Examining the Impact of Local Collaborative Tools on Urban Sustainability Efforts: Does the Managerial Environment Matter?

Abstract

Collaborative management is thought to enhance policy implementation in urban settings by overcoming governmental fragmentation, creating greater goal consensus, increasing access to resources, and facilitating policy learning. However, empirical studies of this relationship are conspicuously absent, limiting researchers' ability to predict how collaborative tools will directly and indirectly affect local implementation outcomes. This article investigates the effects of inter-and intralocal collaboration on the implementation of urban sustainability practices, and investigates interaction relationships to test whether two managerial environmental factors-administrative capacity and stakeholder support-influence the effectiveness of collaborative tools. Drawing data from a national survey, the analysis finds evidence that the effectiveness of collaborative tools depends on the policy target, and that administrative capacity and stakeholder support influence the effectiveness of collaboration in policy implementation. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for how public managers utilize collaborative tools in urban sustainability governance.

The Perfect Amount of Help: An Examination of the Relationship Between Capacity and Collaboration in Urban Energy and Climate Initiatives

“…The key finding revolves around the significant and nonlinear impact that professional capacity has on collaboration. Past research has indicated that increases in local government capacity, particularly professional capacity, lead to additional activity and greater collaboration around environmental issues (Hawkins et al 2018;Swann 2017). However, the prevailing conclusion that the capacity-collaboration relationship is positive and linear may, in part, be an artifact of the measurements and data utilized.…”

“…The amount of information an organization can effectively process at any given time is directly tied to its human capacity (Zandt 2004). These dynamics lead to the general expectation that greater administrative capacity has a positive effect on the extent of cities' collaboration (Hawkins et al 2018;Swann 2017). Specifically, we hypothesize the following:…”

“…Our research enters this crowded space and examines the relationship between cities' capacity and the extent to which they collaborate with external actors to achieve climate and energy objectives. Although assessments of the effect that human capacity has on collaboration are not particularly novel, most existing studies hypothesize and find evidence supporting a simple positive linear relationship between them (Hawkins et al 2016;Swann 2017). We pull from literature on collaboration risk and transaction cost economics and hypothesize a more complicated relationship.…”

“…Along these lines, urban scholars have noted the importance of cities' ability to manage transboundary policy initiatives in contexts characterized by political fragmentation and divergent stakeholder preferences toward policy solutions (Feiock 2009). Notably, research on the ability of local governments to develop environmental policy proposals and subsequently implement them across city government departments and the larger community have often centered on cities' professional human capacity (Swann 2017;Terman and Feiock 2015).…”

How Town Engages Gown: Engagement and Collaboration Between Local Governments and Institutions of Higher Education

“…These studies have analyzed various topics of collaboration with the local governments, largely through case studies (Vogt et al, 2017), qualitative interviews (Hendriks et al, 2015), and quantitative methods. Among them are public service delivery (Tomkinson, 2017;Pérez-López et al, 2015), food policy (Gupta et al, 2018;McCartan & Palermo, 2017), sustainability (Swann, 2017;Kiron et al, 2015), K-12 education (Hadfield & Ainscow, 2018;Starr, 2015), and disaster management (Sitas et al, 2016;Iimoto et al, 2015). Studies have also examined how local governments work with both industry and universities in what is referred to as the Triple Helix Model (Rodrigues and Melo, 2013;Etzkowitz, 2003).…”