Bachelor of Social Sciences (BSS) in Public Administration

This course is designed as a broad introduction to public administration. Public administration differs from many other areas in academia in that it has a strong practical component. This course will introduce students to both the theoretical and practical sides of public administration. The topics like origin and growth of public administration, major theories of organization, processes and different contexts of public administration will be covered. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to gain a basic understanding of public administration.

The primary goal of this course is to obtain an understanding of the basic principles, functions and foundations of modern state system and to contextualize them in Bangladesh. An understanding of political systems from political philosophy perspective is essential to comprehend the functioning of a democracy and the liberties of its people. Knowledge in conjunction with the willingness and ability to affect change in the government are what separate passive subjects from active citizens. Thus, the second part of the course deals with connection between politics and administration and key issues in contemporary Bangladesh politics and government that affects functioning of democracy in Bangladesh.

This course aims to make the students familiar with the systematic analysis of various aspects of society having bearing on administration and governance. It focuses on introducing the organizing themes and ideas, empirical concerns and analytical approaches to the discipline of sociology. The course deals with both classical and contemporary views of modern society, institutions, nature of community, and on inequality with special attention to family, class, race, institutions, social stratification, social change and social conflict.

This is an introductory course designed to help students develop an understanding of the essentials of managing. The course explores the basic concepts and processes of management. The aim of the course is to provide theoretical and conceptual grounding in practices of management as a field of study. The course intends to provide students an insight into the core issues of management: planning, organizing, staffing, controlling, directing, coordinating, supervision, managing information and information technology. It also highlights issues of ethics and social responsibility. At the end of the course students will develop an understanding related to core managerial functions as needed in today’s competitive world.

The course largely intends to introduce students with the basic philosophy, structure and functioning of Bangladesh public administration. The course provides an overview of the public administration system, functioning of various regulatory bodies, and an evaluation of administrative reform initiatives. In this connection, the course discusses the historical background of the Civil Service System in British India, United Pakistan and Bangladesh. It also aims to deepen understanding of the structure, functions and challenges encountered by the Constitutional bodies in Bangladesh. At the end of the course, the students would be able to have a basic knowledge about the public administration system in Bangladesh.

This is an introductory course that examines the importance of managing an organization’s most valuable assets, its people. HRM is an essential function of both public and private sector organizations. HRM is a fundamental component of the competitiveness, effectiveness, and sustainability of any organization as it influences who is hired, how they are trained, evaluated, compensated, and what steps are taken to retain them. The course attempts to enhance student’s insight to explain the objectives and responsibilities of HRM in an organization as well as the challenges facing managers and employees in today’s work environment. The prime objective of the course is to broaden the knowledge and understanding of the students about the major concepts and techniques of HRM and their application.

This course will provide an overview of the contemporary discourse on decentralization, local government and local development with a special reference to Bangladesh by combining the theories and practice. This course will attempt to answer some important questions by examining a broad range of issues facing decentralization and local governments in Bangladesh. Some of these questions will include the following: what kinds of problems do local governments face? How have local governments attempted to solve problems related to central government dominance, local government’s minimal or no control over locally posted central ministry’s bureaucrats, low level of own source revenue and overall finances, and the provision of public services? How do local governments respond to pressure from local citizens, groups and their increasing level of expectations? How do the problems faced by urban local governments differ from the problems of rural local government?

The course aims to provide the students with basic understanding of application of economic concepts to the analysis of scarcity of individual, firm, and organizational behavior. It combines topics and issues pertaining to both micro and macro-economics. Topic coverage includes the theories of how consumers and firms make choices, and how various rules guide their respective decisions. The course also explores the theory of market structures, such as perfect and imperfect competition, as well as monopoly. The course also deals with the issues such as analysis of national income and employment, economic fluctuations, inflation, fiscal and monetary policies, economic growth, and various economic policies and also how they affect economic growth.

The course focuses to provide the students a basic understanding of a range of the different dimensions of the concept, process and practice of governance. It highlights the political and policy framework of governance from a national perspective. Also explores different forms and modalities of governance in the global and Bangladesh context.

The course introduces the students with basic issues of administrative law and the functioning of regulatory agencies in Bangladesh. Administrative law is the body of law concerned with the procedures, rules, and regulations that governs the activities of administrative agencies of government. It also includes rule making, adjudication, or the enforcement of a specific regulatory agenda. Regulatory agencies enforce administrative law in order to maintain discipline in the functioning of public administration. They keep the activities of different spheres of public life on the track and thereby ensure an equilibrium in the society.

The course is designed to orient the participants with the public sector human resource policy and management in Bangladesh. It will help them to understand the major elements of the personnel management process, organizational functions of the human resource system, and contemporary issues and problems in the public sector with particular focus on Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS).

This course begins with theoretical approaches to gender and development, development theory and feminist critiques. The aim of this course is to develop a greater understanding of the nature and importance of gender roles and gender relations in development processes and practice, with a particular focus on women in production process and economy, women and environment, participation of women in politics, administration and policy making and violence against women.

This course addresses the theory and practice of public finance with special reference to governmental revenue systems. It is concerned with taxation, borrowing and aid in the specific context of Bangladesh. The focus of this course is on the revenue and expenditure sides of public financial management, government budgeting and the changes in financial management.

The course is primarily aimed at introducing the students to the world of ‘projects’ and ‘project management’ and acquainting them with the key concepts, debates, approaches, tools and strategies relating to the analyses and dynamics of project management. The focus is on bridging theoretical discourses with practical examples and learning.

This course focuses on the concepts and issues relating to banking and financial institutions and their interaction. The course covers concepts such as financial instruments and interest-rate determination; the structure and operations of banks and financial institutions; the operational tools and policies of central banks; money and inflation. It also identifies the primary actors- in the money and the financial markets - and their operations and the goals as well as various types of financial instruments and the differences within, the role and determinants of interest rates and monetary policy in the economy.

The main focus of the course is to familiarize the students with basic concepts, tools and mechanisms of managing environmental problems, natural disasters and related risks. Moreover, the course aims to provide the students with an understanding of the global as well as national measures for responding to the environmental and climate change related problems and the mechanisms of governing natural disasters and risk.

This is an elementary course on social research methods. The prime objective of the course is to introduce the students with the basic concepts and approaches of social research with particular reference to Public administration. After the completion of the course students are expected to attain the skill to initiate a research in a systematic way.

Land administration is one of the prime functions that an administrator does in Bangladesh Civil Service. Most of the cases filed under jurisprudence in Bangladesh are on land related disputes. The course will focus on the issues like ownership of land, land survey and settlement, mutation, registration, acquisition and land rights. This knowledge will help to understand different laws on land, land management procedures, etc.

This course is designed to orient the students with the key issues and concepts related to urbanization, migration, and development. The idea is to aware them about the causes and effects of urbanization, the nature and extent of urban poverty, and the challenges of ensuring efficient and equitable distribution of urban resources and services in the face of increasing level of urbanization. The course also focuses on the key actors and concern of urban governance and how the relationship between actors evolved within the formal framework of different governance models. The central focus of this course would be to encourage debates and analysis of how urbanization can be made the engine of growth and development rather than poverty, vulnerability and exclusions through sound urban governance. Attention is equally paid to the intellectual history of urban planning and development of sustainable city, its current and future challenges, and practice in the national and global context.

Security and Emergency Management is gaining importance in contemporary world. The word “security” has different connotations and dimensions. Similarly, emergency management can be subdivided into various categories at application level. It is essential to point out that although national security, global security and regional security are interconnected, they are dealt with differently. Disaster management and emergency management may imply the same thing to most people but based on the magnitude, the precautions, preventions and actions during the crises differ at organizational and national level. More specifically, disaster management mostly deals with natural disasters and uncontrollable emergencies while security management deals with emergencies which are man-made and controllable. After graduating, students of this department shall work as administrators in various public or private organizations. They may, hence, often have to deal with many security issues and emergencies, for which prior knowledge is essential. Their prior knowledge will increase their efficiency and decision-making skills during an emergency which will be valuable for the organization, as well as the community. However, this course shall fundamentally deal with the protection of organizational assets i.e. men, material and information. This course shall also aid in handling emergencies such as fire hazard, building evacuation under any emergency circumstances, labor unrest, workplace violence, bomb threat etc.

This course will provide the students with a comprehensive knowledge on organizational behaviour by focusing on all its four key aspects: individual and group behaviour, structure, and process of organization.  Students will gain both theoretical knowledge and practical skills to deal with the pertinent issues of organization including: motivation, communication, conflict resolution, decision making, team building, and group dynamics. 


The purpose of the course is to equip the students with multiple methodological and analytical skills to conduct qualitative research on relevant problems/ issues in the broader field of public administration/ social science. The course attempts to enhance student’s insight in different qualitative research methods and understand the philosophy of the social sciences. The prime objective of the course is to broaden the knowledge and understanding of the students about the important tools and techniques of qualitative research.

Irrespective of its nature, it is inevitable for the State to ensure the wellbeing of its citizens, which is popularly known as social welfare. As a concept, social welfare involves some organized services and provisions for the society to deal with social problems. The purpose of this course is to help students develop an understanding about the concept of social welfare and its management in Bangladesh. In this connection, the administrative arrangements and management practices of social welfare services across public and non- profit sector/NGOs will be covered by the course. Intricate issues related to the management of NGOs will also be dealt with by this course.

Twenty first century is about broadening the horizon, understanding the technologies, trends and developments, exploring people, market and opportunities, and taking new initiatives to address various social and economic challenges of the society. This course introduces students with the basic understanding and overview of the concepts, theories and requirements, necessary to establish and manage a new business. Topics include basic information about entrepreneurship, developing business plan for an entrepreneur, determining marketing strategies, financial strategies, compensation package, etc.

This course focuses on how the new public management and reinventing government movements have affected the nature and practice of public management in recent decades. The course makes a critical assessment of the challenges that the public organizations and public managers are facing in contemporary world and also the opportunities created therein with the advent of these globally popular public sector management conceptions.

The course will help students understand the key concepts and approaches of performance management and its importance in public sector. It will familiarise the students with the techniques of designing performance management system in public sector organisations. In addition to this, the course will shed light on the current practices of performance management in the public sector of Bangladesh as well as on the best practices of public sector performance management systems elsewhere. Challenges in introducing performance management typically faced by the public-sector managers will also be highlighted in the course.

The purpose of this course is to familiarise students with the tradition of moral philosophy and the use of moral philosophy in the study of ethical and professional behaviour in public service. Ethics and professionalism go hand in hand in ensuring efficient and just governance in the functioning of state. These two constitute the two sides of a single coin. Professionalism in public administration is an overarching value that determines how its activities will be carried out. It encompasses all other values that guide the public service such as loyalty, neutrality, transparency, diligence, punctuality, effectiveness, impartiality, and other values that may be specific to a country. On the other hand, ethics are broad norms that delineate how public administration should exercise judgment and discretion in its duties and responsibilities. Most of the current problems of governance including endemic corruptions especially in the developing countries are directly or indirectly related to the crises in professionalism and ethics.

The course will introduce the students to basic statistical tools, process and approaches of data collection and data analysis including probability, distributions, sampling, chi-square test, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, correlation and regression analysis. The students will generate primary data and do hand on exercise on the basis of collected data/information

The objective of the course is to familiarise the students with the fundamentals of public policy-making. Key concepts, theories and elements of the policy cycle and the generic instruments of policy making are the focus of the course. How policy proceeds from idea generation to evaluation through implementation, who are the actors involved in the entire process, which social, political and economic factors act as supporting or constraining forces in the process, what could be the effective approach/es for undertaking an effective policy and for its implementation are discussed in the course.

The course provides a sound theoretical and analytical basis for examining and evaluating the causes and consequences of international trade within the ambit of the global political economy. The main objective of the course is to make the students familiar with the basic aspects of international trade and protectionism and political economy. The course is structured around a set of topics which include: the determinants of international trade and political economy, international trade and the free market economy, international trade and globalisation, international trade and its effects on nation and its governance, international trade theories, gains from trade and political economy attached to it, balance of payments, exchange rate regime, economic integration, trade policy negotiations, different types of protectionism and their implications, political economy of trade policy.

Based on the research proposal prepared in the 5th Semester, Students will be required to complete their empirical research and produce a Research Monograph within 25,000-word limit.