Abstract

Despite widespread agreement about goals of knowledge development in public administration, there is imbalance in efforts directed at these goals. The overlap between the domains of theory and practice is not substantial. Important concerns in public administration theory and practice are outweighed by naïve quantitative bias (NQB), an unfortunate methodological artifact. This symposium seeks to highlight this imbalance and to nudge the public administration scholarly community toward paying attention to theoretical and practical matters, recognizing NQB and mitigating its undesirable effects on knowledge development. Broadly speaking, two recommendations emerge from symposium contributions. The first recommendation emphasizes paying attention to theoretical goals. The second recommendation is to promote reflexivity about how the domains of theory and method interact to counter the methodological artifact of NQB. A brief overview of each article in the symposium and its contribution to advancing knowledge development is provided.

Let me begin by making two uncontroversial points that seem almost jejune at first blush. First, as a scholarly community, we want public administration research to be theoretically rich and insightful. Second, we want public administration research to be well grounded in and useful for public administration practice. We are likely to get widespread agreement on these two points. Yet, the road beyond easy agreement on these two points is neither well-paved nor pretty.

Conclusion

The symposium contributions raise significant questions and offer constructive suggestions on how we can improve the knowledge development enterprise in public administration. There is much that authors need to be responsive to in an individual peer-reviewed contribution, and therefore, it is unfair to hold every single paper accountable for the state of the discipline. This is where the auto-pilot of the “invisible hand” of peer-reviewing (or orchestration of a specific point of view through a few peer-reviewed articles) needs help, and we hope that the symposium contributions provide that help!