This dissertation extends literature comparing public and business administration by examining the underlying values associated with professional training. In contrast to earlier studies that compared the practices of business and public administration, this study examines the preferences of the faculty educating practitioners. Insight into how these preferences differ between business and public administration can provide a stronger foundation for understanding the debates comparing the two fields.
Four conceptual categories were created. They were categorized by public--private differences as well as by differences in judgment; the latter was conceptualized on a continuum from analytic to synthetic. Hypotheses about systematic differences between the priorities of business and public administration professors generally, as well as others regarding the training of statesmen$\sp{\rm i}$ versus executives, or foremen versus bureaucrats, were tested from this perspective.
The preferences of business and public administration professors among comparisons of 11 curriculum areas were tested. These included general competencies, quantitative research methods, finance and budgeting, economics, management concepts, organization studies, decision making and problem solving, political and legal processes, provision and distribution of goods and services, strategy making and evaluation, and ethics. These competencies were hypothesized to differ in terms of priorities, based on which of the categories best fit a professor.
PROSCAL, a program for probabilistic multidimensional scaling, was used in this analysis. The dimensions of the study were tested by the construction of preference spaces in each observed dimension. The spaces represented the preferences of professors for training students in the curriculum areas relating to bureaucrats, foremen, statesmen, and executives. These preferences were examined to determine whether statistical differences consistent with the conceptual frame existed.
Results indicated that the perceptions of business and public administration professors, based on the ranking of preferences, were statistically incomparable. However, when political scientists, a major subgroup of faculty in public administration, were removed, strong statistical differences emerged between business and public administration professors. Unexpectedly, there were no relationships on the judgment axis. Apparently professors in both fields focus on managerial rather than leadership values. ftn$\sp{\rm i}$Please realize that "statesmen" refers to a category only. Though in the past it referred specifically to men, in this study categories are treated as gender neutral.
