As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal, is to advance management and policies so that government can function. Some of the various definitions which have been offered for the term are: * "the management of public programs"; * the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day"; * and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies. Public administration is "centrally concerned with the organization of government policies and programmers as well as the behavior of officials (usually non-elected) formally responsible for their conduct.

* Many unelected public servants can be considered to be public administrators, including heads of city, county, regional, state and federal departments such as municipal budget directors, human resources (H. R. ) administrators, city managers, census managers, state mental health directors, and cabinet secretaries. * Public administrators are public servants working in public departments and agencies, at all bevels of government.

In the US, civil servants and academics such as Woodrow Wilson promoted American civil service reform in the sass, moving public administration into academia. * However, "until the mid-20th century and the dissemination of the German sociologist Max Weeper's theory of bureaucracy" there was not "much interest in a theory of public administration. * The field is multidisciplinary in character; one of the various proposals for public administration's sub-fields sets out six pillars, including human resources, organizational theory, policy analysis and statistics, budgeting, and ethics.In 1947 Paul Appleby defined public administration as "public leadership of public affairs directly responsible for executive action. In a democracy, it has to do with such leadership and executive action in terms that respect and contribute to the dignity, the worth, and the potentials of the citizen. * Drawing on the democracy theme and discarding the link to the executive branch, Patricia Shields asserts that public administration "deals with the stewardship and implementation of the products of a living democracy.

The key term "product" refers to "those items that are constructed r produced" such as prisons, roads, laws, schools, and security. "As implementers, public managers engage these products. " They participate in the doing and making of the "living" democracy. A living democracy is "an environment that is changing, organic", imperfect, inconsistent and teaming with values. "Stewardship is emphasized because public administration is concerned "with accountability and effective use of scarce resources and ultimately making the connection between the doing, the making and democratic values. More recently scholars claim that "public administration has no generally accepted definition", because the "scope of the subject is so great and so debatable that it is easier to explain than define".

Public administration is a field of study (I. E. , a discipline) and an occupation. There is much disagreement about whether the study of public administration can properly be called a discipline, largely because of the debate over whether public administration is a subfield of political science or a subfield of administrative science" Scholar Donald Kettle is among those who view public administration "as a subfield within lattice science".

The North American Industry Classification System definition of the Public Administration (MAINS 91) sector states that public administration comprises establishments primarily engaged in activities of a governmental nature, that is, the enactment and Judicial interpretation of laws and their pursuant regulations, and the administration of programs based on them".This includes "Legislative activities, taxation, national defense, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and international assistance, and the administration of overspent programs are activities that are purely governmental in nature. From the academic perspective, the National Center for Education Statistics (ONCE) in the United States defines the study of public administration as "A program that prepares individuals to serve as managers in the executive arm of local, state, and federal government and that focuses on the systematic study of executive organization and management.Includes instruction in the roles, development, and principles of public administration; * the management of public policy; * executive-legislative relations; public budgetary processes and financial management; * administrative law; * public personnel management; * professional ethics; (Wisped, the free encyclopedia) Woodrow Wilson is considered the father of public administration.He first formally recognized public administration in an 1887 article. "The Study Of Administration".

He wrote that "it is the object of administrative study to discover, fist, what government can properly and successfully do, and secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy'.Wilson wrote an article in with he advocated four concepts of public administration; * Separation of politics and administration * Comparative analysis of political and private organizations * Improving efficiency with business -like practices and attitudes toward daily operations * Improving the effectiveness of public service through management and by training civil servants, merit -based assessment (Woodrow Wilson) Tailor's approach is often referred to as Tailor's Principal, and/or Tailors.