On Theory and Theory Building in Public Administration

“Theory is the bedrock of understanding public administration.” (Frederickson et al. 2018:4) Scholarship in public administration, public management, and governance (broadly termed PA in this essay) encompasses a vast array of phenomena. The significance of these phenomena is attached to the value and purpose as well as the creation and distribution of a great range of public services and public goods. Like social scientists more broadly, PA researchers investigate individual motivation, cognition, and behavior; group dynamics and performance; institutions; organizational development; social and political events, processes, and systems; and the myriad relations among all the above. This breadth of inquiry requires an accompanying depth of understanding of multiple social science disciplines, theories, and research traditions extending beyond the field of public administration itself. Across this multiplicity, it is no wonder that defining and assessing theory in public administration can stump the best of us. Indeed, given this multiplicity of research foci, contexts, and applications, PA scholars, emerging and established, continue to find theory and theory building quite daunting. And yet, as George Frederickson and his coauthors (2018: 5) wrote, “a need exists for greater conceptual clarity and theoretical reliability in the treatment of public administration.” It is time we try to clarify the myriad approaches to PA theory and what it means to advance it. The new journal Perspectives on Public Management and Governance (PPMG) is intended to do just that.