Revisiting “Public Administration as a Design Science” for the Twenty‐First Century Public University

• Author: R. F. Shangraw,Michael M. Crow
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12573
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016

762 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in

any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 5, pp. 762–763. © 2016

The Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf

of American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12573.

R. F. Shangraw, Jr., is CEO of the

Arizona State University Foundation

for a New American University. He is

founder and former CEO of Project

Performance Corporation, a research and

technology consulting firm specializing in

environmental, energy, and information

management issues. He holds an MPA

and doctorate from the Maxwell School of

Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where

he was also on the faculty prior to entering

the private sector.

E-mail: rick.shangraw@asu.edu

Michael M. Crow is the sixteenth

president of Arizona State University and

former executive vice provost of Columbia

University. A graduate of the Maxwell

School of Public Affairs at Syracuse

University, Dr. Crow is a fellow of the

National Academy of Public Administration

and has written extensively on topics

related to public administration, science

policy, and innovation. His latest book is

Designing the New American University

(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015),

coauthored with historian William Dabars.

E-mail: michael.crow@asu.edu

Perspective

I n the decades since Wilson ’ s 1887 treatise on

the study of administration, scholars of public

administration have contended with the challenges

and opportunities facing theory and practice in the

field. While some public administration neophytes

may see these discussions as trivial self-indulgences,

veteran scholars and experienced practitioners

recognize them as important contributions with

the potential to improve inestimably critical social

enterprises.

The Minnowbrook Conference of 1968 served as an

important demarcation point in the development of

the science of public administration. Recognizing the

significance of Minnowbrook, some 25 years ago we

set out as earnest contributors to the Minnowbrook II

discussion to propose that public administration, as a

domain of social enterprise, should be seen as a design

science (“Public Administration as a Design Science,”

PA R 49 [1989]: 153–160) rather than a rigid, highly

structured, legalistic, and bureaucratic construct.

Drawing from Herbert Simon ’ s conceptualization of

design in The Sciences of the Artificial , our vision for

public administration as a design science includes a

process of adaptive, deliberate action. In our view,

the intent beginning in 1968 was to reconceptualize

the design principles of public administration around

flexibility, change orientation, system responsivity,

client-centricity, transdisciplinarity, and adaptivity.

From these principles, a new design paradigm was laid

out, and thus, a new approach for collective action

and outcomes was envisioned in what had by then

become a massively diverse and complex democracy.

In our estimation, the public institutions of American

democracy have in recent decades reached the limits of

their initial and reformed designs. But in no case are

the limits more apparent than in public universities.

With more than 650 public four-year colleges serving

millions of students and more than a thousand public

two-year colleges serving over 10 million students, the

ultimate success of these institutions, and American

democracy as outlined by John Adams, are closely

tied. But like other public institutions, they have seen

public support and confidence erode at unprecedented

levels, as well as decreasing outcome effectiveness.

The designs of public universities were initially

legalistic, bureaucratic, faculty-centric, and subject

to conserver models of organizational behavior, and

thus exhibited only minimal rates of adaptation and

change over long periods of time. The result was that

by the late 1990s there were significant calls for new

models for public-purposed universities, including

those articulated by Frank Rhodes, then president

of Cornell University, and James Duderstadt, then

president of the University of Michigan.

Recognizing the need for a new public administration

of public universities, we set out as architects,

drawing from our Minnowbrook II assumptions

about public administration as a design science, to

construct a “New American University.” This new

form of public institution is a complex and adaptive

public research university built around the core

democratic principles of equity and meritocracy, and

its foundational prototype is Arizona State University

(ASU). The reconceptualization is based on a set of

“design aspirations” that enhance public value. A

new university charter built on a unique and self-

determined set of core assumptions expresses its

aspirational institutional self-identity: Arizona State

University is a comprehensive public research university,

measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it

includes and how they succeed; advancing research and

discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental

responsibility for the economic, social, cultural, and

overall health of the communities it serves.

Since the late 18th century, public universities have

been increasingly important to the social mobility

of American society, and to the success of both the

ideals of American democracy and the growth of its

economy. Countless studies demonstrate their historic

impact on social mobility. However, as a consequence

Michael M. Crow

Arizona State University

R. F. Shangraw , Jr.

Arizona State University Foundation

Revisiting “Public Administration as a Design Science” for the

Twenty-First Century Public University