Reputation reform strategies in local government: investigating Denmark and Norway

This article investigates reputation reform in Norwegian and Danish local government and whether they have the same strategy content depending on the degree of administrative involvement and municipality size. Political and administrative actors are likely to cultivate different types of reputation strategies (place or organisational reputation), which explicitly embrace the potentially diverging interests cultivated by the two types of actors. We use a comparative design and quantitative method with an empirical ambition to explore local government reputation strategies in two national contexts. We find that local government responses to reputation reform depend on the size of the municipality and the type of actors involved; the larger the municipality, the more the administration is involved. And the more that administrative actors are involved, the more the strategies target organisational reputation. The country-specific factors do not appear to be the most important determinants for reputation reform strategies.     

The role of local government in rural communities: culture-based development strategies

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses local development and various governance strategies that local governments can use to engage actors in rural communities and resources from a broader environment to achieve desired socio-economic outcomes. We ask: How can local governance vary in rural communities? How can governance arrangements lead to contrasting socio-economic outcomes? Our conceptual framework combines a typology of local governance roles with socio-economic outcomes associated with neo-endogenous development theory. We explore culture-based development projects from three rural communities. We find that local governance strategies vary between relatively similar rural communities and that they represent compromises in terms of socio-economic outcomes. Local government in rural communities can act strategically through use of local networks. Local governance here is best understood as an emergent quality of the local context, history, institutions, culture, and, power relations. Therefore, governance strategies in rural contexts should be based on careful reflection on potential roles, trade-offs and desirable outcomes.     

Community involvement: a function of local government innovation

This paper discusses the implications of community involvement for the delivery of public services. It discusses exemplary case studies of community involvement in government, and provides an in-depth discussion of community participation in the affairs of the Engineering Traffic Division in San Diego, California. It finds a positive relationship between community involvement, and responsiveness, customer satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness.     

Is cooperation cost reducing? An analysis of public–public partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation in Brazilian local government

ABSTRACT

In local government systems worldwide, financial pressures have obliged local authorities to focus on cost-efficient methods for providing local services, including inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships. However, in comparison with municipal mergers, privatisation and other approaches to the problem, the cost impact of the cooperative provision has not yet been thoroughly examined empirically. Moreover, available empirical research has largely concentrated on waste disposal in developed countries. The present paper seeks to contribute to the empirical literature on inter-municipal agreements and public–public partnerships by comparing their impact on costs with ‘stand-alone’ provision in a range of non-waste local services. In contrast to the bulk of existing studies, our analysis takes place in a developing country context by examining Brazilian local government over the period 2013/15. We found that – on the whole – cooperative provision is less expensive than the ‘stand-alone’ provision for the services studied. Our results can be explained by the size and composition of the population, together with the politics for cooperation.     

Creativity in local government: Definition and determinants

In current thinking about public service improvement, civil servant creativity plays an important role. Using the results of 43 semi‐structured interviews, we assessed the degree to which our theoretical knowledge about creativity—based primarily on business research—matches the insights of managers in local government. Respondents considered employee creativity to be important, but—in contrast to the literature—understood creativity as the act of trying out new things to better deal with specific problems at hand instead of developing new ideas potentially applicable to a wider context. As such, respondents did not see creativity as the main precondition for innovation. In line with the literature, there is little consistency across respondents about individual‐ and context‐level determinants of creativity. Lastly, respondents put forward several factors that have received little attention in the literature but are particularly relevant in understanding differences in work‐related creativity in the context of local government.     

Occupational stress among professional local government managers: introspections and a prognosis

The area of stress research is broad and not well understood. Little is known about the ways in which workers cope with job related stress .This article explores this element of stress related behavior for local government managers. Among the most important findings are that local managers perceive their stress levels to be equal to or greater than many other professions often associated with high demand. It appears that local managers see other professional managers as facing increased levels of stress over the past decade. Managers also see their stress levels as equal to or greater than that of previous occupations or occupations they might wish to hold in th future. While age and length of experience appear to have little association with percieved levels of stress, increased education does appear to reduce such perceptions.     

Educating local government managers: a national survey of MPA programs

This article reports the findings of a national survey of masters degree programs in public administration. The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of efforts to educate local government managers. The findings suggest that programs with an overall focus on local government management or a specialized concentration are distinctly different from generalist programs. Furthermore, they indicate that internship programs may suffer from some serious shortcomings and that they may not offer an effective content supplement for generalist programs.     

The Audit Commission: guiding, steering and regulating local government

How does the non‐executant state ensure that its agents are fulfilling their obligations to deliver nationally determined policies? In the case of elected local government in England and Wales, this function is carried out by the Audit Commission (AC) for Local Authorities and the Health Service for England and Wales. Since being established in 1983, it is the means by which local authorities are held to account by central government, both for its own purposes and on behalf of other interested stakeholders. Although the primary function of the AC is to ensure that local authorities are fulfilling their obligations, it does so by using different methods. By acting as a regulator, an independent expert, an opinion former and a mediator, the AC steers local authorities to ensure that they are compliant with the regulatory regime and are implementing legislation properly.     

Walking the fiscal tightrope: local government budgeting and fiscal stress

This paper discusses the components of local government budget processes and their relationship to fiscal stress. While many cities and counties are suffering from stressful fiscal situations, leading in some cases to bankruptcy filings or other severe measures, their budgets have to be balanced, unlike the federal government and some state governments. Using survey data from a large number of jurisdictions, this paper shows how local governments have developed budget processes which respond to these changing fiscal situations. Governments use computers, collect and analyze many different types of information, and use budgetary information for other management purposes in order to improve productivity. Budget processes are providing good information to local government decision makers which is helping them respond constructively to the fiscal crises of the 1990s.     

Beyond privatisation and cost savings: alternatives for local government reform

Unsatisfactory results from privatisation have caused local governments to seek alternative reforms. Inter-municipal cooperation, mixed public/private delivery and contract reversals are three alternatives that have gained traction in the last decade. These alternatives help local governments manage markets for public service delivery as a dynamic process. They maximise government/market complementarities and address a wider array of public goals beyond cost efficiency concerns. The alternative reforms show how local governments balance citizen, labour and community interests to ensure efficiency, coordination and stability in public service delivery.     

Cultural policy,local government and museums: an Australian perspective

This article examines cultural policy developments affecting the Australian local government sector arguing for policy that directly addresses the operational needs of small to medium museums. Over a period spanning roughly three decades, national and state government involvement in ‘community’ cultural programmes has decreased, with local authorities assuming primary funding responsibility; a process I call the ‘municipalisation of culture’. The dual imperative for councils to provide dynamic cultural facilities while demonstrating prudent spending of ratepayer money has produced a challenging climate for local museums. Using the state of New South Wales as a case study, this article explores how this shifting cultural policy landscape, together with growing instrumentalisation of cultural programmes, has transformed the perceived context and purpose of museums in local government areas. It argues that the pressures of demonstrating impact across an array of public benefits in a restricted funding climate threatens the sustainability and meaningfulness of local museums.     

Local government reforms: between multifunction and single-purpose organisations

The paper argues that, in ‘revisiting’ the referred-to article published back in 2004, the concept then guiding the analysis would need to be modified particularly on three scores. For one, in order to achieve a more adequate comparison the country selection should be expanded beyond the earlier sample (UK, France, Germany and Sweden) to also capture Southern and Central Eastern European countries. Second, the ‘developmental’ (‘over time’) analysis of the pertinent institutional changes should be further accentuated and complemented by proceeding ‘by (developmental)stages’ instead of ‘country by country’. Third, while still deeming the distinction between ‘multifunction’ and ‘single-purpose’ organisations fruitful to guide a ‘government versus governance’ analysis and interpretation, the distinction between ‘political rationality’ and ‘economic rationality’ should be added with the former (ideal-typically) identified with elected (local) government and the latter seen characteristic of many of the actors in the governance-typical actor networks.