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Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Traditionthe moral performance of individual administrators in the tasks delegated tothem (Discretionary). Accountability must be given upward in a hierarchythat ultimately ends with the popular level of citizens, as well as laws(Constitutional). Furthermore, responsiveness to citizens must be given toensure humane practice and pluralist tolerance (Collaborative). All told,democratic public administration is “a process in which facilities of appeal andlevels of review are more numerous, various, and open than in any other actionladenprocess 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) donot prescribe a preferred blend, but instead support a conscientious balancingact among competing logics. Conciliation is a notion that allows fundamentallydifferent ideas to be reconciled, or at least brought into a state of “agreeing todisagree,” without negative outcomes. Rather than being integrated, disparateideas coexist in a separate, but related, manner. Differences can be interpreted ascomplementary or competitive, but, in either case, conciliation imagines theideas to be in a positive state of dialectical tension (Carr & Zanetti, 1999). Eachconciliatory theory of public administration unifies at least two of the three roleconceptualizations described in this inquiry, while maintaining their distinctcharacteristics. An exemplar would be Rosenbloom’s (1983) unified theory ofpublic 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 compromisenor dominance by any one of them is likely to occur, because either approachwould violate deeply held American values. In fact, attempts to collapse thelegal, managerial, and political powers of government into public administrationmay be a source of the legitimacy crisis in the first place. All three powers mustbe present to function with one another in a system of checks and balances.In the end, theorists principally associated with each of the three publicadministration traditions, as well as those fully straddling the interstices, seek toachieve the public interest. In doing so, all three traditions offer some role forpublic administration. But the Discretionary ideal is always challenged by ourpolitical system of legitimacy through accountability; a true Constitutional idealis always challenged by the risk of inefficiency and administrative evil and a callfor administrative responsibility; and both of these ideals are challenged by theCollaborative tradition’s participative democratic standards and demand fordirect responsiveness to citizens.The notion that these conflicts can be successfully resolved through eitherintegration or conciliation seems unlikely. In short, all social groups comprisinggovernance (elected officials, administrators, and citizens) cannot be empowered302 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Traditionsimultaneously in our political system (Peters & Pierre, 2000). In the end, ifthere is disagreement, one view must trump the others in order for action tooccur. These theoretical conflicts illustrate the mutual exclusivity of their logicsand the paradox of empowerment. Therefore, something more than integrationor conciliation is required to achieve legitimacy in public administration. If onebasis of legitimacy must ultimately dominate the others, then we each must finda way to choose which legitimacy logic we prefer, and the manner in which theothers will be addressed.IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGYAs noted above, inculcation of role conception is an important element ofprofessional education and training, whether it is through academic orworkplace models. Professional socialization can occur through both implicitand explicit teaching (Schein, 1968; Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). Facultymembers in a variety of fields describe their socializing role as transmitting theculture and values of their profession (du Tort, 1995; Pescosolido & Hess, 1996;Sachs, 2001; Teschendorf & Nemshick, 2001). It is clear from the inquirydescribed here (Stout, 2007) that at least three role conceptualizations—withsubstantively different bases of legitimacy—are being promoted in variousblends either by individual scholars, or in combination across faculty during thecourse of a professional program of study. Therefore, students of publicadministration are receiving mixed messages that also are incoherent whenlinked back to associated legitimacy logics.An increased understanding of the differences among role conceptualizationsshould impact how public administrators are educated and prepared for workroles. Such understanding also should help answer the question posed duringthe presidential address at the 2005 NASPAA annual conference: “How best dowe ensure through experiential learning and our own good example that weinstill in the next generation of leaders and managers fidelity to the democraticimpulse and democratic institutions, which are at the heart of our culture andcivic society?” (Mazmanian, 2005).A leading article on public administration education suggests that “thosewho are secure in their own identity (the result of personal developmentprocesses) 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 mostcritical in times of crisis, particularly when the source of chaos is related to thevery legitimacy of one’s professional role within society. If we do not givestudents the tools needed for the deepest levels of reflection, we are askingthem to make choices unconscientiously. Furthermore, if we do not give thema way to organize and link specific prescriptions for practice to various theoriesof legitimacy, we are asking them to choose haphazardly actions that may beJournal of Public Affairs Education 303
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