Public Management: Should It Strive to be Art, Science, or Engineering?

Behn, Robert D.

doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jpart.a024305

Cited by 24 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…As Overman and Boyd explained, those who carry out best practices research undertake selective observation of a set of exemplars across different contexts in order to derive more generalizable principles and theories of management. Behn (1993, 1996), for instance, has argued that public management research should emulate engineering as a model for scholarship. Employing methods such as the case study approach, public management scholars should collect, codify, analyse, and disseminate knowledge held by public managers that can help improve the practice of public management.…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

What Works Best When Contracting for Services? An Analysis of Contracting Performance at the Local Level in the Us

Fernández

2007

Public Administration

112

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During the last decade the field of public administration has undergone a period of renewed interest in the topic of performance and effectiveness. Key contributions to the growing stream of research on public sector performance include work focusing on the adoption and implementation of performance measurement in the public sector (see, for example, Julnes and Holzer 2001; Behn 2003); theoretical and empirical research on management’s effect on organizational performance (see, for example, O’Toole and Meier 1999; Meier and O’Toole 2002); and efforts to identify the determinants of organizational effectiveness (see, for example, Rainey and Steinbauer 1999; Brewer and Selden 2004). Surprisingly, this literature includes very few studies that explicitly address the issue of performance in contracting for services (exceptions include Domberger and Hensher 1993; Romzek and Johnstone 2002). In the United States alone, hundreds of billions of dollars are contracted out every year, and innumerable policies and programmes are implemented, at least in part, through contractual arrangements between public agencies and private providers (Savas 2000; DeHoog and Salamon 2002; Kelman 2002; Cooper 2003). Moreover, contracting for services appears to be a growing trend in Western Europe and other regions (Kettl 2000; Savas 2000). With the stakes so high, there is a pressing need for research that identifies factors and practices that contribute to success in contracting for services. This paper takes on the challenge by developing a model of contracting performance and testing it using Substantively Weighted Analytic Techniques (SWAT), a new methodology that allows researchers to isolate high performance among a large number of observations in order to identify variables practitioners can manipulate to improve practice (Meier and Gill 2000).

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Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

What Works Best When Contracting for Services? An Analysis of Contracting Performance at the Local Level in the Us

Fernández

2007

Public Administration

112

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“…Finally, the exact nature of the knowledge produced by NPM is not clear. Maybe NPM is an art (Lynn, 1994(Lynn, , 1996 or, as Behn (1996) thinks, something like engineering, that is to say a blend of science and art. When talking about NPM as a paradigm, maybe we should talk about a 'professional paradigm' rather than a research one.…”

Section: Sociological Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the New Public Management a Paradigm? Does it Matter?

Gow

Dufour

2000

International Review of Administrative Sciences

100

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Since the appearance of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1970, Thomas Kuhn's notion of a paradigm has been widely used in the social sciences even though its author was not sure about its applicability outside the hard sciences of nature. In the field of public administration and management, the approach known as 'New Public Management' (NPM) has been seen by many as the new paradigm that is replacing the classic bureaucratic or Weberian paradigm of 'public administration' (PA). However, there has been little reflection concerning the validity of using in this way the notion as it was developed by Thomas Kuhn.The question of whether or not NPM is a new paradigm merits attention for a number of reasons. First, does the introduction of ideas borrowed from business management and economics constitute a fruitful transfer or borrowing (Kuhn, 1970: 29) or a spurious one (Bendor, 1976;Ramos, 1978)? Second, the question of paradigms leads us to reflect on the degree of difference between the supposed new paradigm of NPM and the old one of PA. Is it a revolution that challenges the former paradigm and ultimately leads to its replacement? Finally, inquiring into paradigms informs us of the nature of knowledge in NPM and by extension PA.Here we enter into the realm of epistemology and raise a more universal question about social science: Are we really taking part in a 'conversation that is aware of itself ' (McSwite, 1997: 4)?In what follows Kuhn's theory is recalled, NPM is presented and analyzed in terms of it. In a third section NPM and PA are compared before an overall assessment is attempted in the conclusion. While we claim universality for our theoretical content, the practical difficulties cited, with which the traditional PA paradigm met, are mostly Canadian. Kuhn's theory of paradigms and its application to the social sciencesKuhn's theory was inspired by the desire to put order into the study of the external conditions giving rise to scientific discoveries. What emerged was a

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“…In addition to the comparison to medicine, Behn (1996) argued that the field of public administration is more like engineering than art or science. In particular, engineering education has taken great strides in reaching beyond its disciplinary border to include other fields.…”

Section: The Realities Of Public Administration: Governance and Intermentioning

confidence: 99%

Encouraging Cognitive Flexibility and Interdisciplinarity in Public Administration Programs

Newswander

2011

Administration & Society

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In response to the increased complexity that comes from a shift away from government and toward governance, public administration programs need to adjust their traditional curriculum and encourage interdisciplinarity perspectives in students. Given the proper mind-set, administrators can be better prepared to face the challenges of governance in a highly integrated, real-life setting by having the capacity to integrate competing viewpoints, which includes a reintroduction of interdisciplinary theories, methods, and best practices to the classroom. Cognitive flexibility-the ability for an individual to understand, appreciate, and make use of various epistemological approaches-offers a theoretical perspective to guide practical pedagogy and practice.

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Public Management: Should It Strive to be Art, Science, or Engineering?

Cited by 24 publications

References 23 publications

What Works Best When Contracting for Services? An Analysis of Contracting Performance at the Local Level in the Us

What Works Best When Contracting for Services? An Analysis of Contracting Performance at the Local Level in the Us

Is the New Public Management a Paradigm? Does it Matter?

Encouraging Cognitive Flexibility and Interdisciplinarity in Public Administration Programs

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