Selecting and Training Public Managers: Business Skills versus Public Administration

Abstract

The doctrine that government is has been mainstream public administration for thirty years, serving as a guide to the selection and training of public managers and suggesting that a background in public affairs-not business administration-is the best preparation for public management. The business approach, as reflected in B-schools around the nation, tends to emphasize specific skills (such as accounting, finance, statistics, data processing, and management control) and a much more technical approach to administration than most P.A.'ers are comfortable with. P.A. schools, by contrast, have acquired a reputation for teaching attitudes-in particular, an awareness of the political process. 2 The emphasis on P.A. training for public management received a symbolic boost by President Carter's recent decision to exclude business majors from his Presidential Management Intern Program. Carter apparently forgot that the government is different ' doctrine extends to performance on the job as well as selection, for he proposed as part of his civil service reform that productive public servants be rewarded, in business-like fashion, with increased pay. An employee of the National Park Service rose at a presidential town meeting to remind him:

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 26 citations exist upstream.