How managers and students view public service: The theoretical vs. practical divide
| Author | John R Wood,Kenneth Kickham |
| Published date | 01 July 2022 |
| Date | 01 July 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01447394211013068 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
2022, Vol. 40(2) 209 –230
Article
How managers and
students view public
service: The theoretical vs.
practical divide
John R Wood and Kenneth Kickham
University of Central Oklahoma, USA
Abstract
This paper examines existing management concepts and practices that make up three
contemporary approaches to public policy and public administration. We attempt to
understand whether municipal public administrators and public administration graduate
students validate these perspectives in “reality” versus “ideally.” Addressing the extent
to which practicing public administrators and students identify with theoretical frame-
works, which one(s) they deem most prominent, and how closely their preferred fra-
meworks correspond to what they see in practice, we offer an exploratory analysis of
results from 176 respondents through descriptive statistics, paired-sample t-tests, and
analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). We hypothesize significant differences with respect
to 1) what is preferred and what is perceived in the workplace, 2) group membership
(administrator, graduate student, or undergraduate student), and 3) gender (female or
male). This research will help public administration educators bridge the gap between
theory and practice and narrow the distance between the “is” and the “ought.”
Keywords
Public administration, city manager, public administration education, New Public Service
This exploratory study examines public administration assumptions and practices.
Specifically, we want to know whether city administrators and public administration
graduate students adhere to scholarly perspectives or are more pragmatic. Probing
these distinctions seems to be a unique undertaking as there are no empirical studies we
know of exploring these issues with respondents like ours; that is, a sample repre-
senting both sides of the theory-practice equation.
1
We surveyed International City/
Corresponding author:
John R Wood, University of Central Oklahoma, 100 N. University Dr., Edmond, OK 73034, USA.
Email: jwood41@uco.edu
Teaching Public Administration
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/01447394211013068
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210 Teaching Public Administration 40(2)
County Management Association (ICMA) members nationwide to determine how they
relate to the three perspectives identified by Light (1999) and also by Denhardt and
Denhardt (2000, 2015a, 2015b). Subsequently, we administered the same survey items
to students in our Master of Public Administration program, and to undergraduates
taking classes in our department.
Scholars contend that we need to blend theory and practice to improve relationships
and understanding between public administrators and citizens, enhance the public
administration classroom experience, and assist managers doing their job (Hanbury
et al., 2004: 573). Students tend to study perspectives in the classroom as if these fra-
meworks are discrete systems of coherent ideas, but there is little or no scholarly work on
whether practitioners perceive these distinctions. If they do not, then a more accurate
portrayal of what happens in practice is needed.
Analyzing the theory-practice divide is critical as the field is questioning itself,
manifesting healthy and productive debate. This disciplinary self-examination may be
why Frederickson and Smith (2003) argue that there has been a loss of theoretical
hegemony, giving public administration an identity crisis. Scholars understandably seek
a greater understanding of how current and future practitioners see the world. Kristof-
Brown et al. (2005) observe that it would be helpful to find ways to achieve consistent
compatibility between a job candidate’s talents and those required for a specific job.
Public administration education, by the same logic, should strive for harmony with the
profession, presumably by engaging in a reciprocal partnership with practitioners to
narrow gaps between theory and practice. Simply put, theory and practice should learn
from each other.
We explore the three contemporary perspectives—Traditional Public Administration
(TPA), New Public Management (NPM), and New Public Service (NPS). This paper
examines these three perspectives based upon a brief, exploratory survey that uniquely
breaks down Denhardt and Denhardt’s three perspectives into forced choice response
items. Respondents select what they find in reality, or what tends to happen in organi-
zations, and then what they would prefer in an ideal world, or what ought to happen.
Although reality and the ideal are not expected to line up reliably in any context, Uveges
and Keller (1998) argue that harboring juxtaposed multiple perspectives can present
challenges both in the workplace and in the classroom. While they may enhance the
practice and research of public administration through greater flexibility, strains among
these competing perspectives may also pose unique challenges when teaching students to
understand how professional managers think in the field. In the broadest sense, our
research question is whether theory and practice agree about “what is” and “what ought
to be.”
Literature review
The gap between what is being taught and what ought to be taught suggests an inability
to keep up with the changing world, or what Tropman (2001) has called structural lag.
The discipline has not remained stagnant, however, as there have been intellectual steps
forward throughout history.
2Teaching Public Administration XX(X)
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