in action is a dependant variable and thus it is linked to a number of ecological concerns. The government in action is never static and thus, its boundary can never be established or delineated.
The scope of public administration is linked to the concept of public administration. This is because the definition of public administration is not yet settled and it is not yet fully conceptualized. Thus, it is difficult to demarcate its outline.

@doodlebeanok mam.

@doodlebeanmam pardon me for asking this but I'm comfused as the question asks us aboutpublic administration disciplineis boudaryless...... which means 'public administration subject as a whole'' it could be anything as an activity or a discipline or whatever comes under the subject and not just public administration as a discipline.
as an activity it can boundaryless in different ways as to whatever is done for public by state comes under this every aspect of life is nowadays touched by pubad
as a discipline is just the study of subject in detail where it is boundaryless in different ways as the subject has many aspects and public administration can mould into pol science, economics, business, sociology. because of diverse nature of the subject.
like pub ad as political science for adressing political issues and bringing changes to the political administration
pub ad as sociology adressing sociological perspectives of society
pub ad as business...ppp model etc

@prowess
So I went through all the answers. Let’s break the question into two points which have the most emphasis-
-‘determined by what an administrative system does’
-‘scope of the discipline is boundaryless?’

When they ask what an administrative system does -then don’t you think we should trace the evolutionary history of the discipline like one among you very correctly did.

While tracing the evolutionary history from NPA to NPG we can witness that the scope of the discipline is continuously evolving and the boundaries changing. Like we can truly witness a stage from a lot of boundaries to more n more boundaries getting dissolved till we reach NPG which is the current stage and still evolving.

@prowess

@doodlebean

Brilliant. This is the level of clarity we need

Bhagat Singh's concluding lines of "vacillating periphery, but stable core" will do the balancing act.

@doodlebeanMam is it necessary to explicitly mention the keywords in our answers as asked in the question like "boundary less" here as in my answer I have mentioned the same thing the other way?
Please do tell me where I lacked in my approach and how do you manage to make so well explained diagrams.. please throw some light

@IWRAsaid inOfficial Thread for Public Administration Optional - Questions & Answers:

@doodlebean

Brilliant. This is the level of clarity we need

Bhagat Singh's concluding lines of "vacillating periphery, but stable core" will do the balancing act.

Absolutely

@IWRA@doodlebeanMam i face prblm in breaking the ques in parts. In all 3 mains i hv faced this prblm and so i havent clrd mains once. Even for those ques which i have good content i dnt how to approach it, how to break it in parts.
Also i hv one doubt while writing in points do we need to just mention the point or shld we also explain tht point. . Example- Rti will increase transparency.
Is this enough or do i need to also write how rti will increase transparency. Likewise for every point in the ans.

@Unicorn
I guess it’s necessary. Who knows whether your answer will be read from first to last alphabet. Sometimes those who are evaluating emphasise more on key words. However unjust but this is how it is.

Your answer is good especially that core periphery part. But since word limit is too restricted we need to address the core (emphasis of the question) - evolutionary aspect rather than subject matter view , posdcorb etc

I’ll share someday my evolutionary history as well. The kind of diagrams I used to make in initial days. I can assure elated you’ll feel witnessing what daily practice has done to my thought process and diagrams. Same goes for you too..... mark the date. We will talk after 6 months.