A user-friendly textbook for students and teachers, The Philosophy of Public Administration covers all aspects of the public administration and management process as an instrument of serving the public. It lays a sound foundation of the basic principles and values, and it facilitates excellence in all the varied circumstances a professional public manager/administrator may encounter in practice. An MS PowerPoint presentation is also available on CD-ROM for instruction.

Philosophy and Public Administration provides a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the philosophical foundations of the study and practice of public administration. In this revised second edition, Edoardo Ongaro offers an accessible guide for improving public administration, exploring connections between basic ontological and epistemological stances and public governance, while offering insights for researching and teaching philosophy for public administration in university programmes.

This forward-thinking Handbook draws on the expertise of established and emerging scholars to provide a comprehensive review of the current state and future direction of theory and practice in US public administration. Chapters offer a cross-disciplinary, holistic review of the field, pulling together leaders from subfields such as public administration, public and nonprofit management, finance, human resource management, networks, nonprofits, policy, and politics. Chapter authors conclude that the field is intellectually rich and highly nuanced, but also identify numerous opportunities for growth and expansion in the coming years. The Handbook charts an agenda for future research in the field.The Handbook of American Public Administration is geared toward academics, researchers, and advanced graduate students. As an authoritative text on the history and state of US public administration, it proves equally suitable for national and international audiences. Practitioners who may be looking for background information or state-of-the-art knowledge about practice will also benefit from this Handbook.

Is public administration an art or a science? This question of whether the field is driven by values or facts will never be definitively answered due to a lack of consensus among scholars. The resulting divide has produced many heated debates; however, in this pioneering volume, Norma Riccucci embraces the diversity of research methods rather than suggesting that there is one best way to conduct research in public administration. Public Administration examines the intellectual origins and identity of the discipline of public administration, its diverse research traditions, and how public administration research is conducted today. The book’s intended purpose is to engage reasonable-minded public administration scholars and professionals in a dialogue on the importance of heterogeneity in epistemic traditions, and to deepen the field’s understanding and acceptance of its epistemological scope. This important book will provide a necessary overview of the discipline for graduate students and scholars.

Throughout its history, public administration has used a number of different perspectives for analyzing the discipline's theory and practice, and both mainstream and alternative lenses have produced valuable insights and prescriptions. At the same time, an individual way of looking at PA can be misleading. Alone, a solitary lens can miss critical aspects and often gives only part of the picture. Public Administration in Perspective has been specifically crafted to give new life to public administration theory and practice by helping readers view the discipline through a variety of perspectives. Designed for the capstone course in public administration programs, as well as a fresh approach for courses in PA theory and organizational theory, this unique book provides a culminating experience--bringing together what has been learned in previous MPA courses without simply rehashing old content. It offers a comprehensive guide to eleven major approaches to PA, and synthesizes them to deepen our understanding of the discipline. Each chapter in Part I describes the key features of the selected perspective--history, content, and proponents--and discusses the strengths and weaknesses related to PA theory and practice. Part II synthesizes the various perpectives, with specific implications for PA management and practice. Part III concludes with a complete overview, identifying ways in which readers can think more creatively and productively about PA, putting the perspectives themselves into perspective.

Most public administration texts overly compartmentalize the subject and don't interconnect the various specializations within government, which leaves a serious gap in preparing students for public service. Government: A Public Adminstration Perspective is designed to fill that void. It provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary view of government that includes perspectives from political science, political theory, international relations, organizational sociology, economics, and history. The text draws on classic and modern literature from all these areas to analyze government at four different levels--ideational, societal, organizational, and individual layers. It links public administration's various subfields--human resource management, budgeting, policy making, organizational theory, etc.--into a holistic framework for the study of government. It also includes an extensive bibliography drawing from American and Europen literature in support of the book's global, historical, and comparative approach.