ABSTRACT
Historically, "public administration" has grown in large part out of the wider field of inquiry, "political science". In public administration the first major advances into realism were in the fields of public law (particularly administrative law) and comparative administration. F. J. Goodnow led these advances, although his contributions were by no means limited to his excellent legal and comparative studies. The conception of "public administration" as a separate entity, a definable discipline or field of study, is itself almost entirely a product of the schools. Part of the general movement for better personnel and better management of personnel, and related to such other activities as academic study of public administration, has been the development of educational or training programs for public employees. Business organization, for example, particularly the corporate form, was used to justify the tenets of reorganization. Presumably—obviously—the men have been affected by their European experience, and American study of public administration has been thus affected.
