How Does a Seminal Article in Public Administration Diffuse and Influence the Field? Bibliometric Methods and the Case of Hood's 'A Public Management for All Seasons?'

Bibliographic methods offer an advanced microscope-like tool to probe specific fields of inquiry. In this article, we use these methodological tools to demonstrate how a seminal article diffused and influenced the intellectual structure of the public administration (PA) field. We do this by conducting citation (breadth and depth), co-citation (relationships between citing authors and journals) and citation network analysis (network of the most-cited authors citing the focal article) of Hood's 1991 article “A Public Management for All Seasons?” The findings from the citation analysis of the 949 Hood citing articles in the Web of Science suggest that Hood is typically studied within PA. Co-citation and citation network analysis points to continuity of themes and topics examined but also identifies departures, divergences, alternate timeframes and geographical associations that differ from Hood's challenges and commentary on the evolution of the field. The extensive opportunities that bibliometric analysis presents for the discipline are discussed