The founder of public administration considered by many is Woodrow Wilson. His essays were the cornerstone of public administration. He typified this link between academic and utilitarian studies through his personal overlap of professor and politician. Political science, he argued, should concentrate on how governments are administered. He was committed to developing the practice and theory of administration. In establishing the public administration disciplines, he believed that administration could and should be divorced from politics and policy-making. He defined administration as the machinery for implementing government policy. Dwight Waldo called a conference that birthed the New Public Administration. He argued that public administration should have a separate identity based on relevance, participation, change, values, and social equity. The NPA projected a normative role of public managers by being policy oriented. The practice and theory of public administration had an enduring effect and lasting influence from the conference. Social equity, cutback management, ethics, change, citizenry participation, implementation, and policy issues are some of the themes that that were developed at the Minnowbrook conference. Today, they continue to be considered important aspects of public administration. A political scientist and activist, Luther Gulick, introduced the now well-known but highly innovative and different functions of administration. Those functions are planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. He was considered an expert on the topic and his work was viewed as a breakthrough in the science of administration.
Sayre, Wallace S. 1958. “ Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging.” Public Administration Review
Ridley, F.F. 1975. The Study of Government: Political Science and Public Administration. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Because governments often operate in environments in which earning a profit is either impossible or undesirable and do not normally seek to earn a profit, it’s very difficult to obtain objective information by which to evaluate the performance of programs and agencies. Without knowing very well which programs deserve more and which deserves less, in which this leaves legislatures and executive budget agencies in the position of allocating scarce budgetary resources. A theory to guide resource allocation, Key addressed this exact problem when he asserted the ‘lack of budgetary theory.’ There’s no doubt that other objective criterion to guide budget decisions and the absence of a budgetary theory helps explain the explosion of interest in performance measurement and its cousin, performance budgeting. To provide objective information about program outcomes is the promise of performance budgeting. That will allow budgeters to make appropriate comparisons among programs and allocate funding in a way that provides a better return on taxpayer money, as opposed to inputs or process measures.

Knott, Jack, and Thomas Hammond. 1980. A zero-based look at zero-based budgeting. NewBrunswick, NJ: Transactions Books.

Before they entered the political campaign and/or the administration, one may observe that most of the perpetrators and directors of Watergate misdeeds were reputedly honest and upright persons. Few if any had record of unethical or dishonest, let alone criminal, activity. This suggests that Watergate was a product of a system which shaped and guided the behavior of its participants. Standards should be improving and making more sophisticated the codes and guidances of ethics in public service, incorporate oath in the office and require each at the time to read it and certify in writing, require that new political appointees attend briefing sessions on the ethics of public service; such briefings would cover ethical conduct, accountability, the nature of checks and balance in government, create a federal service ethics board, provide a government wide ombudsman or one in each major agency to consider complaints of ethical violations in the federal service. The threat of future relevation and scrutiny can be a considerable deterrent for those who might be tempted to unethical behavior for want of understanding or conscience. Ultimately, the assurance of high standards of ethical behavior depends more particularly upon the system of values they have internalized and upon the people who aspire to and gain public office. A guiding rule of such instruction and subsequent official decisions should be that propounded many years ago by Thomas Jefferson: Where you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.

Milton Mayer, “From Deliquescence to Survival – Watergate and Beyond:” Center Report, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (February 1974)

Stephen K. Bailey. "Ethics and the Public Service," in Roscoe Martin, ed., Public Administration and Democracy. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1965; pp. 283-298.

A productivity improvement strategy whose main feature is TQM, whose main feature is the compromise with consumer’s needs. People want to have their problems solved as rapidly and with as little costs as possible are the rights that people claim more and more. There are many ways of applying TQM to public administration, including police departments, firefighter departments, personnel management, transports, public services among others. Areas such as road maintenance, welfare, police protection and emergency services refers the governments’ interest in TQM translated into an increase of TQM initiatives. In the sense that it helps understanding what a community needs, local administration may come to find TQM very attractive, as well as making public administration contain costs and improve services. Insofar as it may become a means to increase responsibilities, diminish revenues and the public’s cynicism regarding civil servants’ skills, local administration may benefit from TQM. From reducing costs in public administration to reorientation strategies intended to meet as effectively as possible with the public’s needs, TQM applications are multiple and varied. As cost reducers to control the duration and performance of the services, they are usually designed to raise the consumer’s orientation. For many organizations TQM implementation may have an impact on culture, leadership, the structure of the organization as well as of the processes, and, in many cases, on all these aspects at the same time. When a TQM program fails the reasons for its failure are often ascribed to everyone but the executive staff. More often than not it begins with the executive staff not getting really committed to it. TQM is not faultless; there are many other reasons why TQM fails. Since it focuses on the consumer- the one who can pay for the goods wanted – and not the public in general, it being potentially anti-democratic is one of its main shortcomings. The possibility of TQM forcing uniformity upon public services is another concern.

McGowan, Robert (1995), Total Quality Management: lessons from business and government, Public Productivity & Management Review, San Francisco.

Three interrelated approaches to public administration make it difficult for government to perform effectively is Rosenbloom’s argument. Specifically, he cites the legal approach, which relates to the judicial system; the managerial approach, which relates to the executive branch; and the political approach, which relates to the legislative branch. Tendencies associated with these three approaches make it extremely difficult for government to identify a problem, decide on a solution, and implement that solution. Defending basic constitutional rights of individuals is primarily the concern with the legal approach. Its core values and safeguarding procedural due process are equity and fairness. Unique people operating under unique circumstances are how the legal approach views individuals. Each case has its own particular merits. In other words, preventing government from dealing with crime and other goals of administration in the cheapest and easiest way is procedural due process. The value of efficiency, effectiveness, and economy is what the managerial approach teaches. Civil service jobs should be divided up into the proper agencies, according to this model. These agencies should then clarify these jobs and classify them. Only position in the hierarchy matters when determining net worth because the model takes the stance that the individual is not distinct. Without input from elected officials or the citizens, members of this group would plan their attack. Also the orders of the President would be obeyed without question Rosenbloom’s third approach is the political approach. This view values representativeness, responsiveness, and accountability. The organizational structure under this model is pluralistic which is not surprisingly, and includes the rights of citizens to access public information. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows interested citizens to obtain copies of certain documents and records of proceedings so they can conduct their own inquiries. The view of the employee or civil servant as the member of a group and the public as a clientele of that group is what the political approach embraces. This approach is very consumer-friendly and responsive to citizens.

Rosenbloom, David H. (1983). “Public Administrative Theory and the Separation of Powers”,
Public Administration Review

Sayre, Wallace S. (1958). “Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging”, Public
Administration Review