Love and Un-Engineering

Abstract

Shouldn't public management be motivated by love? Shouldn't the post September 11th P.A. community give priority to reflecting about administrative lovel Or, should we stick with motivation-as-usual, e.g., an efficiency ethic? Un-engineering is what management needs, I hope to suggest; approaches like reengineering should be abandoned. Through un engineering, the P.A. community should seek a fresh consciousness that focuses on knowing and embracing administrative love as a regulative ideal. Assuming that it should be motivated by love, should a loving management be fueled primarily by love for an ideal (like love for country, or love for the public interest)? Or, should it be powered primarily by love for each person as she is in herself (like Romeo for Juliet, and vice-versa)? I suggest that administrative love should include both of these aspects?love directed toward an ideal and love directed toward individual persons. At first blush, the idea of administrative love appears paradoxical, so sentimental and indeterminate that it borders on the nonsensical. Paradoxes rear their heads between love-as-it-is and administration-as-it-is, and they can be expressed in at least two ways.

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