Public Works Management & Policy
Public Works Management & Policy examines the core questions of public policy and public management theory within the context of public works, broadly defined. Recent shifts away from government implementation, in the pure sense, toward governance models where cooperation, collaboration, networks, and coproduction are central to implementation and performance improvement now require us to take a broader scope that includes private enterprise, nonprofits, and citizens. At the same time, the problems we address no longer respect traditional organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. The world in which we operate is increasingly complex and global, and new problems emerge almost instantaneously. With intergovernmental, intersectoral, and cross-jurisdictional efforts becoming increasingly common, and with technological sophistication exploding onto the marketplace through new tools and approaches, the way the public sector produces results is rapidly evolving beyond our understanding.
These complexities create new challenges for those involved in the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of public works, from both public management and public policy perspectives. Elected officials are increasingly attuned to performance, and their tendency to “follow the science” has generated a compelling demand for evidence-based practice. Public Works Management & Policy is a core resource in producing and disseminating evidence about what works and why. Collectively, these changes provide opportunities to scholars who wish to contribute to theory and practice through their research. PWM&P articles provide clear conceptual contributions to the body of theory by which they are framed, and they offer evidence with a clear practical application to policymakers, practitioners, and invested stakeholders.
In today’s global technological society, information travels instantaneously and policy innovation is necessary to keep pace with technology. Sustainability has become a core, and technology has opened new opportunities and challenges. Collaboration across governments and sectors has become more complex, but continues to characterize implementation in these areas. Solutions now cross agency boundaries, jurisdictional boundaries, and even technological boundaries.
PWMP solicits relevant research from all subfields of public administration, including budgeting and finance, human resource management, performance management, policy change, policy analysis, and so on, provided it 1) connects to a core body of public administration or policy theory (See figure 1 below), and 2) is aligned substantively with the public works management focus of the journal.
Figure 1: The Impact ‘Sweet Spot’ for PWMP
The novel developments in technology and governance require a broad interpretation of public works management that includes traditional, novel, and hybrid foci. See the examples that follow:
Traditional Public Works Activities
- Transportation infrastructure, including: roads, bridges, ports, airports, rail, intermodal shipping, parks and recreation, and others.
- Utilities, including: water, sewer, waste management, telephone, cellular and internet availability and connectivity.
- Economic Development, including: industrial parks, urban redevelopment such as Tax Increment Finance Districts, or higher education capacity building
- Capital construction projects such as schools, libraries, prisons and jails, government offices, and military installations.
Novel Public Works Activities
- Advanced telecommunications, including fiber and satellite broadband internet connectivity for citizens, and for government agencies themselves.
- Artificial Intelligence, cloud-based programs, servers, and data mining.
- Autonomous implementation, autonomous decision making, and decision making by algorithm.
- Hybrid electric vehicle charging stations, service requirements, and associated recycling and disposal challenges.
- Space ports and commercial space travel
- Public safety and protection beyond human policing, such as technology utilized to support law enforcement, surveillance, and national security
- Border protection and enforcement, including systems to accommodate, support, and process migrants.
Hybrid Public Works Activities
- Emergency management and government resilience, which depend heavily on infrastructure planning, development, and utilization in emergencies, including priority restoration following disasters.
- New energy sources, such as solar and hydrogen
- Sustainability considerations
- Adapting traditional infrastructure to new uses, such as transportation corridors for electric cars or airport service infrastructure to sustainable aviation fuel.
Each of these topics is germane to PWMP’s focus, and when addressing core conceptual questions, is welcome to be submitted for consideration.
Relevant, Practical Scholarship
Public Works Management & Policy is publishes original analysis, research, and exemplary normative essays that contribute to public administration theory with a focus on substantive questions within the realm of public works and management. To that end, articles must be conceptually sound, empirically rigorous, and practically significant. The journal seeks to deliver value to both academic and practical audiences, while stimulating discourse on important questions around the world. Public Works Management & Policy is a source of evidence-based practice for practitioners and policymakers, as well as a resource for scholars in public administration and beyond.
While the pages of Public Works Management & Policy have always offered useful and valuable work on a wide range of topics, such as public infrastructure and the economy, infrastructure financing, engineering and project management, environmental planning and policy, performance and risk infrastructure, and public works legal issues, that scope is now much broader. The articles we are especially interested in publishing are those that address salient and timely questions about current and emerging problems, those that examine new and innovative forms of infrastructure and their use, adaptations of existing infrastructure to new uses, and the integration of infrastructure with the softer side of government—how it is used and how it affects governance for the better or for the worse. To that end, questions that explore the interaction between infrastructure and program and policy implementation are of particular interest; such as: 1) how novel technological infrastructure and traditional infrastructures come together to improve community resilience through emergency planning and preparedness initiatives, 2) how artificial intelligence can be utilized to analyze and predict demand for infrastructure to inform its scale and placement, or 3) how the installation of electric vehicle charging stations shapes consumer demand and facilitates sustainability goals. PWMP is most interested in articles that examine innovative approaches to novel problems while drawing from and expanding the corpus of theory that both supports and constrains our understanding of how things work and why.
Diverse, Interdisciplinary Scope
Public works infrastructure, and its management, is an inherently broad field, embracing many disciplines of study and encompassing varied areas of practice. Public Works Management & Policy encourages scholarship from public administration, public policy, public management, political science, economic development, urban planning and urban affairs, economics, sociology, public finance, engineering, environmental studies, and others. Scholarship that transcends these disciplinary boundaries or that provides interdisciplinary perspective is of special interest.
Comprehensive, Informative Features
To fully explore the field of public works, Public Works Management & Policy presents innovative, thought-provoking scholarship written in accessible language, and with direct relevance to practice and policy. All material appearing in PWMP is subjected to double-blind peer review. Features in Public Works Management & Policy are streamlined into two categories:
- Research Article
Research articles undergo a rigorous peer-review process to ensure concerns of contribution, reliability, and validity are addressed. These pieces provide objective analysis drawn from clear conceptual foundations and are situated clearly in the literature. These original analyses provide empirically rigorous testing of hypotheses that lead to clear conclusions with practical implications for policymaking and public management in the public works sphere.
- Viewpoint Article
Viewpoint articles undergo a lighter peer review process, typically with only two reviewers. These pieces are intended to capture salient commentary by prominent leaders, as well as research notes, studies with narrow questions and findings, agency evaluation reports, or compelling case studies with value for theory, practice, or pedagogy.
Aims and Scope:
PUBLIC WORKS MANAGEMENT & POLICY is a peer-reviewed journal providing cutting edge analysis on emerging issues in public works management and policy using core theories from public policy, public management, public administration, and related disciplines. PWMP solicits articles that not only offer practical significance to public works management, but that, in particular, contribute to the core body of theory from which the hypotheses are drawn. Public infrastructure, its planning, design, financing, and construction are all traditional foci; today, however, the journal addresses expanding forms of technological infrastructure, how infrastructure affects program implementation, and how infrastructure relates and contributes to broader societal goals such as resilience, sustainability, and social equity. PWMP seeks manuscripts that provide original research results to novel questions, that evaluate management innovations, evaluate infrastructure programs to provide evidence-based solutions, and use policy theory and policy analysis to explain programmatic evolution and performance over time. PWMP publishes rigorous research with practical value to policymakers and managers in an effort to improve our understanding of how to build, manage, and adapt infrastructure and public works to better meet emergent problems that will shape the future of governance, both globally and locally.
| Jeremy Hall | University of Central Florida, USA |
| Claire L. Felbinger | (In Memoriam) |
| Patrick C. Exmeyer | University of Louisville, USA |
| Tonya Thornton | Global Connective Center |
| Julius Nuzpekah | Mississippi State University, USA |
| Sarah Larson | Miami University, USA |
| Abdul-Akeem Sadiq | University of Central Florida, USA |
| Ratna Okhai | University of South Florida, USA |
| Nicola Belle | Sant'Anna Scuola Univeritaria Superiore Pisa, Italy |
| Karissa Bergene | George Mason University, USA |
| Eric Boyer | University of Texas at El Paso, USA |
| Paola Cantarelli | Sant'Anna Scuola Univeritaria Superiore Pisa, Italy |
| Carter Casady | University College London, UK |
| Can Chen | Georgia State University, USA |
| Timothy Colling | Michigan Technological University, USA |
| Alison Conway | City University of New York, USA |
| Joseph F. Coughlin | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA |
| Handley Donna | Southern Utah University, USA |
| Wendy Eaton | Indiana Wesleyan University, USA |
| Laurence Ferry | Durham University, UK |
| Luke Fowler | Boise State University, USA |
| Michael J. Garvin | Virginia Tech, USA |
| Nasir G. Gharaibeh | Texas A&M University, USA |
| Neil S. Grigg | Colorado State University, USA |
| Wendy Haynes | Bridgewater State University, USA |
| Naim Kapucu | University of Central Florida, USA |
| Tapio S. Katko | Tampere University of Technology, Finland |
| John Kiefer | University of New Orleans, USA |
| Jiseul Kim | University of Texas at Arlington, USA |
| Gordon Kingsley | Georgia Institute of Technology, USA |
| Joung Lee | American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officals, USA |
| Suzanne Leland | University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA |
| Daniel Mallinson | Penn State University, USA |
| Martin Mayer | University of North Carolina, Pembroke |
| Steven McCann | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia |
| Bruce McDonald | North Carolina State University, USA |
| Sue McNeil | University of Delaware, USA |
| Howell-Moroney Michael | University of Memphis, USA |
| Chad Miller | University of Southern Mississippi, USA |
| Kyle Shelton | University of Minnesota, USA |
| Stefan Verweij | University of Groningen, Netherlands |
| Yin Wang | Shanghai University of Finance & Economics, China |
| Daniel Xu | East Carolina University, USA |
| Wie Yusuf | Old Dominion University, USA |
| Fengxiu Zhang | George Mason University, USA |
Manuscript submission guidelines can be accessed on Sage Journals.