Archives – PMRA Insights: A Scholarly Blog

Public Administration Professionalism at the Flashpoint Presidents issue orders, Congress passes laws, and courts make judgments, but immigration policy really succeeds or fails when bureaucrats interact with people seeking entry to the United States. Immigration policy is what happens when an ICE agent detains an individual (or doesn’t), separates children from parents (or doesn’t), and […]

To many scholars in the field of public administration and public management, the study of nonprofit organizations is viewed as a narrow niche, a handful of people working at the margins of the field on topics that largely sit outside of mainstream concerns for public managers. Many of us working in the nonprofit space have […]

As public management scholars, we invest a lot of energy in doing research on public organizations, and most of us need answers to a very simple question: Why? What will our research be used for? Why should we use so much time to do public management research? Some disciplines divide their research according to two […]

The recent natural disasters centered in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico have prompted many to look at government with fresh eyes.  Not least of these is President Trump.  Earlier calls to “drain the swamp” seemed distant if not incongruous to presidential tweets that waxed confident, proud and even deferential to government and government officials. Consider […]

It was a great honor to receive the Beryl Radin Award at the 2017 PMRC conference at American University in June for our article entitled, “Clerks or Kings? Partisan Alignment and Delegation to the U.S. Bureaucracy” in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.  In this blog post, we will highlight the article’s main […]

The Public Management Research Association—through its flagship journal, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART)—has always stressed building knowledge through theoretically informed analysis. JPART is clearly a success by all measures. Continued empirical progress, however, needs significant theoretical development. Theory can be viewed as the capital base or the seed corn of our […]

There has been substantial growth in the use of experiments in public management over recent years. The substantive contributions are becoming broad and deep, and span a range of research questions about core topic areas. These observations were part of the motivation for Sebastian Jilke, Gregg Van Ryzin and I to put together an edited […]

Recent efforts by the new administration to change a wide variety of policies and programs has led me to look back at how our field has thought about the role of the public administrator.  Much of the current thinking on this is still rooted in the work by political scientists from the 1940s and 1950s.  […]

In light of the recent election in the U.S. and reliance on “alternative facts”, it is easy to feel disheartened about our role as researchers– particularly researchers who care about issues that are often central to public debates.  This topic recently came up during one of our monthly fireside chats between faculty and doctoral students […]

Individuals across the organizational spectrum face complex work tasks and decisions that require them to reach out to others for information and advice.  An important question is: “Which individuals are sought for advice and why?” Particular sources of information influence the way in which we understand novel events and shape the criteria and options we […]

For the next several months I’ll be concentrating on writing the fifth edition of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations. (The current edition came out in 2011.) From the very first edition I have emphasized that strategic thinking, acting, and learning matter most, not any particular approach to strategic planning. Indeed, if public leaders […]

Public affairs programs across the country are developing undergraduate certificates, concentrations, minors, and majors in public administration, affairs, policy, and service. Some view this as an opportunity to expand programming and resources while, for others, it is another challenge in an environment of tightened budgets, expanded administration, and increased pressure to do more with less. […]

Earlier this year, Dr. Marybeth Gasman of University of Pennsylvania wrote a Hechinger Report op-ed piece, where she argued that elite universities do not have diverse faculties because they do not want them. Her op-ed cited a litany of excuses used by the Ivies to exclude faculty of color, including low-quality scholarship and the absence […]

As Vice-President and President-Elect of PMRA, I have spent the last year learning more about our thriving organization. I have been very impressed with the leadership of Don Moynihan, from whom I often receive official emails or documents at 1:00 in the morning. Don is a tireless leader who has given his all to PMRA […]

One of the most frequently heard recommendations for network researchers from those who review interorganizational network papers for JPART and other top journals is “I wish you had studied this network over time.”  While this is sometimes possible based on finding detailed historical records (Padgett & Ansell, 1993) or we can occasionally replicate the study […]

The unexpected victory of Donald Trump has upended all manner of enterprise, but is especially salient for those of us who study the workings of government. Public administration can be seen as the study of people, organizations, and institutions. The institutions part of that formulation has become a good deal more important since the election. […]