journal of public affairs education - NASPAA *The Global Standard ...

Enhancing Professional Socialization Through the Metaphor of Traditionconflicting in logic. Indeed, most academic programs seek a diverse faculty,with the specific intent of providing a broad range of theoretical perspectives totheir students. As a result, students are encouraged to adopt competing idealsand approaches from these three traditions, and the various hybrids that seekto integrate or conciliate them.Alternatively, formal academic programs may be conscientiously designed topromote a specific tradition of public administration. In PA Times, themonthly 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 thetraditional approach to public administration, as well as the paradigmemerging under the New Public Management, citing many of the sameshortcomings and negative consequences noted by the normative camps withinthe Constitutional and Discretionary traditions described here. In essence,certain theories are privileged by default of prevalence, if nothing else. Ratherthan unifying public service around the authority of the state or themarketization of the state, she suggests that public service unite around “acommon mission, a common sense of purpose, and common values” (Bourgon,2004, p.6). She reflects back on a time when mandatory training ensured thatpublic administrators shared a common understanding of the values of publicservice. These orientations supported collective values, cooperation, politicalconsensus, democratic outcomes, individual rights, fairness, and the rule of law.She suggests that the field has experienced a great loss because this type oftraining has gone by the wayside.This claim would appear to be evident in empirical studies. In general, issuessuch as legitimacy and role conceptualization are covered in ethics andleadership courses. However, Paul Light’s (1999) content analysis of the corecurriculum of 13 of the top 20 public administration and public policyprograms 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 wassupported by graduates reporting less satisfaction with these elements of theirprograms than they did with policy analysis, and budgeting and finance. Thevast majority of graduates felt that maintaining ethical standards was the topskill that they considered very important for success. No other skills (includinginfluencing 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 graduateswould have closed the gaps identified above on their own, through on-the-jobtraining, personal experience, and their own reading throughout career [sic]”(Light, 1999, p.118).304 Journal of Public Affairs Education