Psychoanalytic And Ethical Lens Essay

457 Words2 Pages

Term Paper
Analyzing PA Planning through Psychoanalytic and Ethical Lenses
Tony Lee
PADM 602 -Summer - Dr. Huff

INTRODUCTION to EPISTEMIC PLURALISM

Since the beginning of public administration theory, the multidisciplinary field has developed and expanded differing lenses that offer diverse viewpoints and dimensions of practice and thinking. Through the use of multiple lenses, public administrators gain insight into their organizations and develop promising ideas to positively affect their organizations and, subsequently, the citizens they serve. To limit oneself to one perspective, one lens, one viewpoint, is to limit potential opportunities and can even cause the failure of a project or organization. A key figure in public administration Dr. David Farmer emphasized the importance of multi-lens thinking and practice. In his 2010 Public Administration in Perspective: Theory and Practice Through Multiple Lenses, Dr. Farmer stated, a “solitary lens can miss critical aspects and can reveal only part of the picture” (Farmer, 2010). It would be like an investigator only hearing testimony from one individual who witnessed a crime, instead of interviewing every single player involved, including the crime scene. Viewing the crime scene through multiple viewpoints will generate a greater picture of the …show more content…

Farmer mentioned that the target of epistemic pluralism is to provide PA employees with differing viewpoints that enhance PA practice and theory with new ideas grounded in actuality, not biases, that give PA an academic framework to grow and strengthen the field (Farmer, 2010). He stated, “Epistemic refers to knowing; pluralism refers to a strategy of more than one way” (Farmer, 2010). In respect to the previous example, an investigator finds the “knowing” through a “more than one way” strategy. The purpose of this paper is to apply Dr. Farmer’s epistemic pluralism to PA practice by analyzing PA Planning in light of psychoanalytic and ethical