The Umbrella Metaphor

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: R. Paul Battaglio,Jeremy L. Hall
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13319

The Umbrella Metaphor 917

One of the beautiful themes of public

administration is that it continues to flourish

as a field due in no small part to its reliance

on theoretical developments in other disciplines.

Over the last century, public administration has

borrowed from myriad disciplines including, but not

limited to political science, economics, psychology,

biology, sociology, and physics. This amazing tapestry

has led to some of the discipline’s most important

research. For example, nascent research in behavioral

public administration has borrowed heavily from

psychology and economics resulting in an outpouring

of scholarship. The inclusion of so many academic

disciplines outside of public administration in our

research streams is often compared to an umbrella,

where public administration is the canopy under

which fields and subfields continue to thrive.

In other words, the theme of inclusivity and

theoretical development go hand in hand in public

administration. Our current issue embodies this

theme, with contributions and symposia borrowing

from many disciplines in an effort to bring clarity

to information technology, performance, race and

civil rights, and gender equity. For us, as editors, this

issue provides a nostalgic look back over our last two

years’ work. Many miles were traveled, and emails

exchanged to move from discrete ideas to collections

of research articles focused around these increasingly

salient topics.

We begin this issue with two research articles.

Hansen and Tummers (2020) review 42 field

experiments in public administration to explore

how they have developed over time, trends in

field experiments, and issues to take into account,

including: costs, practicality, ethics, and validity.

They conclude with recommendations for authors

to consider in developing and conducting successful

field experiments. Next, Hong (2020) explores the

effectiveness of a central government regulatory

reform policy on actual local reductions in red tape

using a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity

design. Hong finds that local levels of red tape

were reduced significantly, but only among low-

performing localities, suggesting asymmetric responses

to performance information. The effect was clearest

among those localities most reliant on the central

government for resources.

We next take up the first of four symposia (three

research, one Viewpoint) appearing in this issue.

Transformation of Government in the Era of Smart

Technology presents a collection of papers that

explore the increasing role of technology in public

administration. Guest editors Soonhee Kim (KDI

School of Public Policy and Management), Kim

Normann Andersen (Copenhagen Business School),

and Jungwoo Lee (Yonsei University) called on

scholars around the world to contribute papers and

participate in a workshop in Copenhagen in Summer,

2019. Their dedication and support are clear from the

manuscripts included.

In recent years, information technology has proven

instrumental to many facets of public administration,

including: performance, security, employee rights, and

equity (Van den Berg et al. 2020; Xu and Tang 2020).

Indeed, having the right technology in place enables

improved communication and distribution of relevant

information across agencies and governments (Vogl et

al. 2020). For public managers, a greater appreciation

of technology is necessary for the effective delivery of

services. Moreover, a greater awareness of the benefits

of information technology has raised the expectations

of public employees, managers, customers, regulators,

and end-users or citizens. In the way of an example,

Whitford et al. (2020) confirm that the adoption

of advanced robotics technology in crime labs can

be explained by familiar factors including the push

of agency professionalism, the pull of agency task

environments, and resource capacity.

Another important IT related task is the management

of institutional knowledge. Public managers, as the

arbiters of organizational information, face increased

demand from stakeholders and thus play a vital role

The Umbrella Metaphor Editorial

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 80, Iss. 6, pp. 917–920. © 2020 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13319.

Jeremy L. Hall

University of Central Florida

R. Paul Battaglio

University of Texas at Dallas