structural:expansion
In the United States

The father of public administration in the US is considered to be Woodrow Wilson. He first formally recognized public administration in an 1887 article entitled " The Study of Administration ". The future president wrote that "it is the object of administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or energy."

By the 1920s, scholars of public administration had responded to Wilson's solicitation and textbooks in this field were introduced. Distinguished scholars of that period include Luther Gulick, Lyndall Urwick, Henri Fayol, and Frederick Taylor. Taylor argued in The Principles of Scientific Management, that scientific analysis would lead to the discovery of the " best way" to do things or carry out an operation. Taylor's technique was introduced to private industrialists, and later to various government organizations.

The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) the leading professional group for public administration was founded in 1939. ASPA sponsors the journal Public Administration Review, which was founded in 1940.