Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis

Abstract

English councils have long aspired to be ‘self‐sufficient’, providing services within single jurisdictions with limited inter‐local collaboration. However, by 2017 almost all local councils (97 per cent) participated in one or more frontline or back‐office ‘shared service’ involving 338 distinct partnerships. We analyse this new‐found enthusiasm for inter‐council collaboration by performing exploratory social network analysis on organizational and financial data for all 353 English councils. We examine factors predicting collaboration and the characteristics of the service networks that result, focusing on resource, organizational and political considerations. Propensity to collaborate was found to be unpredictable, but partner choice was rational, driven by geographical proximity and similarity in organizational and resource characteristics. We argue that, according to the institutional theory of organizations, both efficiency and legitimacy influenced these reform choices, and the risks of fashionable collaboration were mitigated by careful partner selection. We highlight implications for future quantitative research into symbolic (non‐instrumental) forms of collaboration.

The Motivations for the Adoption of Management Innovation by Local Governments and its Performance Effects

“…De Borger and Kerstens 1996). Second, administrative intensity is measured as the percentage of each district council's overall expenditure that is spent on central administrative services (see Dixon and Elston 2020). Third, we measure expenditure reductions as the annual percentage change in total expenditure per capita for each council (for a similar approach see Jordan 2003).…”

“…To analyze the political factors shaping adoption of a shared SMT, right‐wing party rule is measured using a dichotomous variable coded 1 for councils controlled by the Conservative Party and 0 otherwise (see Dixon and Elston 2020). Next, electoral competition is measured by calculating the percentage difference of the share of the vote gained by the two parties winning the most votes in the most recent local election subtracted from 100 (see Pattie and Johnston 2005).…”

“…Research suggests that inter‐local co‐operation has grown considerably in the United States (US) and many other countries during the past thirty years (Kwon and Feiock 2010; Bel, Mildred, and Warner 2015). In particular, empirical studies have identified a movement toward the sharing of services, such as IT, HR, and procurement, in the United States (Henderson 2014), Australia (Drew, McQuestin, and Dollery 2019), England (Dixon and Elston 2020), and Germany (Niehaves and Krause 2010). However, to date, little systematic empirical analysis has addressed the reasons for appointing a single SMT to run all of the services provided by separate local governments 2…”

“…From an institutional perspective, coercive pressures from regulatory bodies, and higher levels of government could prompt local governments to search for new ways of doing things (Ashworth, Boyne, and Delbridge 2009). At the same time, mimetic pressures from nearby adopters of innovation are also likely to be influential (Dixon and Elston 2020).…”

Toward the Roux: Explaining the Adoption of Inclusionary Practices in Local Governments

“…Scholars have observed that the affluence of a community often drives its priorities, may facilitate and/or constrain the ability of localities to offer services, and affects the willingness/ability of local policymakers to engage in innovation (Dixon and Elston 2020). Hajnal and Trounstine (2010), for example, concluded that cities in poor fiscal health are limited in what services they offer as well as how they distribute resources.…”