What Organization Theorists and Public Policy Researchers Can Learn from One Another: Publicness Theory as a Case-in-Point

Abstract

I argue that organization theory and public policy studies, two field that share many common origins, have had surprisingly little cross-fertilization and that this state of affairs is both injurious and correctable. This paper (1) considers the costs and the foregone opportunities resulting from this mutual intellectual disregard, (2) presents an illustrative case to show the possibility of cross-fertilizing public policy and organization studies, and (3) suggests some general strategies to promote cross-fertilization between these two apparently related fields of inquiry. I provide a detailed illustration of the cross-fertilization of public policy and organization studies by recounting the history of “dimensional publicness theory,” a theory lens that, uncommonly, has been employed by both organization theorists and public policy scholars. I conclude with suggestions for promoting cross-fertilization between public policy studies and organization theory.