Two ships passing in the night? Practice and academia in public management

Abstract

The article investigates the divide between research and practice in public management. The article does not discuss the advice-giving role of academia which has been dealt with by other authors. Instead, it focuses on gaining an understanding of its core business: research and teaching. The views of senior academics and practitioners, along with an analysis of secondary data and a review of the literature on knowledge production and collaborative research, provide answers for ways forward.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the help and support from many colleagues in developing the ideas presented in this article. In particular Morten Huse, Marco Meneguzzo and Riccardo Mussari, the Academy of Management conference's four anonymous reviewers, and Public Money & Management's two anonymous reviewers. Special thanks to the 38 key informants, a vital source of evidence in this article, for their valuable insights.

Notes

* Providing a place for academics and practitioners to work together was one of the reasons that Public Money & Management was launched in 1981 (Terry, 2004). More recently, other journals have explored this topic, although none has focused specifically on public management: for example the Journal of Management Studies (2009, 46, 3), the Academy of Management Journal (2001, 44, 2) and the British Journal of Management (2001 special issue).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Denita Cepiku

Denita Cepiku is Assistant Professor in the Department of Business Studies, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy.