a model for educating development administrators

A Model for Educating Development AdministratorsAuthor(s): Saul M. KatzSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 28, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1968), pp. 530-538Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/973330 .

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530

A Model for Educating

Development Administrators

SAUL M. KATZ, University of Pittsburgh

H OW CAN WE EDUCATE the development administrators Latin America so ur- gently needs? This was one of the key questions discussed at a recent conference of distinguished Latin American educators and government officials.'

This question-how to prepare the skilled administrators who can facilitate the delicate process of formulating development-related policy decisions and manage the complex of activities involved in their implementation- however, is like a Chinese box puzzle. It is made up of a series of interdependent questions. How to design a curriculum depends on the course content. The course content depends on the educational needs. The educational needs derive from the character of the development goals. The character of development goals depends on the particular country, and so on.

The following model for educating development administrators was presented at the conference. It includes a consideration of four interrelated questions. Section one discusses the major educational needs of development administrators. Section two treats with the form their education should take. Section three con- siders the desirable content of the education. Section four discusses an "ideal" curriculum.2

Three Educational Needs

The educational needs of development administrators flow, in important measure, from their concern with development. Three such groups of needs can be identified: substantive

knowledge; purposive methodologies; and development administration.

First, a word about development. Defining the nature of development is a difficult and substantial undertaking that makes life interest- ing for academicians. It involves a great variety of elements: economic, political, and social. There are also subtle-and sometimes not so subtle-problems of values, perspectives, and motivations. Equally important, much of development tends to be place and time specific, having rather different meanings in, say, Chile, as contrasted with Haiti. Nevertheless, some simple generalizations are necessary if we are to identify educational needs.

An examination of typical development goals, as exemplified in the Charter of the Punta del Este, suggests some main characteristics of development.3 At the risk of over- simplifying, they may be described in three groups. One, development involves "comprehensive societal change." Not only are economic goals of increased income and output matched by social goals of equitability and wel- fare, and by political goals of dignity and free- dom, but together they involve interrelated changes in the entire motivational, organizational, institutional, and ideological fabric of the society. Two, the goals are "prescriptive," being concerned with more or less clearly defined objectives such as "substantial and sus- tained growth," "equitable distribution of national income" and "comprehensive agrarian reform." It is this concern with "what ought to be" that distinguishes development from the "industrial revolutions" of the past and pro-

NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 1968



EDUCATING DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATORS 531

vides purpose and stimulus to action. Third, is the importance of "actions by the government." Without action, purpose is negated and goals can only become national daydreams or political nightmares, or perhaps both. The importance of government undertaking the action is stated or implied in many of the goals. In any case, for a variety of reasons, national governments in Latin America usually have a strategic role in achieving development action. Let us return now to our concern with the educational needs.

The comprehensive and complex nature of development goals means that a development administrator must have both general and specialized substantive knowledge of development. He needs to be generally educated in the major concepts and methods of the sciences that are directly relevant to the managed societal change we call development, including eco- nomics, political science, and sociology. He also needs a detailed knowledge of the fields of his special concern, both sectoral such as agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, education, or public health; and functional such as macro-economic planning, industrial management, public finances, preventive medicine, or agricultural extension. In particular, the development administrator needs to be able to relate the knowledge of his special concern to his knowledge of the general processes of societal change.

The prescriptive nature of development points up the need for education in purposive methodologies. The concern in development with "what ought to be" as contrasted with "what is" requires an ability to identify and define, in manageable terms, the desired future as well as to analyze and understand the un- satisfactory present. This is to say, the development administrator needs education in norma- tive as well as analytic methodology. In addi- tion, since he is especially concerned with how to get from what is to what ought to be, he needs a special understanding of the methodology of public policy formulation and implementation, the planning and programming that help chart a path toward the developed future. A constantly expanding ability to understand and use scientific methodologies is a necessary vehicle for the rational purposiveness of development.


The governmental action orientation of development emphasizes the need for a comprehensive familiarity with development administration. This includes administration as both the science and the art of achieving governmental action toward development. In one sense, administration is the science of rationally organizing and managing men and materials to achieve governmental policies and norms. In another sense, administration is an art. Its practice involves making judgments under conditions of inadequate knowledge and considerable uncertainty. It entails leadership in achieving cooperative human endeavor that takes account of the personal goals and motivations of different individuals and guides them to common ends. The accomplished administrator relates the rational action of achieving governmental goals with the rational and irrational compo- nents in human behavior. Sometimes he can do this only through intuitive understandings that come with the knowledge and experience of particular environments.4 The development administrator needs a thorough grounding in both the science and the art of achieving governmental action toward development goals.

The major characteristics of development and their consequent educational needs just described are listed in columns (1) and (2) of Chart 1.

The Form of a Professional Career

Educating the development administrator must take the form of preparing him for a professional career. This follows from his many important roles as: expert, change agent, and member of the modernizing elite. This view is reinforced by the interdisciplinary and the practical nature of the necessary expertise.

The development administrator is an expert in a highly complex and technical field of knowledge. In the preceding section we have noted some of the major characteristics of this needed knowledge. It involves a comprehen- sion of the overall societal process of development and a detailed understanding of specialized sectoral and functional interests. It includes a familiarity with the purposive methodologies of analysis, decision making, and plan formulation. The knowledge, in particular, includes training in the administration of



532 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

development action. All of this has to be fitted into a coherent, intellectual framework. Posses- sion of such knowledge and skill in applying it makes the development administrator an expert in the field of development.

The development administrator, as an expert specifically concerned with fostering societal change, is also a change agent. This role, ac- cording to Lippitt et al., makes many demands. He must not only be able to diagnose the problems, motivations, and capacities in the situation, but assume and maintain a helping rela- tionship to those concerned and assist in guiding the change process.5 Such a role is particularly difficult when the change agent is within the system to be changed, as is the development administrator.6 It is evident that the development administrator must bring a rational perspective to bear on goal identifica- tion and problem diagnosis and an informed objectivity toward the interpersonal and inter- group relations involved in fostering change.

The development administrator is also an important member of the modernizing elite. The new norms necessary for modernization must be created, strengthened, and enforced. This sanctioning of change is the role of the modernizing elite. David Apter suggests that the technical and civil services of a country are probably among the most important of the modernizing elites and identifies three functions of a modernizing elite's role. First, is the organizing of resources around a defined set of objectives. Second, is the linking together of the modern, intermediate, and traditional groups in the society. The third function, he specifies, is control over the mechanisms of coercion in the society.7 The development administrator is significantly involved in the first and third and may well have an important part in the second of these three functions. In addi- tion, there are other roles that the development administrator may also assume: ideologist for development, representative of modernizing groups, and spokesman for the underprivileged.

The foregoing discussion of the character of the educational needs and the various roles of the development administrator underlines the need for an interdisciplinary education. The importance of interdisciplinary approaches in dealing with comprehensive societal problems,

such as development, has been a matter of concern to social scientists for some time.8 The systems perspective seems particularly useful in providing a dynamic framework for dealing comprehensively with the interrelationships of human behavior in purposive and action-on- ented terms.9 Since this is discussed at length in other places, no further comment will be made here except to note the increasing amount of work on the application of a systems perspective to the problems of administration in general 10 and the administration of development in particular.11

The need for a practical education also suggests the selection of a professional form of education. A practical education requires that the concepts and methods taught be clearly related to and expressable in terms of the real world. It highlights educating the administrator to understand and deal with the individual motivations, organizational behavior, social institutions, and value patterns in the areas of his responsibility. In particular, practicality points up the need for field experience as an important part of the education.

The Four Strands of Content

The course content of the education for development administrators is shown in the third column on Chart 1. It may be visualized as consisting of four main strands that intertwine to form the cable of contents. Three of these strands are associated with the three educational needs of substantive knowledge, purposive methodology, and development administration, noted earlier. The fourth strand is the professionalism just discussed. We char- acterize each of these strands by listing the constituent courses under titles that, hopefully, are suggestive of their content.12 Before pro- ceeding to the characteristics, however, a comment on the systems approach is in order.

Systems are intended here as intellectual constructs for the study of selected aspects of society. They establish methods for catego- rizing, abstracting, and organizing data on social behavior, and studying their interrelationships. They are intellectual instruments for the study of society, not the studies themselves. Systems facilitate the integration of knowledge





CHART 1

EDUCATION FOR DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATORS: SUMMARY LISTING OF CHARACTERISTICS, STRANDS, AND CONTENT 4

Development Educational Educational Content Characteristics Strands (Course)

(1) (2) (3)

Comprehensive Substantive "Nature and Dynamics of the Development knowledge Process "

"Problems and Strategies of Development"

Functional Specialty*

Sectoral Specialty*

Prescriptive Purposive "The Nature of Scientific Inquiry" methodologies "Quantitative Methods in Social Science"

"Mathematics for Administrators"

"Development Plan Formulation"

"Project Design"

Methodological Specialty*

Governmental Development "Concepts and Methods of Public Action administration Administration"

"Administrative Organization and Institutions"

"Administrative Functions"

"General Development Administration"

Development Subsystems t

Administrative Specialty*

Professionalism "Roles of the Development Administrator"

"Field Familiarization"

"Summer Practicum"

"Thesis Field Work and Study Design"

* Elective choice of subject areas. t Equivalent to three courses. t Saul M. Katz, Education for Development Administrators: Character, Form, Content and Curriculum, (Pitts- burgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh, 1967) p. 27.





from many sources with the concerns of a particular course. Their contribution cannot be adequately made in one or a few courses. The systems perspective should, therefore, suffuse as many of the courses as feasible, helping provide them with an orientation toward understanding and dealing with development on a comprehensive, rationally coherent, and empiri- cally realistic basis. Let us return now to the four strands.

Substantive knowledge of development includes both a general understanding of the development process and a detailed knowledge of the subjects of the development administrator's special concern. The necessary general understanding could be likened to a one to one million scale map of the development process. This might be comprised of such courses as "The Nature and Dynamics of the Develop- ment Process" and "Problems and Strategies of Development." Such courses would study the interrelationships of the relevant variables (economic, political, social, etc.); the sectors (agriculture, manufacturing, distribution, health, education, etc.); and the different areal levels (national, provincial, regional, local, etc.) of the society. The specialized knowledge could be likened to a one to 20,000 scale map. It would be designed to help provide a development administrator with the necessary technical expertise, building on his previous education and experience. Such courses would be varied and diverse and might be sectoral ("Agricultural Development," "In- dustrial Development," "Educational Develop- ment," etc.); functional ("Monetary and Fiscal Policy for Low Income Countries," "Public Enterprise in Development," "Technical and Economic Assistance," etc.) or at different levels, ("Regional Development," "Urban De- velopment," "Community Development," etc.) .

The purposive methodologies are concerned with the ever-expanding understandings essen- tial in dealing with change. The importance of purposive achievement emphasizes the need for a thorough grounding in scientific methodologies. These may be seen as having two aspects: analytic and plan formulation. The former is fundamental to scientific understanding and its expansion. It includes the basic nature and justification of the methods used

in scientific inquiry, as well as the methods themselves. Development administrators need both. Courses for the first aspect might include: "The Nature of Scientific Inquiry," "Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences," and "Mathematics for Administrators." The second aspect, plan formulation methodologies, involves the devising of sets of decisions regarding ends and the means for their achievement. It might include such courses as: "Development Plan Formulation" and "Project Design," as well as courses in specialized methodologies such as "Regional Development Planning," "Educational Planning," or "Simu- lation and Gaming."

Development administration involves the thorough knowledge of the concepts, methods, and practices of administering governmental activities. This again has two aspects. One involves a general understanding of public administration. The other aspect is concerned with development administration proper, the application and extension of public administration to the substantive problems of development.

We distinguish here between public administration and development administration. The latter may be described as the way in which government acts to fulfill its strategic role in the development process. It is similar to general public administration in its concern with how a government implements its rules, policies, and norms. In this sense, it draws upon and is part of the field of study of public administration. However, in its concern with the substance of development it is broader and differs from "traditional public administration" in objectives, scope, and complexity. Develop- ment administration is substantive and innovative since it is directly concerned with the societal changes involved in achieving development objectives. In its quest for change, the government becomes involved in a wide scope of activities. No longer is it oriented to the maintenance of law and order, the provision of some limited public services, and the collection of taxes. Rather, the government is specifically involved in the mobilization of resources and their allocation to a great variety of development activities on a massive scale. Flowing from the greatly increased scope of





activity, is a wide-spread functional and struc- tural differentiation of government and the consequent emergence of many interdependent, specialized activities which require a high de- gree of coordination.'3

The general work in public administration, to provide a basic introduction to the field, might include three courses: "Concepts and Methods of Public Administration," "Admin- istrative Organizations and Institutions," and "Administrative Functions." The other aspects, the work in development administration proper. may be seen as consisting of thre parts. First, might be "General Development Administra- tion," which provides an over-all introduction to the administrative procedures and organizational arrangements for formulating and im- plementing development plans. Second, might be half-term courses introducing the administration of the systems that produce the various outputs comprising development. We have stated elsewhere that a review of national development theory and practice suggests six groups of such needed output: skilled manpower, finances, logistics (or facilities for the physical flow of goods and services). social mobilization (the participation of individuals and groups), conflict management (the legiti- mate power to enforce decisions), and information (the facilities for the physical flow of information.) 14 Third, might be elective specialized courses focusing in detail on particular development systems, sectors, and methodologies.

The final strand, professionalism, serves to unify the preceding three and focus them upon practical application. This strand helps provide the student with a professional doctrine of ethical standards, technical expertise, and operational capability. The ethical standards, the rules of professional conduct, might be introduced by a course such as "The Roles of the Development Administrator," although they will need to be included in various ways in the other work. The technical expertise, the organized body of relevant knowledge and techniques for its application, will flow from the courses in the substantive, methodological, and administrative strands. Field-work practice, as a major vehicle of education in application, might be provided by three "blocs of


work": "Field-Work Familiarization" at the beginning of the program, a "Summer Prac- ticum," and "Thesis Study and Design and Field Work" as a final graduation requirement.

An "Ideal" Curriculum

A course sequence for an "ideal" curriculum is suggested in Chart 2. The term "ideal" is used in Max Weber's sense of an "ideal-type." It is not concerned with value judgments and it is not an optimal program under all conditions. It is a model that brings together some relevant generalizations to help understand and guide the design of a curriculum for development administrators. In the chart, we have identified our four generalizations (major strands) and suggested a sequence and com- bination of the courses listed in the preceding sections.

Such an "ideal" curriculum is based on a number of assumptions regarding the situation to which these generalizations about necessary education content are being applied. For example, we have assumed that we are concerned with young university graduates who have recently entered or are about to enter the higher-level government service. We have also assumed that the students would be able and willing to spend two years, etc.

The "ideal" curriculum would need to be adapted for situations whose characteristics vary from these and the other assumptions made. For example, it should be less rigorous and comprehensive for those with less preparation; have more on program and project administration for the technician; more on the operating details of administration for people who are primarily concerned with the opera- tions of the auxiliary services such as personnel or budget; more general with greater empha- sis on policy considerations, and probably much abbreviated, for senior policy makers such as cabinet officers and members of legis- lative bodies, and so on.

In all cases, however, the curriculum must be intimately associated with the expanding research and advisory efforts of the training institutions. The research provides conceptual and methodological insights and empirical data. The advisory work provides information




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EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATORS 537

and a focus on the practical administrative needs of development in the country. The two help provide increasingly better guides for administrative improvement. At the same time, the educational program provides a growing number of skilled professionals to help expand the research and advisory effort and to apply the results to the nation's development effort.

In general, education for development administration must be seen as a part of the larger effort to improve capability for national

development. It should be designed as an innovative instrument to help support and con- tinuously expand that effort in the environment of the particular country. In this manner it can constructively participate in the process of public action, gain the acceptance of influential leaders, and obtain the necessary support and resources. Most important, it will be an es- sential part of the conscious and deliberate effort to achieve the " better world," so widely envisioned, but so elusive in attainment.

Notes

1. Conference on Research and Teaching of Public Administration in Latin America, sponsored by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, the Inter- American Development Bank and the Latin American Development Administration Commit- tee of the American Society of Public Admin- istration's Comparative Administration Group at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 1967.

2. The brief compass of this paper, of course, greatly limits the development of the model and much is necessarily left out. The interested reader is invited to examine the Conference presenta- tion. See Saul M. Katz, Education for Develop- ment Administration: Character, Form, Content, and Curriculum (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts- burgh, 1967).

3. See the Charter of Punta del Este, Title 1 Objectives of the A alliance for Progress from Official documents emanating from a special meeting of the Interamerican Economic and Social Council at The Ministerial Level held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, from August 5-17, 1961, OAS Official Records, OEA/SER. H/XII.I (English) Pan American Union, Washington, D.C. 1961, pp. 10-12.

For discussion of three characteristics of these goals see, Katz, op. cit., pp. 3 ff.

4. See, for example, the discussion on "What Is Public Administration," in Dwight Waldo, The Study of Public Administration (New York: Random House, 1955) chapter 1, pp. 1-14.

5. Ronald Lippitt, Jeanne Watson, and Bruce West- ley, The Dynamics of Planned Change (New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1958), pp. 91-126.

6. Customarily, it has been assumed that the change agent is outside the systems to be changed, but this is impractical in the case of national development; recent usage also sees the change agent as within the system. Ibid., pp. 108-109 and 236.

7. David E. Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 164-168.

8. See, for example, Talcott Parsons, "The Present Position and Prospects of Systematic Theory in Sociology," in George Gurevich and Wilbert E. Moore (eds.), Twentieth Century Sociology, New York, 1946. For a recognition of this problem in the '30's, see Robert S. Lynd, Knowl- edge For What (New York: Grove Press, 1964).

For a discussion particularly relevant to problems of development, see Fred W. Riggs, Ad- ministration in Developing Countries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1964), particularly chapter 2, "The Social Sciences and the Prismatic Model."

9. See Kenneth E. Boulding, "General Systems Theory-The Skeleton of Science," Management Science, Vol. II, No. 3 (April 1956), pp. 196-208, in Human Biology, Vol. XXIII, No. 4 (Decem- ber 1951), pp. 302-361. (Papers I and V by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy of this collection of six papers by four authors are particularly interest- ing in this connection).

10. For a simple, administration-oriented discussion of the systems approach and many useful refer- ences, see Richard A. Johnson, Fremont E. Kast, and James E. Rosenzweig, The Theory and Management of Systems (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1963). A very insightful discussion of the systems perspective for administrative purposes is contained in Herbert A. Simon, The New Science of Management Decision (New York: Harper, 1960).

11. See, for example, Saul M. Katz, "A Systems Approach to Development Administration," paper No. 6 in Comparative Public Administra- tion, Special Series, (Washington, D.C.: Com- parative Administration Group, American Society for Public Administration, 1965) and Bertram M. Gross, The Administration of Economic Plan- ning: Principles and Fallacies (New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Public Administration Branch, 1966).





12. For purposes of this paper, a course is assumed to consist of three class hours and six to nine hours of nonclass preparation per week for about 15 working weeks. Four or five of these courses would constitute a full-term work. This is similar to what is being done at the University of Pittsburgh which is experimenting with efforts to develop a curriculum in development administration focussed on serving the needs of the low-income countries. However, not all of the courses here characterized have counterparts at the University of Pittsburgh.

13. This distinction is subject to some disagreement. Some of the debate on the distinctions between public and development administration may be seen in, for example, Irving Swerdlow, (ed.) Development Administration, Concepts and Prob- lems (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1963). However, core elements of the case for the distinctions are suggested in the CAG Occa- sional Papers, Development Administration: Re- port by a Special Committee, June 1964, and Fred W. Riggs, Modernization and Development Administration, January 1966. See also, Saul M. Katz, Exploring a System Approach to Development Action, one of a collection of

essays to be published shortly by the Compara- tive Administration Group of the American So- ciety for Public Administration.

14. The body of public administration knowledge and experience identifies similar technical needs for the maintenance and operation of government, although not always in the same terms. Four of the technical needs do have related names: manpower is used for staffing; finances for budgeting; logistic arrangements for procur- ing and distributing supplies; and information facilities for transmitting instruction, reports, and statistics. The two remaining technical needs, while stated in somewhat different terms, are readily discernible. Involvement and commit- ment (or mobilization) to support government action is sought from employees, clients, and publics through a variety of arrangements. There are also procedures for enforcing government decisions (conflict management) by education, persuasion, and the use of incentives and sanc- tions including physical force. See, Saul M. Katz, Guide to Modernizing Administration for Development (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts- burgh, 1966), also see Saul M. Katz, "A Systems Approach," op. cit., pp. 12-21.

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