Tag Archive | Public Administration

Henry Fayol: Gangplank and Criticism [Part 3]

Gangplank

The Gangplank refers to the need for ‘level jumping’ in a hierarchical organisation. Although Fayol places emphasis on formal organisation, he is alive to the dangers of conformity to hierarchy and formalism. ‘It is an error to depart needlessly from the line of authority, but it is even greater one to keep it when detrimental to the business’, asserts Fayol.

He illustrates the problem with reference to the figure given below. Read More…

December 4, 2020

Henry Fayol: An Introduction on Administrative Theory [Part 1]

Henri Fayol, contributed the corpus of management concepts and is considered the founder of the ‘Management Process School’. His Administration Industrielle et Generale was first published in France in 1916, but it did not come to light in the English-speaking countries until its English translation published in 1949 under the title General and Industrial Management. His work is considered a classic and a foundation in classical management theory. The book offers a theory and principles of management.

December 4, 2020

Henry Fayol: Management and Principles of Administration [Part 2]

Elements of Management

Fayol identified, as we have seen earlier, five elements of management viz., planning, organisation, command, coordination and control which are discussed below.

Planning

Fayol used the French term Prevoyance which in French means to ‘foresee’, to ‘anticipate’ and to ‘make plans’. The administration’s chief manifestation and most effective instrument, to Fayol, is the plan of action. Planning enables the separation of the short-run events from the long-range considerations. It endows forethought to the operations of an organisation. Fayol considers that experience is an asset in drawing a realistic plan. To him, unity, continuity, flexibility and precision are the broad features of a good plan of action.

November 30, 2020

by Gora
in Ethics Mains, Polity, Polity Mains, Public Administration
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Good Governance

The term “good governance” is being used in development literature. Bad governance is being increasingly regarded as one of the root cause of all evil within our societies. The concept is elusive and value laden. Hence proved to be difficult to define accurately.

The outline of the concept attempted to sketch through two documents.

June 10, 2020

Public Administration of Developing Countries: Role and Characteristics

Public Administration is an institution of central importance in almost all the countries in the world. It has emerged most impressively in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America after they attained independence.

In these countries, the role of government and the nature of its tasks are no longer limited to minimum traditional functions of law and order, defence and revenue collection. The government in these countries are entrusted with developmental and national building activities. Since the developing countries are engaged in rapid socio-economic transformation under the leadership of government.

August 4, 2019

Basics of Public administration

What is Public Administration?

Public administration has many definitions, but will put some layman understanding of Public Administration that will give you a more peripheral vision. We will first discuss the ambit of Pub. Adm. i.e Cross-disciplinary- Political Science, Sociology, Business Administration, Psychology, Law, Anthropology, Medicine, Forestry and so on. Read More…

August 3, 2019

Basics of Public Administration – Nature and Scope

There are two important views regarding to the Nature of Public Administration, that is, Integral and Managerial views.

The integral view: Administration is the sum total of all the activities such as; manual, clerical, managerial, etc., which are undertaken to realise the objectives of the organisation. According to this view, all the acts of officials of the government from the attendant to the secretaries to the government and head of the state constitute Public Administration. Henri Fayol and L.D. White are the supporters of this view.
The managerial view: According to this veiw of administration, the managerial activities of people who are involved in planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling (POCCC- according to H. Fayol) constitute Public Administration.

This view regards administration as getting things done and not doing things. Luther Gullick, Herbert Simon, Smithburg and Thompson are the supporters of this view. The managerial view excludes Public Administration from non-managerial activities such as manual, clerical and technical activities.

November 22, 2016