Frederick C. Mosher - Life

Life

Mosher was a graduate of Dartmouth College. He has a master's degree from Syracuse University. He received his doctorate (Ph. D.) in public administration from Harvard University in 1950. He taught at Syracuse University, the University of California, Berkeley, and University of Bologna, before moving to the University of Virginia's Department of Government and Foreign Affairs.

He served with the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Public Administration Clearing House and the Los Angeles Department of Civil Service early in his career. Mosher, a specialist in budgeting and personnel administration, served as a consultant to several Government agencies and task forces and was editor in chief of Public Administration Review (1951–1954).

Mosher wrote widely on the subject of governance and public administration. He authored, coauthored, and edited books on subjects such as government staffing, presidential transitions, government agency reorganization, city services management, and the federal government's General Accounting Office (now Government Accountability Office).

Mosher perhaps is best known for his book, Democracy and the Public Service, published by Oxford University Press in 1968, a work that has influenced countless civil servants in governments around the world. According to Professor Jeremy F. Plant, a 1990 poll of public administration scholars "ranked Democracy and the Public Service as the fifth most influential book published between 1940 and 1990". In the book, which is a series of lectures, Mosher grapples with the evolving nature of the civil servants who staff agencies, and considers how they might be educated and trained, and how to reconcile their expertise with respect for democratic governance.

He died of emphysema on Monday, May 21, 1990, at his home in Charlottesville (VA) at the age of 76 years.

Read more about this topic:  Frederick C. Mosher

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is being used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but certain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different.
    Marie Winn (20th century)

    Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man’s life if he has the weight and cares about the words.
    Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)