According to this view, Public Administration is a sum total of all the activities undertaken in pursuit of and in fulfillment of public policy. These activities include not only managerial and technical but also manual and clerical.
Image Source: xmindshare.s3.amazonaws.com
Thus, the activities of the errand boy, the foreman, the gatekeeper, the sweeper, clerk as well as the director and manager in an enterprise constitute administration. L.D. White adopts this view of public administration.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
According to him, public administration “consists of all of those operations having for their purpose, the fulfillment of enforcement of public policy as declared by competent authority”.
This definition covers a multitude of particular operations. In many fields the delivery of letter, the sale of public land, the negotiation of a treaty, the award of compensation of an injured workman, the quarantine of a sick child, the removal of a litter from a park, manufacturing plutonium, and licensing the use of atomic energy.
These two views manifest basic difference. Acceptance of the integral view makes us count the entire personnel of an undertaking as engaged in administration. The managerial view, on the other hand, postulates that administration is the organisation and use of men and material in pursuit of a given objective. It is a specialised calling of the manger whose function is, to organise and to use men and materials to realise a given objective.
After discussing the two different views on the nature of public administration we come to the conclusion that no single view is complete or sufficient to study the nature of public administration’. And neither of these views can be rejected. But we accept views the both exact meaning of administration would depend on the context in which the term is used.