Transitioning to Tomorrow's Public Administration: Policies and Practices for PA 2000

Abstract

Periodically, my attention has turned to the wellsprings of public administration and management: broadly, what considerations should dominate in the design of graduate degree programs and associated activities? The first concentrated attention came in 1964-67, as we at Georgia -- primarily Bill Collins, Geoff Cornog, Frank Gibson, and myself -- were modelling one of the first of what became a string of second-generation MPA programs. Our burgeoning enrollments, and especially those off-site, highlighted the lack of convenient teaching materials, and this market force then led directly to about 25 editions of a family of readers (e.g., Golembiewski, Gibson, & Cornog, 1966, 1972, 1976...). Subsequently, in what was essentially a Lone Ranger sortie, the design of one of the early DPA programs came into focus. And then a bit later, the target was the broad design of PA as discipline (Golembiewski, 1977c). Later still, my objective was an overall sense of what there was to learn from the range of PA/PM graduate programs that I had either helped design or had observed, up-close and personal (e.g., Golembiewski, 1979, 1980).

Now is another one of those retrospective times for an integrative review of experience and insight that might yield directions as well as limits for PA 2000: The Future of the Profession. Specifically, three themes get targeted:

• a survey of today's conditions;

• a brief sense of PA's near-future markets; and

• ways of easing the here ---> there transition, beginning with short-run opportunities, and extending to longer time frames.

Transitioning to Tomorrow's Public Administration

In sum, this essay is a kind of mental exercise, composed of some data and more speculation. Overall, the goal is clear: to provide both insight and guidance about how to raise the probability of a substantially-integrated discipline and profession -- building on mutual values, visions, theory, and experiences. The stakes seem clear enough, but the goal is neither trivial nor an easy piece. Many observers see a kind of fragmenting decay as already substantially underway in PA/PM -- henceforth, for convenience, PA. The goal is to inhibit any such tendencies, and without creating even less-tractable problems in the long-run.

Circumscribing Today's Major Conditions

Let us begin from where PA now stands -- for obvious reasons, and without even a pretense of comprehensiveness. Five major conditions get emphasis here, by way of illustrating the far-broader scan of the present required for transitioning to tomorrow's Public Administration. Thus, attention begins with the student flow, goes on to estimate faculty hires and their characteristics, deals with publications and research interests, takes on approach to characterizing the quality of PA programs, and sketches the character of that major component of PA's throughput -- the doctoral dissertation.

1. The Flow of Students. This venture begins where I did, professionally. All of us circa 1960 doctoral candidates in PA at Yale operated under a strict dictum: "Add at least one or two arrows to your academic quiver in addition to PA." The message was clear enough. There was not that much shaking in PA in the late 1950s and early 1960s: few positions were authorized, and virtually all of these were filled with a cohort that had achieved early status and still had years to go -- Fesler, Waldo, Sayre, Bernstein, Mosher, and similar others. And the few well-situated mid-career academics -- those like Kaufman and Rourke -- could be expected to move into that small number of major openings that might occur serendipitously -- as by movements into administrative jobs, by premature deaths, or whatever.

The outlines of what began to happen with the mid-1960s are not obscure even to the casual observer. The percentage of those in the relevant age cohorts enrolled in undergraduate and graduate education zoomed to dizzying heights, and quickly -- from 10 percent or so in the 1950s, to 50 percent or more in the subsequent three decades or so. Not unrelatedly, those interested in some kind of professional education in public management experienced an even-greater growth spurt. We at Georgia were at the head of the pack of this horde of second-generation programs: by 1970 Georgia had both MPA and DPA programs, and perhaps 50 students at Athens, soon to approach 100; and by 1998 we had awarded more than 800 graduate degrees, including 100 doctorates. Nationwide, similar numbers soon dwarfed the products of first-generation programs like the Maxwell School, Princeton, and the University of Southern California.

The yeastiness of these times can be exaggerated only with great effort. Table 1 provides a historical benchmark of a sort, for all of Political Science. Note that PA doctorates are referred to only in the late 1960s as being included in the total, and then only as a "cognate," or under this label: "Political Science (Public Administration and International Relations Included)." See Somit and Tannenhaus (1967, p. 159).

Table 1.
Estimates of Annual Doctorate Production in Political Science, Selected Years^*

* Somit and Tannenhaus, 1967, esp. pp. 57-59, 100-105, 160-162, provide data for the first 6 intervals. The early estimates are rough approximations, for many reasons detailed by Somit and Tanenhaus. See also National Research Council, Survey of Earned Doctorates. Washington, DC. Table B-1.

Post-1970, PA came on like a rushing wind. Thus, doctorates in PA rose sharply, even dramatically: more or less, those awards doubled in a quarter of a century, according to the National Research Council (1997, p. 94). This implies that half or more of the Doctorates Awarded (Column III in Table 2) by NASPAA schools are degrees in Political Science. Moreover, as shown by Rows I-II in Table 2, the growth curve of Master's degree awarded by NASPAA schools absolutely rocketed upward by 100-150 percent in a brief interval (1972-79), then dropped down to a level still over 70 percent greater than the 1972-73, and not long thereafter rebounded in 1993-98 to a level over 100 percent greater than the new plateau, where it seems to have re-stabilized. Data for 1972-1985 justify the guess that a large proportion of these Master's degrees are MPAs, perhaps 70-80 percent. Recent NASPAA conventions in published data do not permit the disaggregation of MPA from other master's degrees.

Table 2.
Indicators of PA Outcomes in Selected Years * in NASPAA Members

*From NASPAA (1974, 1984, 1986, 1994, 1996, 1998). indicates no data available.

These dramatic changes in major PA outcomes encourage both pride and substantial concern, but let us focus on aspects of the latter with special reference to several intersects of Table 3 with Table 2. First, there seems a substantial dysjoint between basic supply and demand. Thus, Table 3 indicates a post-1990 increment  in faculty on the order of 40 percent, although data are incomplete and pose some interpretive problems. This contrasts sharply with several aspects of Table 2. There, post-1990 doctorates are almost flat; and the number of master's degrees awarded has recovered most of the fall-off from the earlier great-leap-forward. And the flat curve for doctorates awarded also contrasts sharply with Table 3's sharp post-1992 increase in master's enrollments, which add 5-8,000 students to the 1982-89 trough, and approximates the sharp spike in master's enrollments over the five-year interval after 1975.

Table 3.
Indicators of PA Inputs in Selected Years in NASPAA Members*

^*From NASPAA, 1974, 1984, 1986, 1998.
^**From alphabetical listing, NASPAA, 1991. Some may not be full-time.
__ indicates no data available.

To be sure, there are hints of a silver lining in such dark clouds, but they should be interpreted cautiously. That is, Table 3 indicates a substantial increase in faculty post-1992; and doctorate enrollments also have increased almost uniformly over the past decade. All well and good. However, if our experience at Georgia is any indicator, a substantial proportion of our doctorates return to non-teaching roles -- the percentage is certainly a quarter, and may approximate 40 percent. In addition, whatever that case, it seems far from clear that PA hiring ever caught up with even the enrollment trough of the late 1980s, let alone the sharp spike of the late 1970s. Thus, the downsizing and budget-slashing of the previous decade or so must be taken into account. Paramountly, in 1997-98 -- even if all three levels of degrees are weighted equally -- the raw faculty:student ratio is 2154:38415, or 1:17.8. This is not a favorable ratio. Moreover, if the BA is awarded a weight of 1, the Master's a weight of 3, and the doctorate a 5 -- certainly not extravagant estimates of the faculty resources required and desirable -- the corrected faculty:student ratio in 1997-98 zooms to 1:46.9.

2. Flow of Faculty Hires. No good data are available about the sources of the faculty required to field this post-1970 flood of students, or the up-tick in enrollments that may well be in PA's immediate future. But several reasonable things may be said.

To put the best foot forward, Rodgers and Rodgers (1998) provide us with a useful profile for all hires during one hiring season by the 220 PA programs listed in the 1986-87 NASPAA Membership Roster. For convenience, this source will usually be referred to as "R & R" or the "R & R cohort." By prodigious effort, these two researchers generated a cohort of 108 new hires during the 6 month interval ending in January 1991. Only one of the 220 programs refused to provide information during telephone contacts seeking the names of "new, tenure track assistant professors."

We could do far worse than take this cohort as providing a reasonable estimate of today's minimum replacement demand for new PA faculty as 100-plus, and probably growing. Most of the 220 PA programs by 1990-91 no doubt had a reasonable chance to move beyond start-up status; and that recruiting year does not stand out in memory as either a great year for job-hunting or a bummer; and by 1990-91 most of the early hires of PA's explosive growth spurt were tenured and in mid-career ranges.

The Rodgers and Rodgers cohort provides two other kinds of useful data. With a "final sample" of 91 who completed a questionnaire about teaching and research, Rodgers and Rodgers add powerfully to our knowledge about the sources and orientations of PA hires.

3. Sources of New Faculty. In what disciplines do NASPAA faculty earn their degrees? Here, the reader may enjoy a little game: predict the percentage of the 1990-91 cohort of new faculty with the Ph.D in PA or the DPA.

For those readers who made a guess, and who can't stand being wrong, you probably want to stop here.

Why? Only 17 percent of the new faculty had a PA doctorate! Rodgers and Rodgers explain that only 70 persons who responded by mail revealed the source of their doctorate, so the estimate must be qualified a bit. The researchers note (1998, p. 13): "Other sample members had [doctorates] which spread across a staggering variety of disciplines," which they go on to illustrate:

Accounting, Anthropology, City and Regional Planning, Comparative Politics, Criminal Justice, Decision Sciences, Economics, Educational Administration, Information Systems, International Relations, Operations Research, Political Science, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Management, Public Service, Regional Analysis and Planning, Sociology and, finally, Systematics and Ecology.

Data are not precise enough to permit forecasting any trends. But it seems useful to note that in 1983 and 1984 less than 25 percent of all faculty in NASPAA programs indicated that their doctoral specialization was in Public Administration (NASPAA, 1986, p. xxi). The 1983 and 1984 data seem the first reliable estimates available.

Relatedly, less than a fifth of NASPAA faculty, perhaps surprisingly, listed Political Science as their "academic field of activity" in 1983-84 (NASPAA, 1986, p. xxi). No reliable data are available, but the proportion probably has not changed markedly since then. Why "perhaps surprisingly?" If nothing else, nearly one-third of all NASPAA members represent PA/A programs within a department of Political Science (NASPAA, 1996, p. 8); and Public Affairs programs can be expected to have a definite PS bias in recruiting, certainly moreso than PA in generic schools/ departments.

4. Research Programs of New Faculty. The R & R cohort also provides useful, if limited, perspective about features of the research of new PA hires. Two questions get attention. What is the character of their research programs? And what is the quality of that research?

These questions are disarmingly complex, to be sure; and no comprehensive answers will be claimed here. But some generalizations seem reasonable concerning the journals in which the cohort published, and how frequently the new hires published over the interval 1990-1996. If tentatively, these generalizations from the R & R cohort can be extended to a cluster of years both before and after 1990-1997.

Here, again, the reader might put self in a guessing mode about sources and quality of publications by this PA cohort, given a caveat appropriate to the lack of data other than that of Rodgers and Rodgers (1998). For openers, readers can pose two salient questions to themselves: where do faculty in PA programs publish?; and with what frequency?

Answers will be suggested, if tentatively and only after a bit of stage-setting. Typically, publications in a small number of journals usually have been used to rate PA faculty and programs. Three intersecting sets of such journals represent the sources in which PA findings, practices, and beliefs most legitimately "speak to the discipline" -- 10 journals (e.g., Legge and Devore, 1987), 11 journals (Douglas 1996), or an expanded set of 26 journals (Forrester, 1996).

Rodgers and Rodgers (1998) recognize all three sets of journals and, hence, the attentive reader can now ask self an expanded list of questions concerning the R & R cohort over the interval 1991-1997:

• How many journal articles do cohort members publish per year?

• What proportion of those cohort publications appear in what may be called the "foundation" journals of PA -- those sets of 10, 11, or 26 journals alluded to above?

• What is the quality of the "foundation" journals?

• What is the quality of other journals in which the R & R cohort published?

Let me hazard a few guesstimates that would have to be correct if all is well in PA. In sum, whether using the 10, 11, or 26 journal sets, a healthy PA would be consistent with several tendencies among the R & R cohort, given the obvious problems with defining "many", "sizable," and "high":

• members would publish many journal articles;

• a sizable proportion of cohort publications would be in the foundation journals, indicating a "PA core";

• the quality of foundation journals will be high; and

• the quality of other journals in which the R & R cohort published also would be high.

Do these guesstimates mirror realities, as Rodgers and Rodgers (1998) find them? Hardly. The fit seems poor or, if one prefers the unvarnished truth, seems flat-wrong in all particulars. Brief summaries follow, and they will later be used to support interpretations with which Rodgers and Rodgers do not agree.

First, whatever else, the R & R cohort of assistant professors does not seem preoccupied with publication, the prominence of the prescription "publish or perish" notwithstanding. To say it flatly: cohort members over the 5-6 years following their initial employment publish a bit less than one-half a journal article per year, wherever.

Second, cohort members seldom publish in the "foundation" journals usually used to assess the "success" of PA faculty or programs. When the "canon" numbers only 11 journals, as is usual, few -- indeed, almost none -- of the article-length publications by the R & R cohort would count in typical assessments of faculty or programs. To be specific, Rodgers and Rodgers (1998, p. 12) report that "82% of the publications and 94% of the journals in which the R & R cohort published fell outside foundation journals." The situation is a bit less extreme when the "canon" journals are expanded to 26 (Rodgers and Rodgers, 1998, p. 12).

Third, "quality" raises many measurement problems but, overall, the "canon" or "foundation" journals in PA at best can claim a status approximating that of the "average of social science journals." Rodgers and Rodgers base their judgment on a national index provided by the publishers of the Social Sciences Citation Index, and will not further detain us here.¹

Fourth, the numerous other journals in which the R & R cohort publishes are hard to characterize, but no convincing case can be made that as a collectivity they are either clearly superior to, or inferior to, the foundation PA journals.

Rodgers and Rodgers (1998) interpret their data as demonstrating that PA programs are "undisciplined" in the sense of "multidisciplined." Hence, they propose that ratings of PA faculty and programs should be based on a far broader range of journals than the 10, 11, or 26 "foundation journals."

Up to a point, this author agrees, and would add books published as well as articles (Golembiewski, 1997). But my interpretation is far broader. The 1990-91 PA hires permit no optimism concerning their performance as researchers and commentators. The reasonably-attributed characteristics of the cohort also will be discussed at several points below, along with the challenges implied for a maturing PA.

Three further perspectives conclude this sampler of present state PA. These perspectives deal with: the PA doctorate; the mixed picture of PA specializations; and an analogy for PA. Overall, this trio exacerbates the building sense of today's challenges, even though those perspectives represent only hopefully-informed speculations drawn from more-or-less-chance observations.

5. The PA Doctorate. Substantial attention has been directed at this topic, and hence brief summary is possible here. Paramountly, much discomfort and even displeasure exist with doctoral education in PA, and especially with its central component -- the dissertation. Thus McCurdy and Cleary (1984, esp. p. 51) studied 142 dissertation projects -- the full catalog for 1981 -- and report somber conclusions. To look at their results from three perspectives only, the researchers note that: only 6 percent of the full batch dealt with a "major subject in Public Administration" or were seen as being at the "leading edge"; 15 percent employed a research design "possessing some validity"; and 42 percent of the batch "tested a theory or reached a conclusion containing a causal statement."

The tenor of these findings should trouble the attentive observer, and especially because McCurdy and Cleary are not alone in their observations or interpretations. A bit later, White (1986) utilized looser criteria but he also provided "support" for McCurdy and Cleary. About a decade later, still other researchers came to similar conclusions by reviewing the publications records of PA doctorates. In brief, this important aspect of "doctoral education and research" yielded evidence of only "a minimal contribution to knowledge and theory development in the field" (White, Adams, and Forrester, 1996, esp. p. 41).

Whatever improvements have occurred over the years, then, it seems reasonable to conclude that much remains to be done. How much? Let me present a rough balance sheet here, and indulge some of my pet concerns (Golembiewski, 1996), especially those supported by others. Granted, to begin, this assessment is a difficult one because few have perspective sufficient to avoid myopia. But I have read a good many dissertations in my time -- not only here at Georgia, but as an external resource for perhaps a dozen doctoral-granting programs. In addition, my sense of doctoral education is buttressed by design roles in several programs, by editorship of several long-running symposia, and by editorial service for a dozen or so journals, both in PA as well as in the management and behavioral sciences.

What do I see lacking in the dissertations I have assessed? In sum, the collection suffers from these and related shortfalls:

• the dissertations are insufficiently empirical in several senses: in involving data collection to test hypotheses that are theoretically salient and practically significant; in contributing to cumulative theoretical development; and in providing the comparative analysis of operational definitions that alone will permit reliable and valid research.

• the dissertations are methodologically innocent -- whether the analysis is qualitative or quantitative;

• the dissertations, especially those using correlation or time series methods, are too frequently number-crunching exercises using programs beyond the ken of users

• research questions too-often have a distal association with the "management" I have been involved in as administrator and consultant; and

• in particular, the projects do not feature the loops I see as central in both learning and managing: experience ---> action ---> testing ---> reconceptualization or learning, and so on.

The recent PA dissertations as a collection also have their attractive features. Paramountly, quantitative analysis is far more common, and even more informed, than a decade or two ago. SASS and SPSS have permitted this greater reliance, of course, and sometimes even informed it.

6. "Phantom Specializations". In part associated with this shortfall in PA dissertations, both as product but more especially as catalyst, I highlight the relevance to PA's past, and even moreso to PA's future challenges, of "phantom specializations." Or perhaps "incomplete conversions" provides the more appropriate label for the point.

Especially early in PA's great-leap-forward, but even today, convenience or necessity overcame preference or training as administrators and recruits responded to the exploding demand for faculty in PA. No doubt, the issues were posed most sharply in connection with Public Budgeting and Finance, but the issues seem more generic than localized.

The general position deserves some detail, beginning with the interval 1960-1965 and focusing on Public Budgeting and Finance, both for convenience as well as special significance to PA. In addition to the institutional features associated with authorizing and spending public monies, the basic early enhancements in PA came from verbalisms -- sometimes catchy and even impressive-sounding, but typically imprecise and theoretically footloose. For details on the latter, please consult the last section of this paper. Here recall only the prominence of such terms:

• satisficing;

• incrementalism; and

• muddling through

Obviously, each term was associated with a prominent figure in PS, PA, or economics: e.g., Wildavsky (1964); Simon (1957); and Lindblom (1959), respectively. These central persona borrowed extensively from one another (e.g., Meyers, 1994, pp. 1-2), and all used the same synthesizing method which was based -- how to say it? -- more on assertiveness than on research, which was sparse.

Let us call such an assemblage the "politics of budgeting and finance," with the note that all three terms, and especially the last two, are loaded with an institutional history and infrastructure and fit comfortably enough with what passed for common knowledge in Political Science (e.g., Meyers, 1994, pp. 1-3). Admittedly, this is not an exact designation, but the denotations fit rather well. In common, the verbal elaborations associated with the terms proved attractive cul de sacs for cumulative theory in PA. Of equal or greater import, the verbalisms attracted in the short run, but they more essentially distracted from, and were also distanced from, essentials of the teaching/training of the burgeoning cadres of PA degree-seekers.

These terms and their elaborations were pressed into common service, given the sudden need for content in Public Budgeting and Finance, or PB & F, and given the cadres already trained in "the politics of"; but the terms provided only easy starts in awkward directions, as has become increasingly evident. In sum, the development of PB & F was not governed by equifinality, and (for example) incrementalism was flawed in its "three basic points" (Meyers, 1994, pp. 6-18):

• Budget actors make simple decisions in response to complexity;

• Institutional positions determine budgetary roles; and

• Bargaining about budgets is stable and consensual.

As Meyers concluded (1994, pp. 3-4): "Though battered and bruised by critics ... the view of budgetary strategy as incrementalist retained some supporters...." But there are far fewer supporters than there were in the past. Much the same may be concluded about satisficing and muddling through.

All three terms admitted to PA prominence, and especially in PB & F, also shared a methodological myopia that contributed to a "phantom specialization." In short, even if each of the three terms rested on, or contributed to, a reasonable working empirical theory of how things are, this provides no prescriptive theory of how things should be, and hence obviously did not provide useful directions for achieving those ends. Elsewhere (Golembiewski, 1996), I elaborate on this simple but common confusion of an empirical theory with the large array of "goal-based, empirical theories" or "action theories" required for any field of praxis or applications such as PA. Schick (1988, pp. 60-63) makes similar observation, and elaborates it.

In sum, the three central terms above made it too easy for those in PA, in the short-run.

Longer-run difficulties also were exacerbated by such inherent limitations, and perhaps especially in PB & F. To put it directly, a minority of PAers urged that "the politics of..." certainly should include the three perspectives above; but far more significantly, "the politics of" should be augmented by the "approaches and techniques of financial management." The need here was especially great when one highlighted "goal-based, empirical theories" in PB & F, as could only be finessed by a massive oversight. Different goals might well be approached, or be approachable only by specific sets of approaches and techniques, a perspective then-gaining great visibility in schools of business (e.g., Anthony, 1965).

The issue of the appropriate balance in PB & F between "the politics of..." versus approaches/techniques got little attention. I urged a sliding balance as PAers developed experience with the latter: starting at 75/25, and working toward long-run parity between "politics of" and approaches/techniques. In practice, however, the actual balance often became more like 90/10, or worse. I recall a debate with the late Aaron Wildavsky -- always a friend, and earlier a fellow graduate student at Yale. "What approaches and techniques of financial management have the potential for serving ends more satisfactory to you than incrementalism," I asked Aaron. "I don't know, and I don't care," he responded.

The dissenting minority clearly lost in defining the content of Public Budgeting and Finance, to shorten a long story, but they (and I) can be called persistent. Our team published an early book of readings designed for Georgia's expanding population of MPAers and included numerous entries related to both "the politics of" as well as "approaches and techniques of financial management" (Golembiewski and Rabin, 1968). Sales were great, but were accompanied by major complaints about the volume's latter emphasis. We editors were unconvinced, but for a while compromised to the extent of emphasizing critiques of many "approaches and techniques of financial management" in subsequent editions (Golembiewski and Rabin, 1973, 1983).

That publisher-abetted flexibility proved unsatisfying to us, and our retreat from the reader/textbook arena was reflected in an emphasis on simulations. We relocated rather than surrendered, in a manner of speaking. The guiding principle behind the new emphasis was that dealing with the dynamics of simulations would generate situational pressures for both "the polities of" and approaches/techniques. We underestimated developmental time-frames, but this original vision of simulation has been fruitful. One of our original teams produced a major book in the approaches/ techniques tradition (Miller, 1991); and advances in computer capabilities permit quantum improvements in CD-ROM versions of simulations (Bartell, Rabin, Hildreth, Miller and Munzenrider, 1998) that far outstrip the original vision (Rabin, Hildreth, and Miller, 1975).

The CD-ROM simulations clearly imply that our original approach was a strategic error. Directly, the attractions of the advanced simulation powerfully urge developing-in-context the capacities we have here labelled "approaches and techniques of financial management" as well as "the polities of." Our fourth edition of the PB & F reader (Golembiewski and Rabin, 1998) returns to the original dual emphasis. We shall see whether the CD-ROM simulation gives added lift to that reader, and vice versa.

But let us re-tether this immediate discussion. In effect, our initial strategy required a substantial act of faith about the worthwhileness of an investment by both faculty and students in PB & F approaches and techniques when the major available simulation and case studies were insufficiently compelling.

In retrospect, it now seems curious that our cluster of PAers ever anticipated it could have gone any other way. Paramountly, perhaps, the market demand for new PAers was there, no matter what. Related urgencies needed attending, no matter what. Moreover, immediate forces discouraged the long-run commitment by PA faculty to developing the attitudes/skills required for "financial management," whatever its merits. In addition, the conventional wisdom remained substantially satisfied with critiquing easier targets: e.g., the largely-overblown pretensions of some financial management variants like Programming Planning Budgeting Systems, or PPBS (e.g., Wildavsky, 1968).

Pretensions always need puncturing, but the ideological battles often obscured important realities. Thus, real progress was being made in much of the realm labelled "approaches and techniques of financial management"; and, simultaneously, major learning was accumulating about planned changes in building those ways and means into operating situations, as via OD (e.g., Golembiewski and Eddy, 1978). The conflation of both lines of progress appeared early, if the knowledgeable audience was narrow, even among major actors in the real-life dramas (e.g., Golembiewski and Scott, 1989).

Hence, I was of two minds about the root-and-branch rejection of the approaches and techniques of financial management that dominated in the PA of 1960-1970: Yes, but. Attack pretensions, certainly; but there was a growing strategic opportunity/need to "feast on" those variants of approaches and techniques of financial management that "already were in the cupboard." Aaron Wildavsky noted in opposition: "That cupboard is bare." In later and more measured moments, he settled for the observation that at higher systemic levels it becomes "difficult to maintain pure notions of economy," which requires discounting but not dismissing the approaches/techniques often derived from that base (Wildavsky, 1968, pp. 292-293). In his latter version, "political economy's" claim becomes a probabilistic one, while Aaron's former view seems quite absolute. I am with the latter Wildavsky, with the caveat that to me his work always implied more reliance on approaches and techniques of financial management than his devotees recognized. Finally, as perhaps the fundamental reason why the dominant opinion sought to transmute PB & F into "the politics of," gentle reader, consider a simple set of statements to which I assign a high truth value. Thus, "the politics of" budgeting and finance were directly applicable, even if incompletely so. Moreover, the needs of many who came to be suddenly associated with PA -- as new recruits from Political Science -- also helped explain what often happened in the heated marketplace characteristic of PA circa 1965-1980.

This may seem labored, but the major point is direct. "Phantom specializations" came to be common among PA faculties, at least in this observer's view. By a convenient transmutation similar to that detailed for PB & F, many newly-minted public administrationists emerged out of classical training in political philosophy, or an interest in "system sociology" à la Parsons or Max Weber, or contemporary social thought, among many other possibilities. Many products of this understandable -- indeed, perhaps unavoidable -- process are now tenured in PA positions, and with profound consequences. Perhaps most significantly, the kind of transmutation sketched above seldom will fuel a career of moving to prominence on the new turf, and especially after tenure had been awarded. Numbers are fugitive here, but some PAers-by-convenience soon returned to their first lover; perhaps most labored to transmute their original issues into PA issues, even when substantial reaches were involved; and only a few in my experience went on to develop new competencies in depth. Hence, my characterization of phantom specializations.

In my observation, such poor fits occurred most frequently in Public Budgeting or Finance, for three basic reasons -- because PB & F was and is so central in PA curricula; because there are so many faculty involved in its teaching; and because PB & F resources were (and remain) in such great demand as well as short supply. More or less, similar forced-fits occur among all PA specialties. I have seen similar effects in association with law, political philosophy, various persuasions of economists, critical theorists, the several types of analysis, and so on through a substantial list.

In fact, perhaps the most egregious examples of phantom specializations of which I know occur in one of my own specialties: Organization Development. Competence there requires both mastery of a literature as well as action skills associated with diagnosis, intervention, and follow-up (e.g., Golembiewski & Varney, 1999). In several cases, over-eager searchers for employment in that hot area not only never took any requisite coursework, but had no sense of practice skills let alone competence in them. Their chutzpa was surpassed only by two individuals who as seekers of OD jobs falsely claimed a dissertation adviser who is a recognized OD "grandmaster" (Coghlan, 1997).

And so it goes with all areas experiencing rapid growth, with greater or lesser variations.

Indeed, the more I think about it, this cameo description of much of what happened in PA understates the case. Notice, for example, that Wildavsky's early work (e.g., 1964) was dominant in Public Budgeting and Finance, while his later and much-more-nuanced work never got the attention it deserved. In effect, Wildavsky's original work with budgeting provided a convenient crosswalk between PA and various traditional specialties. This was true of conventional Political Science and PA, for example, and just when PS was variously threatened. Hence, that 1964 book's careless transmutation by many into a description as a working model of dynamics at all managerial levels, as well as a prescription for what should go on, which Wildavsky took pains to disclaim.

7. Tectonic Plates as An Analogy. Waldo, I believe, once observed that a healthy area of inquiry and application should be characterized by a still-fecund core capable of generating an expanding periphery that signals growth and excitement without abandoning that core. Absent either a viable core or an active periphery, any area of inquiry or application can anticipate major troubles.

This evocative notion strikes me as fundamentally correct, but certain adjustments have to be made when PA is the target. The sense of tectonic plates adds the basic feature that I see. That is, the PA core -- once stoutly defined in terms of the Politics/ Administration dichotomy, but even then struggling to find a conceptual replacement -- seems more of a shell than a core. PA took on various attractions post-1970, and this encouraged several "plates" to come together. These "plates" assembled around the PA core, more or less, and they carried various labels -- public policy, political science, public affairs, public management, public choice, agency theory, conventional PA, a range of functionally-defined entities like health administration or local government administration, and so on.

Curiously, success did not generate a new balance of centripetal vs. centrifugal forces. Perhaps this general principle applied: Failure is always an orphan, but success has a thousand parents. After a decade or two of unparalleled growth "in PA," then, some of the area's "tectonic plates," if you will, ground against one another; other "plates" distanced themselves from each other as well as from the weakened core.

This seems the present condition -- still not determinative, but of long-standing concern to many observers, beginning at least with Ostrom (1973). For example, a real sense of this segmentation within PA seems reflected in some elemental data, which no doubt raise the probability of conflicts-of-interest, if not zero-sum competition. That is, in 1992-93 about 80 percent of all degrees were the MPA; by 1996-97, that proportion fell to 74 percent; and in 1997-98 only 70.3 percent of all enrollments are in MPA programs (Brintnall, 1998). These data suggest growing program differentiation, as by function or policy arenas, which might augur later segmentation from the PA core.

Even at an early date, some of the forces in contention were clear enough -- as in the APSR debate between Ostrom (1977) and Golembiewski (1977a, 1977b). The comments below seek to show how, at least in a few particulars, better can be made of this troubling condition, based on the preceding analysis of PA as it seems to me. The present handful of particulars add to the evolving sense of the PA-to-be already developed by the observer (e.g., Golembiewski, 1977c, 1995a).

Crystal-Balling About the Near-Future

With this limited but useful sense of what now exists, what can be said reasonably of tomorrow's force-field into which PA will transition, for good or ill? Five features serve here to illustrate this future state -- PA's marketplace, if you will. Selectivity dominates, and so does brevity.

First, the future promises more of the same when it comes to enrollment magnitudes, or perhaps even moreso. Both the NASPAA aggregate numbers, and those from individual programs like that at Georgia, suggest a high plateau that seems likely to be sustained over the next 5 years or so. See especially Tables 2 and 3 above. Indeed, given in-process decisions about where the several degree programs targeting the voluntary sector will find a home, PA may be seen as building a high base for another great-leap-forward.

The choices of homes for the already-escalating voluntary sector programs remain a crap-shot, and the stakes are substantial. For relatively-straightforward reasons, this observer doubts that business schools will absorb the lion's share; and, at least through the intermediate run, it often will be prudent for voluntary sector initiatives to spend start-up stages in an already-established administrative setting. Some bets, including our own (e.g., Golembiewski and Stevenson, 1998), have already been influenced by such a dual rationale.

Second, the PA mix of students will reflect a growing premium on the doctorate. Paramountly, the huge cadres of MPA enrollments/ degrees in Tables 2 and 3 suggest one primary reason for this growing premium, with a high teacher:student ratio motivating a catch-up effort. In addition, the very act of granting MPA degrees implies a major source of doctoral applications that can be all-but-counted on. Our Georgia experience suggests perhaps 20 percent of those getting an MPA degree will apply for admission to the doctorate. Finally, for present purposes, it seems better than 50/50 that the number of U.S. doctoral programs on which PA might rely will stabilize or even diminish (e.g., Porter and McKibblin, 1988). Thus, fewer will have to do more -- perhaps much more.

Third, relatedly, the years between now and 2005 probably will see several reinforcing flows of retirements, even if no increases occur in PA enrollments and absent substantial improvements in faculty: student ratios. The point is too little remarked, let alone highlighted or prepared for. No systemic data are available, but it seems very probable that we approach a change in senior employment that suggests stepping off a steep cliff: specifically, three rationales for such a sharp increase in retirements seem convincing on their face. Thus, PA programs sharply added faculty circa-1975 and, assuming an average age of 30 on hiring, many of these old recruits will be sixty-ish in 2005. In addition, an even-sharper case can be made for all American universities, whose employment started to escalate in the late 1960s. Finally, a boomlet occurred in state and local hiring about 1975-80, and these cohorts also will be adding to retirements of possible PA teachers.

To be sure, this prediction about retirements is no rifle shot. Thus, changes in normal retirement age may occur before 2005 or so. And no doubt some of the cohorts in question have been thinned by cut-backs and early retirements. Rather more than less, however, the three scenarios are compelling; and together they suggest massive demands on all PA resources within a future that is fast approaching, and seems to feature high or even growing enrollments.

Fourth, "distance learning" (DL) and/or recent advances in electronic and lap-top or personal computer delivery systems probably will provide some respite from such predictions about more of everything in PA. Certainly, that DL pot is clearly bubbling away (e.g., Banas and Emery, 1998), even as specific predictions are for the foolhardy.

What seems relatively certain in this arena where so much is in-ferment? Thus, educational administrators tend to salivate at the potential for cost-savings as well as for escalating tuitions that are associated to the DL form of delivery. To paraphrase two close observers (Banas and Emory, 1998): "If Duke University's Fuqua School of Business can offer their Online Global MBA Program, and get pleasing enrollments while charging a juicy premium for tuition, can we be very far away from Big University's Online Global MPA Program?"

Some of this anticipatory salivating certainly underestimates start-up costs, but we are hardly discussing pie-in-the-sky, by-and-by. Thus, Banas and Emory (1998) inform us that 1.3 million students took distance learning courses in 1993, and nearly 12 million are envisioned in the DL cohort for 2000. In addition, over 50 percent of our universities and colleges already offer one or more DL courses; and a handful of schools of higher education already offer degree programs earned entirely at a distance.

Without doubt, the huge recent technological enhancements present real opportunities-for-the-taking in extending DL. That is, institutions have had substantial experience with other forms of learning-at-a-distance. How long is this history? It may surprise some that another high-technology-for-its-times -- Rural Free Delivery -- generated its own brand of distance learning no later than 1892 (Banas and Emory, 1998, p. 1).

Finally, considering distance learning as a challenge, it no doubt will create internal strains due to new roles and statuses. Thus, designers of learning packages may become sharply differentiated from presenters, in ways not common in today's centers of learning, and with major consequences for reward systems in higher education. One large system, for example, recently proposed to hire actors as DL presenters, on the grounds that this would save money, especially if presentations are canned and hence available for re-use. In this model of the DL university, traditional faculty would design the scripts and facilitate discussion.

Fifth, and last on this deliberately-shortened list, the issues of core-plus-periphery probably will get much worse before they get better. The near-term challenges above all imply greater stressors on PA as discipline, as well as on PA units and individual faculty. For example, the opportunities/resistances associated with distance learning would only add to the travail of PA seen as tectonic plates in motion, in that DL adds to the possibilities for conflicts and collisions.

Hence, new premiums will be placed on what may be called "health" and "balance," both of PA seen as a discipline and as an assemblage of service-delivery sub-systems. Here, past PA success may well constitute a special potential for future failure. The past several decades in PA have been a pleasure cruise, on balance, and new days may require special skills as well as substantial good fortune. The pressure will be on, and adjustments might be difficult for those nurtured under relative affluence.

Ways of Transitioning Here ---> There

Since PA has to face some tough challenges in the near-future, it only makes sense to consider some ways of easing the today ---> tomorrow transition. Here, only a few suggestions will made. But that is the way even the longest of journeys must begin. Four emphases get us started by detailing what are considered short-term initiatives. Later, intermediate-run features get attention; and this paper concludes with a number of long-range perspectives to guide PA's transitioning.

1. Starting With What PA Has. We begin with four initiatives within the substantial control of those now involved in PA, whether as authorities or commentators. First, PA has idiosyncratic as well as integrative features: it encompasses a broad range of collective enterprises: it contributes to analysis and applications in them; and it draws substance from the full range of arts and sciences of managerial relevance, while promising to contribute to them as well as profiting from those collections of knowledge and skills.

So the present short list of things to do in PA begins with a narrow issue, which has received prominent attention.

When it comes to evaluating people and programs in PA, then, the criteria applied need to do better in reflecting both core and periphery, as it were. Recognition of quality foundation journals makes sense, since it implies an identity and shared findings, and also may contribute to them. At the same time, workers in the PA vineyard come at those core elements with different training gained in a broad range of specialties. Hence, a correspondingly-broad range of publication outlets also should be legitimated as standards for evaluations of people as well as programs. And the higher the quality of the source, the better. Given earlier discussion, obviously, much remains to be done here.

A fair review of publication activity in PA suggests that authors today do better at reflecting their multiple origins than contributing to some emerging and relatively-shared core. This lack of balance has real limits, and requires fine-tuning.

Integrative/fragmenting forces in PA are real, and probably will grow. Hence, they constitute high-priority targets for identification, acceptance, and amelioration. Hence, also, the central value of work such as that of Rodgers and Rodgers (1998), in recognizing that PA as a discipline has rather "undisciplined" features. These observers encourage a shift of attention away from a sense of a or the discipline -- away from the guiding metaphor of a kind of prototypic thoroughbred. And these commentators provocatively urge attention to as well as respect for the synergistic assemblage of "undisciplined mongrels" required to encompass the reach-and-grasp of PA, to rely on the grating but revealing language of Rodgers and Rodgers (1998).

Second, relatedly, common socialization experiences could ease PA's transitioning in that they would both contribute to as well as derive meaning from a shared core of meanings associated with PA and its several service-delivery units. Various formats could help generate such socialization experiences: needs assessments, strategic planning, conventional team building or development, or getting-to-know-you-better designs all qualify. Not just any design will serve such purposes and, fortunately, much is known about how to generate the intended effects (e.g., Dyer, 1987). My preferred mode is through "regenerative interaction," with relevant designs having success rates at the 80 percent level, as a ballpark estimate (e.g., Golembiewski, 1993).

No one can say with certainty, but my sense of it is that PA units usually do not do well with such socialization experiences even though they make sense If nothing else, success at inducing a relative unity-of-purposes among faculty and students could contribute to a reputation for potency in making managerial things happen.

Third, various particulars in the descriptions above call for serious attention to Chataugua-like experiences for present PA faculty. The label "Chataugua" refers to a New York state hamlet that was the historical center of activities to raise consciousness and standards about religious matters. More recently, the National Science Foundation used Chataugua-like conferences to disseminate work on advances in the biological sciences. Several emphases in the discussion above -- of "phantom specializations," paramountly -- support such an initiative. Indeed, those features may be said to require Chatauguas, which no doubt would generate maintenance as sociability enhancements as well as substantive ones.

Such diffusion of knowledge in PA could be fielded by professional associations -- ASPA, NAPA, or NASPAA -- or academic entrepreneurs, both making special use of summer sessions and no doubt of long-distance learning. Perhaps Budgeting and Finance deserves greatest attention but, more broadly, drawing participants from national populations, upgradings could be periodically scheduled for PA specialists in organization behavior, approaches to organization and management development, or legal/constitutional perspectives, among others.

The Chataugua impetus requires more entrepreneurship than innovation. Thus, the National Science Foundation began such an initiative decades ago, and continues to do so in 1999. NSF Short Courses for College Teachers offers courses at eight field centers and nine satellite centers, and their catalog describes 83 courses. Other historical exemplars of the basic approach include:

• major foundation support went into upgrading quantitative skills among U.S. business school faculty. It involved a subsidized summer of off-site classes and also coursework during the next year at the home location;

• a major effort among Canadian faculties of management, using a "master's session" format, extended over several summers to move research of individual faculty through all phases -- from conception through write-up.

Similar Chataugua-like experiences would be highly useful in PA, both in keeping current as well as in shaping loyalties and contacts, since some/many faculty serve in areas for which they were not specifically trained. No one confidently knows even ballpark proportions but, in Public Finance and Budgeting, I tentatively estimate that as little as 10-20 percent of usual coursework goes beyond the clearly-useful but nonetheless-limited "politics of" approach. Said another way, focusing on tools and techniques of financial and budgeting analysis, only a small proportion of present PA faculty can provide in-depth guidance. Indeed, the best-trained PAers in Budgeting and Finance roles come out of traditions that focus on economic analysis of local bonding and financing, and even that probably-small minority largely avoids what is here called "financial management" (e.g., Anthony, 1965).

Targeting Public Budgeting and Finance is at once significant and convenient, as well as necessary. Significance goes without saying in this extended era of doing better, but with less. And a certain convenience has long existed in this area, with agency financial and budgeting data always being amenable to storage and access, whether for use in standard case studies or as the framework for realistic simulations (e.g., Rabin, Hildreth, and Miller, 1975). More recently, advances in data storage, retrieval, and analysis via the computer, and especially in lap-tops, permit a growing sense of virtual reality that will no doubt increase as visuals and virtuals in various forms become conveniently built-into learning programs that feature financial data. The power of such enriched simulations is already apparent in C-D ROM form (e.g., Bartell, Rabin, Hildreth, Miller, and Munzenrider, 1998), which represents a quantum jump beyond conventional case studies. No doubt, there will be far more to come, and soon. Note also PB & F specialists have only relatively recently launched a major case-writing project. This reflects the gap in methods and techniques that enriched simulation may help fill, and fast.

Fourth, relatedly, such in-service work should focus on advanced topics and techniques, especially for the purposes of enhancing personal capabilities as well as for upgrading local learning cultures in anticipation of the expected greater demands for doctoral education. Such an effort could be fielded in one or more of several modes:

• using senior faculty members as "circuit riders," on the model of retired city managers who serve as mentors and advisers at several locations, as needed; and

• relying on appointments with tenure at multiple locations for faculty who have such advanced interests/skills that demand is too limited at any site to permit intense specialization. These resources could include scholars in administrative law; senior resources in Organization Behavior or Organization Development; system designers for Information Systems; or quantitative analysts with policy or work design interests.

Such innovations in service delivery have attractive features, while they also encourage reliance on distance learning, experience with which will have its growing advantages. Paramountly, it is unrealistic to pursue full-fledged staffing of all specialties at every PA location, even at the largest sites. Many similar innovations could facilitate diffusion of knowledge and techniques, while economizing on costs and more broadly exposing faculty and students to special resources, and while permitting the involved faculty to develop more sharply-honed portfolios for teaching, research, and consultation.

2. Advancing Toward What PA May Develop, Intermediate Run. Three features illustrate priorities for PA as it may develop beyond the short-run. The first feature is practical; and the other two blend theoretic with practical concerns.

First, as I concluded earlier (Golembiewski, 1979, 1980), it still seems to me that a major emphasis on "counterpart hires" will help remedy some major particulars of what troubles PA. The notion is a simple one. New PA faculty would have been employed, or be employable, in counterpart positions in institutions which are "home" to their specialty. Thus, scholars in administrative law would have been employed, or be employable, in law schools or in relevant positions within a public agency or regulatory body. For an Organization Behavior specialist, counterpart employment typically would be in a business school, in one of the behavioral sciences, or in a Human Resources position of some responsibility in a public or business organization. And the beat goes on for other specialties: budgeting and finance, Information Systems, students of public institutions, and so on through the panoply of specialties involved in PA.

There is no quick fix of anything, for certain; and some daunting details of specification no doubt would be involved in counterpart hiring. Primarily, it no doubt would pose some inconveniences -- e.g., developing majorities in PA programs that are not substantially influenced by Political Science or any single discipline so as to permit multi-disciplinary hiring; evolving governance systems for heterogeneity; and accomplishing sufficient socialization of diverse PAers to permit a creative balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces -- of multiple specialties and training balanced by a shared sense of mission as well as loyalties to an evolving core.

Challenges and disadvantages notwithstanding, the advantages of counterpart hiring seem to me compelling. Such a policy would discourage casual career switches; and it would reduce "phantom specialization" of the kind I have seen too often and which we at Georgia have experienced on occasion. Paramountly, the policy would reduce the tenuring of poor-fits, which will be with us to a substantial some degree under even ideal circumstances.

Counterpart hiring also would reinforce post-tenure review, which we have adopted here at Georgia and which may become widespread. (Indeed, your author was one of the first at Georgia so reviewed, and he was certified for another 5 years.) Indeed, it seems to me that post-tenure review is motivated in substantial part by an intent to remedy the poor-fits of yesteryear's hirings, which often faced serious pressures to "fill the slot." Such review can be used unwisely and punitively, of course, and we have not heard the last of what is required for its just administration. Usefully, the Georgia program emphasizes peer review, the development of action plans when agreed-upon improvements seem appropriate, and (perhaps paramountly) provides time to implement such improvements as well as to review progress.

Second, PA will profit from a growth in the theory, skills, and experiences appropriate to "action research and theory." For convenience, ART serves to label this target.

This is no revolutionary call to reform, of course. There have long been some "action researchers" in PA (e.g., Golembiewski, 1977c; Golembiewski and Kiepper, 1988). ART applications also have received substantial attention broadly (e.g., Sussman and Evered, 1978) as well as in PA (e.g., Harmon, 1981), and with success rates in the latter settings that closely approximate business experience (e.g., Golembiewski, 1990, pp. 11-50).

Primarily, ART provides a media via underlying much of the concern about doctoral dissertations in PA. Crudely but revealingly, much of the concern implies a theory vs. practice dichotomy, or empirical research vs. applied work. This polarization at once says too much and too little. For that twain is conceptualized so that it will seldom meet, if ever.

Several direct distinctions between types of theory reflect a more useful set of strategic and tactical connections than those normally encountered in PA, and having high degrees of mutual interdependence. Details appear elsewhere (e.g., Golembiewski, 1996).

To be ferociously selective in abstracting a long story, all managerial research requires a blend of three kinds of empirical theory. In stark outline, PA should distinguish:

• empirical theory, which describes existing dimensions of reality and identifies causal relationships between those dimensions;

• goal-based, empirical theories, which seek to specify the causal relationships required for achieving specific goals. For example, how can organizations be designed so as to maximize approaches to the Judaeo-Christian ethic (e.g., Golembiewski, 1989)?

• action theories, which define and seek to realize empirical conditions that are desired or desirable in specific work settings. For example, how can a mass transit agency develop acceptable relationships between their executives and managers under specific time-and-dollar pressures (e.g., Golembiewski and Kiepper, 1988)?

In sum, the ideal is one comprehensive empirical theory, although fragments of various power will dominate for a long time. Many more goal-based, empirical theories are possible, in contrast; and the number of action theories is unlimited for practical purposes.

Unfortunately, PA does not consistently differentiate these kinds of empirical theories, with resulting mischief and lost opportunities. That is, directly, the three types can inform as well as discipline one other. To begin, replicated action theories can basically inform both goal-based, empirical theories as well as empirical fragments, as happened with flexible workhours. As empirical theory fragments develop, in turn, they can inspire finer-tuned goal-based, empirical theories or guide action research. Something like this second approach characterized small group analysis, as it informed group therapy, team building, and much else besides. Typically, my work focuses on a limited set of values, and I try to develop action theories as well as test goal-based, empirical theories of some scope. To illustrate only:

• If your goal is to approach Judaeo-Christian values at work, what structural and policy variants will be most useful (Golembiewski, 1989)?;

• If you seek regenerative interaction in organizations -- high trust, openness, and owning as well as low risk -- what personal skills and attitudes are required, and what structures and policies will help most (Golembiewski, 1995a, 1995b)?;

• If you value diversity in organizations, what structure, policies, and procedures are diversity-friendly (e.g., Golembiewski, 1995b)?

On occasion, such work also will inform empirical theory, as is occurring most clearly with our research on phases of burnout (Golembiewski, Boudreau, Munzenrider, and Luo, 1996), which deals with issues of practical significance that have major theoretic salience.

Succinctly, PAers will have many opportunities to contribute to the development of empirical theory -- both directly and via goal-based, empirical theories as well as action research. But this will require abandonment of simplistic distinctions between pure vs. applied research.

This abandonment seems worthwhile, since PA's failure to distinguish the three types of empirical theories has been multiply mischievous. Thus, incrementalism was often presented as a significant sub-set of an empirical theory, and let us grant that point, although it is seriously debatable. However, incrementalism also was interpreted in terms of "should be" as well as of "is." That implies a goal-based, empirical theory, but with a vague awareness of the consequences. Serious follow-on of incrementalist positions would entail, inter alia: specifying goal-based, empirical theories that could support non-incrementalist positions, because incrementalism might have a substantial claim to reality but even that concession is mute as to desirability; and any attempt to gain perspective on incrementalisms as empirical theory requires attention to the other types of theories concerning which conditions, if any, lead to non-incrementalist outcomes.

Directly, since the distinctions between types of empirical theories were seldom made in PA, unclarities dominate and opportunities are lost. For example, the abortive dissemination of PPBS by President Johnson derived from just such a confusion. Interested readers can track the details elsewhere (Golembiewski and Scott, 1989). In brief, behavioral scientists had developed the substance of a goal-based, empirical theory that used up-front behavioral interventions to induce value-loaded relationships and cultures at work that blunted many features associated with the incremental or "political efficiency" features of the application of a PPBS-like model. A schema of these goal-bases and typical learning designs to energize them are available elsewhere (Golembiewski, 1977c, 1993).

As political executives belatedly learned about and interpreted this application, they lusted after its consequences but were innocent of the effort devoted to culturally prepare those fielding the application. In effect, political executives substituted a different set of goal-bases, completely neglected the start-up learning associated with the original application, and without any qualms extended-by-fiat to the entire U.S. government a successful application that was cross-departmental but lodged at mid-managerial levels. The effects were predictably negative, overall, although a few pockets of success did survive at agency and sub-agency levels.

Third, PA in the intermediate run would do well to include greater emphasis on consulting in their repertoires of faculty/ student skills. The shortfall has been noted many times; and the advantages, on balance, of consulting experience need not be detailed here. The basic model is no secret, in any case:

• conceptual materials are introduced in a regular course;

• a workshop for those interested -- for credit or not -- follows, with the focus on one or a few interventions for a specific client, often one who cannot afford standard consultation or requires pro bono consultation. "Students" work under close faculty supervision in all stages -- data gathering, diagnosis, design, inter-vention, and evaluation.

• Later still, those having successful experience can field the intervention(s) under progressively-relaxed super-vision.

Team-building is a convenient focus for such a model. And so is needs assessments, or performance classification or appraisal among numerous other targets.

3. Advancing Toward What PA May Become, Longer-Run. Two perspectives conclude this paper: the first aspect seems obvious to me in principle, although how it will work out defies easy prediction; and the second perspective reflects more of a personal preference, as tested by substantial experience -- and especially here at Georgia in the design and implementation of MPA and DPA degree programs, which have over the years retained their essential form while generating what approaches a thousand degree-recipients.

First, the time has long passed since PA could have profited from a concerted reformist evaluation, on the order of the justly-renowned Flexner Report in medicine or of the several prescriptive analyses for business schools (e.g., Gordon and Howell, 1959; Porter and McKibblin, 1988). Modest attempts in PA have been made (e.g., Waldo, 1955, 1968), but they had neither the scope, legitimacy, nor funding required for a truly-reformist effort that covered analysis, prescription, and implementation. The working ideal of such comprehensive efforts was approached most closely in business schools circa 1960, with detailed critical analyses being followed by such major upgradings as that targeted by an initiative to increase mathematical applications in business.

PAers will have to do better, and soon. Otherwise, the core/ periphery balance may become seriously misaligned. This could happen when PA both fails and succeeds. Thus, the PA core might no longer sufficiently support healthy extensions of the periphery, and in effect would collapse on itself. Or when that core might be so fecund as to empower numerous institutional spin-offs, in which case several scenarios can be envisioned. In practical terms, Health Administration, Local Government Administration, and so on could so attenuate their associations with the PA core as to starve it, as it were. Or proponents of the core could become protective and defensive, thus closing themselves off from the excitement and opportunities of those who risk leaving the core, organizationally and even conceptually.

Second, one of the products of such a reformist venture might well deal with the basic circumscription of PA; but unless and until that happens, I find quite serviceable the simple trinitarian conceptualization that has guided our Georgia MPA and DPA programs. Our basic curriculum in both degree programs, beginning with the mid-1960s, reflected three components:

• about 40 percent is devoted to the core, as functionally defined: methods and philosophy of science, overview of PA, human resources, organization behavior and theory, and public budgeting and finance;

• about 30 percent is devoted to a policy specialization: e.g., local government, forestry, criminal justice, civil/military relations, welfare, and so on through a very long list of possibilities; and

• about 30 percent is devoted to a management or subject specialization: budgeting and finance, organization development, legal services, human resources, research design and methods, managerial/organizational analysis, and so on, again through a very long list.

To this bundle of courses and learning experiences, we at Georgia over time have basically added to the MPA degree only a socialization experience at start-up. For various reasons, both task- and maintenance-oriented, we now additionally focus on: interaction and communication patterns and skills; legal and constitutional heritage; ethical professional concerns; and an introduction to micro-computers. These themes can be conveniently dealt with in several weekends of lecturettes, skill practice, or informal building of personal and institutional relationships and loyalties.

At least as a potentiality, significantly, the basic trinitarian concept encompasses both core and multiple peripheries. That is, the model's centrally provides a context for the development of the periphery, as in specialties in health or criminal justice or whatever, while defining an integrative core. Lacking such a centripetal feature, developments at the periphery -- and especially successful ones -- are apt to spin-off.

Note also that the Georgia model has the effect of seeking to integrate several themes that generate divisiveness in many other PA programs. Thus "public policy" and "public management" are clearly provided for. Some recent academic concern, if not warfare, has focused on "public administration" versus "public management" (e.g., Charih & Rouillard, 1997); and "public policy" has at several institutions been proposed to supplant both public administration and management as the umbrella label.

Notes

1. Rodgers and Rodgers (1998, esp. pp. 10-11) rely on the Impact Factor Score, or IFS, to assess the quality of journals. As they note, IFS is "calculated by dividing the total number of citations to articles that were published by the source journal during 1993 and 1994 by the number of articles published in the source journal over the same period of time. Impact Factor Scores from the 1995 Journal Citation Report were used as the indicator of journal quality in this study. According to the 1988 Journal Citation Report, the average Impact Factor Score for all journals in the social sciences was .78."

   As a benchmark, the Public Administration Review has an IFS of .781. The overall IFS for all journals in the R and R panel was .71 (1998, pp. 11-12).

   Many journals do not have an IFS score; and about half of the PA "foundation" journals lack such a score, as do about a quarter of the other journals in which the R & R cohort published. Rodgers and Rodgers carefully note (1998, p. 10): "While a prestigious journal is very likely to be included in the SSCI data base and have an Impact Factor Score, journals without Impact Factor Scores are not necessarily little cited by other journals. Inclusion of a journal in the SSCI data base depends on several factors .... Treating a journal without an Impact Factor Score as having zero quality would thus be misleading."

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