New perspective on public administration: Towards an anthropological approach

Abstract

As a broad discipline, public management is a discipline based on the theories and methods of political science, law, economics, management, anthropology and other disciplines to study public organization management and its processes and regulations. At the beginning of the introduction of public management into the academic world, the importance of anthropological related theories and methods was ignored and even abandoned in the discipline construction, which also caused the inevitable disconnection between knowledge and practice in the discipline construction of public management in our country. This paper explains the connotation of public management and combs the evolution process of the public management paradigm. This paper discusses how to bring anthropological theories and methods back into China’s public management practice, perfect the public management process from the perspective, concepts, and methods of anthropology, to solve China’s practical problems and establish a public management knowledge system with Chinese characteristics.