As a field of research, organization studies is interdisciplinary, even eclectic, favoring multiple objects, methods, and levels of analysis. Yet, over time, it appears that some of the disciplines involved in this field have grown increasingly unaware of one another. Such is the case for studies and research dealing with public policymaking, public administration, and political regimes. While having contributed in a decisive manner to the emergence of knowledge about social organizations (authors like Weber, Selznick, Blau, Lipset, March, Crozier, Mayntz and others), their influence seems to have declined somehow in the last twenty years. Such is also the case for business administration and management focused knowledge. While playing today a major when not hegemonic role, it may underestimate what to learn from public organization and organizing research, and not address any longer fundamental issues of its core domain. The scientific agendaThis call for papers wishes to break down these disciplinary silos, by putting the emphasis on the reconfiguration of knowledge frontiers and research agendas between public administration, policy making, and organization studies, as well as between public, non-profit and business organizations and organizing. To this extent, we invite theoretical and empirical papers, welcoming those that are situated in diverse geographies and disciplinary traditions, and are exploring knowledge frontiers.• Is cross-fertilization still relevant between organization study perspectives and public phenomena studies? • What could perspectives dealing with the public sector and public affairs still learn from research on profit and non-profit organizations, and vice-versa? Indicative, but not exhaustive, topic areasPublic administration and public policy are themselves interdisciplinary fields that interrelate with organizations studies in very diverse forms.

Since the late 1990s social science-based studies have allocated much less attention to public organizations. Based on the sixth Organization Studies summer workshop, this introductory paper suggests a diagnosis of such a decline as well as a research agenda. It lists some fundamental issues still to be explored such as publicness and governance. It also considers how social science-based organizational knowledge might be extended to various empirical objects and fields in public domains and set-ups such as inter-organizational arrangements, hybrid organizations, multi-stakeholder arenas, hybrid organizing, and transnationalization processes, that usually are covered by scholars -economists, historians, anthropologists, management academics, etc. -who are not using organizational theory lenses.

PurposeThe purpose of the research is to demonstrate the impact of psychological contract infringement (independent variable) on organizational commitment, exit, voice and neglect (dependent variables) within a Canadian federal public organization located in Quebec, where individual (e.g. age), organizational (e.g. stricter rule enforcement) and situational (e.g., employment alternatives) variables are controlled.Design/methodology/approach – A pre‐tested questionnaire (204 questions) on the psychological contract was distributed to 357 Canadian civil servants in a one site federal department. One hundred and thirty‐two questionnaires were returned and considered usable for research, for a 37 per cent response rate. Bivariate analysis was performed on the various determinants and individual responses to psychological contract violation, including organizational commitment, departure designs and counterproductive behaviors.Findings – Results clearly illustrate the great complexity of the link between organizational variables and individual reactions and shed light, on a higher level, on the need to outgrow arguments that reduce bureaucracy to its mere perverse effects. These results suggest that the managerial challenge is not so much to produce a shift from an environment where the rule of law, standards and regulations prevails to an open and flexible environment where individual autonomy is prized as it is to ensure compliance with normative and regulatory constraints.Originality/value – The research seeks to enrich the knowledge base on the subject area because previous research has dealt almost exclusively with the psychological contract within large private companies.

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