Public Administration and its Relation to other Sciences

Public Administration and its Relation to other
Sciences
Public Administration and Science & Technology

It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Scientific and
technological inventions over the modern world and our way of
life. The railway, the motor car, the aeroplane, the telegraph,
and the telephone have annihilated distance for purpose of
travel and transmission of news and information. The use of
mechanical power in industry has led to gigantic factories and
urbanization with the myriad of their social consequences.
Scientific weapons of war of which the latest are the atom and
hydrogen bombs have made war tremendously destructive,
threatening the very existence of modern civilization. In short,
during the last two hundred years, the forces of technology and
science have transformed the world out of recognition.

The newspapers, the radio, and similar other means of publicity
and propaganda have had a tremendous bearing on the
problem of public relations. Finally, the whole scientific
management movement initiated by F.W. Taylor and his
followers has drawn its inspiration from science and
Technology has affected administration, anything like a
complete inventory of the influences of the former over the
latter would be all but impossible to make.

It is now recognized by all that psychology plays a great part in
all human organizations. No social science concerned with the
activities of human beings can afford to disregard the
psychological factors involved in the study.

Today administration is increasingly being studied from a
psychological point of view. The most important result of the
psychological approach has been the recognition of the fact,
that underlies every formal organization as determined by the

, law and the rules, there exists also an informal organization
that naturally springs up from the personnel engaged in running
of the organization. Psychological has thus added a large
number of new items to the problems which the students of
administration have to study.

Public Administration and Law

Public administration functions within the framework of the law
of the land. Nothing that is contrary to the law can be attempted
by the administrator, however, reasonable or desirable it may
be on other grounds. Indeed, the public administrator has to be
on the right side of the law not only negatively in the sense of
not breaking it, but also positively, that is of not doing anything
unless the law warrants it.

The administration is also intimately concerned with the making
of law. The proposals for a large part of legislation arise from
the various administrative departments and their first drafting is
done according to their directions. In modern times, the
administrative officers and departments themselves do a great
deal of subordinate law-making in the shape of rules and
regulations to details of laws making in the shape of rules and
regulations to fill in the details of laws passed by the legislature.
This is called delegated or executive legislation.

Law is one of the great instruments of enforcing the
responsibility of the administration. The unauthorized acts and
excess of administration are corrected by the courts under the
provisions of law. Law prevents the administration from
encroaching on the liberties of the citizen.

Finally, requirements of administration have had their influence
on moulding the basic concepts of law. Thus, the egalitarian
principles of the common law in many particulars have been
replaced by the rule of greater protection for the weaker party in
the interest of higher justice.