Disciplinary limits and possibilities of public administration and organizational studies

This paper aims to analyze the limits of the unidisciplinary approach to public administration and organizational studies and the development of the inter-, multi-and transdisciplinary approaches in the field. The adopted methodological strategy is structured in two stages. The first consists of a theoretical analysis of the subject in which discipline is conceptualized, the advantages and the limitations of uni-, inter-, multi-and transdisciplinary approaches are theoretically explored, and an analysis of the fields of public administration and organizational studies is carried out. The second stage consists of an empirical study in which the advantages and the limitations of the uni-, inter-, multi-and transdisciplinary approaches are investigated. The empirical study is conducted in the divisions of Public Administration and Social Management, and Organizational Studies of the National Association of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Admnistration Meeting (EnANPAD). It can be concluded that these EnANPAD divisions prioritize, with some difficulty, the unidisciplinary approach, and present inter-and multidisciplinary approaches without systematization. Thus, the divisions are unable to benefit from possibilities or overcome limitations of the various approaches to disciplinarity.