Andrew Massey, A Research Agenda for Public Administration (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2019). 256 pp. $135 (Hardcover), ISBN: 9781788117241.

• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Author: Heather Rimes
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13435

1204 Public Administration Review • November | D ecember 2 021

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 6, pp. 1204–1206. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13435.

Book Reviews

Heather Rimes is an assistant professor

and Director of the Master of Public Affairs

Program at Western Carolina University.

Her research interests span public and

nonprofit management and public policy

areas including public values, managerial

role development, co-production, volunteer

utilization in public service delivery,

innovation, and science and technology

policy.

Email: hnrimes@wcu.edu

Reviewed by: Heather Rimes

Western Carolina University

Andrew Massey, A Research Agenda for Public Administration

(Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2019). 256 pp. $135

(Hardcover), ISBN: 9781788117241.

Public administration’s interdisciplinary nature,

its perpetual identity crisis, and its scholars’

continuing discussions of the nature of a

science of public administration have in many

ways shaped contemporary scholarship in the field.

Simon (1946), Dahl (1947), and Waldo (1948) all

offered early challenges and calls to take seriously

the problems involved in establishing a science of

public administration, and numerous scholars have

since revisited and expanded upon these questions

(e.g., Raadschelders 2011; Wright 2015; Zhu, Witko,

and Meier 2019). A Research Agenda for Public

Administration, edited by Andrew Massey, offers

relevant and timely contributions to this tradition.

The book has two overarching purposes: it reflects

on the epistemological nature of the discipline of

public administration, and it provides a number of

perspectives on future research trajectories for key

themes and issue areas within the field.

While the chapters within the edited volume are not

formally grouped into sections, the epistemological

reflections are gathered at the beginning of the

book in the first four chapters and are revisited in

the concluding chapter. The intervening chapters

are structurally linked, but each explores a distinct

theme or issue in contemporary public administration

research. For the purposes of this review, I discuss

the epistemologically focused chapters first, and then

I turn my attention to the issue-focused chapters.

Because of the diversity of topics covered, I do not

describe each of the topical chapters individually, but

rather attempt to highlight overall contributions.

I conclude with some thoughts on which audiences

might find this book most useful and why.

In the initial chapter, Andrew Massey outlines

four key normative themes that unify the chapters

in the book including the following: (1) public

administration scholarship should pursue diverse

methods, (2) it should be more integrated with

solving the “wicked problems” (e.g., climate change)

facing both regional and global communities

today, (3) it should be careful not to overemphasize

quantitative methodological approaches, and (4)

it should produce research that is both useful and

accessible to practitioners. Following directly from the

first theme, Chapter 2 offers a prescription for one

way in which the field might pursue diverse methods.

It advocates ethnographic fieldwork, currently little

used in the field, as being a particularly salient

methodological approach to help answer questions

about actions and practices in networks of public

actors. It further describes specific approaches that can

be utilized to collect data and provide useful advice to

policymakers. Next, Chapters 3 and 4 offer arguments

that touch on themes two through four. They both

provide suggestions for improving connections

between public administration research and practice.

Key takeaways from these chapters are the need for

better translation of the results of scholarly work

into useable forms for practitioners, encouragement

of interdisciplinary research with and beyond other

social science fields, and more intentional structuring

of forums for the discussion of practitioner-oriented

research.

Notably, the arguments and conclusions from the

book’s initial four chapters are congruent with

suggestions offered by other scholars who have

undertaken similar reflections in recent years. For

instance, in his reflections on the future of public

administration, the outgoing managing editor of

Public Administration Review, Jos Raadschelders

(2011), suggested a need for the field to revisit

its epistemological and ontological foundations,

particularly given an increasing tendency toward the

natural science model, and he exhorted researchers

to pay more attention to the wicked and complex

problems facing public governance. More recently,

Zhu, Witko, and Meier (2019) describe “rigorous

methodological pluralism” as the path forward for the

discipline.

Perhaps, the most provocative chapter of the book

is the concluding chapter, entitled “After Public

Galia Cohen, Editor