An Investigation Into the Characteristics of Papers With High Scholarly Citations in Public Administration: The Relativity of Theory and Method

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X17698188
• Author: Rebekah St. Clair,Diana Hicks,Kimberley R. Isett
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X17698188

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2017, Vol. 37(3) 323 –350

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X17698188

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Article

An Investigation Into the

Characteristics of Papers

With High Scholarly Citations

in Public Administration:

The Relativity of Theory and

Method

Rebekah St. Clair1, Diana Hicks1,

and Kimberley R. Isett1

Abstract

In this article, we investigate characteristics associated with highly cited journal

articles in Public Administration, especially the extent to which high impact

contributions are theoretical. Using citations as a measure of scholarly influence,

we used a mixed qualitative and bibliometric approach to understand the factors

associated with the most highly cited articles in Public Administration in the last 20

years. Specifically, we assessed the extent to which each article was theoretical or

empirical in nature, the role of the journal in which each article was published, and

the extent to which the article’s impact spanned disciplines. Results indicate that

theoretical development, the journal in which an article is published, and strategic

placement with regard to the intended audience matter for scholarly impact. We

also identify that theoretical versus empirical approach of subdisciplines is aligned

with the maturity of that subdiscipline, consistent with Kuhn’s ideas of scientific

evolution.

Keywords

scholarly impact, theoretical contributions, empirical contributions

1Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kimberley R. Isett, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, 685 Cherry St., Atlanta, GA

30332, USA.

Email: isett@gatech.edu

698188ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X17698188Review of Public Personnel Administration 00(0)St. Clair et al.

research-article2017

324 Review of Public Personnel Administration 37(3)

Introduction

The scientific method requires that theory be used to generate hypotheses, phenome-

non observed, and data collected, and then tests of the hypotheses be done based on

that data to inform, confirm, or build theory. Knowledge is built upon this foundation.

No part of this cycle can effectively advance knowledge for very long without the

other components. Yet, there is a perception by some scholars in the Public

Administration discipline that theory has been pushed out of the pages of journals and

quantitative empiricism dominates disproportionately.1 Has the field has become

increasingly atheoretical? What role does theory play in our field? How does that mat-

ter for shaping the disciplinary corpus?

We seek to understand knowledge within the discipline and the relative role of

theory and data. To do this, we use mixed-methods, bibliographic and qualitative anal-

ysis, to explore the characteristics of the most cited articles published in non-specialty

Public Administration journals in the past 20 years. Our analysis is the first in Public

Administration to assess the top cited articles and to provide a description of their use

of theory and method, their intended contribution, and their boundary spanning pro-

file. We contribute to the corpus by documenting how theory and method is used in the

discipline, as observed in the most highly cited papers.

Literature Review

The existing literature assessing scholarly impact centers on bibliometric analysis. We

found 23 such studies published in Public Administration. The scopes of analysis in

these 23 studies were quite varied. For example, some scholars have studied how or

whether the journal in which an article was published matters (Desmarais & Hird,

2013; Jensen & Kristensen, 2013), others assessed article or research impact within

one particular field (Christensen & Gazley, 2008; Corley & Sabharwal, 2010; Sillanpää

& Koivula, 2010), while still others have studied impact within subfields of certain

disciplines (Sapotichne, Jones, & Wolfe, 2007), across different disciplines (Andrews

& Esteve, 2014; Georgiou, 2014; Jensen & Kristensen, 2013; Saetren, 2015; Van Der

Wal, Nabatchi, & Graaf, 2013; Wright, 2011), and even across countries (Jensen &

Kristensen, 2013; Saetren, 2015). The 23 studies pursued a variety of goals including

describing the components and subdomains of Public Administration (Bunea &

Baumgartner, 2014; Georgiou, 2014; Lecy, Mergel, & Schmitz, 2013; Saetren, 2005),

understanding how the literature defines, operationalizes, or measures a particular

concept (Christensen & Gazley, 2008; Lanjie, 2009; Sillanpää & Koivula, 2010; Vogel

& Masal, 2014), understanding how certain concepts vary across subfields (Van Der

Wal et al., 2013), presenting new ways to think about article impact and quality ratings

(Walle & Delft, 2014), understanding how research gets used by governmental agen-

cies (Desmarais & Hird, 2013; Marsilio & Cuccurullo, 2011), assessing cross-disci-

pline reliance and influence on theory and/or methods (Andrews & Esteve, 2014;

Sapotichne et al., 2007; Wright, 2011), identifying the conditions that favor “perme-

able” boundaries (Vogel, 2010), and understanding researcher level collaboration and

productivity (Corley & Sabharwal, 2010).