Over the past few years, there has been a great effort from researchers to compile a critical assessment of scientific publications from several fields of knowledge. However, public sector management and social management have not been covered as much as other fields. In order to fill the gap, this article presents a framework of the scientific production in public management and social management based on data gathered from 549 papers published in the Enanpad proceedings between 2000 and 2005. The variables analyzed in each paper were: the number of authors per paper; the institution and state of origin of the authors; the ratio of theoretical and empirical papers; the method and research strategy used. It was found that the average number of authors per paper is growing. Most of these papers were categorized as 'theoretical-empirical'. Within the theoretical-empirical papers, approximately 67% were of qualitative nature, predominantly case studies (55,7%) as the main research method, although it can be suggested there is a growth of quantitative methods. Among the authors' institutions or origin, five can be highlighted as the most productive, responsible for approximately 50% of the papers published within that time-frame, and around 56% of the papers can be narrowed down to three states in the country.
public sector management; social management; research methodology; academic research; scientific production
