Purpose: This article provides a snapshot of several innovative and underused methodological approaches employed by scholars from across public management. Design/methodology/approach: A comparative review of methodological approaches to public management research is used. Findings: The authors...

Purpose: Public management researchers have successfully leveraged theory to advance the understanding of contracts and the different governance structures that underpin contract relationships. Yet there is still much to learn about the implications for different governance structures. Applying...

Employing a resource-dependence theoretical framework, we analyze a set of recently awarded contracts between the Environmental Protection Agency and various suppliers to determine how joint dependence, supplier dependence, and government dependence affect contract design, and specifically the...

There is widespread agreement on the value of competition in the delivery of public goods and services. In some markets competition is naturally limited and thus various mechanisms have been utilized to bolster competition, including franchise bidding and auctions. In this article, we examine...

The U.S. Congress created the small disadvantaged business (SDB) and women-owned small business (WOSB) programs to promote fairness in government contracting. In this study, we examine whether increases in racial and gender representation in federal agencies correlates with the proportion of...

Relying on transaction cost logic we consider the likelihood that contract duration and monitoring are jointly determined in 241 cable franchise renewal agreements. Results indicate that municipalities award longer contracts to larger cable companies with more asset specific investments, but...

What would a "smart government" look like? Political philosophers have spent entire careers trying to answer that question, which obviously implicates wide-ranging cultural and political values far beyond the purview of this paper. For purposes of the following discussion, however, the term...

What would a - smart government‖ look like? Political philosophers have spent entire careers trying to answer that question, which obviously implicates wide-ranging cultural and political values far beyond the purview of this paper. For purposes of the following discussion, however, the term -...