"Education in public administration has been strongly influenced by Leonard D. White's text, Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, the first edition of which was published in 1926. The author traces the theoretical issues of public administration through the four editions of the Introduction into the administrative histories which were White's final work. Many important aspects of White's thought are analyzed-the partial intellectual genesis of his formulations in Frank Goodnow's writings at the turn of the century, the four assumptions which were the foundation of White's work and of the discipline of public administration, are analyzed, exposing problems of relationship that White never fully resolved. Storing finds in White's administrative histories a style of scholarship for resolving these problems. Using these formulations, other scholars may find differing approaches to the dilemma of identifying the theoretical assumptions that underly public administration as a field of inquiry."