SPirituality and dialogue

This article serves as an introduction to this symposium on spirituality and Dialogue. The purpose of the symposium is to explore if spirituality and dialogue have a place in public administration. A brief description of the six articles in the symposium is given. Finally, this introduction presents various complementary themes that the reader can find in the symposium as a whole. In brief, this introduction argues that the twenty-first century will be noted for its decentralization that is prompted by the information age. These phenomena will require a much higher ethical level in public administration than has existed in the past. The current approaches to bureaucracy, religiosity, modernism, and postmodernism are dysfunctional to that need. In contrast, spirituality and dialogue are functional to lifting public administration to a higher ethical plateau. A one-day discussion between members of the American Society for Public Administration and the Global Dialogue Institute held in May 1997 in Philadelphia prompted this symposium and a later symposium that will appear in this journal. The purpose of that This article serves as an introduction to this symposium on spirituality and Dialogue. The purpose of the symposium is to explore if spirituality and dialogue have a place in public administration. A brief description of the six articles in the symposium is given. Finally, this introduction presents various complementary themes that the reader can find in the symposium as a whole. In brief, this introduction argues that the twenty-first century will be noted for its decentralization that is prompted by the information age. These phenomena will require a much higher ethical level in public administration than has existed in the past. The current approaches to bureaucracy, religiosity, modernism, and postmodernism are dysfunctional to that need. In contrast, spirituality and dialogue are functional to lifting public administration to a higher ethical plateau. A one-day discussion between members of the American Society for Public Administration and the Global Dialogue Institute held in May 1997 in Philadelphia prompted this symposium and a later symposium that will appear in this journal. The purpose of that meeting was to explore the viability of spirituality and dialogue to the field of public administration. Although interrelated, this symposium primarily deals with the topic of spirituality and a subsequent symposium shall deal primarily with dialogue. Both topics have extreme importance to the development of public adminis-tration as it moves into the twenty-first century. This introduction to the symposium shall proceed by first discussing the symposium in general, then provide a quick overview of each article, and end with some concluding observations that should help the readers as they proceed with the symposium.