Opening the “black box” of public administration: The need for interpretive research

Abstract

Important research questions in public administration and management cannot be studied through the scientific method. A fundamental example is how public administrators utilize their discretion and judgment in their everyday work. Inquiring into the process of administrative practice has been characterized as “opening the black box” of public administration and policy implementation—that is, how people in public administration and management situations do what they do. This paper argues that expanding the menu of worthwhile research approaches from quantitative empiricism, the current “gold standard” in public administration, to include interpretivism makes it possible to view inside the black box of administrative process. After a brief narrative describing how the field lost the balance between quantitative and interpretive approaches it once had, the discussion lays out the philosophical grounding and methodology of interpretive research and offers phenomenology as illustration of how such an expansion will benefit both administrative theory and practice.