In this article we examine the state of public management research, specifically focusing on the scope of research and variety of methodologies pursued in the field. We use a sample of manuscripts from three successive meetings of the Public Management Research Association to explore these issues. Our analysis is organized along four themes that have been central to public management's identity as a field of research: (1) the link between theory and practice; (2) focus on prescription and performance; (3) debate over empirical and nonempirical approaches; and (4) preferences for quantitative or qualitative data. We find that public management research has not yet bridged the gap between theory and practice, although substantive areas of research appear to reflect current trends in the public sector. There is moderate but slightly declining interest in performance. Empirical methods appear to be the norm, with an even mix of qualitative and quantitative data.
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Pitts et al. (2009) studied this question.