Public Administration Enquiry and Social Science in The Postmodern Condition: Some Implications of Value Pluralism

This paper examines the relationship between publiic administration and social science in light of the postmodern condition. It is argued here that the postmodern condition limits the role of conventional social science in public administration because it increases the incidence, as well as the visibility, of conflict between incompatible and incommensurable human ends or values. While conventional social science can still make a useful contribution to public administration enquiry, as an expression of certain important values, other modes of enquiry, including philosophy and history, are also important in helping us to become more self-conscious about the political and ethical values that we express in public administration discourse and practice and the conflicts that can occur between them.