Philosophy for and of Public Administration and Management

Abstract

Philosophy is a contributing discipline for the advancement of the study and practice of public administration and public management (PA). The contribution of philosophically-informed work used to be widely recognised in the field of PA, but this awareness has partly been lost when the requirements of academic specialisation and the proliferation of specialised disciplinary approaches have burgeoned over the last decades of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century. Yet, a range of philosophical issues are inherent in PA: bringing philosophical approaches and substantive philosophical ideas to bear is therefore beneficial to the development of PA. A distinctive contribution of the inclusion of philosophy into the range of disciplines studying PA is that it may perform an integrative function, shedding further light and linking the often separate contributions that individual disciplines make to PA. It is distinguished between three approaches in the relationship of philosophy and PA: philosophy for PA (the systematic application of philosophical thought for the advancement of PA research and practice); philosophy of PA (the development of a specific philosophical stance to justify certain propositions in the field of PA); and mapping backwards from PA to philosophical thought (the detection and critical appraisal of the philosophical premises inherent and often implicit in the various strands of PA scholarship).