The Future of the Study of Public Administration: Embedding Research Object and Methodology in Epistemology and Ontology

Abstract

What should be done to advance the study of public administration? A strong argument is advanced by outgoing PAR managing editor Jos C. N. Raadschelders that the fi eld benefi ts signifi cantly from greater attention to ontology and epistemology. To be sure, empirical, evidence-based research has its place, but its basis and the meaning of fi ndings seldom are questioned. Why? Many public administration scholars seek "scientifi cness" through a disciplinary type of methodology. However, working within an inherently interdisciplinary fi eld, public administration scholars cannot reduce the complex, wicked problems of society and government to mere empirical measurement. Th e author lays out fi ve critical challenges confronting today's public administration-both its study and research-requiring the fi eld's urgent attention in order to meet the comprehensive and rapidly expanding needs of specialists and generalists, practitioners and academicians, as well as the general public.Education has two purposes: on the one hand to form the mind, on the other to train the citizen. Th e Athenians concentrated on the former, the Spartans on the latter. Th e Spartans won, but the Athenians were remembered. -Bertrand Russell, Th e Scientifi c Outlook, 1931 [Th e] materialistic basis [of science] has directed attention to things as opposed to values. -Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 1925

Accounting for Time: Comparing Temporal and Atemporal Analyses of the Business Case for Diversity Management

“…Scholars have expressed a renewed interest in understanding the relationship between public management methodology and epistemology (Meier and O'Toole ; Raadschelders ). How, they ask, is our knowledge of public management affected by how we study it?…”

Exploring the epistemology of transdisciplinarity in public policy and administration in South Africa

“…In understanding the potential and the need to view public policy and administration from a transdisciplinary perspective, we offer the long-standing argument of whether or not public administration is an art, a craft or a science (Raadschelders 2011b). According to Farazmand (2012:499), the major problem with public administration is the notion of professionalism outside academic institutions.…”

“…Arguments and counterarguments in public administration as a discipline are numerous with the idea of interdisciplinarity clearly identified (see Berkley 1975;Greenfield 1986;Raadschelders 2009Raadschelders , 2011aRaadschelders , 2011bRingeling 2012;Riccucci 2012;Farazmand 2012;Wildavsky 1980). The maladies of This article seeks to address and direct future research collaboration in public policy and administration from a transdisciplinary perspective in South Africa, by answering three major questions: Firstly, how can public administration be understood from a transdisciplinary perspective?…”

Theory-Pluralism in Public Administration

“…In the context of PA research, this has meant an almost exclusive focus on qualitative methods, loosely defined. Classical pragmatism, however, is more greatly predisposed toward resolving the quantitative/qualitative divide, which Raadschelders (2011) recently called for through greater attention to ontology and epistemology, as well as finding a way to employ mixed methods in a rigorous and coherent manner.…”