The nexus of public administration, public policy, and nonprofit studies: An empirical mapping of research topics and knowledge integration

Abstract

AbstractThe interdisciplinary fields of public administration (PA), public policy studies (PP), and nonprofit studies (nonprofit) all contribute to our understanding of public affairs, but the nature and extent of their knowledge integration are empirically unclear. The current study adapts Rafols and Meyer's framework for understanding interdisciplinary research integration and applies bibliometric and qualitative methods to analyze citation trends among PA, PP, and nonprofit journal articles published between 2009 and 2020. Our findings reveal that articles in PA and PP journals cite nonprofit journals at a low (but consistent) rate, while those in nonprofit journals cite their PA and PP counterparts more frequently. Using qualitative coding, we developed a taxonomy of 15 broad research categories at the nexus of the fields: three of these (collaboration, networks, and partnerships; public service provision; and financial management) were shown to integrate knowledge from PA/PP and nonprofits, while several others indicated the potential to do so.