User:Dressupdaze/sandbox

Abstract
The discipline of public administration in the Philippines has been undergoing its version of an ‘identity crisis’ over the past decade. This crisis has been manifested in four areas: (1) the inordinate influence of mostly American public administration theories and concepts upon Philippines public administration has led Filipino academics in the early to mid-1980s to ask the question ‘is there a Philippine public administration?’; (2) the perceived disconnect between theories of public administration as taught in schools and the realities in the outside world has raised questions of the relevance of the discipline to real world challenges; (3) the continued frustration over the perception that in spite of many public administration and governance reforms, the Philippines continues to be among the more corrupt nations in the region; and (4) the recent fascination of academics in other disciplines, especially economists, that ‘institutions matter’, has led some public administration scholars to argue that their discipline has been arguing precisely the same point since the 1950s.

Acknowledgement
This article was initially presented at the 2012 BK21 International Conference on ‘Knowledge-Building in Asian Public Administration Research and Education: Current Research Trends and Future Challenges’, organized by the Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University, South Korea. We are grateful to Byong Seob Kim, M. Shamsul Haque, and Kilkon Ko for the invitation to participate in this very important conference. We are also grateful to Lyle Manaay and the library staff of the National College of Public Administration and Governance, University of the Philippines for providing advice and assistance when this article was being written and to the National College of Public Administration and Governance alumni who took time to respond to the questionnaire sent to them online.