JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - naspaa

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Tradition the moral performance of individual administrators in the tasks delegated to them (Discretionary). Accountability must be given upward in a hierarchy that ultimately ends with the popular level of citizens, as well as laws (Constitutional). Furthermore, responsiveness to citizens must be given to ensure humane practice and pluralist tolerance (Collaborative). All told, democratic public administration is “a process in which facilities of appeal and levels of review are more numerous, various, and open than in any other actionladen process yet devised” (Appleby, 1952, p.251). As Wamsley (1990) put it, the public administrator’s role must be at once all of the following: “subordinate, autonomous, agential, responsive, and responsible” (p.118). Alternatively, what can be called “conciliatory approaches” (Stout, 2007) do not prescribe a preferred blend, but instead support a conscientious balancing act among competing logics. Conciliation is a notion that allows fundamentally different ideas to be reconciled, or at least brought into a state of “agreeing to disagree,” without negative outcomes. Rather than being integrated, disparate ideas coexist in a separate, but related, manner. Differences can be interpreted as complementary or competitive, but, in either case, conciliation imagines the ideas to be in a positive state of dialectical tension (Carr & Zanetti, 1999). Each conciliatory theory of public administration unifies at least two of the three role conceptualizations described in this inquiry, while maintaining their distinct characteristics. An exemplar would be Rosenbloom’s (1983) unified theory of public administration that maintains three distinct powers of government (legal, managerial, and political), each of which “has a respected intellectual tradition, emphasizes different values, promotes different types of organizational structure, and views individuals in markedly distinct terms” (p.219). Neither compromise nor dominance by any one of them is likely to occur, because either approach would violate deeply held American values. In fact, attempts to collapse the legal, managerial, and political powers of government into public administration may be a source of the legitimacy crisis in the first place. All three powers must be present to function with one another in a system of checks and balances. In the end, theorists principally associated with each of the three public administration traditions, as well as those fully straddling the interstices, seek to achieve the public interest. In doing so, all three traditions offer some role for public administration. But the Discretionary ideal is always challenged by our political system of legitimacy through accountability; a true Constitutional ideal is always challenged by the risk of inefficiency and administrative evil and a call for administrative responsibility; and both of these ideals are challenged by the Collaborative tradition’s participative democratic standards and demand for direct responsiveness to citizens. The notion that these conflicts can be successfully resolved through either integration or conciliation seems unlikely. In short, all social groups comprising governance (elected officials, administrators, and citizens) cannot be empowered 302 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Tradition simultaneously in our political system (Peters & Pierre, 2000). In the end, if there is disagreement, one view must trump the others in order for action to occur. These theoretical conflicts illustrate the mutual exclusivity of their logics and the paradox of empowerment. Therefore, something more than integration or conciliation is required to achieve legitimacy in public administration. If one basis of legitimacy must ultimately dominate the others, then we each must find a way to choose which legitimacy logic we prefer, and the manner in which the others will be addressed. IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY As noted above, inculcation of role conception is an important element of professional education and training, whether it is through academic or workplace models. Professional socialization can occur through both implicit and explicit teaching (Schein, 1968; Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). Faculty members in a variety of fields describe their socializing role as transmitting the culture and values of their profession (du Tort, 1995; Pescosolido & Hess, 1996; Sachs, 2001; Teschendorf & Nemshick, 2001). It is clear from the inquiry described here (Stout, 2007) that at least three role conceptualizations—with substantively different bases of legitimacy—are being promoted in various blends either by individual scholars, or in combination across faculty during the course of a professional program of study. Therefore, students of public administration are receiving mixed messages that also are incoherent when linked back to associated legitimacy logics. An increased understanding of the differences among role conceptualizations should impact how public administrators are educated and prepared for work roles. Such understanding also should help answer the question posed during the presidential address at the 2005 NASPAA annual conference: “How best do we ensure through experiential learning and our own good example that we instill in the next generation of leaders and managers fidelity to the democratic impulse and democratic institutions, which are at the heart of our culture and civic society” (Mazmanian, 2005). A leading article on public administration education suggests that “those who are secure in their own identity (the result of personal development processes) are more likely to act in accord with their knowledge and principles (both of which are the result of learning), even under pressures not to do so” (R.B. Denhardt, 2001, p.530). This self-reflective capacity and integrity is most critical in times of crisis, particularly when the source of chaos is related to the very legitimacy of one’s professional role within society. If we do not give students the tools needed for the deepest levels of reflection, we are asking them to make choices unconscientiously. Furthermore, if we do not give them a way to organize and link specific prescriptions for practice to various theories of legitimacy, we are asking them to choose haphazardly actions that may be Journal of Public Affairs Education 303
Page 1 and 2: Summer 2009 Volume 15, No. 3 JPAE J
Page 3 and 4: EDITOR’S NOTE REFERENCES Henry, N
Page 5 and 6: the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
Page 7 and 8: Public Values As a Core Element of
Page 9 and 10: Public Values as a Core Element of
Page 15 and 16: How Do We Know What They Know Evalu
Page 33 and 34: Enhancing Professional Socializatio
Page 45: Enhancing Professional Socializatio
Page 61 and 62: Staying Connected: MPA Student Perc
Page 77 and 78: Teaching Public Administration As a
Page 91 and 92: Badgers & Hoosiers: An Interstate C
Page 97 and 98:
Badgers & Hoosiers: An Interstate C
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Operation PSA: The Action Learning
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Introduction of Government Process
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
show all

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - naspaa

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?