One does not easily talk of Management in the applied and contextualised form of Public Management, in the same breath as theory, and even less in the same breath as philosophy. Essentially, Public Management is an applied, professional and practiceoriented endeavour. In many instances, there is even evidence of a professional attitude that sees very little, if any, use for fundamental philosophical and/or theoretical matters. This view of theory and philosophy held by professional practitioners in the field of public management is well captured by Caiden (1982: 209), who writes that:

What is postulated here for theory would hold true for philosophy. One of the first philosophical issues in management, therefore, is about the state of a philosophy of management (if such a philosophy exists at all). For this purpose, attention will first have to be focused on the nature of philosophy, the relationship between philosophy and theory, and the aims of philosophy.

Shaping management philosophies to Public Administration focuses this discussion. In this regard, Smit et al. (in Thornhill and Van Dijk 2010: 102) posit that in tracing the significance of the development of Public Administration theory to accepted organisation theory, ten different administrative theories3 were identified:

• ■ Classical theories, schools and approaches:

• □ scientific management promoting the one best way of performing a task with its champions (Taylor, Frant, Gilbreth and Fayol) which contributed to the shaping of administrative theory (Murphy 1981: 23);