JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - naspaa

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Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Tradition conflicting in logic. Indeed, most academic programs seek a diverse faculty, with the specific intent of providing a broad range of theoretical perspectives to their students. As a result, students are encouraged to adopt competing ideals and approaches from these three traditions, and the various hybrids that seek to integrate or conciliate them. Alternatively, formal academic programs may be conscientiously designed to promote a specific tradition of public administration. In PA Times, the monthly newspaper of the American Society for Public Administration, Bourgon (2004) presents a case for unifying public service around a central, underlying philosophy about the role of the state in society. She describes the traditional approach to public administration, as well as the paradigm emerging under the New Public Management, citing many of the same shortcomings and negative consequences noted by the normative camps within the Constitutional and Discretionary traditions described here. In essence, certain theories are privileged by default of prevalence, if nothing else. Rather than unifying public service around the authority of the state or the marketization of the state, she suggests that public service unite around “a common mission, a common sense of purpose, and common values” (Bourgon, 2004, p.6). She reflects back on a time when mandatory training ensured that public administrators shared a common understanding of the values of public service. These orientations supported collective values, cooperation, political consensus, democratic outcomes, individual rights, fairness, and the rule of law. She suggests that the field has experienced a great loss because this type of training has gone by the wayside. This claim would appear to be evident in empirical studies. In general, issues such as legitimacy and role conceptualization are covered in ethics and leadership courses. However, Paul Light’s (1999) content analysis of the core curriculum of 13 of the top 20 public administration and public policy programs in the United States found that, on average, only 0.4 courses in ethics, and 0.2 courses in leadership, were required. This lack of coverage was supported by graduates reporting less satisfaction with these elements of their programs than they did with policy analysis, and budgeting and finance. The vast majority of graduates felt that maintaining ethical standards was the top skill that they considered very important for success. No other skills (including influencing policymakers, policy analysis, and budgeting and public finance) ranked consistently in the 80th percentile range. Leadership followed ethics, ranking in the 70th percentile range. Thus, “as a general rule, these graduates would have closed the gaps identified above on their own, through on-the-job training, personal experience, and their own reading throughout career [sic]” (Light, 1999, p.118). 304 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Tradition These perspectives on public administration pedagogy suggest that a particular substantive and normative content is desired from professional socialization, but is not consistently present in graduate programs, or at least not called out through specific courses in ethics and leadership. Alternatively, perhaps these ideas are integrated into the theories taught throughout many courses during graduate study, as suggested by the elements described in Table 1. Indeed, NASPAA accreditation standards call for a program of study that gives graduates “values, knowledge, and skills to act ethically and effectively” (NASPAA, 2008), and the new draft standards promote “public values as the heart of the discipline” (NASPAA, 2009, p.4), demanding that programs “demonstrably emphasize public values” (NASPAA, 2009, p.1). Specific values mentioned include civic virtue, participatory processes, social equity, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, fiscal and environmental sustainability, efficiency, and effectiveness (NASPAA, 2009, p.7). Whether these ideas are disseminated via specific courses, or integrated throughout the program of study, the normative models informing professional socialization are desired, and are believed to make a difference in the attitudes and actions of the role-takers. Unfortunately, there is a lack of agreement on which set of values to inculcate. The values listed by NASPAA are linked to competing legitimacy logics. If we anticipate a public administrator acting in accordance with these role conceptualizations when they become part of one’s identity, it will benefit faculty to be cognizant and conscientious about which models we are prescribing. Interestingly, we seem to deny that this type of normative socialization is occurring. “To be more precise, we frown not on socialization, but on conscious and responsible control of it” (Bennis, 1967, p.15). For example, MPA programs in China are roundly criticized for intentionally imparting a uniform approach to legitimacy, according to Marxist and socialist theory: “The Chinese government is clearly unwilling to give up political indoctrination in the MPA program” (Tong & Straussman, 2003, p.112). This is done in order to ensure professional characteristics that are appropriate for China’s political, historical, and cultural attributes. Comparatively, it is reasonable to assert that MPA students in the United States are similarly indoctrinated with representative democratic capitalism as a part of their programs of study. Not considering the very few who might transcend representative democracy altogether, most individual scholars tend to profess liberalism in one of its classical, modern, conservative, or radical manifestations. As Bennis (1967) notes of all organizations, MPA programs are “magnificent, if undeliberate, vehicles of socialization. They teach values, inculcate ethics, create norms, dictate right and wrong, influence attitudes necessary for success and all the rest” (p.15). But, because of our individualistic mistrust of intentional indoctrination and our pluralist tendencies, socialization Journal of Public Affairs Education 305
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