The emergence of self-awareness and scientific theorizing in this respect was focused on
the hierarchical, command-and-control bureaucratic aspects of public organization and
coincided with the gradual emergence of larger and larger and more and more complex
administrative systems associated, first, with the modern state and its apparatus and then,
with the parallel developments in the business and corporate world, starting with the
nineteenth century. The bureaucratic or administrative or managerial revolutions, both in
practice and in thinking, have led to the advent of two related fields (Public Administration
and Business Administration) and to their consolidation as academic disciplines. Hence,
one of the best ways by which we can get a clearer sense of the nature of Public
Administration as a discipline is to consider it in parallel with Business Administration.
Evoking or using the better known and more successful one (Business Administration) as a
foil, is one of the most effective ways of introducing the second and getting a general sense
of its nature: The same mixture of theory and practice, the same interdisciplinarity using
opportunistically results and instruments form different disciplines, the same portfolio of
subfields that are organized around core functions of management and governance (such as
personnel, finance, budgetary control, motivation).