The Journal of Public Administration is a platform for interrogating epistemological, methodological, axiological, ontological and rhetorical issues and reflections. However, as Wessels (2014) has argued, issues and reflections in public administration still have research methodological implications. This is because, more generally, social scientists consider science ‘not so much what we know as how we know it’ (Babbie, 2001). Therefore, Bless and Higson-Smith (1995) have pointed out the need to outline research procedures and methods applied in acquiring scientific knowledge.