Exam 3: What Is Public Administration?

From the choices below, which activity is the most critical to public organizations as compared to private organizations?

What term describes public organizations by the formal, rational system of relations among persons entrusted with administrative authority to carry out public programs?

Gortner, Mahler, and Nicholson distinguish managerial discretion in the public sector from that in the private sector mainly on the basis of what?

Government's role in society is so pervasive that it was termed the administrative state by ______ in 1948.

Briefly describe what Dwight Waldo meant when he suggested that the lines between public and private sectors were becoming blurry.

What contradictions did Woodrow Wilson advance in his classic article "The Study of Administration" ? Do you believe that Wilson's arguments are as important today for public administration as they were more than 120 years ago?

Public administrators must answer not only to their superiors but also to legislators and the courts.

Explain the various ways a public organization is different from a private organization.

The most fundamental difference between public and private organizations, more than oversight and performance measurement, is ______.

One of the core issues of public administration is the inevitably fuzzy line between ______.

Explain the internalized norms of behavior that exist in addition to external controls associated with administrative responsibility.

Although elected officials authorize, direct and provide resources toward policy, what reality-making activity is entrusted to administrators?

Briefly discuss the key difference between policy formation and policy execution.

How has the administrative state changed since the coining of the term in 1948?

What kind of connotation does the term bureaucracy have and why does it embody a contradiction? Do you agree or disagree with common conceptions?

What period of time did Nicholas Henry suggest that the politics-administration dichotomy was rejected and there was a loss of confidence in the principles of public administration?

Public organizations administer law, which makes them different from ______.

In writing about a politics-administration dichotomy, Woodrow Wilson was mostly arguing that public administrators were basically the same as members of Congress.

Briefly describe why the term bureaucracy is actually a neutral term despite it sometimes being viewed negatively.

Describe what Gortner, Mahler, and Nicholson meant by the following: "For the private organization, it is a matter of 'go until I say stop'; but to the public manager the message is 'don't go unless I tell you to.'"