ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an exploration of several great issues, each of which reflects the contestation between the traditional and the non-traditional. Traditional concerns about the field of public administration (PA) are encountering post-traditional frameworks. Traditional PA expresses the issue of identity in such terms as the politics–administration dichotomy. This dichotomy has been one of the signature issues of traditional PA. The post-traditional consciousness transforms this traditional conversation about the dichotomy, shifting the shape of the problem and the available opportunities for coping. Radical imagination is intended in a fuller sense as post-traditional consciousness. The traditional extreme could be described in terms of a person’s sense of identity and the relationship of that identity to the person’s group. H. A. Simon underlines his argument for a science of administration with a later pungent comment on the quality of PA. Post-traditional frameworks emphasize radical imagination that is nourished by a critically open attitude toward wisdom from a wide variety of extra-PA sources.
