Public Administration Discretion

Public Administration Discretion
Bobbi Soriano
Grantham University

Public administration is in a constant state of flux and what worked for one era may not necessarily be the best option of doing things in a completely different era. Max Weber’s rules of public administration state that public administrators should only be allowed to follow a restricted set of rules. The people who hold offices in the public administration are also constantly changing which would also make a certain set of rules possibly not be as cohesive for some as they were for their predecessors. Each new official has his or her way of doing things and thought processes, priories, what needs to be done, how to address issues and their own styles of leadership. The role of Public Administrator is such that whoever assumes the position needs to be a person who is capable of multi-tasking, an aggressive outside the box thinker who can address current issues and agendas while running a public department. The benefit of a restricted bureaucracy allows for the public administrator to only hone in on their little piece of the pie. Being responsible for only what is listed in their job description, being technically responsible for that area only without overlapping responsibility for other areas. Although this make the job easier those who work in the field they must be the experts in that area but they are only experts in that one area working from fixed set of rules with no deviation. A disadvantage of a restricted bureaucracy would be that the process could take longer to complete with only a certain set of hands dealing with certain areas. If no outside help is allowed because it does not fall within their job description, and if things were to fall behind there would really be no playing catch up because the same amount of people that allowed it to fall behind in the first place are the same amount of hands that must play catch up and still stay on top of the