AN EXAMINATION OF EMERGENCY SERVICES RESEARCH IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION.

Henderson, Alexander C. ; Charbonneau, Etienne

INTRODUCTION

Emergencies, crises, and disasters have long captured the attention of public administration scholars. Responses to crises and disasters have been the subject an increasing amount of scholarly effort in the field, including examinations responses to natural disasters, terrorism, public health incidents, and other critical events (Comfort, Waugh, & Cigler, 2012). Much of this research has focused on intergovernmental, interorganizational, and networked organizational responses to incidents (Kiefer & Montjoy, 2006; McGuire & Silvia, 2007; Moynihan, 2008), the decisions of key emergency management officials and elected officials (Boin & t'Hart, 2003; Wise, 2006), and the role of communities and social capital in mitigation, planning, and response (Ganapati, 2012). This corpus of research provides critical insight into these large-scale incidents, and has made tangible contributions to both theory and practice. A related body of research examines responses to more "routine" or "everyday" emergencies (e.g., house fires, traffic accidents, and cardiac arrests) that occur with significantly greater frequency, yet are also much smaller in scale (Leonard & Howitt, 2007, 2009; Quarantelli, 2000). These incidents are, when viewed in the aggregate, as crucial as larger-scale incidents.

Both types of emergencies--disasters and more routine, everyday events--are alike in that they pose danger to life and property and require some type of response to remove hazards and reduce the effects of the incident. Both also necessarily require the collaborative efforts of first responders from varying public and private agencies and civil society, and are situated within a complex and multi-level policy context. Yet the responses to these incidents are intrinsically different. Issues of scope and impact of the event (i.e., location, magnitude, and duration), the needs of individuals affected, temporal considerations, training for responders, and the core tasks of emergency services providers are not uniform across large- and small-scale events (Leonard & Howitt, 2009; Quarantelli, 2000). Though much attention has focused on crises and disasters, the body of research in the field of public administration relating to the routine provision of emergency services is not as robust (Whelen, 1999). An appropriate understanding of these services is crucial, and must naturally take these differences in incident type into account.

The purpose of this article is to report on conceptual and empirical treatment of routine emergency services as published in public administration journals based in the United States (US) over a 15-year period from 1999 to 2013. These routine emergencies services, including policing, fire suppression and rescue, and emergency medical services, are crucial in their contribution both to broader societal and community stability and to the needs of individual citizens through the protection of lives and property. Indeed, these services have evolved to become core local government functions, representing in many cases a substantial portion of municipal budgets. Examining research in these service areas highlights the focal topics of scholarly inquiry, the methods used to study these services, and creates a foundation for future conceptual and empirical research. This study contributes to public administration literature by providing an exploration of the empirical character of this realm of routine emergency services, by highlighting trends and gaps in this body of research, and by encouraging future research that examines actual service provision in the service of theory building and testing.

This article will begin with a brief overview of past research examining crisis and disaster response emerging from the field of public administration. Next, key differences between responses to "routine" emergencies and crises and disasters will be outlined. Following this, the findings of a review of public administration journals will be reported, purposefully focusing on conceptual and empirical public administration research over a 15-year period as it relates to the routine provision of emergency services. Central findings include a substantive focus on policing and law enforcement (with fewer focusing on fire and emergency medical services), as well as research foci that include topics like human resources, organizational behavior, management, and professionalism. This body of existing research is largely exploratory in nature, and primarily uses quantitative data. Discussion and future considerations for public administration research will follow.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Crisis and Disaster Research

Research examining crises, disasters, public health incidents, and other large-scale emergencies has been a focus of scholarly research in academic public administration, with a number of core scholarly journals publishing both single articles and special issues on this topic. A 1985 special issue of Public Administration Review (PAR) focused on emergency management and the current and potential contributions of public administration scholarship (Bonser, 1985). This examination of emergency management has increased significantly over the last several decades, with a substantial increase in attention after the events of September 11 (th). Special issues of PAR were published in 2002 discussing the response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and a special issue in 2007 examined the failures in response to Hurricane Katrina.

Extant research has focused on varying levels and units of analysis, including networks (Koliba, Mills, & Zia, 2011), organizational response to large-scale events (Somers & Svara, 2009), and individual actors, including leaders and boundary spanners (Kapucu, 2006). For example, Kapucu and Van Wart (2008) examine the unique role of public sector agencies in responses. Waugh and Streib (2006) discussed concepts of leadership amid necessary collaborative activities, and Simo and Bies (2007) examined the role of nonprofits in the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Modern approaches to emergency management research also focus on understanding the complex interactions among networks of organizations and concomitant administrative capabilities like communication, coordination, collaboration, and control during these events (Comfort, 2007; Waugh & Streib, 2006). Comfort (2007), for example, focused on administrative response as a complex adaptive system that must take into account security and capacity in light of the resources, range, and limits of governmental capacity to adapt to the emerging threats. Likewise, Cigler (2007) emphasizes the necessity of taking a longer-term perspective in understanding crises and disasters, including a purposeful examination of the roles of individuals and institutions, the response capabilities of emergency management systems and broader governmental agencies, and the process of internalizing lessons learned. Not all emergency incidents are, however, alike. Unpacking central differences between routine emergencies and crises or disasters provides important context for this study.

Exploring Central Differences: Emergencies, Crises, and Disasters

Quarantelli (2000) draws distinctions between "everyday" emergencies and disasters, with the latter being characterized by a need to work with larger and more complex groups, different performance standards and norms of behavior, scripts for action, and a "closer" interface with the community (pp. 1-2). Likewise, Leonard and Howitt (2007, 2009) create the same distinction between "routine" emergencies and crises. Table 1 presents Leonard and Howitt's (2009) conceptualizations of these differences from routine ("Mode R") events to crises and disasters ("Mode C").

Incidents are characterized by differences in both preparation and individual behavior by front line personnel and leadership, and in organizational structures, with many of these characteristics existing across time in both preparation for and response to actual events. Responses to crises and disasters are unique. Thus, they are less frequently encountered, requiring some amount of adaptability, creativity, and improvisation, as well as cooperative activity and interface between organizations (and, more accurately, boundary-spanning personnel).

In contrast, routine events are more frequently encountered, have readily available cognitive scripts and expertise in execution, and allow for skill development and rapid execution via formal training and experiential education. Importantly, this does not indicate that routine responses are easy, unchallenging, and devoid of variance. Rather, these differences exist in contrast to the more substantial characteristics of crises and disasters. The central idea here is that the aggregated volume of routine emergency service incidents is worthy of investigation.

Extant Research in Routine Public Safety and Stock Taking Activities

Though research in other fields has examined routine public safety services (for example, Coulter, 1979; Bigley & Roberts, 1991; Weick, 1993), the body of extant research in the field of public administration focusing on those organizations and individuals who respond to everyday routine emergencies is relatively sparse. Examining and understanding the nature of past scholarly inquiry in a subset of an academic field is an important first step in framing current knowledge and establishing a foundation for future research. This type of activity is crucial in that it highlights and brings to the fore both a broader perspective of a subfield and coverage of particular topics (or lack thereof), as well as a narrower view in terms of specific types of contributions to knowledge.

To that end, this study adopts and reports on a "stocktaking" process of research examining routine emergency services in public administration literature. Stock-taking is a process by which a body of conceptual or empirical research in a specific field, journal, over a period of time is assessed on specific types and qualities of research. Inquiry of this nature is certainly not new, with previous efforts providing an overview the broader field of public administration (Bowman & Hajjar, 1978), a review of the content and nature of work published in public administration journals during a specific time period or examining and reflecting on the editorship of a particular scholar (Raadschelders & Lee, 2011; Stallings & Ferris, 1988; Terry, 2005), examining the specific topical areas including comparative public administration (Van Wart & Cayer, 1990), and in specific geographic regions (Henderson & Terry, 2014).

Of note, the present study focuses purposefully on the field of public administration. Other academic fields like sociology, psychology, criminal justice, and others have made substantive contributions to our understanding of both routine emergencies and crises, and those contributions are noteworthy. Indeed, stock taking activities examining routine emergency services research in those fields and other types of comprehensive review of literature are necessary and important. However, this article focuses intently on public administration research for two reasons. First, the field of public administration is intrinsically interdisciplinary. While other fields like criminal justice are also necessarily interdisciplinary, public administration is characterized both by this disciplinary inclusiveness and by a breadth of focus that includes many different types of public services. Second, this same breadth of focus on public services by the field of public administration brings forth questions of appropriateness and comprehensiveness of topical inquiry in an academic field. As a field that intently examines the processes and practices of providing of public services, it is necessary to examine the nature and extent of this inquiry into essential public services including these core routine emergency services providers.

RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA

This article examines the existing body of public administration research that addresses, in a purposeful and direct manner, organizations and individuals that provide "routine" emergency services. This paper employs a purposefully broad definition of public administration provided by Fitzpatrick et al. (2011), who highlight and include "... activities required to deliver public policies" in their similarly focused stock-taking paper (p. 823). Though research examining various types of emergencies and emergency services has appeared in public administration research for some time, a narrower, 15-year time period that includes calendar years 1999-2013 was established. This narrower period allows for the emergence of a substantive body of research and to also ensure that the research foci and methods are contemporary and reflect the current provision of services.

Journal and Article Selection

A list of scholarly journals was compiled from a number of sources with an aim of creating a comprehensive and inclusive body of academic research in the field of public administration. The initial list, composed of journals in both the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Social Sciences listings, the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and from previous stock-taking articles (Fitzpatrick et al., 2011; Van Wart & Cayer, 1990), was narrowed to include American-based journals, resulting in a final list of 28 journals. Though journals in other related or crosscutting fields may include articles on routine public services, and public administration scholars may publish outside their field, the focus of this study is only on those peer-reviewed periodicals identified as residing within the field of public administration.

A keyword search of all journals (see appendix for the full list of journals) returned a number of articles, which was refined according to several criteria. First, the list of articles generated by the keyword search was reduced to maintain the focus on the provision of routine services. Thus, studies that focused on the role of police, fire, and EMS agencies in crisis and disaster management and homeland security were excluded. Second, in a number of cases police, fire, and EMS were included in studies as part of a comprehensive examination of municipal service provision, often focusing concurrently on all local services. Though these studies shed light on important topics of function and service provision, the comprehensiveness suggests that the focus is on the entirety of local government functioning as opposed to a purposeful look at emergency services. Thus, articles that focused on a number of non-emergency municipal services were excluded as well. Third, given that emergency services are often characterized by fragmentation and differentiation of organizations and functions, a choice was made to focus only on routine police, fire, and EMS in an American context. Thus, articles in US-based journals that focused on police, fire, and EMS in other countries were removed from the final sample. Finally, this stock-taking article focuses on original scholarly articles, and excludes book reviews, article responses, and other types of commentary.

The final article listing is comprised of articles that explicitly and purposefully focus on the public administrative aspects of police, fire, and emergency medical services in an American context. The keyword search of journals returned a total of 93 articles from 19 journals in the 1999-2013 study timeframe.

Article Coding

Articles emerging from the keyword search were coded for several central factors that characterize and locate them within scholarly inquiry in public administration (Fitzpatrick et al., 2011; Van Wart & Cayer, 1990). These factors include the service focus (public, fire, emergency medical services, some combination of these, or paired with other public function), the focal topic of the research (e.g., organizational behavior, human resources, public budgeting and finance, and others), the purpose of the research (descriptive, exploratory, or explanatory/causal), and the genre of the research. The term "genre" is used by Fitzpatrick et al. (2011) to differentiate and categorize types of research, including formal research, "apparent research," and theoretical/conceptually focused research. "Apparent research" is used by Fitzpatrick et al. (2011) to label those studies that appear to be empirical in nature, but do not detail background or foundational research, data collection, analytical methods, and the connections between data and conclusions. Articles fitting with the "formal research" category were also coded for unit of analysis, sampling logic and sample size, and data collection sources and methods.

Article abstracts were reviewed for the content noted above and, if necessary, the entirety of the manuscript was reviewed until all items were coded. Any discrepancies in coding were resolved through discussion by both authors. The next section presents the findings of the coding and analysis of 93 articles on the routine provision of police, fire, and EMS.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Journals and Distribution of Articles

Of the 28 journals in the initial search, a total of 19 contained articles that focused purposefully on the routine provision of police, fire, or emergency medical services. Table 2 lists journal titles, the frequency with which articles appeared in each journal, and the percentage of the total articles included in this study. Two journals, including Public Administration Review (PAR), Public Personnel Management (PPM), contained 10 or more articles over the 15-year time frame, making up just under half of the total articles in this study. This is unsurprising given the status of PAR as a central journal of the field of public administration, and of PPM as focused on key aspects of emergency services service provision including management, performance, and human resources functions. Not surprisingly, a number of journals focused on issues of public administration closely related to local emergency and human services, performance, to the interface of administration and constituents, and on research included a number of articles that purposefully addressed these functional service areas.

Table 3 lists the scope of articles as focusing on a single service or on multiple emergency services. A majority of articles examined a single service, with an overwhelming amount (66%) focused on police services. This is not unexpected given the centrality of concepts of justice and law enforcement in government and the history of police services as a core public function. The single-service focus was also present, but in a much smaller amount, for fire services (9%) and EMS (5%). For example, single-service fire department research examined the varying costs of services and the impact of managerial decision-making (Donahue, 2004), hiring and job analysis (Roberts, 2010; Mueller & Belcher, 2000) and job satisfaction (Traut, Larsen, & Feimer, 2000) and commitment among volunteer firefighters (Lee & Olshfksi, 2002).

Single-service research in EMS examined topics like clinical protocol implementation (Henderson, 2013), and the use, creation, and support of performance indicators (Abrams, Moyer, & Dyer, 2013; Horan, McCabe, Burkhard, & Schooley, 2005). A total of 16 articles focused on some type of combination of emergency services, or of an emergency service and a related non-emergency front line service (e.g., welfare eligibility workers, teachers). Of those, several compared police services to non-emergency street-level human services (6%); examined a number of routine emergency services (police, fire, and EMS in a single municipal context, 4%); or, to a lesser extent, examined two interrelated emergency services in tandem (e.g., police and 9-1-1 dispatchers). Studies by Maranto and Wolf (2012) and Oberfield (2010) characterize the most frequently occurring comparative emergency/non-emergency studies, examining police officers and teachers and police officers and welfare eligibility workers, respectively.

Topical Focus

As noted previously, articles were often located in journals that examined concepts central to the provision of street-level human services, including those focused on employees, employee behavior, and interactions with citizens. Table 4 lists the topical focus of articles, and the number and percentage of articles in which that topic was a primary or secondary focus. These articles focused on a wide variety of subjects spanning core subject areas found in public administration research. These include related areas of human resources (38%) and organizational behavior (24%), citizen and community interactions, particularly in police services (23%), concepts of general public management (14%); professionalism and standards (14%); performance measurement (11%); and representative bureaucracy (11%). These themes are mainstays in the public administration literature. To that extent, emergency services are seen as functions that can be studied from familiar topical angles. We use a tentative tense here, as 93 articles in a 15-year span is relatively sparse. In mainstream American public administration, local government managers, federal department heads, and school district directors are studied more often than EMS workers, firefighters, and police officers.

Articles focusing on human resources and organizational behavior investigated a number of standard and narrower topics of interest. These include, for example, studies of bureaucratic job mobility and innovative human resources policies in police services (Teodoro, 2009); ethics training for police officers (Wyatt-Nichol & Franks, 2009); the use of personality tests (Barrett, Miguel, Hurd, Leuke, & Tan, 2003) and affirmative action (Allen, 2003) in law enforcement hiring; and an examination of the performance implications of voluntary and non-voluntary police officer turnover (Hur, 2012).

A number of studies focused on topics in the realm of organizational behavior, including job commitment among volunteer firefighters in a post-9/11 world (Lee & Olshfski, 2002); job satisfaction among firefighters and the link to service tenure (Traut, Larsen, & Feimer, 2000); police officer personality and size of communities (Surrette, Ebert, Willis, & Smallidge, 2003); and police officer socialization and concepts of the use of force (Oberfield, 2012). Examinations of community-citizen interactions were prevalent, especially in police services (for example, Orr & West, 2007), as were examinations of representative bureaucracy and racial profiling (Wilkins & Williams, 2009). General concepts of management were numerous, including discussion of managerial capacity in police services (Jones, 2008), resource utilization and location and scheduling of personnel in the field (Barnum, 2011), and the use of performance information systems in EMS (Horan, McCabe, Burkhard, & Schooley, 2005). Articles examining professionalism and standards (Hughes & Teodoro, 2013), performance measurement and social equity (Charbonneau, Riccucci, Van Ryzin, & Holzer, 2009), and the creation of shared services (Carrizales, Melitski, & Schwester, 2010) in policing are also representative.

Genre, Methods, and Purpose of Routine Emergency Services Articles

A vast majority (78%) of the 93 articles in the final sample were formal research articles, with a clearly defined research question, purpose, fully developed methods section, and clear connections between data and conclusions (see table 5). Just over 13% were conceptual or theoretical in nature, with a single study explicitly aimed at theory building. A still significant amount of articles (8%) were categorized as "apparent research." A majority of the formal research articles used quantitative methods (64%), while just under a quarter used qualitative methods (21%) or employed a mixed methods strategy (15%). Just over four out of five articles were exploratory in nature (81%), which is not surprising given the overall lack of coverage of these functional areas in public administration literature and concomitant lack of theory building that would allow for the creation of more ambitious explanatory or causal research, which accounted for 15% of the articles found here. A significantly smaller number (4%) were descriptive in nature. As also noted previously in table 3, much of the research examining routine emergency services is focused on policing. Access to front line public servants, particularly police officers, can be relatively difficult to secure. This may explain in part why much of the research relies on quantitative instead of qualitative data.

Of the total body of articles, 73 (78%) were empirically oriented and contained information on the unit of analysis, sampling logic, and final sample size (see table 6). Not surprisingly, the most popular units of analysis were at the individual (48%) and organizational levels (25%), followed by the city level (11%) and focused incidents or events (7%). These units of analysis are closely matched with the topics of papers focused on individual behavior during incidents, direct interactions with the community, and topics related to general management, human resources management, performance, and representative bureaucracy. A vast majority of articles were focused purposively theoretically interesting groups or individuals (48%), or on full (and narrowly defined) populations of emergency services providers (37%). Randomly selected (12%) and convenience samples (1%) were more rarely found. Final sample sizes were generally found in the lower ranges (1-9, 18%; 10-99, 33%; 100-999, 36%), while 8% were focused on samples greater than 1,000.

Table 7 provides detail on sources of data and data collection methods used in these studies. By far the most frequently tapped data source was government officials (67%), followed by the use of data and archives from public service organizations (38%). Data from other sources, including citizens (11%), previous research (5%), and others were used with less frequency, and in most cases were used to support or triangulate with data collection from officials and organizational documents. Closely related to this, data were most frequently collected via the use of existing documents or secondary data (47%), or through use of surveys (40%). Fewer articles relied on direct evidence from public safety officials via semi-structured interviews (23%), observations (7%), focus groups (3%), or structured interviews (1%).

Viewed in a broader context, the existing body of literature devoted to routine emergency services is relatively sparse, with most research focusing on policing and law enforcement. The notable paucity of research is especially apparent in the functional areas of fire and emergency medical services. Of the published articles examining routine emergency services, the vast majority of topics covered are not unique to these service areas. Rather, they constitute core topics found in examinations of federal, state, and local agencies that provide services of a non-emergency nature. However, other additional topics covered were more concretely central to front-line public services, including community interactions, representative bureaucracy, and rule following. Though these studies appeared with some frequency, there is significant room for future research that focuses on contemporary issues in street-level emergency services.

Empirical research was most prevalent, with a handful of conceptual papers found during the study period. Of the empirical research, most were exploratory in nature, with a significant number using existing quantitative data gathered at the individual- or organizational-level. Related to this, as the topics in many of the articles were not unique to emergency services, they employed tested theoretical frameworks or explored these services via well-honed methodological and analytical techniques. Interestingly, only a small number of studies employed interviews, focus groups, or observations to collect data from service providers.

Sources of data were most the individual service providers or existing organizational data. Remarkably, only a small portion of the studies used data collection directly from citizens. As direct service recipients, often in times of great distress, the attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of citizens are important to the provision of these services and should be a focus of future studies. These findings present related opportunities for shaping future research in this area of inquiry.

Framing Future Research

This study provides broad direction in shaping future research that begins to address "big questions" for routine emergency services. First, though a substantive body of research examining police work exists in a number of fields (due to the intrinsic connections between the purpose of the state and enforcement of laws and concepts of justice), the lack of conceptual and empirical research examining the provision of routine fire and emergency medical services points to an area open to substantive and focused investigation. Though "younger" services as compared with law enforcement, both fire and emergency medical services have evolved and emerged as key local government functions. This would suggest that new research emerging from the field of public administration could play a particularly important role in shaping practice.

Second, the results of this study suggest that future research can be tailored to move beyond exploration to theory building and testing activities. In essence, this represents an opportunity for shaping the first steps of future inquiry examining these services. Areas of inquiry that are more closely related to service provision in routine emergency services may initially benefit from the use of hypothesis-generating qualitative or comprehensive case-based research, followed by the creation of more robust theories and testing using broader populations and quantitative data. This would allow for movement beyond exploratory studies into explanatory research that includes more sources of data. This also suggests that mixed methods research may be particularly useful here. Likewise, experimental research, though particularly difficult in highly situationally contingent emergency response activities, hold significant promise as a means of testing theories and making substantive contributions to practice. And, as is apparent here, future research can be intently focused on the actual provision of services. Research that focuses on the behaviors, tasks, and outcomes of individual and group behavior during routine emergencies is critical in improving knowledge and practice.

Third, given the other fields of study that have an equally strong interest in these services, including sociology, psychology, clinical health care, public health, operations research, and others, the necessity of collaborative research with other academic fields of study also emerges here. The field of public administration can play a central coordinating role in those efforts by fostering connections among fields of study and theoretical perspectives, epistemic traditions, and related modes of inquiry, and by operationalizing findings from other disciplines into actionable knowledge. Indeed, the cross-cutting nature and comprehensiveness of public administration research in areas of program evaluation, performance measurement and management, organizational behavior, networks, and related topics may serve to bring together theories and concepts from other disciplines in such a way that practical gains become reality.

Interestingly, the tangible and substantively important differences in preparation and response to different types of emergencies that created the impetus for this study also serve to shape future research. Public servants who respond to routine emergencies are also the first line of response to crises and disasters; the responsibilities, tasks, behaviors, and goals of these individuals may shift from one incident type to another, and thus scholars must be attentive to the varying roles that individuals play. Related to this, more comprehensive and focused examinations of the cross-response effects of the two broadly different types of responses (routine versus crisis/disaster) may prove fruitful. The strengths of greatly standardized cognition and behavior in routine responses may be a weakness in a crisis or disaster and, likewise, abilities to be creative and innovative in crises and disasters may help with those occasional encounters in the provision of routine services that deviate from the norm. On the other hand, the usefulness of understanding schemas that work well in routine response may be helpful in training and developing emergency managers and front line workers for disaster situations. Though these issues have previously been addressed in a rather broad manner (c.f., Leonard & Howitt, 2007), we would suggest that more focused research is necessary.

Fourth, we observe a disconnect between the special status of emergency workers within public service, and the coverage they receive in American public administration literature. There are many worthy ways to serve the public. Without diminishing the contribution of public servants serving in office towers, the examples showcased in the introductory textbooks (e.g., comparing firefighters to Spartans in Shafritz, Russell & Borick 2009, p.1) about the ethos of the public service are often serving in caserns, police station, or barracks. Yet, relatively few public administration scholars focus their attention on studying emergency workers and managers.

Of note, a number of resources necessary fell outside the scope of this study, and future research should also be attentive to the broader scholarly realm. As noted previously, this could include assessment of other characteristics of research, such as total share of published articles in journals, and an expansion of the review to include journals located outside of the US and those not listed in SSCI and JCR. Opportunities for future research and interactions with practitioners are plentiful, and the potential for impacting public service provision is great. Though the breadth of this study does not allow for the creation of specific lines of research, it does provide a basis and motivation for the creation of such strategies and foci.

Limitations

Several limitations of this study are worthy of mention. First, this research examines only peer-reviewed articles published in academic public administration journals over a 15-year time period. Though this body of published research is important in how we understand and characterize our knowledge of these functional areas, it does not represent a full picture of either theory or practice of police, fire, or emergency medical services. Research appearing outside of the study timeframe (before 1999 and since 2013); in other scholarly outlets like books, monographs, reports, and other media; and in other scholarly fields may contain equally important, insightful, and substantive research that may shape our knowledge of both theory and practice of providing routine emergency services. Related to this, research appearing in journals located outside of the US was not included. These scholarly outlets undoubtedly include rigorous research in this area of inquiry, and targeted examinations of emergency response should be reviewed in a similar manner.

Second, due to the nature of this research as providing a broad overview of more than decade and a half of published research from a significant number of journals, it is not possible to analyze and synthesize the content of each of the 93 articles with the requisite depth. The importance of the services provided, and the rigor of the scholarship covered here, demands more in-depth analysis and integration in the service of building a more comprehensive research agenda. This task is left to future scholarly work focusing on these service areas. These limitations are, however, acceptable given the purpose of this study.

CONCLUSION

Routine police, fire, and emergency medical services constitute a central and tremendously important area of public service worthy of focused and purposeful research. Though other fields of scholarly inquiry have contributed to our understanding of these services from their own distinct theoretical and methodological positions, the field of public administration has not yet done so in a comprehensive and purposeful manner. Recently, Lee (2013, 549-550) noted that the field of public administration focuses on generalist government managers, even if few managers are truly generalists and, as a result, "... over the years, less and less of the spectrum of government seemed to be under public administration's microscope" (Lee 2013, 550). Studying police officers, firefighters, and EMS providers is one way for public administration to claim back the study of important aspects of the state's mission. This represents an area of study ripe for future research in that public administration scholars have both a vested interest in these services and the ability to make substantial contributions to theory and practice. The purpose of this research was to investigate extant contemporary public administration research that focuses on these services, and to spur future empirical efforts. The potential benefits of research for service recipients, practitioners, and the scholarly field are worthy of this attention.

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Appendix Table 8. Listing of All Journals Included in Keyword Search Administration & Society Administrative Sciences Quarterly Administrative Theory and Praxis American Journal of Political Science American Political Science Review American Review of Public Administration Contemporary Economic Policy Governance International Public Management Journal Journal of Policy Analysis and Management Journal of Accounting and Public Policy Journal of Health and Human Services Administration Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory Journal of Public Affairs Education Nonprofit Management and Leadership Philosophy & Public Affairs Policy Studies Journal Public Administration Quarterly Public Administration Review Public Budgeting and Finance Public Integrity Public Performance and Management Review Public Personnel Management Public Works Management and Policy Review of Policy Research Review of Public Personnel Administration State and Local Government Review

ALEXANDER C. HENDERSON

Long Island University

ETIENNE CHARBONNEAU

Ecole nationale d'administration publique Table 1 Comparison of Response Modes for Routine Emergencies and Crises/Disasters Response Mode Characteristics Mode R (routine Mode C (crises and emergencies) disasters) Situational High Low, openness to novelty expertise Decision making Rapid and Cognitively driven, recognition-primed analytical Scripts Comprehensive Unavailable Customization Modest Extensive Skills required Well-defined, highly Incompletely specified, developed creativity is important Leadership Trained, practiced, Adaptive, shared authority, selected for prior innovative performance Command presence Authority-based, Muted, oriented to directive collaboration Organizational Hierarchical Flattened for solutions; structure hierarchical for execution Execution Precision through Fault-tolerant to account for repeated application improvisation Source: Adapted from Leonard & Howitt (2009) Table 2 Journals and Frequencies of Articles on Routine Police/Fire/EMS Name Number Percentage Public Administration Review 20 22% Public Personnel Management 15 16% Public Performance and 9 10% Management Review Administration & Society 6 6% Journal of Public 7 8% Administration Research and Theory State & Local 6 6% Government Review Urban Affairs Review 5 5% Review of Public 4 4% Personnel Administration Public Administration 3 3% Quarterly Journal of Health and 3 3% Human Services Administration Journal of Public 2 2% Affairs Education Public Budgeting 2 2% and Finance Public Integrity 2 2% Administrative 2 2% Theory & Praxis Journal of Policy 2 2% Analysis and Management Journal of Homeland 2 2% Security and Emergency Management American Journal of 1 1% Political Science Policy Studies Journal 1 1% The American 1 1% Review of Public Administration Note: n = 93 Table 3 Scope and Focus of Articles on Routine Police/Fire/EMS Scope of the Article - Single Number Percentage Police 63 66% Fire 9 9% Emergency Medical Services 5 5% Scope of the Article - Multiple Number Percentage Police / Other Non-Emergency Service 5 6% Police / Fire / EMS (Full Municipality) 3 4% Police / Other Law Enforcement 2 3% Police / Fire / EMS 1 1% Police / Fire 1 1% Police / Fire / 911 Personnel 1 1% EMS / 911 Personnel 1 1% Police / 911 Personnel 1 1% Fire / Other Non-Emergency Service 1 1% Note: n = 93 Table 4 Subject Focus of Articles on Police / Fire /EMS in Public Administration Journals Subject Number Percentage Human Resources 35 38% Organizational Behavior 22 24% Citizen / Community 21 23% Interactions and Perceptions Management 13 14% Professionalism / Standards / Accreditation 13 14% Performance Measurement 10 11% Representative Bureaucracy 10 11% Collaboration / Intergovernmental 9 10% Relations / Shared Services Rule / Policy Implementation 8 9% or Enforcement Public Budgeting and Finance 6 6% Ethics / Corruption 6 6% Social Equity 5 5% Use of Social Media / Technology 4 4% Service Innovativeness and 3 3% Organizational Change Accountability / Trust 2 2% Note: Articles were coded for up to two topics each; percentage column reflects the number of articles exploring this topic out of the total number of articles included in the study and thus adds to more than 100% Table 5 Genre, Methods, and Purpose of Articles on Routine Police /Fire / EMS Genre Number Percentage Research 73 78% Conceptual 12 13% Apparent Research 7 8% Conceptual / Theory-Building 1 1% Methods Number Percentage Quantitative 47 64% Qualitative 15 21% Mixed 11 15% Purpose Number Percentage Exploratory 59 81% Explanatory / Causal 11 15% Descriptive 3 4% Note: n = 73 for the methods and purposes subsections of this table Table 6 Unit of Analysis, Sampling Logic, and Sample Size for Empirical Articles Unit of Analysis Number Percentage Individual 35 48% Subunit / Functional Division 3 4% Organization 18 25% City 8 11% County 1 1% Network / System 2 3% Incident / Event 5 7% Multiple 1 1% Sampling Logic Number Percentage Purposive 35 48% Population 27 37% Random 9 12% Not identified 1 1% Convenience 1 1% Sample Size Number Percentage 1 to 9 13 18% 10 to 99 24 33% 100 to 999 26 36% 1,000 to 9,999 4 5% 10,000 + 2 3% Multiple 6 8% Note: n = 73 Table 7. Data Sources and Data Collection Methods for Empirical Articles Data Sources Number Percentage Government Officials 49 67% Internal Organizational Data 28 38% Citizens 8 11% Data from Previous Research 4 5% Online Sources 2 3% Media 1 1% Other Officials 1 1% Data Collection Methods Number Percentage Existing / Secondary Data 34 47% Survey 29 40% Semi-Structured Interviews 17 23% Observation 5 7% Focus Groups 2 3% Structured Interviews 1 1% Note: Articles were coded for up to two types of data sources and data collection methods each; percentage column reflects the number of articles employing this type of data or data collection method out of the total number of research articles included in the study and thus adds to more than 100%