Thoughts on Administrative Case‐Study
| Author | R. N. Spann |
| Published date | 01 March 1953 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1953.tb01756.x |
| Date | 01 March 1953 |
Thoughts
on
Administrative
Case-Study
BY
R.
N.
SPA"
Mr.
Spann, Lecturer in Government in the University
of
Manchester, has
recently spent a year in the United States.
In
the course
of
this review
of
Harold Stein's
book
of
Case-Studies in Administration, he reflects upon
the possible development
of
the technique in rhis country.
HE development of Public Administration as an academic subject in
T
this country has been hampered by belief in the half-truth that
"
ad-
ministration is an art which can only be learnt on the job." If this is so then, as
Professor Edwards has recently pointed out1, administration is alone among
the arts in containing nothing that can be absorbed academically. Most
activities have some general characteristics which it is useful to know about if
one intends to pursue them. There is no reason to believe that administration
is an exception. Such a statement also implies that there is no possibility
of reproducing some of the insights of
"
doing
"
away from the activity itself.
But, though there are certainly many difficulties, no administrator really
believes that he cannot communicate some practical wisdom to others by
talking from his experience, in
or
out of the office. If he writes as well
as
talks, he instructs a wider public. Regrettably he usually does not write, for
the
student or for other administrators to read and to profit thereby.
We may imagine the administrator replying tolerantly that he agrees
with this in principle, but what a wasteful and roundabout way it sounds
of
teaching someone about administration. How much simpler to learn by
doing,
with
the senior official's wisdom available in the next room.
To
this
I
think that teachers of Public Administration have a number of answers.
The neatest and most irrelevant is that most of them are not in fact teaching
Public Administration, but Political Science! But let us suppose that they
try to live up to their title. Then they might reply, first, that many
of
their
students will never be full-time administrators, but will nevertheless
go
to
positions where they should know something of administrative problems.
It
is
hard to believe that public administrators would not like the experts
who now surround them, and the intellectual leaders of the public whom they
serve, to be made more aware
of
their functions and difficulties. Another
answer is that students
of
Public Administration include men and women who
already are,
or
will be, public servants who work in comparatively narrow
fields and in junior positions, and who have hardly more notion
of
what goes
on in departments
or
at levels other than their own than many an intelligent
layman. There are limits to the desirability of teaching one hand what the
other one does. But he would be brave who said we had sighted them.
My own preference would be for the more direct reply that even the
senior administrator is still,
or
should still be, a student of Public Adminis-
tration.
I
do not mean that he can learn
a
great deal from most
of
the current
literaturc
on
that subject.
He
and his
fellows
have contributed too little to
it
for that, though he can perhaps learn more than he believes,
It
would be more
accurate
to
put
it
likc
this,
that if administration
is the
important activity
we
35
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