Managing Local Government Services: A Practical Guide

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”

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Municipal Choices during a Recession: Bounded Rationality and Innovation

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.

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

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Managing Local Government: An Essential Guide for Municipal and County Managers

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Positive Problem-Solving: How Appreciative Inquiry Works

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.

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

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Consensus Building and Leadership

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.

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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.

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Innovations in Public Leadership Development

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.

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Collaborative Leadership Development for Local Government Officials

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.

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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

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Collaborative Capital Budgeting in U.S. Local Government

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

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“Big Questions” about Intergovernmental Relations and Management: Who Will Address Them?

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.

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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

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Local Government Options in the Era of State Preemption

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”

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