Research and Publications

How Might Local Governments See Indicators of Human Trafficking Through Traveling Sales Crews?

This handout provides basic information about the dynamics and indicators of labor trafficking through traveling sales crews.  Post-natural disaster clean-up crews operate in a similar way.

Public Management Bulletin #18

This bulletin explores the unique opportunities that local governments have to prevent, identify, and/or intervene is the sex and labor trafficking of youth in our communities.

Ten Questions about Local Governments: A Primer for Anti–Human Trafficking Advocates

Similar to most U.S. citizens, community advocates working to prevent or respond to human trafficking are likely to be mis- or uninformed about governmental functions, responsibilities, and lines of authority. That is understandable, given how complex and intertwined local, state, and federal programs and services can be.

Law enforcement agencies and departments of social services are two governmental departments likely to be involved in direct intervention efforts with victims of trafficking. People in other departments can play key roles as well, not only in identifying potential indicators of trafficking or in contributing services that enable the long-term recovery of victims, but also in informing or supporting change efforts.

The purpose of this publication is to provide anti–human trafficking advocates basic guidance in navigating city and county governments. Few answers would apply to all jurisdictions about who to contact with questions, or how processes work. Instead, this publication provides generic answers to beginning inquiries to help community advocates better understand government roles, functions, or procedures.

Property Tax Officials Can Help Recognize Human-Trafficking Indicators

Property tax officials, like many other local government staff in different roles, have professional reasons to visit homes, businesses, and construction sites every day. Their work positions them to see indicators of sex and labor trafficking in the communities they serve. This article will address what human trafficking is, what it looks like in our communities, how property tax officials can recognize the indicators of human trafficking, and how they should respond if they see those indicators.

It may be rare to see indicators of human trafficking, but the crime is serious enough to warrant building awareness among local government staff. The inspiration for this article came from a county tax-office appraiser who attended a training session about human trafficking and described inspecting a large home that had a basement filled with bunk beds. The beds did not appear to be for the benefit of visiting grandchildren.

Exploring the Intersections between Local Governments and Human Trafficking: The Local Government Focus Group Project

This completes a series of three Public Management Bulletins (PMB) by Margaret F. Henderson addressing the increasingly prevalent problem of human trafficking in North Carolina. PMB No. 12 introduces the issue and provides global as well as local context for its growth, while PMB No. 14 explains how government works at the local, state, and national levels and offers advice to community advocates on how to seek help from local government officials in addressing the issue. This bulletin focuses on the business models (or strategies) traffickers use to manage their human trafficking enterprises and reports on focus group discussions with local government officials to determine how greater awareness of these models and their various signs within the community might be incorporated into their daily work.

The Basic Information about Human Trafficking

Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion by one person to compel another person to perform a profitable labor or sex act. Victims can be adults or children, foreign or domestic born. The trafficking can involve purely labor, purely commercial sex, or a blend of both.

To employ a common description, human trafficking is something that often is “hidden in plain sight” in our communities. Whereas Hollywood regularly employs imagery of physical restraints and kidnapping, the reality is that the indicators of trafficking can be much more subtle and situational. Appendix A shares some indicators that might be visible to outsiders. Given that trafficking takes many different forms, the indicators will vary depending on the situations and people involved.

Local government leaders face a variety of problems in doing the work of local government and must use different approaches and resources to act in the best interest of their communities. Some issues are difficult to solve, and their root causes are often obscure and can remain untreated. These persistent challenges are “wicked” problems, and they can threaten the vitality of communities. Local governments are well positioned to play a leading role in coordinating the efforts of businesses, nonprofits, citizen groups, and other governments to help maximize resources and take meaningful actions to tackle these issues. This guidebook aims to equip local government leaders with tools to develop new approaches for identifying, understanding, and addressing wicked problems.

This publication is designed for local boards, from ABC and social services boards to boards of elections, planning boards, boards of education, and area mental health authorities. It covers subjects such as the use of agendas, the powers of the chair, citizen participation in meetings, closed sessions, minutes, and the use of procedural motions. The book contains helpful appendixes that summarize the requirements for each procedural motion and list other statutes that apply to particular local government boards. Suggested Rules of Procedure for Small Local Government Boards, Second Edition, 1998, was reprinted and reformatted as a publication. This reprint adds to Rule 5 and Rule 23 new material that addresses 2005 legislation pertaining to public comment periods and that was originally included as an errata sheet to the 1998 edition. If you own the original 1998 edition and the 2005 errata sheet, you do not need to buy the redesigned publication unless you want the newly worded text.

The adoption of a budget is one of the most important activities undertaken by local government officials each year. The budget serves as the elected board’s primary opportunity to establish community priorities and as a tool for planning community services and programs, communicating priorities, and properly managing finances. The budget process, however, with its big numbers, multiple acronyms, and counterintuitive rules, can be confusing.

A book in the Local Government Board Builders series, this guide is intended to remove the mystery of the budget process and to equip North Carolina’s city and county governing bodies with the tools they need to actively participate in the process.

“I am impressed with this guidebook on budgeting. It answered several questions I had as a newly elected commissioner, and it is a great reference for explaining the process on how to reach a budget ordinance.”

Kitty Barnes
Chair
Catawba County Board of Commissioners

“This guidebook does a great job of providing context for local government budgeting. Each topic covered makes sense in the budget world, and the book will be helpful to those involved in local government budgeting.”

Scott Fogleman
Budget Director
Town of Cary

This first book in the new series, Local Government Board Builders, focuses on the requirements for and tools used by lead governing officers: mayors of city councils and chairs of county boards of commissioners. Mayors and board chairs hold the keys to effective meetings for their governing bodies and must create effective working relations with public managers and other organizations. This book emphasizes how these leadership roles should work, including tips for setting agendas and maintaining forward motion and participation in meetings. Intangible essentials, such as keeping a fair and impartial manner and respecting professional roles, are also clarified.

What are the rights and duties of local elected officials relating to the listing, assessment, levy, and collection of property taxes? After reading this book, members of local governing boards should know what they must do, what they may do, and perhaps most importantly, what they cannot do with property taxes.

This guide, part of the Local Government Board Builders series, will help governing boards answer questions such as:

• How is the property tax rate determined?
• When can real property tax values be changed?
• What types of enforced collection remedies are available for property taxes?
• When can property taxes be waived?

In 2009, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law requiring all North Carolina cities, counties, local boards of education, unified governments, sanitary districts, and consolidated city-counties to adopt a resolution or policy containing a code of ethics to guide actions by the governing board members in the performance of their official duties as members of that governing board. Each governing board must adopt its resolution or policy by January 1, 2011.

This guidebook, the second title in the Local Government Board Builders Series, is intended to help local elected boards and their staffs develop codes of ethics that meet the requirements of this statute. It includes a Model Code with optional provisions, as well as commentary and discussion questions that boards are encouraged to use in developing and interpreting their own codes. The book is designed to be clear and unambiguous, simple, and easy to read and use.

This handbook in the Local Government Board Builders Series is intended for elected officials in North Carolina cities and towns, and for persons interested in election to municipal office. It explores the nature of cities and towns in the state, including how they come into existence, how they are run, and how they are financed. It also covers the work of the mayor and council, including the organization of the council, council meetings and actions, and potential liabilities of a mayor or council member.

Hiring a manager may be the most important decision a local governing board makes. To make sure the new manager will be a good fit for the organization, the board needs to agree on expectations for the new manager and design a process that will enable it to hire the best candidate for the job. This guide, part of the Local Government Board Builders series, provides local elected officials with an overview of their responsibilities in hiring a public manager and outlines the essential steps in a successful hiring process.

“I believe this publication would be an extremely valuable resource for municipalities that are in the process of hiring a manager. Not only can it offer officials immediate detailed instruction and guidance in the process of developing the profile, assessing, and hiring the best candidate, but it is as close as their fingertips for follow up review and future use.”Hartwell Wright
Human Resources Consultant
North Carolina League of Municipalities

“Vaughn M. Upshaw, John A. Rible IV, and Carl W. Stenberg’s Hiring a Manager is an excellent resource … it raises key points that both boards and managers should consider in the hiring process. This publication can increase the likelihood of the fit right for both the board and the new manager.”Michael McLaurin
Town Manager
Town of Waxhaw

Local governments often use appointed policy boards or citizen advisory committees (CACs) to engage people in the democratic process. These boards may be established to respond to community-generated issues, including identifying priorities, considering and recommending actions, and evaluating outcomes. Even though these bodies are used widely, developing and integrating their work into the governmental process remains challenging for many local governments.

Part of the Local Government Board Builders series, this new book and accompanying electronic files provide practical guidelines for local elected officials responsible for establishing policy boards and advisory committees. The book includes tips on evaluating costs/benefits of CACs, worksheets for assessing whether or not to establish a CAC, and options for creating a model policy.

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“The questions and tips in this book provide a comprehensive framework for assessing the benefits, costs, and challenges of advisory boards. The book will be useful to local governments when creating new advisory boards, and helpful in ensuring boards’ continued effectiveness as they adapt to changing conditions and priorities.”Bernadette Pelissier
Vice-Chair
Orange County Board of Commissioners

“Advisory committees are the core organizational tool by which local government filters and incepts ideas, policies, rules, and practical decision making. These volunteer citizen groups represent the true essence of how government works and are an integral part of our democracy. This book covers the purpose of citizen advisory committees (CACs) along with helpful tips on creating a positive, healthy relationship between these boards and local elected officials and their staff. It provides an in-depth perspective and includes questions that practitioners and local elected officials should consider when creating new CACs or analyzing existing boards. Dr. Upshaw has proffered a simple yet detailed approach for organizing and empowering citizen groups in the democratic process.”Lloyd Wm. Payne, Jr., ICMA-CM
Town Manager
Town of Elkin

A guidebook in the Local Government Board Builders Series, this publication describes best practices and offers practical tips for productively evaluating the manager’s and the governing board’s performance. It provides examples of manager and board evaluation measures, rating scales, and formats along with suggestions for ongoing performance improvement. For those already doing manager or board performance evaluations, this guidebook offers suggestions that can strengthen an existing process. It may also be used as a step-by-step manual for developing a new performance evaluation process from the ground up.

“Are you satisfied with your manager? Is your board operating in the best way it can? Most people can answer yes or no to these questions. But can you quantify your answers? Do you have written expectations for the manager or board members? This book is an excellent resource for the essential task of evaluating the manager and the board.” Kevin Patterson – Manager, Scotland County

Now in its fourth edition, this book provides city councils with model procedural rules for their meetings. The model rules cover, among many other topics, the organizational meeting, pertinent requirements of the open meetings law, the role of the presiding officer, agenda preparation and approval, substantive and procedural motions, voting rules, ordinance adoption, public hearings, and public comment periods. Legal and practical issues are analyzed in the comments that follow each rule.

The fourth edition differs from prior editions in important ways. It incorporates significant statutory changes that have occurred since a revised version of the third edition was published in 2007. Both the rules themselves and the comments have undergone extensive modifications in an effort to make the book even more useful to municipal governing boards. New appendixes include tables showing the numbers of members necessary to establish a quorum and the number of votes required to adopt an ordinance or approve a contract.

This book is a must for council members, city managers and administrators, city clerks, and city attorneys. Anyone with a general interest in local government or parliamentary procedure will also want a copy.

BONUS FEATURE:  The book contains information to help readers download a digital version of the book’s procedural rules that can be customized to fit a council’s specific needs.   

Now in its fourth edition, this book provides boards of county commissioners with model procedural rules for their meetings. The model rules cover, among many other topics, the organizational meeting, pertinent requirements of the open meetings law, the role of the presiding officer, agenda preparation and approval, substantive and procedural motions, voting rules, ordinance adoption, public hearings, and public comment periods. Legal and practical issues are analyzed in the comments that follow each rule.

The fourth edition differs from prior editions in important ways. It incorporates significant statutory changes that have occurred since a revised version of the third edition was published in 2002. Both the rules themselves and the comments have undergone extensive modifications in an effort to make the book even more useful to county boards.

This book is a must for county commissioners, county managers, county clerks, and county attorneys. Anyone with a general interest in local government or parliamentary procedure will also want a copy.

BONUS FEATURE:  The book contains information to help readers download a digital version of the book’s procedural rules that can be customized to fit a council’s specific needs.

Among the enduring topics of debate among reformers, public officials, and civic groups have been the fragmented structure of local government and blurred boundaries in relationships among local units as well as between localities and their state government. Critics have pointed to the excessive number of small jurisdictions performing a limited range of duties, costly duplication of functional responsibilities, parochial nature of interlocal relationships, and time and expertise limitations of part-time elected officials. Because of small size and antiquated governing and administrative structures, many communities are unable to tackle complex and costly problems that spill across local boundary lines and require timely collective remedial actions. As a result, tensions have grown between special and general-purpose units, and disparities have widened between rich and poor jurisdictions Supporters have argued the need for local accessibility, autonomy, and control, and for placing democratic values above technocratic efficiency and effectiveness. While local structure may not meet ideal standards, in most places it works satisfactorily in delivering services demanded by the public at “prices” (i.e., taxes and fees) citizens are willing to pay. Part-time elected officials, rather than professional politicians, are appropriate leaders of “grassroots” governments because they are close to both the problems and the public.

Cite as:

Stenberg C.W. (2008) Fragmented Structures and Blurred Boundaries: Strategies for Regional Governance. In: Morgan I.W., Davies P.J. (eds) The Federal Nation. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York

Collaborative public management, managing across boundaries, leveraging networks, and governance through networking are contemporary concepts that characterize a near tsunami sweeping across recent public administration literature. These novel and creative formulations describe, analyze, and prescribe complex modes of management for the current practicing public administrator. In retrospect, Rhodes (1996, 658) was prescient in claiming, “governance is about managing networks.”

The significance and relevance of the “collaboration-networking-governance movement” cannot be denied (Robinson 2006; Bingham and O’Leary 2008; O’Leary 2009). This chapter does not challenge or question the promising paths chartered in that literature. Rather, it explores the antecedents and foundation stones on which the triumvirate of collaboration-networking-governance is erected. Those-building block components are represented by federalism and its legacy concepts, intergovernmental relations and intergovernmental management, concepts that have framed governance and management thinking for decades.

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Menzel, D., White, H., S. Wright D., Cho, C. (2011). The State of Public Administration: Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities.

The field of intergovernmental relations has changed substantially over the past five decades. It maintains a critical and evolving role in the US federal system as well as in public policy and administration. Building upon the legacy of Deil S.Wright’s scholarship, this collection of essays by distinguished scholars, emerging thought leaders, and experienced practitioners chronicles and analyzes some of the tensions and pressures that have contributed to the current state of intergovernmental relations and management.

Although rarely commanding media attention by name, intergovernmental relations is being elevated in the public discourse through policy issues dominating the headlines. Many of these intergovernmental issues are addressed in this book, including health insurance exchanges under the now-threatened Affordable Care Act, and the roles of the federal, state, and local governments in food safety, energy, and climate change.Contributors interpret and assess the impacts of these and other issues on the future directions of intergovernmental relations and management. This book will serve as an ideal text for courses on intergovernmental relations and federalism, and will be of interest to government practitioners and civic and nonprofit organization leaders involved in public policy and management.

Cite as:

Stenberg, C. and Hamilton, D. (2018). Intergovernmental Relations in Transition. Milton, UNITED KINGDOM: Routledge.

Growing empirical evidence supports the fact that human resource management (HRM) practices have a direct impact on organizational performance. However, recognition that the HRM function can impact the strategic direction and performance of public organizations has been a more recent shift. Local government represents a robust area to examine the capacity of government organizations to leverage their human resources (HR) to improve performance. Using data from a 2012 survey in Colorado and North Carolina, this article examines the degree to which municipal governments have implemented strategic human capital management (SHCM) practices. Results indicate that while progress had been made, there is still significant variation on the extent to which municipalities are implementing SHCM. For jurisdictions that have seen greater adoption of SHCM practices, a number of factors appear related, including the role HR plays in broader municipal strategic decision making and the perceived importance of the HR function for the municipality.

Cite as:

Jacobson, W. S., & Sowa, J. E. (2015). Strategic Human Capital Management in Municipal Government: An Assessment of Implementation Practices. Public Personnel Management, 44(3), 317–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026015591283

A hands-on manual for learning the leadership skills that take you beyond compromise to higher ground. In this visionary book, the authors present their challenging, innovative and principled approach to problem solving within groups. Reaching for Higher Ground is filled with the practical information and illustrative examples that group leaders and conflict resolution leaders would need to achieve extraordinary outcomes with any group.

Cite as:

Dukes, E., Piscolish, M. and Stephens, J. (2000). Reaching for Higher Ground in Conflict Resolution: Tools for Powerful Groups and Communities. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.

The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook is based on the same proven principles outlined in Schwarz?s groundbreaking book. The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook is the next-step resource that offers consultants, facilitators, managers, leaders, trainers, coaches, and anyone that works within the field of facilitation, the tools, exercises, models, and stories that will help them develop sound responses to a wide range of challenging situations. The book spans the full scope of the successful Skilled Facilitator approach and includes information on how to get started and guidance for integrating the approach within existing organizational structures and processes.

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Davidson, A., McKinney, S., Schwarz, R. and Carlson, P. (2005). The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook: Tips, Tools, and Tested Methods for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.

Collaborative governance is becoming a primary motif in public administration research and practice. There is widespread recognition of the need to develop leaders for collaborative governance, yet clear guidelines or standard operating procedures are elusive. However, while the literature is varied, a broad model of collaboration phases is distinguishable and core competencies are emerging. This article outlines a four-phase model of collaborative governance and corresponding competencies to help ground education and training for collaborative governance. The application of this approach to case teaching is demonstrated by repurposing a readily available teaching case.

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Although city and county elected officials frequently hear from their constituents, officials and citizens often do not fully understand how public participation occurs and how it informs decision making by municipal and county boards.

This book, part of the Local Government Board Builders series, offers ideas for engaging the public, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of participation mechanisms, and provides guidance for better public outreach. It also discusses ways of developing long-term community participation.

See the Local Government Board Builders Series webpage for other books in the series and related School of Government publications.

Cite as:

Stephens, J., Morse, R. and O’Brien, K. (2011). Public Outreach and Participation. [Chapel Hill, N.C.]: UNC School of Government.

This article identifies some of the factors that make group development more challenging for city and county boards than for other groups, and explains the importance of establishing group norms in the early stages of a board’s development. The authors describe an intervention used to help board members establish effective working relationships. Findings show that boards and managers are better able to avoid many potential conflicts and resolve existing ones by developing early on a shared set of expectations among and for board members, presiding officials, and managers.

Cite as:

Margaret S. Carlson, & Anne S. Davidson. (1999). After the Election: How Do Governing Boards Become Effective Work Groups? State & Local Government Review, 31(3), 190-201. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4355240

The term strategic planning describes a process through which people first agree on a desired future and then organize their resources and efforts toward meeting those long-term goals. A strategic plan defines what you want to accomplish for your organization or community and provides a road map for moving forward and staying on track. The authors, as trainers and facilitators, have helped communities of all sizes and varying characteristics work through strategic planning processes. This book is their way of offering those potential benefits to others.

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Altman, L., Henderson, M. and Upshaw, V. (2017) “Strategic Planning for Elected Officials: Setting Priorities”

Facing the challenges of providing more and better services while being constrained by difficult fiscal limits, local governments across the United States have increased their involvement with nonprofit organizations, involving nonprofits in service delivery and drawing on these organizations’ volunteers and private financial resources. Some nonprofits have also become skilled advocates for their local government clients, making persuasive appeals for public funding of their work or otherwise helping shape government priorities.

This guidebook focuses primarily on the basic questions North Carolina local governments should ask themselves when deciding whether and how to fund nonprofits. If a governing board is considering an ongoing partnership with a nonprofit, many of these same considerations will apply.

Part of the Local Government Board Builders series, this book was written for elected officials of municipal and county governments, but governing officials of other kinds of public entities, such as councils of government, might also find the information useful.

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Henderson, M., Altman, L., Julian, S., Whitaker, G. and Youens, E. (2010). Working with nonprofit organizations. [Chapel Hill, N.C.]: UNC School of Government.

This article is based on interviews with more than forty government and nonprofit organization staff members
in seven counties in central North Carolina. Human services agencies were targeted because North Carolina county governments are most likely to fund nonprofits in that area of service. (For a further discussion of counties’ relationships with nonprofits, see the article on page 25.) The two largest counties, Wake and Mecklenburg, were excluded from the study as atypical. The remaining ninety-eight counties were categorized as small, medium, and large on the basis of population, and counties from each category were chosen for study. The study’s geographic reach was limited initially by budgetary constraints and later by the traumatic impact of Hurricane Floyd on eastern North Carolina—no counties from the far western or far eastern areas of the state were included. However, the seven counties in the study included both urban and rural areas that represented a diversity of cultural and political traditions. During the study we asked local government and nonprofit organization staff to assess the nature of their work with each other—how they interacted, what worked well in their relationships, and what factors limited their relationships. We also asked them to describe the differences in decision-making or operational style and the ways in which those differences affected working relationships. Finally, we asked about specific changes that local government and nonprofit organization staff would like to see in relationships or in the way in which services were delivered in their counties. In every community where we interviewed, respondents candidly shared their views. The study was part of a larger project (supported by a grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund) to identify and create ways to help nonprofit organizations and government agencies work together to serve the public more effectively.

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Altman-Sauer, L., Henderson, M., P. Whitaker, G., (2001) “Strengthening Relationships between Local Governments and Nonprofits”

Nonprofit organizations have long worked with governments to respond to community needs. The resulting
partnerships have been powerful, combining the flexibility and service-delivery capabilities of the nonprofit sector
with the financial and direction-setting capabilities of the public sector. They have resulted in improved local services in
many areas, including human services, community development, economic development, and environmental protection. Although they are touted as the wave of the future, these partnerships have not been without their fair share of challenges. This article follows other recent efforts by the Institute of Government, in partnership with the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits and the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, to improve the relationships between local governments and nonprofits (see the sidebar, page 33). It focuses on the legal aspects of relationships between local governments and nonprofits, with particular attention to contracting. Although local governments and nonprofits work together or interact in many circumstances without contracting, contracts are the most common vehicles for these collaborations. It is important for representatives of both sectors to understand
the requirements for and the limitations on these contracts.

Cite as:

Bluestein, Frayda S. and Anita R. Brown-Graham. “Local Government Contracts with Nonprofit Organizations: Questions and Answers.” Popular Government 67:1 (2001): 32-44.

Since fall 2003, the Public Leadership faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) School of Government (SOG) has worked on the design and delivery of the Public Executive Leadership Academy (PELA), an advanced leadership program for local managers. PELA serves a diverse audience of twenty-five municipal and county managers, assistant managers, and department heads who aspire to leadership careers in local government and need to hone or develop their communication and collaboration skills. The program’s curriculum is unique in its focus on the manager’s role as community leader and change agent, and its emphasis on leading and managing in an intergovernmental and intersector context. Participants apply information and insights from class sessions to their “real world” change opportunity back home. To our knowledge, no other university-based public executive leadership program in the United States has this emphasis. As we reflect on the past two years of experience, we have learned a great deal. The purpose of this chapter is to share these lessons with those interested in developing similar leadership programs. Our focus is on: (1) partnership management, (2) collaboration, (3) curriculum design, (4) team-building techniques, and (5) program evaluation.

Cite as:

Morse, Ricardo S., and Terry F. Buss. Innovations in Public Leadership Development, Routledge, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unc/detail.action?docID=1900028.
Created from unc on 2019-04-05 11:47:52.

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are a transforming public sector leadership group. CIOs have emerged
to connect business units in an organization with information technology staff. They are the linchpin between the seemingly disparate, and often contentious, components of an organization. The potential impact of this population is high but their characteristics and perspectives have been only nominally explored. By investigating leadership within the public sector IT profession through the application of Q-methodology and use of a well-accepted competing values framework, this article contributes to both the leadership and IT scholarship. Using a sample of local government CIOs from North Carolina, Q-methodology is used to examine how individuals view and operationalize the concepts of leadership in their own work and careers. The research reveals four dominate leadership conceptualizations amongst local government IT professionals. These groupings demonstrate high variation in how IT professionals understand and prioritize leadership attributes.

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Tufts, Shannon and Jacobson, W. 2010. “Visions of Leadership: An Examination of How IT Professionals Prioritize Leadership Attributes,” Journal of Information Technology Management. Volume XXI, Number 1. 1-1

This book explores what this shift looks like and offers guidance on what it should look like. Specifically, the book focuses on the role of career leaders: those in public service who are change agents not only in their organizations but also in their communities and policy domains. These leaders work in network settings, making connections and collaborating to create public value and advance the common good.

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Morse, Ricardo S., Terry F. Buss, and C. Morgan Kinghorn, eds. 2007. Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century. New York: Routledge.

Although there is no shortage of general studies and theories of leadership, the same cannot be said for public leadership. This concern surfaced as a critical issue among scholars at the 2008 Minnowbrook III conference. Drawing from that discussion, this article calls for invigorating the study of public leadership within public administration (PA). We present the case for public leadership, that is, leadership for the public good, where challenges are complex, stakeholders are many, values are conflicting, and resources are limited. Traditional, generic models of leadership—as in, leading followers toward some specific goal—do not align well with these current challenges. We argue for studying public leadership specifically, rather than trying to retrofit existing concepts of leadership from business management or elective politics. PA should be the leading voice in understanding and promoting public leadership. By examining previous public leadership scholarship through three broad lenses—the character of public leadership, the function of public leadership, and the jurisdiction of public leadership—we develop theoretical propositions designed to drive a revitalized research agenda. We conclude with a set of research questions we see as critical to crystallizing the significance of public leadership.

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Heather Getha-Taylor, Maja Husar Holmes, Willow S. Jacobson, Ricardo S. Morse, Jessica E. Sowa, Focusing the Public Leadership Lens: Research Propositions and Questions in the Minnowbrook Tradition, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Volume 21, Issue suppl_1, January 2011, Pages i83–i97, https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muq069

Integrative public leadership is a process of developing partnerships across organizational, sectoral and/or jurisdictional boundaries that create public value. This paper explores the concept in the context of the literature and illustrates some salient features of integrative public leadership through three cases involving extensive multi-sector collaboration in the western (Smoky Mountain) region of North Carolina. The cases are different in subject matter—sewer lines to a rural community, broadband infrastructure across a network of rural schools and colleges, and a major environmental preservation effort—but they all share some key elements. Leadership in each case is enacted through structure, process, and people. Boundary organizations provide a structural context for partnership development; boundary experiences and boundary objects serve to bridge differences and create a common purpose; and boundary spanners exhibit entrepreneurial qualities and leverage relationship capital in order to facilitate integration.

Cite as:

Ricardo S. Morse, Integrative public leadership: Catalyzing collaboration to create public value,
The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 231-245, ISSN 1048-9843, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.01.004. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984310000238)

As director of a regional council for more than 30 years, Bill Gibson is instrumental in facilitating “boundary-crossing” collaborations that increase public value. This Administrative Profile examines three cases of regional, cross-sector collaboration catalyzed by Gibson’s leadership. Characteristics of entrepreneurship, attention to “relationship capital,” and the humility derived from ego strength combine with the context of working for a boundary organization to help explain his success.

Cite as:

Morse, Ricardo. (2010). Bill Gibson and the Art of Leading Across Boundaries. Public Administration Review. 70. 434 – 442

This exploratory study surveys the public service leadership literature from a selection of leading public administration journals over a 25‐year period (1987–2012). Patterns in methods used to study public leadership are explored, along with how those methods vary across settings within the public service sector and the treatment of leadership in the analysis. While the number of empirical studies of public service leadership has grown, the diversity of theoretical approaches, methods and measures challenges the ability to synthesize findings in order to advance the knowledge base on this topic. This article provides a map of leadership studies within the field of public administration over time and offers prescriptions for future research.

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CHAPMAN, C., GETHA-TAYLOR, H., HOLMES, M., JACOBSON, W., MORSE, R. and SOWA, J. (2015). HOW PUBLIC SERVICE LEADERSHIP IS STUDIED: AN EXAMINATION OF A QUARTER CENTURY OF SCHOLARSHIP. Public Administration, 94(1), pp.111-128.

This article is designed to show how to evaluate a chief administrative officer who reports to a governing board, for simplicity called here the “manager.” Ironically, the reasons that a manager may not receive a regular performance evaluation are the very reasons that an evaluation can be helpful:

• this individual is in a unique position in the
  organization;
• he or she serves at the pleasure of the board; and
• he or she may frequently receive conflicting messages about priorities and direction from board
  members.

Conducting an effective evaluation is hard work, but it doesn’t have to be a bad experience for the board or
the manager. With planning and a commitment to open lines of communication, chances are good that the experience will result in a new level of cooperation and understanding between manager and board and, ultimately, a more effective working relationship.

Cite as: 

S. Carlson, Margaret (1994). ” How are we doing?” 1994

The Great Recession’s damaging effects on the finances of cities and counties have led some observers to predict dramatic, widespread, and enduring changes to local government in response to fiscal pressure. However, the history of change in local government suggests otherwise, as does the experience of individual cities and counties that have confronted fiscal duress in the past. The authors of this article suggest that financial problems will not overwhelm the balance among an array of competing pressures that already confronted local governments long before the recession. Although some cities and counties will respond to the downturn with major, permanent changes, most will not. For local governments as a whole, equilibrium among the host of tensions they face will continue to resist dramatic moves and favor only gradual change.

Cite as:

Ammons, D. N., Smith, K. W., & Stenberg, C. W. (2012). The Future of Local Government: Will Current Stresses Bring Major, Permanent Changes? State and Local Government Review, 44(1_suppl), 64S-75S. https://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X12454143

An indispensable resource, this comprehensive text on the subject of local government services is relevant to local governments of all sizes. It includes demographic, economic, technological and cultural trends that affect the management of service delivery. New chapters discuss the shift from “government” to “governance,” alternative methods of service delivery, community development, and the five management practices that are fast becoming the standard for professional local government management.

Cite as:

Austin, S., W. Stenberg, Carl (2007). “Managing Local Government Services: A Practical Guide”

This study reports the findings of a comparative case study analysis of sixteen U.S. municipalities to
provide an in-depth examination of the choices municipal leaders are making to address revenue
shortfalls. The findings suggest that municipal fiscal choices during a recession fit the bounded
rationality model. While local government leaders will attempt to follow a rational sequence of fiscal
management decisions, as the economic situation worsens, the external pressures from electoral
considerations, state government restrictions, and interest group involvement increase, leading a
divergence in strategies. The greater the pressures (the bounds), the more unpredictable the
choices among municipalities become.

Cite as:

K. L. Nelson, (2012). “Municipal Choices During a Recession: Bounded Rationality and Innovation”

In the current economic downturn, both individuals and organizations are challenged to “do more with less.” In the midst of uncertainty, one tendency is to be fearful of what we don’t know or to focus on the “bad” things that are
happening around us—revenue shortfalls, collection lags, shifting budget allocations, or double-digit unemployment that strain our ability to provide services to those who need them. The practice and philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) enables public officials and organizations to recognize and build on their strengths to meet these challenges. This article provides a framework for exploring this approach, describes the experiences of others in public sector settings in using AI practices and philosophies, and outlines how managers can use AI in their own communities and offices.

Cite as:

Lee, S., Henderson, M., Whitaker, G ““Positive Problem-Solving:  How Appreciative Inquiry Works” ICMA Press, vol. 43, Number 3, 2011

There appears to be a consensus on consensus building in public administration: We are for it. Consensus building is an important skill for managers and leaders in terms of responsiveness, participation, managing in an age of diffuse power centers, and building more durable outcomes. This chapter pushes beneath this comfortable degree of agreement to critique what is known about consensus building, identifies issues on leadership from inside and outside of consensus-building processes, and proposes essential questions for leadership research to bridge the gap between practice and theory on consensus building.

Cite as:

Morse, Ricardo S., et al. Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century, Routledge, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unc/detail.action?docID=1899942.
Created from unc on 2019-04-02 09:46:23.

This book is grounded in several premises widely shared by our contributors. First, leaders can, and indeed must, be developed if the public sector is to meet its obligations to citizens and its constituents. It is just not the case or our experience that leaders are born and in short supply. Second, although it has some common attributes, public leadership differs from leadership in other contexts, such as military, sports, or business. Military models of leadership, for example, remain focused on hierarchical structures of authority, whereas public leaders now find themselves leading much more in a collaborative environment. Third, the practice of public leadership is in crisis, or at least in turmoil, necessitating new ways of leading and alternative ways of developing leaders. Public confidence in government is low, traditional ways of doing business are becoming obsolete, scandal appears to be permeating government, management and administration are becoming increasingly political, and the quality of public services seems on the decline. New leaders are desperately needed. And fourth, a wide variety of training and development innovations are underway that can, and are producing public leaders who have been or will be effective in today’s environment. These innovations, many presented here, are grounded in practice rather than theory, have been tested and evaluated for effectiveness, and are beginning to attract a large following in the field. The contributors hope that their work conveys the exciting times in which we find ourselves in the field of public management and the unprecedented opportunities for advancing leadership development.

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Morse, Ricardo S., and Terry F. Buss. Innovations in Public Leadership Development, Routledge, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unc/detail.action?docID=1900028.
Created from unc on 2019-04-02 09:16:13.

The increased emphasis on collaborative governance across the field of public administration necessitates a rethinking of what the core competencies of public managers are and how they might be developed. The traditional model of leadership development, focusing on leading within bounded hierarchy and via command-and-control must be moderated with an additional focus on collaborative problem solving, working in flattened structures, and incentivizing behavior in new ways. This article reviews relevant literature along with the experience of two local government leadership programs to explore content and training approaches needed to prepare local government leaders for collaborative governance. Qualitative and quantitative survey findings indicate that program content should specifically address collaboration competency development. Further, training evaluation strategy should allow for processing and reflection: immediate reaction surveys should be supplemented with a long-term evaluation strategy. Finally, while scholarly literature recommends non-traditional, peer-learning activities for collaborative leadership development, this research offers mixed support. The program examples and associated research findings highlight the importance of a strategic approach to training that reflects emerging leadership needs.

Cite as:

GETHA-TAYLOR, H., & MORSE, R. (2013). COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS: EXPLORING COMPETENCIES AND PROGRAM IMPACT. Public Administration Quarterly,37(1), 71-102. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24371989

This article explores collaborative capital budgeting in U.S. local governments. To date, the capital budgeting literature has focused on practices within individual governments. This leaves a gap in our understanding because a large portion of capital planning, acquisition, and maintenance occurs through collaboration between two or more local governments. Drawing on the capital budgeting and collaborative public management literature, and on illustrative cases of collaborative capital budgeting in the United States, an inductive approach is used to: (1) identify and categorize the different objectives that motivate local officials to pursue collaborative agreements, (2) examine common patterns in the types of assets involved in collaboration, and (3) discover common institutional arrangements in collaboration agreements. The research findings demonstrate significant heterogeneity in the objectives, patterns, and institutions of collaborative capital budgeting.

Cited as:

Hina Khalid, David S.T. Matkin, Ricardo S. Morse, (2017) “Collaborative capital budgeting in U.S. local government”, Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, Vol. 29 Issue: 2, pp.230-262, https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBAFM-29-02-2017-B003

Since the death of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) in 1996, important intergovernmental issues have remained on the country’s agenda. Shortly after the 2008 presidential election, for example, the Federal Systems Panel (2008) of the National Academy of Public Administration delivered an “Intergovernmental Agenda” to the incoming administration asserting a need to “restructure intergovernmental management across the federal system” on the basis of “collaboration rather than command and control.” The agenda cited such policy challenges as health care access (e.g., Medicaid) and cost reductions, housing, natural
disasters, terrorism, energy consumption, unemployment, and infrastructure. The agenda disappeared in the bowels of the White House.

Cite as:

Kincaid, J., & Stenberg, C. (2011). “Big Questions” about Intergovernmental Relations and Management: Who Will Address Them? Public Administration Review, 71(2), 196-202. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41061180

Local governments have historically faced such challenges as increasing demands for service, limited
fiscal resources, and contending with economic forces beyond their control. Still, local governments remain a primary engine of innovative government services and enjoy high levels of resident trust. In recent years, state legislatures have encroached on the ability of local governments to meet these challenges and have become increasingly intrusive in local affairs. Reports by the National League of Cities (NLC)1 as well as the Local Government Research Collaborative,2 a partnership of ICMA, the Alliance for Innovation, and the Center for Urban Innovation at Arizona State University, have found significant changes in state-local relations, including: 1) a sharp increase in the number of states
involved with this movement, and 2) an increase in the overall number of limitations placed on local governments by their state legislatures. What options do local managers and elected officials have as they try to tailor local public services to the needs and preferences of residents? This article provides an overview of this changing environment and highlights the array of actions available to local governments as they respond to state limitations.

Cite as:

Swindell, D., Svara, J. and Stenberg C.”Local Government Options in the Era of State Preemption”

As demand for government services becomes greater and more complex and the nature of work
continues to change, there is increasing interest in project management. In many public organizations, however, the term “project management” evokes images of highly specialized private
sector project professionals working in project-based industries such as engineering, power,
pharmaceuticals, and tech companies. Project management also has modern roots in government. In the 1950s, the Navy used project management methods in its Polaris project. During
the 1960s and 1970s, the Department of Defense and NASA—not just large engineering and
construction companies—employed project management philosophies and tools to direct largescale, schedule-driven projects.1
What does a project manager do, exactly, and who could benefit from sound project management principles? The purpose of this bulletin is to briefly answer those questions, to define the
concept of project management, and to highlight key principles and universal lessons anyone in
charge of managing a project in the public sector can draw from to run successful projects.

Cite as:

Jacobson W. S. “Project Management Principles for Use in the Public Sector: Tools for the Everyday Project Manager”

Local governments are poised for a workforce crisis. Many will be faced with the impact of a mass exodus of baby boomers from their ranks at the same time the skills and knowledge required to continue to provide quality services increases. Governments will compete with private and non-profit organizations, as well as with each other, for talented workers. However, this crisis is likely to be felt by governments first because of their older employee base and high demand for knowledge workers. Individuals with needed skills and knowledge will become harder to recruit and retain, especially if governments are not clear about the skills they seek. Workforce planning can help governments act and perform strategically in the face of increasingly complex governmental demands made even more challenging by this impending human capital crisis. The 2002 International Personnel Management Association report, Workforce Planning Resource Guide for Public Sector Human Resource Professionals, found that “Workforce planning is the most critical human resource management challenge in the public sector today.” This paper examines the state of workforce planning in North Carolina municipalities. Survey data from medium and large size municipalities in North Carolina with populations over 15,000 is analyzed to determine the current state of their workforce planning efforts. An overview of current practices, identified needs, pressing concerns, and primary barriers to implementation and success are presented.

Cited as:

Jacobson, W. S. (2010). Preparing for Tomorrow: A Case Study of Workforce Planning in North Carolina Municipal Governments. Public Personnel Management, 39(4), 353–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/009102601003900404

In line with the theme of this year’s APSA conference, this paper examines issues of
public employee rights as they relate to social media policies. This paper employs an
interdisciplinary approach to examine the issue of employee rights in relationship to social media
actions both on and off the job. The proliferation of the use and forms of social media in the last
five years has been extensive. Significant efforts are being made to capture the power of this
medium as a resource for government while at the same time governments are struggling to
create appropriate, legal, and meaningful policies related to employee usage and behavior.
Stories abound of public employees’ misuse of social media both at and away from work.
Misconduct has led to not just disciplinary action but substantial media attention. Issues of First
and Fourth Amendment rights, human resource policies, and technology policies are all critical
to this topic.

This paper reviews social media policies for public employees with attention to the
employees’ rights. Content analysis of state government policies provide an overview of the
current state of practice and highlight issues of public employee rights. The paper includes a
discussion of key issues of employee rights, recommendations for practice, and future research
needs.

Cited as: 

Jacobson, Willow S. and Tufts, Shannon H.“To Post or Not to Post: Employee Rights and Social Media,” Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol.33, No. 1. 84-107.

Municipal governments experienced many challenges brought on by the great recession of the late 2000s. Drawing on data from human resource directors in Colorado and North Carolina municipalities, this article examines the real-world implications of the economic recession on human resource management (HRM) practices, including the workforce-related challenges municipal governments face in a difficult economic climate and what HRM innovations were developed to respond. For challenges, funding was consistently the top response as well as recruiting and maintaining a motivated workforce. The bulk of the innovations were internally focused and reactionary in terms of responding to an immediate or current condition. Implications for practice are provided.

Cited as:

Jacobson, W. S., & Sowa, J. E. (2016). Municipal Human Resource Management: Challenges and Innovative Practices in Turbulent Times. State and Local Government Review, 48(2), 121–131. https://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X16658696

In 2011-12, the Town of Chapel Hill tried something big: using the goal of updating the town’s
comprehensive plan to experiment with a wide range of public information and engagement
methods. The goal was “to touch 10,000 people” in this community of about 55,000 permanent
residents.
In order to learn from the Chapel Hill 2020 (CH2020) initiative, selected public participation and
staff roles are evaluated. This formative evaluation provides:
a) Summary feedback from key participants and stakeholders
b) Recommendations for concerned residents, civic leaders, and town government elected
officials and staff on near-term and longer-term public involvement strategy and tools.

Cite as:

Chapel Hill 2020: An Assessment of Public Participation — Analysis and Recommendations for Near- and Longer-term Public Involvement. http://www.townofchapelhill.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=15998 ,  Pages: 62 

Public policy dispute resolution [PPDR] and public participation [PP] are closely related fields of
practice. Despite many similarities, we identify gaps in most evaluation studies conducted in the two
fields. Evaluators of PPDR can better draw upon PP evaluations.

The values, concepts, objectives, and practices of PP and PPDR are compared for similarities and
differences. Focusing on the last 15 years, PPDR and PP evaluation literature is analyzed, with attention
to four PP evaluation studies of special relevance to PPDR. Five ways that PPDR evaluation can be
improved by drawing on PP evaluation studies are identified. Two promising works that begin to bridge
the PPDR-PP evaluation gap are summarized.

Cite as:

John B. Stephens and Berner, M. (2011). “Learning from Your Neighbor: The Value of Public Participation Evaluation for Public Policy Dispute Resolution,” Journal of Public Deliberation. 22 pages.

This bulletin reports findings of a 2017 School of Government survey of all municipal
and county managers and elected officials in North Carolina to discern their views on the
importance of strategic planning and to determine what difference, if any, it has made in their
roles and relationships. Also included are quotes by local officials who agreed to follow-up
interviews.

Cite as:

Altman, L., Curry H., Stenberg, C.”Strategic Planning: What Difference Does It Make? A Snapshot of Experience in North Carolina.”

This article addresses how elected and appointed local government leaders can help develop an authentic and comprehensive community vision to steer their communities during times of upheaval or relative calm. We discuss community visioning and strategic planning as tools that help communities understand current realities and trends, articulate desired conditions for the future, and develop and implement strategies for achieving those conditions. We begin by defining “community visioning,” its relationship to strategic planning, and the place of these ideas in a broader stream of collaborative governance concepts. Then, drawing on the experiences of three North Carolina communities, we outline general principles of successful community change, highlighting how they specifically relate to community visioning and strategic planning. Finally, we suggest some issues for local government leaders to bear in mind as they consider how their community might benefit from visioning.

Cite as:

Altman, L., S. More, R. “Creating Their Own Futures: Community Visioning and North Carolina Local Governments.”

Hiring an executive director is one of the most important actions that the governing board of a nonprofit
agency takes. The board depends on its director for day-to-day operation to achieve the agency’s purposes and objectives within the constraints of its budget—not an easy task to accomplish year in and year out. Also, the working relationship between the director and the board, the staff, volunteers, clients, funding organizations, and other service agencies can significantly influence the agency’s effectiveness and reputation in the community. This article suggests a process designed to help ensure that, in selecting its next director, a board will meet its own needs and those of its constituencies. We have used and refined the process over more than ten years of assisting local elected and appointed government and nonprofit boards. It should be equally applicable whether a board is hiring its first director or it is replacing one who has resigned or been fired. If a clearly agreed on successor already is working for the organization, the board might want to proceed directly to negotiations with and appointment of him or her. However, even in such a case, the board may want to use part or all of the process that we suggest in order to be certain that it has given this important choice the most careful deliberation. To illuminate our description of the process with real examples, we include materials used in the Orange County Rape Crisis Center’s recruitment of a new director in 1999. Whether the board conducts the hiring process itself or secures outside assistance, it might use the steps described in
this article as a framework for planning and arranging its search and as a checklist for ensuring that it has completed all
the essential tasks.

Cite as:

“Hiring a Director for a Small Community-Based Nonprofit Agency: A Step-by-Step Guide,” by Margaret F. Henderson and Kurt Jenne, Summer 2000, Popular Government.

A leader-dominated organization is primarily driven by the efforts and the resources of one person, often the executive director. In contrast, a community-based organization achieves strength through diversification. No single person or funding source drives the work of the organization or controls information flow through it. Part 1 of this article provides a guide for the staff and the board members of nonprofit organizations to assess whether they are shifting or want to shift from being a leader-dominated organization to being a community-based organization.2 The purpose of this part is to propose a step-by-step process for organizations to use as they begin either to discuss such a shift or to make it.

Cite as:

Henderson, Margaret. “Evolution of a Nonprofit, Part 2: Shifting Orientation from One Person to the Community.” Popular Government 70:1 (2004): 1-6.

This article describes a series of characteristics that indicate when a nonprofit
might be more accountable to and controlled by one person than it is to the community that it was created to serve.
It is the first part of a two-part article. Part 2 suggests a process that nonprofits might use to evaluate whether they have the interest and the capacity to shift from being a leader-dominated organization to being a community-based organization. Part 2 is available online at www.sog.unc.edu/popgov/.

Cite as:

Henderson, Margaret. “Evolution of a Nonprofit, Part 1: Determining the Organization’s Orientation.” Popular Government 70:1 (2004): 16-21.

Governments, nonprofits, philanthropies, and businesses all talk about the value of partnering to maximize the impact of their resources. Ironically, in day-to-day life, the ways in which people actually work together often fail to reflect that philosophy of partnership. This article discusses ways to move beyond the buyer-seller relationship often embodied in government and nonprofit contracts, toward shared responsibility for improving public services. It presents a framework of goals, questions, and tools that can help people in government and nonprofit organizations focus on how their work for and with each other can improve public service.

Cite as:

Henderson, Margaret, Lydian Altman-Sauer, and Gordon Whitaker. “Establishing Mutual Accountability
in Nonprofit-Government Relationships.”

Everyone wants guidance in making tough funding decisions. This article describes six questions that local officials should consider in designing a funding process for nonprofits.

Cite as:

This study reports the findings of a comparative case study analysis of sixteen U.S. municipalities to
provide an in-depth examination of the choices municipal leaders are making to address revenue
shortfalls. The findings suggest that municipal fiscal choices during a recession fit the bounded
rationality model. While local government leaders will attempt to follow a rational sequence of fiscal
management decisions, as the economic situation worsens, the external pressures from electoral
considerations, state government restrictions, and interest group involvement increase, leading a
divergence in strategies. The greater the pressures (the bounds), the more unpredictable the
choices among municipalities become.

Cite as:

Nelson, Kimberly L. (2012). Municipal Choices During a Recession: Bounded Rationality and Innovation.

Using data on the adoption of e-government, reinventing government, and strategic practices, and
the Nelson and Svara (2010) typology of municipal government form, the authors investigate the
characteristics of municipal governments that are related to the implementation of innovative
practices. The authors find that higher innovation rates are associated with council-manager
governments—both with and without an elected mayor, higher population, greater growth,
lower unemployment, sunbelt location, and higher population density. Controlling for all other
variables, form of government (and variations within form) account for the greatest explanation
of the adoption of innovative practices in municipalities. The authors conclude that form of
government remains an important variable to consider when investigating local government
management and performance.

Cite as:

Nelson, K.L. and Svara, James H. (2012). Form of Government Still Matters: Fostering Innovation in U.S. Municipal Governments.

Civic technology is an emergent area of practice where IT experts and citizens without specialized IT skills volunteer their time using government-provided open data to improve government services or otherwise create public benefit. Civic tech, as it is often referred to, draws on longer-standing practices, particularly e-government and civic engagement. It is also a new form of citizen–government co-production, building on the trend of greater government transparency.

Cite as:

Stephens, J.(2017). Civic Technology: Open Data and Citizen Volunteers as a Resource for North Carolina Local Governments. Report, School of Government.

Drawing on qualitative data from 40 counties in New York and North Carolina, this article examines the adoption of strategic human capital management (SHCM) principles and practices at the county level and presents a typology of five levels of SHCM adoption. The level of SHCM implementation in a county depends on the view of the HR function by executive county leadership, the capacity of the county to engage in strategic planning and management, and the capacity of the HR director to think strategically about the role of HR in the government. The article concludes with recommendations for practice, which focus on educating a diverse set of actors about SHCM, building executive-level support, developing HR skill and competencies, and applying basic change management practices.

Cite As:

Jacobson, W. S., Sowa, J. E., & Lambright, K. T. (2014). Do Human Resource Departments Act as Strategic Partners? Strategic Human Capital Management Adoption by County Governments. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 34(3), 289–301.

Social media use has quickly become an integral part of people’s personal and professional lives. Although many scholars highlight the benefits of social media for engagement, communication, and outreach, leveraging social media platforms for human resource (HR) practices continues to present interesting questions and challenges. This article examines how municipal and county governments are using social media in recruiting, hiring, monitoring, and disciplining employees. Many local governments are not taking advantage of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media as potential tools for recruitment and screening because of concerns related to liability. The same organizations are conducting workplace monitoring and addressing disciplinary issues around employee social media use, often without guiding policies in place. Based on the findings from this research, recommendations are provided on how and when local government HR departments can more effectively use social media in their practices.

Cite as:

Tufts, S. H., Jacobson, W. S., & Stevens, M. S. (2015). Status Update: Social Media and Local Government Human Resource Practices. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 35(2), 193–207.

A number of recent studies have argued that municipal governments have so significantly modified elements of their form of government that it is now difficult to distinguish form. However, none of these studies considers the influence of state government on these choices. This study uses a comprehensive data set of U.S. municipal governments with populations of at least 10,000 and a data set of state legislative provisions related to form of government to investigate the influence of state law on municipal form of government choices. The findings demonstrate that state law is associated with some choices of government form and that structures that hybridize the council-manager and mayor-council forms of government are still relatively uncommon.

Cite As:

“State Level Autonomy and Municipal Government Structure: Influence on Form of Government Outcomes.”  American Review of Public Administration, 41 (5): 542-561. K. L. Nelson, 2011.

One measure of governance quality is the level of reported conflict and cooperation that is present between and among elected officials and administrators. High levels of conflict or low levels of cooperation can hinder the decision-making process. However, there are few attempts to assess the causes of conflict and cooperation in the existing literature. This study uses an expanded typology of local government form and additional independent variables to determine what factors are likely to lead to conditions conducive to cooperation and lower perceived conflict in the local governance process. Data on government performance and indicators of perceived conflict and cooperation were collected from a national survey of municipal mayors, council members, and chief administrators in cities with populations of 50,000 to 250,000. Our results suggest that form of government and proportion of council members elected by district are two factors that significantly influence governance at the local level.

Cite as:

Nelson, K. L., & Nollenberger, K. (2011). Conflict and Cooperation in Municipalities: Do Variations in Form of Government Have an Effect? Urban Affairs Review, 47(5), 696–720. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087411409129

How can educators leverage blogs and other social media spaces to encourage a reflective, critical discourse about civic engagement that fosters a true learning exchange over promoting one’s own ideas? This article reports upon a single case study of the “Community Engagement Learning Exchange,” a multi-author blog on civic engagement. Through qualitative content analysis and expert interviews with the blogger community we explored the interaction of digital citizenship and civic online discourse, in order to map out civic engagement pedagogies that make use of blogs or other shared writing / media tools. The content analysis of blog posts indicates that high verbosity scores for factual orientation, personalization and interactivity correlate with broader reach. The interview material was condensed into concept maps that identified specific themes for digital citizenship (inevitable, easy, transparent, technologically diverse and changing, unequal, divisive, difficult, superficial) and civic engagement pedagogies (content, format, authenticity, tone, listening, exemplary conduct, accountability, hope). Overall, in the community analyzed, ground rules and a shared writing style lead to discussions and learning processes that transcend differences in views, backgrounds and opinions. Further efforts to support and measure the right amount of friction that exemplifies diverse and even clashing opinions while keeping an online community together emerged from the case study as a future area of practice development for digital citizenship.

Cite As:

Panke, S. & Stephens, J. (2018). Beyond the Echo Chamber: Pedagogical Tools for Civic Engagement Discourse and Reflection. Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 248 – 263