Role Diversity of City Managers

City Managers under Fire: How Conflict Leads to Turnover

“…Kammerer and colleagues provided a plausible explanation, which they developed for their finding that managers had shorter tenure in cities where the mayor was popularly elected. They attributed this shorter tenure to "the elected mayor's base of power, which is 'independent' of the council, and from a presumed leadership role that voters, as well as a separately elected mayor himself, may impute to such an office" (1962, p. 57; see also Kammerer, 1964, andBooth, 1968). They suggested both that elected mayors may be more likely to oppose the manager (to see him or her as a rival leader) and that elected mayors may be more able to build popular support for their opposition to the manager.…”

Mayoral Leadership in Council-Manager Cities: Preconditions versus Preconceptions

“…Reflecting the limited scope of the office and the primacy of undiluted executive leadership in the reform scheme, Kammerer (1964) and Booth (1968) assessed the impact of direct election of the mayor on the manager s authority, the former arguing that the practice threatens the manager and the latter concluding that it makes no difference.…”

Policy Roles of City Managers

“…No clear relationships between any of the socioeconomic variables and role behaviors were found. Kammerer (1964), in a study of city managers in ten Florida cities, found no association between the discretion of city managers and a number of socioeconomic variables except for the means used to select the mayor. Directly elected mayors were associated with less city manager discretion than when mayors were elected by the council.…”

“…Most studies have been unable to identify any association between socioeconomic variables and city manager role behaviors (Booth, 1968;Lewis, 1976;Koehler, 1973;Kammerer, 1964;Wright, 1969). Lewis (1976) examined the possible relationships between city manager role behaviors and fifteen separate factors, including manager's formal education, city size, city growth, and manager's age.…”