Approaches in the study of public administration: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The relevance of Public Administration research has been recognized in several studies. The current paper addresses a bibliometric study on Public Administration research, with a particular concern about finding studies of e-government implementation on the justice system. Citation, co-citation, and factorial analyses were applied on a sample of 613 articles published in eight high quality journals. Factorial, content and co-citation analyses were coherent in classifying the 51 most cited works into four subfields of research: Public Sector Motivation, Decision-making and Management, E-government, and Management Theory. The results of content analysis suggest that the documents analyzed were mostly conceived in the United States to be applied in the executive branch of government. Thus, in emerging economies there seems to be a need to develop Public Administration research. It also seems reasonable to study e-government implementation on the justice system independently from applications in the executive power.