The Journal of Public Administration Research

and Theory and the Public Management

Research Association
H. Brinton Milward
President, Public Management Research Association

The Public Management Research Association is pleased that the Journal of Public Admin-
istration Research and Theory is the official journal of PMRA. The association between
PMRA, JPART, and Oxford University Press promises to be an excellent partnership that
will help raise public management research to a very high level.
For the past eleven years, leading universities including Indiana, Texas A&M, Georgia,
Kansas, Wisconsin at Madison, and Syracuse have hosted the National Public Management
Research Conference (NPMRC). The next NPMRC will be held at Georgetown University
in the fall of 2003. These conferences provide a base and focus for public management
research. Four books have been published consisting of papers presented at the conferences,
and leading journals, JPART foremost among them, have published articles and symposia
from the conference papers. By the time of the NPMRC meeting in Bloomington in 2001,
it was clear that these conferences had created, using Diana Crane’s words, “an invisible col-
lege” of public management researchers. At this meeting the invisible college expressed the
need for its own organization, and PMRA is the result.
PMRA in no sense views itself as exclusionary. We welcome scholars who are inter-
ested in public management, no matter how they define themselves. We know our mem-
bers will and should continue to belong to and present papers at other public-sector organ-
izations like ASPA, APPAM, APSA, and the Academy of Management. What we hope to
provide is a home for research that is explicitly focused on issues related to public man-
agement, recognizing that public management occurs not just in government but also in
nonprofit organizations and private firms operating with taxpayer dollars.
By becoming a member of PMRA you receive a discounted subscription to JPART.
We hope that you will join us and think of JPART when you are submitting papers to jour-
nals. We also invite you to join us at the 2003 National Public Management Research Con-
ference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.