Paper Status Tracking

Journals by Title

Journals by Subject

Contact us

	[email protected]
	3275638434

	Paper Publishing WeChat

Useful Links

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Article

Open Access

The Rocky Marriage Between Public Administration Academics and Practitioners

Author(s)

Sunday I. Odezah

Full-Text PDF Download XML 15910 Views

DOI:10.17265/1548-6591/2016.06.001

Affiliation(s)

The University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma, USA

ABSTRACT

It has long been recognized that public administration (PA) is a “prophet without a prophecy”, a situation in which PA theories and research cannot predict, tell, explain, or solve the problems facing PA practitioners. Consequently, this problem has resulted in a lack of congruence, gap, disconnect, division, or gulf between PA academics and practitioners. Although volumes have been written about the problem, much of this work is based strictly on the “scientific” research method which has little or no potential relevance to the problems facing PA practitioners. In contrast, this paper uses both the scientific and the “case study” research methods to provide a more balanced view of the problem. To illustrate, after discussing the nature of the causes of the disconnect between PA academics and practitioners from a theoretical point of view, the discussion then applied a case study research method to show how the “theory-practice” and “research-practice” gaps might have contributed, directly or indirectly and in whole or in part, to the failure of the American anti-poverty programs, popularly known as the “American war on poverty”. The paper concludes with some results-oriented and productive recommendations to bridge the theory-practice and the research-practice gaps in public administration, the disconnect between PA academics and practitioners, and to move the public administration profession in the right direction.

KEYWORDS

public administration, theory-practice gap, research-practice gap, pracademics

Cite this paper

Journal of US-China Public Administration, June 2016, Vol. 13, No. 6, 367-385

References

Behn, R. D. (1993). Case-Analysis research and managerial effectiveness: Learning how to lead organizations up sand dunes. In B. Bozeman (Ed.), Public management: The state of the art (pp. 40-54). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, Inc.

Behn, R. D. (1995). The big questions of public management. Public Administration Review, 55(4), 313-324.

Bennis, W., & O’Toole, J. (2005). How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 83(5), 96-104.

Beyer, J. M., & Trice, H. M. (1982). The utilization process: A conceptual framework and synthesis of empirical findings. Administrative Science Quarterly, 27(4), 591-622.

Bolton, M. J., & Stolcis, G. B. (2003). Ties that do not bind: Musings on the specious relevance of academic research. Public Administration Review, 63(5), 626-630.

Burns, T., & Stalker, G. M. (1994). The management of innovation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bushouse, B. K., Jacobson, W. S., Lambright, K. T., LIorens, J. J., Mores, R. S., & Poocharoen, O.-O. (2011). Crossing the divide: Building bridges between public administration practitioners and scholars. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 21(1), i99-i112.

Cook, B. J. (1995). At the crossroads of the real and the ideal: Woodrow Wilson’s theory of administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 17(2), 15-28.

Edelman, P. (2012). Poverty in America: Why can’t we end it? Retrieved from http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/.../poverty -in-america-why-cant-we-end-it

Englehart, J. K. (2001). The marriage between theory and practice. Public Administration Review, 61(3), 371-374.

Gibson, P. A., & Deadrick, D. (2010). Public administration research and practice: Are academician and practitioner interests different? Public Administration Quarterly, 34(2), 145-168.

Goodnow, F. J. (1900). Politics and administration. New York: Macmillan.

Gore, A. (1993). From red tape to results: Creating a government that works better and costs less. The Report of the National Performance Review. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office.

Hartmann, J., & Raadschelders, J. (2011). Practitioners and academicians: About gap, authority and bridges. PA Times, (August/September), 25.

Henry, N. (1995). Public administration and public affairs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Johnson, L. B. (1964a). Annual message to the congress on the state of the union. Retrieved from http://www.presidency.ucsb. edu/ws/?pid

Johnson, L. B. (1964b). Modern history sourcebook: President Lyndon B. Johnson: The war on poverty. Retrieved from http:// legacy.fordham.edu/hals11/mod/1964johnson-warpoverty.html

Kettl, D. F. (2000). Public administration at the millennium: The state of the field. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(1), 7-34.

Khurana, R., & Marquis, C. (2006). Diagnosing and dissolving our “translation gap”. Journal of Management Inquiry, 15(4), 406-409.

Lawler III, E. E., Mohrman Jr., A. M., Mohrman, S. A., Ledford Jr., G. E., & Cummings, T. G. (1999). Doing research that is useful for theory and practice. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

MacArthur, B. (Ed.). (1996). The penguin book of historic speeches. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Markides, C. (2007). In search of ambidextrous professors. Academy of Management Journal, 50, 762-768.

McGregor, D. (1960). The theory of human enterprise. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Meyer, J. (2001). A leader in the making: Essentials to being a leader after God’s own heart. New York, NY: Faith Words.

Milakovich, M. E., & Gordon, G. J. (2004). Public administration in America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Mitchell, F. H., & Mitchell, C. C. (2015). Thoughts about theory and practice in public administration. PA Times, 1(2), 12.

Moe, R. C. (1994). The “reinventing government” exercise: Misinterpreting the problem, misjudging the consequences. Public Administration Review, 54(2), 111-122.

Newland, C. A. (2000). The public administration review and ongoing struggles for connectedness. Public Administration Review, 60(1), 20-38.

Odezah, S. I. (2016). The paradox of the American war on poverty. Journal of US-China Public Administration, 13(1), 41-54.

Perry, J. L. (1993). Public management theory: What is it? What should it be? In B. Bozeman (Ed.), Public management: The state of the art (pp. 16-18). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, Inc.

Pierce, G. F. A. (2001). Spirituality@work: 10 ways to balance your life on-the-job. Chicago, IL: Loyola Press.

Pollitt, C. (2010). Envisioning public administration as a scholarly field in 2020. Public Administration Review, 70(s1), S292-S294.

Posner, P. L. (2009). The pracademic: An agenda for re-engaging practitioners and academics. Public Budgeting & Finance, 29(1), 12-26.

Rector, R. (2014). The war on poverty: 50 years of failure. Retrieved from http://www.washingtontimes.com/...rector -the-war-on...

Rosenbloom, D. (1983). Public administration theory and the separation of powers. Public Administration Review, 43(3), 219-227.

Schick, A. (1975). The trauma of politics: Public administration in the sixties. In F. C. Mosher (Ed.), American public administration: Past, present, future. Alabama: The University of Alabama Press.

Shields, P. (2006). Using pragmatism to bridge the gap between academe and practice. Retrieved from https://digital.library. txstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10877/3955/fulltext.pdf?sequence...

Stallings, R. A. (1986). Doctoral programs in public administration: An outsider’s perspective. Public Administration Review, 46(3), 235-240.

Stillman, R. J. (1987). The constitutional bicentennial and the centennial of the American administrative state. Public Administration Review, 47(1), 4-8.

Stivers, C. (2000). “An impossible job”: Report on the building bridges tour. Public Administration Review, 60(3), 194-199.

Streib, G., Slotkin, B. J., & Rivera, M. (2001). Public administration research from a practitioner perspective. Public Administration Review, 61(5), 515-525.

Susman, G., & Evered, R. D. (1978). An assessment of the scientific merits of action research. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23(4), 582-603.

Tanner, M. (2012). The American welfare state: How we spend nearly $1 trillion a year fighting poverty—And fail. Retrieved from object.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA694.pdf

Thomas, G. (1994). Introduction—A view from the trench. In G. Thomas (Ed.), Travels in the trench between child welfare theory and practice: A case study of the failed promises and prospects for renewal (pp. 1-31). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, Inc.

Tsui, A. S. (2013). The spirit of science and socially responsible scholarship. Management and Organization Review, 9(3), 375-394.

Ventriss, C. (1991). Contemporary issues in American public administration education: The search for an educational focus. Public Administration Review, 51(1), 5-14.

Waldo, D. (1968). Scope of the theory of public administration. In J. C. Charlesworth (Ed.), Theory and practice of public administration: Scope, objectives, and methods (pp. 1-26). Philadelphia, PA: American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Watson, D. J., & Montjoy, R. S. (1991). Research on local government in public administration review. Public Administration Review, 51(2), 166-170.

Wilkerson, J. M. (1999). On research relevance, professors’ “real world” experience, and management development: Are we closing the gap? Journal of Management Development, 18(7), 598-613.

Wills, G. (Ed.). (1982). The federalist papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Wilson, W. (1887). The study of administration. Political Science Quarterly, 2(2), 197-222.

Wilson, W. (1941). The study of administration. Political Science Quarterly, 56(4), 481-506.