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Purpose – The chapter provides a review of the debates about the discipline of public administration and public management as art, craft, and science. Thus, the chapter includes a conceptualization of public administration and a discussion of public administration and public management research, scholarship, and practice. The review of the discipline includes a historical perspective and contemporary debates of public administration, new public management (NPM), public sector management, and governance in order to discuss the future trajectories and trends of the discipline.

Design/Methodology/Approach – A range of historical, seminal, and recently published scholarly works are reviewed and discussed, including also an analysis based on primary and secondary research of journal databases, conference proceedings, academic schools, and websites relevant to the discipline.

Findings – The study of government in various guises – whether public administration, public management, governance, public policy – will continue to develop, evolve, and fascinate scholars and practitioners. There will be a continued interest and study of the business of government with three possible trends: (1) a narrow focus on technocratic, managerial approaches in an attempt to provide solutions for more effective and efficient government; (2) a multidisciplinary approach to addressing complex social problems or “wicked policy” problems across narrow specialized interests for “greater principles” of society; and (3) methodological pluralism in the study of government, which may add to the depth or fragmentation of the discipline.

Research limitations/Implications – The research is limited to a review with some primary and secondary research. It provides scholars and practitioners with the conceptualization of public administration, public management and governance. The chapter provides a critical perspective of the state of research and scholarship with an argument that academics need to move beyond parochial debates within the discipline and provide practitioners with empirically based solutions to increasingly complex social and “wicked policy” problems.

Practical implications – This chapter provides scholars, students, and practitioners with (1) a conceptual understanding of public administration, public management, NPM and governance; (2) a historical and contemporary perspective of the discipline; and (3) a critical perspective of research and scholarship that will provide a debate on the state of discipline.

Originality/Value – The chapter is a synthesis and review of the discipline in terms of research and scholarship drawing upon international perspectives to provide a critical debate for scholars and practitioners.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the profile of public administration concerning its capacity to authoritatively assign values to a society, and in particular to the political system in Mexico. Many of the recent transformations in the Mexican public administration have occurred in a context in which a democratic opening of the political system has been the main trait of public life. This is the main light under which these changes in Mexico's federal public administration in recent years should be read.

The article explores the structural features of both the government and the federal public administration in Mexico. In particular, the transformation of the administrative apparatus not only in quantitative but also in qualitative terms is explained as a result of a change in the balance between the public and private sectors in recent decades, as well as the experience of the Professional Career Service and its impact on public officials in Mexico. We examine the links of the bureaucracy with political parties and civil society, as well as the political relationships within the public administration itself. We also describe accountability within the federal public administration. We explore recent reform and change processes in Mexico's administrative apparatus. Finally, some considerations are given to the opportunities and challenges facing the contemporary Mexican public administration as a result of having huge problems and at the same time partial solutions.

This chapter studies Digital (or Electronic) Government in Latin American (LatAm) countries from a comparative perspective. It analyzes a group of countries with a significant degree of economic diversity and public administration heterogeneity. This chapter presents data about the development of the Information Society in Latin America, regarding the diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the Internet in the countries of the region and taking into account the digital divide phenomenon. It also analyzes Digital Government from a regional perspective, pinpointing intergovernmental institutions and international organizations devoted to design and define, and, in some cases, implement, shared perspectives and a common agenda within this region. This overview is brought forward by a comparative approximation to the development of e-Government readiness in LatAm countries, using data from the United Nations reports. Additionally, this chapter analyzes sectional e-Government dimensions, including digital public administration national agendas, electronic public service delivery websites, interoperability initiatives, social media technologies, open data and open government strategies, and the future of technology in public sector of the region. Therefore, this chapter is important to understand the role of ICTs as one of the most recent sources of innovation and reform in public administrations Latin America.

Public administration has become the victim of its own success. Public policy making and problem solving during the first three decades after WWII began from an assumption that public managers had the competence to overcome policy barriers. The ʼdo more with less” slogan was a statement of professional competence. It was adopted because many believed it was an affirmation of that competence. Now it represents a fiscal demand as a scold to those who will otherwise waste the money. What the public hears is a perverse joke. The goal must be more effective governance, by approaching fiscal stability as a strategic enterprise. The potential tools for more effective services exist and are applied by governments across the globe. Yet the public clings to failed practices (NPM) that are best when dealing with short-term issues

It is a point of continuing debate whether the study of public administration can in any circumstances be graced by a disciplinary label. Rhodes (1996), for example, has argued that the study of British public administration was traditionally insular, dominated for a long period by an institutionalist tradition characterized by an interest in administrative engineering, but a distaste for theory. As Rhodes also observes, this position emphasized, albeit in a traditional sense, the political and ethical context of administration public administration existed within a wider framework of accountability relationships and political and moral responsibilities. We might add to this the way government and public administration was seen as linked within a framework of administrative law, which, while not formalized in the sense of continental Europe, was important.

The relevance of the work is determined by the fact that administrative law appears as one of the significant factors influencing the development of both the public administration system as a whole and the processes of its reform that the Russian Federation has faced today. The authors show that if the relations of state administration are the subject of the administrative law’s influence (after all, it is they who are influenced by administrative and legal norms), then we are faced with an extremely important question regarding the character and specificity of the relationship between administrative and legal relations and relations of state management, on the one hand, and analysis of the concept of administrative and legal regulation of public administration relations on the other. This goal is important, given that the authors substantiate the relationship between administrative law and public administration through identifying the possibilities of regulatory influence on the part of administrative law on public administration relations.

Prospects for the further development of the study are the formation of an understanding that government is not limited to administrative law, but it cannot be denied that the regulatory impact of law in public administration is decisive, and therefore public administration is largely a state-legal category, although it is not limited to this.

So, having analyzed the above approaches and positions of scientists regarding the subject of administrative law, the authors believe that it can include any managerial activity of the state authority and local government bodies that does not directly concern the subject matter of another branch of law; is realized with the help of the executive-administrative mechanism (in this case the author does not consider the executive-administrative mechanism as an exclusive prerogative or a unique feature of the executive authorities, although, of course, he agrees that it is the most typical and characteristic feature for them); is realized within the framework of a certain state authority, local government or non-governmental organization (in case of delegating state powers to it) to ensure its proper functioning (internal management relations); is implemented outside the framework of a certain state authority, local government or non-governmental organization (in case of delegating state powers to it) and is directed to other (external) with respect to the relevant body or organization of entities (external organizational management relations); and is largely characterized by relative constancy and immediacy of implementation relative to the management object.

Prospects for the further development of the study are the formation of an understanding that government is not limited to administrative law, but it cannot be denied that the regulatory impact of law in public administration is decisive, and therefore public administration is largely a state-legal category, although it is not limited to this. At the same time, indistinctness and uncertainty about different ways of understanding public administration often generate negative effects both at the general scientific level and at a purely practical level (when it comes to the exercise of administrative powers by certain state authorities).

The zombie-plague apocalypse is a powerful social imaginary that focuses attention on the border between legitimate citizens and zombie “others.” The surge in the number of zombie apocalypse films provides an illuminating area for studying the role imagined for public administration by popular culture. The response to zombies in apocalyptic films brings to fore new realities with the re-conceptualization of the legitimacy and authority of government. This re-conceptualization provides content for analyzing the portrayal of existing governmental institutions overwhelmed by the apocalypse, including local governments, the military, public health agencies, emergency services, and public utilities,

The primary aim of this chapter is to offer an overview of corruption and state capture in Albanian public administration and to describe the solutions adopted to fight corruption by the government since 1998. Conflict of interest is a new aspect of concern in the policy agendas. OECD countries have recently adopted some guidelines for managing the phenomenon, which will be then transferred to eastern European countries. Given this novelty, this chapter does not deal directly with conflict of interest situations. Corruption is rarely treated as a management problem, in part because for obvious reasons as data are scarce and also because the literature is thin and tentative, with few theoretical frameworks. Also rare is analysis of how corruption has been or might be reduced. The state of research on corruption is such that there is little inductive theory or statistical evidence about the kinds of policies that work under particular conditions.

Public sector absorbs a sizeable part of each country’s GDP. Therefore, public organisations are not performing very well at the economic level of responsibility. Consequently, we argue that in order to build better and more responsible public organisations we need to improve their economic responsibility. This chapter presents a prospective action of social media for business to intervene in public administration reform. We envision a possible course of action that may introduce CSR in the public sector thanks to social media collective action.

The framework of this study will make a reference to the theory of socio-technological media de Kerckhove and Pierre Lévy, and on a survey of the literature of citizen activism through social media to answer the question: new media, new message?

It is a new perspective action of social media for business-government relations. We identify a possible theory that leverages the ‘koinè’ of multinational brands to address government effectiveness. The names of multinational companies are the same all over the world, like the ‘Koine’ Greek, and are now a common element in all languages of the world. Citizens and consumers pay a great deal of attention to brands. Multinationals spend millions of dollars every year in public relations (PR) and marketing precisely in order to manage their reputations and images and respond to the requests that consumers have of big corporations. The greatest threat to the reputation of a company or a multinational brand comes, in fact, via the Internet, which has become the most powerful weapon in the hands of interest groups. The object of this research is to explore whether stakeholders can join forces with corporations and use global media to monitor governments in the same way.

The citizens of governments and the customers of global corporations – in different countries in the world – seem to be isolated islands: all endure their own battle without the possibility of drawing attention from other parts of the world through social media.

The citizens can exercise pressure on the governments and public administrations the same way as what happens against the brands. It behoves us to ensure responsible behaviour from all. We propose an extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations.

The stakeholder approach to CSR action and reporting implies that the relevant stakeholders of the organisation be listened to, and this listening be accounted for in the CSR report. These groups are also called the ‘publics’ of the organisation. We contend that the stakeholder approach might be misused and end up in collusion with sections of the publics involved.

The stakeholder approach leads an organisation to try to engage with the wrong counterparts. This is an over-rating of stakeholders.

Therefore, everything that is not taken into account under the headline of the stakeholder approach we call ‘stewardship for the unknown stakeholder’. The theoretical bases of this value reside in the vast literature on non-maximising, non-efficient, non-effective behaviour by firms and by the employees especially.

Thus, the first task in drawing up a CSR or sustainability report is to identify the possible unknown stakeholders; that is, those who do have a stake but don’t know they do; those who have a stake too small to care about but who are numerous.

If we complain about Apple, many in the world will join in; if we complain about the companies that manage the ‘garis’ (as the Portuguese call a garbage collector of Rio de Janeiro) nobody outside Brazil thinks it matters. But in fact, this is not true!

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. Each local public administration will have its own problems, but all in the same way contribute to the well-being or mismanagement of a territory and its citizens. All, to some extent, ill-treated the citizens through their ineffectively.

The CSR should be for everyone and a global movement of citizens asking for responsible governments around the world could be the solution for the well-being of the individual peoples. Let the people’s rights emerge vis-à-vis perceived needs and outrage about the ineffectiveness of public administration that too often lose the name of action.

In summary, the proposal is the extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations.

We propose a covenant between consumers/taxpayers in order to extend the CSR to governments and public administration. The citizens can exercise pressure on the governments and public administrations the same way as what happens against the brands. It behoves us to ensure responsible behaviour from all. We propose an extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations, with the help of the same corporations.

Companies would join consumers for two main reasons: because there are clear signs that their company’s reputation is being harmed by the conflict, and because their market performance dips, coinciding with pressure from stakeholders. Our proposal goes beyond this and proposes the concept of a novel social figure: the unknown stakeholder.