The Experimental Turn in Public Management: How Methodological Preferences Drive Substantive Choices

In their search for empirical credibility, public management researchers may search for topics that lend themselves more easily to experimental methods. This chapter looks at how the use of the experimental method may change the questions asked in the field of public management. Possible consequences are a focus on discrete interventions and marginal changes, and a shift away from studying public organisations themselves to a study of the behavior of individuals within these organisations. The chapter shows how methodological preferences may drive substantive research choices. The chapter first discusses different reasons why experiments have become popular in public administration, including a search for credibility, fashion, and custom. It then shows how the choice of an experimental approach influences what topics or questions are studied, and how they are studied. Subsequently, a number of implications for the future of experimental research in the field of public management are outlined including the need for enhancing experimental realism, ethical challenges, replication needs, a possible move to formal modelling, and changes in publication practice.