The title of the book as “Public Administration: Theories and Concepts” demands some explanation. The book is the product of culmination of my four decades of study in this particular area. Question may arise in any one’s mind.-why such a delay in constructing the book. To be honest, I have been teaching the core course entitled PA 201: Introduction to Public Administration. From the time, I joined the Department of Public Administration as a lecturer; I was entrusted with teaching this course. Well to me, although as the name spelled out, it meant an introductory course to be aligned with the subject matter.
However, for me it was totally a different picture. My thoughts were that, though introductory, it did include all the various aspects and dimensions of the discipline. For example, starting with the meaning of ‘public,’ as it covered the wide range of the subject matter beginning from what does government do for the public.
So what is administration? Simply put, public to administer means to carry out a task. Increasingly, however, to administer means something much more complex, including looking after the interests, accounting for consequences and also justifying actions. From these few words, I found that the matter is not quite an easy one. Public administration did cover a variety of issues, which through out my very long time of teaching I managed to cover a wide spectrum of dimensions I did feel the need of incorporating all the ideas, topics, issues, theories, concepts into a complete book so that students pursuing the introductory course become fully versed with understanding the core issues and problems of public administration. Now let us see where we start from.
Public administration is the concern of all those who on behalf of the public, on behalf of the society, carry out actions and have consequences for the members of the society, singly or as a group. Together with this, we try to focus on people working as groups both in formal and informal sphere and see how the informal relations become prominent and influential in determining the working of the organization, in communication, decision-making and exercising leadership.
All these take us to the very scope or environment of public administration, which are embedded in different theories and concerns of the discipline. My aim of the book has been to try to relate theories of the administrative process to the actual functioning of the government system. Much of the book deals with the relationship between the concepts of organization and behaviour of individuals. My starting point is the belief that there is little relation of theories to practice in the study of public administration. There is a large descriptive literature dealing with theories of organization and bureaucracy.
The book has three parts. First part deals with the meaning and different definitions of public administration focusing on the content and context of the subject. The second section deals with the different concepts of public administration and how these are related to real life situations of the people both in the government and in private sector. How people are motivated, how decisions and policies affect the lives, and how leadership functions to influence and control the lives.
The last part concentrates on a very short account of the administrative system of Bangladesh and describes the multiple problems faced by the country and how the role and relationships between the politicians and bureaucracy are addressing this in achieving the goals of sustainable development in the country. The book will be relevant for those studying public administration, political science, management, business administration, organizational behaviour, leadership studies and other courses on social sciences.