Introduction: Experiments in public management research

Introduction There is an emerging experimental approach to public management research that is reflected in a substantial increase in published studies using this method. Experimental studies are becoming more common across a broad range of topic areas in public management and, relatedly, public organisations and public services. This trend is, in part, a response to increasing recognition of the limitations of non-experimental, so-called observational, methods, including the analysis of surveys or administrative data. In many contexts observational methods risk providing ambiguous or even misleading evidence about causal relationships. In contrast, experiments of the kind we focus on in this book involve active interventions (sometimes termed treatments) by researchers, with randomly assigned treatment conditions to experimental subjects, accompanied by outcome measures, in order to produce more valid evidence about cause and effect. This book develops an approach to experimentation that recognises the distinctive set of issues about their use in public management as a discipline and area of professional practice. In pursuit of this goal, this book takes stock of the current emerging interest in public management experiments and associated debates about their proper role. It seeks to show how experimental methods can be most suitably advanced in a way that reflects the distinctive topic areas, interest in theories, research practices, and ambitions of public management as a discipline. In particular, public management aspires to be a design science, informing policy making and the practice of public management, and evidence from experimentation is especially useful in this regard. However, the practices and institutions of public management need to be modified in order to take advantage of the opportunities offered by experimentation and this book sets out some reforms in support of this agenda. Public management researchers develop and assess theory using different methods and present and discuss findings to build cumulative knowledge about public management topic areas. Looking at experiments in related disciplines is especially instructive because of public management's interdisciplinary characteristics, drawing as it does on management, political science, law, psychology, economics, and sociology. Some of the contemporary interest in experiments has been triggered by the use of the method in several of these disciplines.