The Endless Appeal to Rethink Public Administration

• Author: Donijo Robbins
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12694
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

146 Public Administration Review • January | February 2017

The Endless Appeal to Rethink Public Administration

Donijo Robbins is full professor with

the School of Public, Nonprofit, and Health

Administration at Grand Valley State

University in Grand Rapids, Michigan,

and is former elected comptroller for the

City of Grand Rapids. She holds an MA in

economics and PhD in public administration

from Rutgers University-Newark. Her

research focuses on public budgeting and

financial management.

E-mail: robbinsd@gvsu.edu R ichard Clay Wilson, Jr. joins copious others

calling on academics and practitioners to

rethink public administration. His second

edition of Rethinking Public Administration: The Case

for Management provides an overview of “management

deficiencies that characterize the public sector” (1)

and argues that these deficiencies demonstrate how

critically important management is to the success of

government at all levels. “Government is duty-bound

to perform capably and cost-effectively” but numerous

obstacles constrain managers.

What gets in the way of management? Simply, people

get in the way. Wilson suggests that we do not think

about management enough, and when we do think

about it at macro and micro levels, we do so the

wrong way. Wilson ’ s vie w is that management is the

ability to use available resources to produce the best

possible outcomes (123); “management is about

money and the values related to money such as cost-

effectiveness” (88). Besides the wrong way of thinking,

Wilson suggests politics, systems and structures,

graduate programs in public administration, and

Danny L. Balfour and Stephanie P. Newbold, Editors

Donijo Robbins

Grand Valley State University

Richard Clay Wilson, Jr ., Rethinking Public

Administration:  e Case for Management

(Irvine, CA: Melvin & Leigh, Publishers, 2016).

158 pp. ISBN: 9780978663841 .

ineffective communication skills are management

deficiencies.

In the first chapter, Political Territory, Wilson

showcases how politicians and everything that comes

from them—political appointees, policies, and

elections—disrupt a manager ’ s ability to manage.

Politicians do not solve problems or manage,

instead, Wilson suggests, their job description is to

know how to speak well and respond to the current

political climate so to get reelected. Managers have

to implement and manage the policies made by

the politicians in offices often headed by political

appointees. Moreover, political appointees prevail over

the unsung professionals. “The career public sector

managers are rarely ever noted” when government

succeeds or fails (par. 2–3). Overall, political

values trump managerial values—“The concerns of

politicians accurately reflect the concerns of the public

and managerial values are not among them” (108).

However, toward the end of the chapter, Wilson

acknowledges that not everything is political and that

the “great majority of managerial issues in government

do not invoke politics” (43).

Furthermore, he suggests that graduate programs in

public administration should do for governments

what business schools do for the private sector.

Management works in the private sector because

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 1, pp. 146–148. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12694.