Working across boundaries
| Published date | 01 September 2012 |
| Author | John Diamond,Catherine Farrell |
| DOI | 10.1177/0144739412463220 |
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
Working across
boundaries: Rising to
the challenge
John Diamond and Catherine Farrell
Reclaiming the discipline?
We are aware that an important part of the dialogue within the public administration
community(ies) is informed by a preoccupation with how we define the discipline or
how others define it. To some extent we might be overreacting to the claim that the
discipline is in decline and that it has fallen out of fashion or favour. We accept that there
are ways in which we might measure the overall success or decline of the discipline by
reference to a whole battery of metrics including student numbers, success of specific
conferences or academic journals and the volume of activity associated with the journal
as counted by the research councils. While we are repeating old ground (our sister
journal Public Policy and Administration published a Special Issue on the ‘State of the
Discipline’ [27(3)]), we would want to argue that the growth in public management
(whether in the public sector/quasi public sector or the not-for-profit sector) globally is a
key and real indicator of the longevity of the discipline. Do these debates matter? And
are they not part of the inevitable debates/disputes within academic and research
communities?
We think that they do matter (and yes, they are part of the inevitable background of
professional/academic debate or rivalry). They matter because we do need to reassert
(from time to time) the connections between research, practice, and teaching and
learning. These debates matter (especially for those of us committed to and involved in
this journal) because they offer the context within which we can situate these discussions
and examine their ramifications precisely because they do bring together different
elements of the debate.
A core element in this conversation, we think, is the relationship between research,
practice, and teaching and learning. We think that the intellectual and pedagogical
framework within which we locate these debates does offer something more than a
Corresponding author:
John Diamond, Edge Hill University St.Helens Road Ormskirk Ormskirk, L39 4 QP United Kingdom. e-mail:
diamondj@edgehill.ac.uk
Teaching Public Administration
30(2) 73–75
ªThe Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0144739412463220
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