Public administration theory is the amalgamation of history, organizational theory, social theory, political theory and related studies focused on the meanings, structures and functions of public service in all its forms.

A standard course of study in PhD programs dedicated to public administration, public administration theory often recounts major historical foundations for the study of bureaucracy as well as epistemological issues associated with public service as a profession and as an academic field.

Important figures of study often include the following persons: Max Weber, Frederick Taylor, Luther Gulick, Mary Parker Follett, Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon, and Dwight Waldo. In more recent times, the field has had three main branches: new public management, classic public administration and postmodern public administration theory. The last grouping is often viewed as manifest in the Public Administration Theory Network (PAT-NET) and its publication, Administrative Theory & Praxis.

Important Works in the History of Public Administration Theory

• The Northcote-Trevelyan Report
• Pendleton Act of 1883
• The Study of Administration, Woodrow Wilson, 1887
• Politics as a Vocation, 1918, Bureaucracy, 1922, Max Weber
• Functions of the Executive, Chester Barnard
• The Brownloe Commission Report
• The Lack of a Budgetary Theory, V.O. Key, Jr., 1940
• Bureaucracy, Ludwig von Mises, 1944
• The Administrative State, Dwight Waldo, 1948
• Administrative Behavior, Herbert A. Simon, 1953
• TVA and the Grass Roots, Philip Selznick, 1953
• The Science of Muddling Through, Charles E. Lindblom, 1959
• The Forest Ranger, Herbert Kaufman, 1960.
• Democracy and the Public Service, Frederick C. Mosher, 1968
• Servant Leadership, Robert K. Greenleaf
• Public and Private Management: Are They Alike in All the Unimportant Respects?, Graham T. Allison, 1980
• The New Economics of Organization, American Journal of Political Science, Terry M. Moe, 1984
• Organizational Design as Policy Analysis, Policy Studies Journal, Karen M. Hult and Charles Walcott 1989
• Refounding Public Administration, Gary Wamsley ed., 1990
• Street Level Bureaucracy, Michael Lipsky
• The Public Administration Theory Primer, H. George Frederickson and Kevin B. Smith, 2003
• The Case for Bureaucracy, Charles Goodsell

External links

• The Northcote-Trevelyan Report