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Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of TraditionSummaryFrom this professional socialization process view, role conception isenvisioned as a problem of scholarship, practice, and public perception. It canbe studied from the perspective of those constructing the role (scholars), thosetaking the role (practitioners), or those interacting with the role (electedofficials, other administrators, and citizens). While internal role conceptionsand externally prescribed role conceptualizations are clearly interrelated, thisarticle focuses on the latter, and the manner in which theory describes andpromotes roles for the public administrator. It seeks to describe the constitutiveelements of unique role conceptualizations, define how they are mutuallyexclusive in terms of legitimacy logic, and explain how the field attempts topromote them through pedagogy.ROLE CONCEPTUALIZATIONS AND DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACYAs noted by Morgan (1986), images and metaphors are used not only asdescriptors, but also as prescriptive guides for attitudes and action. Roleconceptualizations depict what we wish social actors to be and do. In this case,images of identity stem from “legitimating myths” about the enterprise of publicadministration within our political system (Kass, 1990). In fact, a historicalreview of the field “shows that the debate over defining the role of theadministrator in governance has actually been a struggle of political ideology”(McSwite, 1997, pp. 229-230). For example, Waldo (1984) brought theproblem of political philosophy into public administration theory: “Are trainingin the mechanics of administration and codes of professional ethics enough? Orshould our new Guardian Class be given an education commensurate with theirannounced responsibilities and perhaps be imbued with a political philosophy?”(p. 202). While the field for the most part has accepted this charge, the specificsflow “from different, often conflicting, ideas in American political philosophy”(Kettl, 2000, p.14).Perhaps in part because of this phenomenon, there is widespreaddisagreement about the legitimate role of government actors. This has beendescribed as a “crisis of legitimacy” (King, et al., 1998) for which a variety ofsolutions has been offered. In fact, the resulting identity crisis has beenrecognized as one of the most pressing concerns for the field in the newmillennium. A 2006 symposium in the International Journal of Public SectorManagement described a competition between the traditional bureaucratic ethosand the managerialist ethos promoted by the New Public Management andrelated theories. Elsewhere, competing democratic and bureaucratic ethos aresimilarly described (Pugh, 1991). Each ethos has a specific logic, ethicalframework, and corresponding role identity for public administrators (Newland,2003). Such competition among ethos is described as an “identity project” that294 Journal of Public Affairs Education