Challenges of (Dis) Connectedness in the “Big Questions” Methodologies in Public Administration

• Published date: 01 July 2001
• Date: 01 July 2001
• Author: Richard F. Callahan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/0033-3352.00052

Challenges of (Dis) Connectedness in the “Big Questions” Methodologies in Public Administration 493

Richard F. Callahan

University of Southern California

Challenges of (Dis) Connectedness in the “Big

Questions” Methodologies in Public Administration

The “big questions” articles previously published in

Public Administration Review

found a widely

divergent set of questions rather than a shared research agenda. This article applies the concept of

layers of society to analyzing the author’s starting points and developing questions that link the

organizational and institutional levels. Connecting these levels offers the potential to overcome the

limitations of problem solving on only one level. In addition, this framework explains the diversity

of research in public administration as potentially productive and connected, rather than frag-

mented and in intellectual disarray. This article offers four researchable questions that connect the

organizational and institutional levels. The proposed questions build on existing research and

address practical problems in public administration. This framework provides a typology that

expects diverse research questions and can productively connect researchers with each other and

with the complex challenges of democracy.

Richard F. Callahan is the director of the Sacramento Center of the School of

Policy, Planning, and Development of the University of Southern California.

He serves on the ASPA Sacramento Chapter Board and the American Plan-

ning Association, Sacramento Chapter Board. He formerly served as direc-

tor of a nonprofit, a township business administrator, and deputy to a Los

Angeles County supervisor. Email: rcallaha@usc.edu.

A series of Public Administration Review articles pro-

posed big questions of public management and public ad-

ministration. In a thoughtful approach to the value of de-

veloping shared research agendas, Robert Behn (1995)

borrowed from physics to invite debate about the big ques-

tions of public management. The subsequent exchange

(Kirlin 1996a; Neumann 1996) offered alternative perspec-

tives on disciplined inquiry. However, the invitation to de-

bate the big questions has not yet produced a shared re-

search focus like that found in physics. The PAR discussion

has yielded a total of 13 divergent big questions.

These authors’ starting points account for the divergence.

In asking the big questions, Behn begins at the organiza-

tional level, while Kirlin starts at the institutional level.

The resulting differences present at least two alternatives

for advancing the debate: One option is to slug it out, ar-

guing for primacy of institutional or organizational ques-

tions in shaping research and noting the insufficiency of

problem solving at only one level, whether organizational

or institutional. A second option is to build on the discus-

sions of Behn and Kirlin, to analyze their approaches, and

to develop questions that link divergent starting points.

Developing questions that connect these levels offers

the potential to overcome the limitations of problem solv-

ing on only one level. It is useful to build on the strengths

of both big-question methodologies and on the specific

questions developed by Behn and Kirlin. Valuing both lev-

els simultaneously rejects the primacy of organizational

or institutional research as sufficient to respond to chal-

lenges of connectedness and cooperation in public affairs.

These challenges in public administration include facilita-

tion of constitutional democracy, responsible market econo-

mies, and social self-governance. Understanding varied

levels of problems is essential to such endeavors.

Formulation of questions for inquiry need not subordi-

nate either level of research. Rather, an integrative approach

suggests the importance of extending each level of research

to explore connections between organizations and institu-

tions. For example, linkages are suggested in both Behn’s

concern for facilitating trust among elected officials and

appointed public managers and Kirlin’s concern for pro-

moting societal learning.

Questions that connect organizational and institutional

levels of analysis explore a territory that might be more

theoretical than empirical at this point. This is perhaps

analogous to physicists predicting a feature of the universe

that experimental physics has not fully captured, but which