Book Review: Public Administration: Traditions of Inquiry and Philosophies of Knowledge

• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15615452
• Date: 01 December 2015
• Author: Sharon Mastracci
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Subject Matter: Book Review

615452ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X15615452Review of Public Personnel Administration
research-article2015
Book Review
Review of Public Personnel Administration
2015, Vol. 35(4) 406 –410
Book Review
© The Author(s) 2015
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N. Riccucci. (2010). Public Administration: Traditions of Inquiry and Philosophies of Knowledge.
Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,176pp. $26.95 paperback
Reviewed by: Sharon Mastracci, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA
DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15615452
In a rude cartoon two bikers regard each other at a stoplight. One is a bearded renegade
in a t-shirt straddling a huge Harley. The other is a sleek youngster in leathers on a boldly
colored Japanese superbike. The cartoon shows each biker’s thoughts. “Idiot” the Harley
rider is thinking. “Idiot” thinks the racer.
Klitgaard (1998, p. 1)
In The Qualitative-Quantitative Divide, Klitgaard (1998) characterizes researchers as
motorcycle enthusiasts with competing styles and declares, “I am bored by the method-
ological decrees. I wonder if quals and quants cannot find ways to move forward
together in empirical research” (p. 3). So too does Norma Riccucci (2010) consider
ideological and methodological tensions in Public Administration: Traditions of Inquiry
and Philosophies of Knowledge. In her path-breaking, infinitely readable, indispensible
treatise on the intellectual history and evolution of public administration, Riccucci pro-
vides the field with a new classic that explains how the field developed the way that it
has—with multiple camps and multiple approaches—and argues that multiplicity
strengthens rather than weakens public administration. Her title is deliberately plural:
traditions of inquiry, philosophies of knowledge. Riccucci asserts and reasserts that
there is no one best way and acknowledges early on that ideologically intransigent read-
ers may never be persuaded: “This book is not for the faint of heart” (p. 5).
Epistemological and ontological debates in public administration are deeply relevant
to scholars of human resource management (HRM) because many of us draw on “moti-
vational and psychological theories . . . deemed critical for studying and understanding
the behavior of people in organizations” (p. 7) and “humanism, which centers on the
complex emotive and psychological attributes of humans” (p. 14). What is more, HRM
scholars investigate questions such as “Are administrators ‘born’ or can they be ‘made,’
that is, trained?” (p. 15). Together, these fundamentals of HRM research require scholars
to understand the epistemological and ontological positions on which their research
rests: “Due to the inevitable presence of human beings, public administration can never
be reduced to certainties such as those found in the natural or physical sciences” (p. 16,
emphasis added). The centrality of people to the study and practice of HRM further
exacerbates the uncertainty with which public personnelists must grapple in our research.
Uncritical acceptance of one best way limits research in public personnel administration

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where the wild card of human behavior forces us to understand our epistemological and
ontological assumptions and choose methods consistent with the questions at hand as
well as our assumptions about truth and what is knowable.
Chapter 1 covers familiar ground—the 1887 Woodrow Wilson article, the...