The big questions of public management and research

Behn, R. (1995). The Big Questions of Public Management. Public Administration Review, 55 (4), 313.

Students and professionals in public management should be continually asking three main questions: How to reduce excessive micromanagement that hampers progress? How to motivate public employees to achieve better results? How can achievements be measured in order to increase productivity? The "micromanagement question" involves issues of trust, what the government should and should not try to control, and the need for legitimate and ethical entrepreneurship practices in public management. The "motivation question" is concerned with finding ways for both public workers and citizens to work harder for the public good, and the "measurement question" relates to the responsibility public managers have to define realistic means for citizens to measure the progress and accomplishments of public agencies and their workers, as well as students in schools. These questions are all interrelated, and while there is not one solution that can solve all public administration problems, public managers need to keep these three questions in mind when formulating plans for improvement.

Puzzles, asking questions: The questions asked in this article are effective because they take into consideration the feelings and concerns of everyone involved with public administration -- citizens, legislature, government, public workers, teachers, students, and managers.

Brewer, J. (2005). Formulating Research Questions, in Foundations in Multimethod Research. Sage Publications.

Research questions need to address current issues and problems that have not been solved at all, or not in their entirety. Two schools of thought exist with regard to the process of formulating a research question: extensive background research and analysis should take place before a problem is stated; or, researchers should embark on their quest with a general idea of what they need to examine but remain open-minded to new and different questions that may arise throughout the process. The answer involves the research style employed, costs involved, time involved, and the particular subject matter and preceding research. The author of this book supports the employment of multimethod research in order to reduce methodological problems and influences; however, using a multimethod style can lead to multiple further questions and even contradicting results across the different studies. The challenge, then, is to employ multiple methods while keeping focus centralized and making sense of any contradictory findings.

Puzzles, asking good questions: This author then goes on to tackle the questions of developing research questions with effective techniques such as mixing metaphors, argument by analogy, and creating new theories from existing ones.

Camburn, E., Rowan, B., & Taylor, J.E. (2003). Distributed Leadership in Schools: The Case of Elementary Schools Adopting Comprehensive School Reform Models. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25 (4), 347-373.

By analyzing statistical data from three major Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models, these researchers found support for their "activation" hypothesis that the use of model-specific roles encourages leadership development by clearly stating expectations for specific roles. In addition, staff development, including professional learning and development experiences and continued training with time for reflection, helps to stimulate instructional leadership.

What is it? How do we build it, and why? CSR leadership teams are small and include many varying roles; the CSR Coach is critical to overseeing leadership efforts, but model-specific and clearly defined roles, as well as staff development practices, are also important reasons for the success of CSR programs in promoting instructional leadership.

Feldman, M., Skoldberg, K., Brown, R.N., & Horner, D. (2004). Making Sense of Stories: A Rhetorical Approach to Narrative Analysis. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 14 (2), 147-170.

This article is a guide to using the authors' "narrative analysis method" for studying change in public administration. The method is based on ideas of rhetoric, semiotics, and interpreting underlying meaning in stories. In the realm of public administration, story-telling is effective for communicating and understanding organizational life, to "mediate reality and construct political space" (147), enhance decision making, and encourage positive change. Public organization members have many stories to tell which, when compiled and analyzed, provide insights regarding methods for changing and improving day-to-day work. These improvements often lead to improved overall results within an organization.

How do we build it? The authors suggest using a highly organized narrative analysis method for studying such stories. This analysis is carried out using software that codes stories based on "specific text units for story, story line, opposition, and syllogism" (165). The resulting data sheds light on the explicit vs. implicit meanings of stories, whether those meanings are cultural or structural, and whether the messages are accepted among colleagues or controversial.

Gronn, P. (2003). Leadership: who needs it? School Leadership & Management, 23 (3), 267-290.

What is it? How do we build it, and why?

This article provides a critique of the concept of leadership and offers possible solutions to the identified problems. According to the author, leadership is faulty in terms of its indistinguishability from management and administration, its overlapping concerns with "authority, power, influence, persuasion, manipulation, coercion and force" (274), its need for explicit and divided role creation, negative effects of a focus on "exceptionalism" (282), and the "disciplined subjectivity achieved through emergent forms of designer leadership" (267). Possible solutions include lessening demands by distributing responsibilities, studying leadership methodologically, and rethinking old assumptions about leadership.

Kelman, S. (2005). Public Management Needs Help! Academy of Management Journal, 48 (6), 967-969.

Kelman suggests that public administration needs to improve by expanding the research methods used by scholars to include organization theory, and by the inclusion of specific public policy research projects among mainstream organization scholars. These organization scholars might contribute to the improvement of "public sector performance" by: management of routine government operations, responding to major government management problems, and converting policy making to small groups (967). In addition, public administration researchers need to share their techniques for prescriptive research with mainstream organization scholars.

Puzzles, asking good questions: Kelman asks good questions because he is sensitive enough to recognize that mainstream organization scholars might be hesitant to attack public problems or to approach government organizations for the purposes of research and offers two practical answers. First, he argues that government agencies are often easier to access than private ones precisely because they are in the "public" domain. Second, he lists recent publications that offer thorough coverage of current findings in public management research.

Locke, K., Golden-Biddle, K., & Feldman, M. (?). Imaginative Theorizing in Organizational Research.

What is it? How do we build it, and why?

In order to be effective, leadership must be transformed from the "exceptional few" to a "distributed" many (395). Timperley studied distributed leadership in a school practice context across seven schools spanning four years, and discovered risks and benefits of the practice, as well as arguments against traditional leadership models. By individually analyzing leadership traits, practices, behaviors, and artefacts, Timperley found a complex interplay among these factors in differing contexts, suggesting the need for differing leadership distribution approaches. Moreover, distribution itself was not enough to improve academic performance among students. Challenges that came into play included building and maintaining coherence and mutual respect in the face of staff politics, encouraging middle managers to expand beyond normal duties, and presenting student achievement data in formats that principals and teachers could actively draw conclusions from in order to take action.

Voss, G. (2003). Formulating Interesting Research Questions. Academy of Marketing Science Journal, 31 (3), 356.

Puzzles, asking good questions: Overly rejecting and critical editors and reviewers, esoteric-minded audiences, and inflexible writing styles are reasons given for boring research topics and articles. Although this article is written for marketing scholars, many of the ideas introduced are applicable to other areas of research, including public administration. Voss finds that only "modular and architectural innovations in marketing research" (356) are effective at producing interesting, widely-popular research. In architectural innovation, core ideas and concepts are kept the same but rearranged and reintroduced in novel ways, much like characters interacting in different episodes of a situational comedy (357).

Wolman, H. (1981). The Determinants of Program Success and Failure. Journal of Public Policy, 1 (4), 433-464.

Puzzles, asking good questions:

This article provides two important lists of questions: a list of questions for public administration researchers to ask in order to measure program success, and a list of success-promoting questions for public policy-makers to keep in mind when "formulating and carrying out public policy" (433). Measurement questions involved in research formulation deal with "conceptualization, theory evaluation and selection, specification of objectives, program design, and program structure" (437). Success-promoting action questions involve "resource adequacy, management and control structure, bureaucratic rules and regulations, political effectiveness, and feedback and evaluation" (437). Following the necessary pattern of realistic yet personally-sensitive inquiry when formulating good questions, Wolman considers the fact that differing situations will require discretion with regard to how much value is placed on measurement vs. action questions. Wolman concludes that no matter what, implications for success vs. failure must be considered and questioned thoroughly before any public policy plan is carried out. Further research along these lines may result in a formal guiding theory on the "why's and how's" of ensuring program or policy success.