ABSTRACT
Markets and business have both fascinated and frustrated public administration scholars and practitioners. Wilson (1887) clearly delineated the intellectual and practical locus of public administration. Wilson asserted that administration is a “field of business” and that administrative questions lie outside politics. Paul Van Riper gave voice to public administration scholars’ frustration with this characterization in writing, “Woodrow Wilson was naive when he suggested in his famous essay of 1887 that government has much to learn from business. The 1880s were one of the most corrupt decades in American business. There were then no schools of business and no management literature of any consequence” (1997: 219). Others have struck a measured tone in discussing what public administration can learn from the study of private organizations (e.g., Staats 1998).
