Washington, Charles W.

From promiscuity to living together to making the decision to break up or make a lasting commitment - 2004 - p.501-08.

Although public administration was "born" and "reared" as a child of politics and constitutional democracy, the coherence of its central purposes later eroded into disparate fragments in a set of "promiscuous" relationships. But now the field has become accustomed to a casual mode in which a loose collection of sub-fields and competing worldviews "live together". This invites leaving behind our intellectual origins and easy flirting with passing trends and alternative partners. Even while maintaining multiple external ties, the field should now seek to advance to an "adult" form of lasting commitment to a reaffirmed set of core values. - Reproduced.


Public administration