‘Publicness’ is a key concept of public administration in theory and practice. But a little attention has been paid on that concept. So in this article, in order to searching for an idea of publicness, an etymological study of publicness is made a...
‘Publicness’ is a key concept of public administration in theory and practice. But a little attention has been paid on that concept. So in this article, in order to searching for an idea of publicness, an etymological study of publicness is made and the various definitions of dictionary is reviewed. And the usages of publicness in organization theory and public policy is examined. The idea of publicness includes both meanings of the social justice(or public interest) in ethical dimension and the substantive democracy in political dimension. Why does the publicness fall into a crisis? In order to answering this question, Arendt’s theory of public sphere is utilized. According to a theory of public sphere, an advent of social realm, which is dominated by a market mechanism, is a modern phenomenon. The expansion of social realm results in the decline of public sphere which the public participate in and debate on the problems of community. This phenomenon is remarkable in the resent reformation programs of public sector. From critically reviewing Reinventing Government(1992) of Osborne & Gaebler, I illustrate an example that the idea of publicness is threaten. This crisis of publicness can be overcome by the restoration and activation of public sphere. The conditions of activation of public sphere are the participation, the communicative competence, and the speech situation excluded power relations.