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AbstractThis is the last of four Last Lectures delivered by George Frederickson before his death in 2020. In "Public Management and Authentic Innovation," Frederickson draws on key studies to demythologize the claims around the origins and diffusion of innovation in the private and nonprofit sectors. He compares and contrasts the managed innovation model with a sustaining innovation model and provides provocative insights into the relevant contributions and limitations of rankings, awards and report cards; strategic planning; and the iron cage.

AbstractThis is the third of four Last Lectures delivered by George Frederickson before his death in 2020. In "Thick Social Equity," Frederickson returns to an abiding theme of his scholarship: the advancement of social equity in public administration research and practice. He traces the progress in the literature over the decades from "thin" to "thick" social equity, praising advancements in theory and empirical research in the twenty-first century, while decrying the current state of social inequity, particularly in the United States.

This is the second of four Last Lectures delivered by George Frederickson before his death in 2020. In "Giving the Public in Public Administration Its Due," Frederickson explores the changing, if not dissolving boundaries between the public and private sectors. He admonishes us to be more careful in our understanding and articulation of the meaning of "public" and the extent to which this matters for future theory building as well as practice.

The moral justification for bureaucracy in systems of democratic self-government is stronger in Eastern thought than in Western philosophy and practice. In East Asia, moral justification for bureaucracy is broadly understood to be based on the work of Confucius and his followers. Modern scholars confirm that the primary countries of East Asia have distinctive bureaucratic cultures tracing to Confucian ideology. Distinctive elements of Confucian ideology include rule of man versus rule of law, distinctive characteristics of good public officials, the nature of moral conventions and practices in governing, the importance of education and merit for public officials, how good officials should deal with those in political power, the logic of civil reciprocity, and the nature of order in society. Following descriptions of each of these elements of Confucian moral justification for bureaucracy, the article closes with a comparison of Western and East Asian approaches to the moral justification for bureaucracy.

Public administration has long been understood to be both a science and an art. In its artful aspects, public administration can also, in fact, be beautiful. At their very best, public organizations and processes have forms, designs, experiences, and languages which are beautiful and compelling. It is this beauty and its potential which draws us to public work. And, there is very great beauty in ideas of high and noble purpose and in the organizations and processes we build to achieve those ideas.

In American public administration there is neither an extensive literature on the public nor an agreed-on conception of the public. Five conceptions on the public in public administration are offered, including the pluralist, public choice, legislative, client, and citizenship perspectives. Building on these five conceptions of the public, a set of requisites for a general theory of the public in public administration is offered.

The characteristics and values of the "new public administration" are viewed as flowing directly from a variety of values, some inconsistent, which guided traditional public administration. This lineage is traced through several disciplines, and the value implications for current practice are explored.