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

Abstract

Many municipalities are taking meaningful action in pursuit of climate, environmental, and energy objectives. These issues are complex and transboundary and thus provide fertile ground for collaboration, particularly in metropolitan regions. However, despite the many benefits that can result from collaboration, it also entails transaction risk. As a result, cities have incentive to be selective about who they collaborate with. In some cases, cities, particularly those with considerable internal resources and capacities, might find it easier to “go it alone.” We pull from the literature on collaboration risk, transaction cost economics, and organizational capacity to develop hypotheses about the relationship between capacity and collaboration in urban sustainability initiatives. Our analysis finds that the extent to which cities collaborate with external organizations on climate and energy issues is shaped by local administrative capacity; however, the relationship is nonlinear.

Trends in Resource Capacity and Collaboration for City Sustainability: Implications for Planning Research and Practice

“…It is relatively well accepted that organizational capacity and the extent of its collaborative relationships are related (Hawkins et al, 2016). However recent research suggests this relationship is non-linear and that collaboration is highest when cities have enough capacity to be an attractive potential partner, but not enough where they are able to "go it alone" (Krause et al, 2019b). From this perspective, declines in investment and related levels of capacity may have provided the impetus for the observed increases in collaboration.…”

“…Local government capacity, as it relates to sustainability initiatives, has two primary dimensionsadministrative and financial. Administrative capacity encapsulates organizational and human dimensions and has been variously operationalized by the presence of a sustainability office, the number of relevant staff, and their expertise and positioning within a city structure (see for example: Homsy & Warner, 2015;Krause et al, 2019b). Existing studies proxy financial capacity with the presence of a dedicated budget line for sustainability efforts and via several different measures of city revenue and expenditures (Yeganeh et al, 2020).…”

Updating the Institutional Collective Action Framework

“…Organizational Capacity. Recent empirical work using the ICA framework also suggests administrative capacity is a key factor in shaping interorganizational collaboration (Krause, Hawkins, & Park, 2019) and its linkage to policy outputs (Swann, 2017) in urban sustainability, and promoting continuity of transborder partnerships in the EU (Szmigiel-Rawska, 2016). In general, administrative capacity enhances organizations' ability to overcome collective action dilemmas, but having too much capacity can disincentivize collaboration (Krause et al, 2019).…”

Assessing Sustainability Behavior and Environmental Performance of Urban Systems: A Systematic Review

“…Cutting-edge ecologically related tools [141][142][143][144][145][146][147][148] can be deployed to evaluate economic advancements, technological breakthroughs, environmental sustainability behavior, and urban liveability. Environmental and social change components mobilize the management operations of urban community green spaces.…”