This blog has been established to provide a different sort of forum for researchers in the field of “public management” or “public administration” to build knowledge through collaborative dialogue.
Traditional ways of developing knowledge – books, journals, conferences – are useful in their own ways, but they provide very limited opportunities for genuine debate and dialogue or sustained attempts to reach any consensus or at least delineate differences.
The “new media” – like blogs, wikis, email listservers, etc – provide much better ways of developing such dialogue and are not constrained by some of the limits of time, cost and location.
This blog is not intended, however, as a replacement for books, articles and conferences but as a useful addition, for those who want to use it.
SESSIONS: FOCUSSING ON TOPICS
“The Public Management Research Sessions” (PMRS) is intended, as the name implies, to have some structure. Initially we are going to try to have three or four semi-structured “sessions” a year focussing on a particular issue. These will hopefully be kicked off by contributions from a handful of leading scholars and then opened up for a wider discussion.
CROWD-SOURCING KNOWLEDGE
However, hopefully PMRS will also be a place where colleagues can seek answers and help from our wider community.
For example, following a controversy in the UK about how the public management side of our (new) Supreme Court works, I asked (via my WhitehalWatch blog and some listserves) for information about similar issues in other countries. Over a dozen colleagues responded with useful information, all of which is publicly available on the blog (see here).
So, if you want to use this community to ask for help – feel free. (But please note, queries will be moderated to prevent time-wasters, spammers, etc. and it’s not a vehicle for research students to get someone else to do their work for them!)
KEEPING UP
People who want to can keep up with the blog by signing up for email alerts.
SHAPING UP
Finally, how this proceeds is up to all those who want to contribute – so please comment on this initial post if you have ideas, suggestions and even criticisms about how this might work.
Colin Talbot
Manchester, April 2011
Interesting initiative. I like the idea of sessions, but perhaps require a little more organisation than we’re used to in the blogosphere? Maybe shouldn’t rule out the relevant single post? Anyway, good luck.
Hi Alex
not ruling out individual contributions/queries – just encouraging some semi-structured ones to start with. but thanks for the thought