It's About Time: Catching Method Up to Meaning—The Usefulness of Narrative Inquiry in Public Administration Research |
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| Authors: | Sonia M Ospina Jennifer Dodge |
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| Institution: | Sonia M. Ospina;is an associate professor of public management and policy and codirector of the Research Center for Leadership in Action at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University. Her research interests include organizational and management theory;leadership in public contexts;public management reform, governance, and collaborative problem solving in public service in the United States and Latin America;and diversity in public service and human resources management. E-mail: . Jennifer Dodge;is a research associate at the Research Center for Leadership in Action and a doctoral candidate at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. Her research interests include public and nonprofit management, leadership in public contexts, public participation in policy making in the United States, and environmental and antipoverty policy. E-mail: . |
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| Abstract: | As a form of interpretive research, narrative inquiry contributes to the pursuit of high-quality public administration scholarship, along with other forms of explanatory research that have dominated the field. In this article we discuss the unique features of narrative inquiry, review how this research orientation has been used in public administration, and use our experience with a national, multimodal, multiyear research project on social-change leadership in the United States to identify and illustrate the contributions of narrative inquiry to address two key issues in the field: the concern with good research and the aspiration to cultivate a meaningful connection between researchers and practitioners in the field. |
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