Sustainability management, strategy and reform in local government

ABSTRACT

As discussions about sustainability management in local government evolve, public managers lack clear frameworks prescribing how sustainability should be integrated into the practice of management. Studies in public administration tend to emphasize the policy tools managers use for sustainable outcomes, rather than the management processes that can enhance sustainability through organizational change. Drawing on Laszlo and Zhexembayeva’s definition of ‘embedded sustainability,’ this essay suggests local government managers should focus on integrating sustainability into strategic planning processes in order to advance sustainability as a reform in local government. Public management scholars and local government professionals are urged to develop partnerships to support evidence-based decision-making in local government in order to investigate propositions about sustainability management.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• city management
• strategic planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This review of sustainability in local government focuses primarily on research in public administration and urban policy. While references come from a range of journals, a more extensive systematic literature review engaging the fields of urban planning and urban ecology might provide a more comprehensive assessment of current research on local government sustainability initiatives. While systematic literature reviews have a place in management research (e.g. Tranfield, Denyer, and Smart 2003), such a bibliographic methodology is not employed here. Instead, the goal of this essay is to critique general trends in this field while pointing to new paths for development.

2. These four journals were selected out of convenience to explore research at the intersection of public administration and local governance. Specialized journals that might explore local environmental policy, such as Local Environment or Environment and Planning C, were excluded because the focus of this critique is sustainability management. Other public administration journals, including Public Administration and The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, were considered; however, articles fitting the search criteria were not identified within the selected time frame. Articles within these journals were identified through two approaches. First a key word search for ‘city AND sustainability’ was conducted with each journal during the selected time period. Next, the table of contents for each issue was directly reviewed in order to identify articles that might have been missed in the key word search, such as articles focusing on environmental management or Local Agenda 21, rather than using the term sustainability. Articles were excluded from the analysis if the focus of the research was financial sustainability, unrelated to the definitions of sustainability that link the concept to the environment, as reviewed earlier in this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric S. Zeemering

Eric S. Zeemering is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration in the School of Public and Global Affairs at Northern Illinois University, where he is also a faculty associate at the Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability and Energy. He was a recent Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Governance and Public Administration at the University of Ottawa. His research explores collaborative local governance in municipal service delivery and urban sustainability initiatives. He is the author of Collaborative Strategies for Sustainable Cities: Economy, Environment and Community in Baltimore, published by Routledge.