Symposia from Perspectives on Public Management and Governance (PPMG)
Perspectives on Public Management and Governance (PPMG) periodically publishes thematic special issues or sections of the journal called "symposium." On this page, we have curated a list of symposia published in PPMG since the journal’s inception.
Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century
Co-edited by Camilla Stivers, Leisha DeHart-DavisVolume 5, Issue 2, June 2022
PPMG issue 5(2) presents a special Symposium on Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century. This issue seeks to place Weberian bureaucracy in the context of contemporary public administration and evaluate its relevance to modern-day concerns.
Law and Governance
Co-edited by Chuck Epp, Ben Merriman, Rosemary O’Leary, Shannon PortilloVolume 4, Issue 2, June 2021
The 2020 Symposium issue of Perspectives on Public Management and Governance is focused on law and governance. The nine articles in this special issue are the result of a call for papers that generated dozens of abstracts, demonstrating the breadth and depth of current work on law and governance. With the evolution from government to governance, scholars have given renewed attention to the importance, complexity, and theoretical significance of legal approaches to public management.
Organizational Theory and Public Administration
Co-edited by Brint Milward and Andrew Whitford
Volume 3, Issue 2, June 2020
PPMG issue 3(2) presents a special Symposium on Organization Theory and Public Management, co-edited by Brint Milward and Andrew Whitford. The purpose of the symposium is to reinvigorate scholarly interest in organization theory and to highlight its past and potential contributions to public management research. The set of papers assembled in this symposium issue were first presented at an international workshop hosted by the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy in fall 2018. Invited contributors are recognized as preeminent scholars in public management and organizational theory. The papers emphasize both the contributions classical organization theory made and can still make to the study of public management, and how advances in public management scholarship in organizational networks and routines as well as a variety of new governance arrangements can provide cutting edge research to advance organizational theory.
Minnowbrook at 50
Co-edited by Julia L. Carboni and Tina Nabatchi
Volume 2 , Issue 4, December 2019
The final 2019 issue of Perspectives on Public Management and Governance (PPMG) presents a set of papers stimulated by the 2018 gathering of public administration scholars to mark the 50th anniversary of the Minnowbrook conferences. The first Minnowbrook conference was initiated by Dwight Waldo in 1968 and has continued every 20 years since. Hosted by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, “Minnowbrook at 50” continues the rich tradition of producing fodder for theory building and debate in our field. The symposium papers respond to the critique of co-editors, Julia Carboni and Tina Nabatchi, that “at precisely the moment in which we confront serious political, economic, social, cultural and environmental challenges on a truly grand scale, the field of public administration seems reluctant (and perhaps incapable) of responding in a meaningful way.” Several papers tackle issues related to research in the field, including for example, scholarly relevance and barriers to practical application (AbouAssi et al.); the integration of multi-level analyses (Jilke et al.); the effects of western centricity and a need for geographic diversity in research (Beagles et al.); and aligning research with public problems through practitioner engagement (Carboni et al.). Other papers explore current challenges and issues in the field. For example, one paper asserts that public administration is now operating under an era of estrangement marked by public distrust, polarization and populism (Ventriss et al.). Another presents a “Social Equity Manifesto” to better develop social equity as a pillar of the field (Blessett et al.). A final paper addresses an increasingly salient topic—the impacts of artificial intelligence on public administration and administrative discretion (Young et al.). These papers, together with Nabatchi and Carboni’s recent IBM Center for the Business of Government report, “Assessing the Past and Future of Public Administration: Reflections from the Minnowbrook at 50 Conference,” not only provide a comprehensive overview of the conference, but also present provocative ideas and questions for the field of public administration.
Purpose-Oriented Networks: The Architecture of Complexity
Co-edited by Branda L Nowell and Patrick Kenis
Volume 2, Issue 3, December 2019
Perspectives on Public Management and Governance (PPMG) has published a mini-symposium issue entitled “Purpose-Oriented Networks: The Architecture of Complexity.” Co-edited by Patrick Kenis and Branda Nowell, the assembled papers provide a timely reflection on the current state of both research and theory of purpose-oriented networks in the public domain. The authors of the papers included in this symposium were among the attendees at a 2016 workshop on goal-directed networks at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, organized by Angel Saz-Carranza from ESADE and Jörg Raab from Tilburg University.
In their introductory essay, Nowell and Kenis introduce purpose-oriented networks and present an architecture of complexity for these networks that incorporates the operating context and the purpose orientation of a network, the emergent versus the purposively engineered network structures and processes, and the ambiguities in theorizing across multiple levels of analysis. Lemaire, Mannak, Ospina and Groenleer address ways to improve meta-synthesis by enhancing comparability and the synthesis of research outputs. Carboni, Saz-Carranza, Raab, and Isett offer a set of constitutive elements of purpose-oriented networks that distinguish them from other network forms. Finally, Berthod and Sergato build on process theory to extend beyond the conventional categorical and time limited thinking that has dominated much network research to explore the the origins, formation, maturation, and decline of networks.
