Public Management: Should It Strive to be Art, Science, or Engineering?
本文主张公共管理不应模仿自然科学范式，也不应被视为非科学的艺术，而应借鉴工程学中科学与艺术结合的特点，强调实践智慧与经验积累。
The study of public management ought not to attempt to imitate—as do many disciplines in the social sciences—the research paradigm of the natural sciences. But neither should public management be dismissed as merely an unscientific art. Rather, public management is, in many ways, a combination of science and art similar to engineering. Engineering shares some of the features of science; yet it is not merely the application of science. Science asks why. Engineering asks how. Scientists discover things. Engineers create things. Indeed, engineering is its own distinct field that often leads (rather than follows) science. After the engineers figure out how the scientists try to discover why. Moreover, in creating things, engineers must use both scientific equations and personal judgment based on the wisdom accumulated in their own professional repertoire. The role of engineering scholars is to understand this design process—this blend of science and art—in such a way as to help future engineers do their jobs. Scholars of engineering seek to learn how experienced, effective engineers produce better designs. Similarly, the task of scholars of public management is to help specify and codify, classify and disseminate, those activities of experienced, effective public managers that produce significant results.