Behavioral Public Administration: Combining Insights from Public Administration and Psychology

• Author: Asmus Leth Olsen,Lars Tummers,Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen,Sebastian Jilke
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12609
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 1, pp. 45–56. © 2016 by

The Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on

behalf of The American Society for Public

Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12609.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited,

the use is non-commercial and no modif‌i cations or adaptations are made. 45

Public

Administration

and the

Disciplines

Asmus Leth Olsen is associate

professor at the University of Copenhagen,

Denmark. His research spans the areas

of behavioral public administration,

political-administrative psychology, and

the application of experimental methods in

public administration. His current research

focuses on the effects of performance

information on citizens and the role of

dishonesty for selection into public sector

employment. His work has appeared in

Political Behavior, Public Administration

Review,

and

Judgment and Decision Making.

E-mail : ajlo@ifs.ku.dk

Sebastian Jilke is assistant professor

in the School of Public Affairs and

Administration at Rutgers University–

Newark, where he co-directs the Center

for Experimental and Behavioral Public

Administration. He also co-chairs the newly

established European Group for Public

Administration Permanent Study Group

on Behavioral Public Administration. His

interests include citizen–state interactions

and equality in service provision, and his

recent work examines how citizens and

public officials respond to market-type

mechanisms in public service delivery.

E-mail : sebastian.jilke@rutgers.edu

Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen is

assistant professor at the Utrecht School

of Governance of Utrecht University, The

Netherlands. He is interested in public

sector transparency, citizen attitudes,

legitimacy, behavioral public administration,

and experimental methodology. His work

has appeared in

Public Administration,

Public Administration Review,

and the

Journal of Public Administration, Research

and Theory.

E-mail : s.g.grimmelikhuijsen@uu.nl

Abstract : Behavioral public administration is the analysis of public administration from the micro-level perspective of

individual behavior and attitudes by drawing on insights from psychology on the behavior of individuals and groups.

The authors discuss how scholars in public administration currently draw on theories and methods from psychology

and related fields and point to research in public administration that could benefit from further integration. An

analysis of public administration topics through a psychological lens can be useful to confirm, add nuance to, or extend

classical public administration theories. As such, behavioral public administration complements traditional public

administration. Furthermore, it could be a two-way street for psychologists who want to test the external validity of

their theories in a political-administrative setting. Finally, four principles are proposed to narrow the gap between

public administration and psychology.

Practitioner Points

• The aim of this article is to deepen the dialogue between public administration and psychology by outlining

a distinct approach in public administration that integrates the two fields of study: behavioral public

administration.

• Behavioral public administration can be beneficial for practitioners as it aims to bring psychological insights

into the practice of public administration.

• In addition, behavioral public administration can be beneficial for practitioners as it brings public

administration insights into debates dominated by psychologists or behavioral scientists. For instance,

scholars have used public administration theories to critique the nudge movement in government. Such

endeavors are valuable as these do not take psychology at face value but explicitly connect it with theory and

practice within public administration.

E minent public administration scholars,

such as Herbert Simon and Dwight Waldo,

have repeatedly stressed the importance

of psychological research for the study of public

administration (Simon 1947a , 1965 , 1979 ; Waldo

1948 , 1965 ). Simon even stated that “[f]or the

man who wishes to explore the pure science of

administration, it will dictate at least a thorough

grounding in social psychology” (1947b, 202).

Despite these early calls to integrate the two fields

of study and the inherent interdisciplinary nature

of public administration (Raadschelders 2011 ),

public administration scholars have partly neglected

theories and methods from psychology (Jones

2003 ). If we look at neighboring disciplines such as

economics, political science, and management studies,

psychological research has had a much more profound

impact within those fields of inquiry. This is reflected

in the emergence of psychology-informed subfields

such as political psychology (e.g., McDermott 2004 ),

behavioral economics (e.g., Mullainathan and Thaler

2000 ), and industrial and organizational psychology

(e.g., Cascio 1995 ).

Public administration scholars have recently begun

borrowing and extending theories from the field

of psychology. This includes studies on core public

administration topics such as public leadership and

motivation (Bellé 2015 ), transparency (de Fine

Licht 2014 ; Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer 2014 ),

public service competition and choice (Jilke 2015 ),

performance information (Baekgaard and Serritzlew

2016 ; James 2011 ; Olsen 2015a ), and trust of civil

servants (Van Ryzin 2011). At the same time, the

methodological toolkit of public administration

scholars is becoming more informed by developments

within psychology, for instance, by using experimental

methods (Bouwman and Grimmelikhuijsen 2016 ;

Margetts 2011 ) and measurement techniques (e.g.,

Kim et al. 2013 ; Perry 1996 ; Tummers 2012 ). But

this is not a one-way street. Some psychologists

are explicitly connecting their theories to the

Rosemary O’Leary, Editor

Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen

Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Sebastian Jilke

Rutgers University–Newark

Asmus Leth Olsen

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Lars Tummers

Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Behavioral Public Administration:

Combining Insights from Public Administration and Psychology

Lars Tummers is associate professor

at the Utrecht School of Governance of

Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and a

research fellow at Arizona State University

Center for Organization Research and

Design. He co-chairs the newly established

European Group for Public Administration

Permanent Study Group on Behavioral

Public Administration. His research interests

are public management, leadership, and

citizen–state interactions. When researching

such topics, he often combines insights from

psychology and public administration.

E-mail : l.g.tummers@uu.nl