Many Hands Make Light Work: The Role of Collaborative Management in Improving Environmental Information Management by Local Authorities

ABSTRACT

What is the role of collaborative management (CM) in enhancing environmental outputs? Does CM enable local municipalities to be better environmental performers? The present article addresses these two questions by means of a study of all urban localities in Israel (80% response rate). The aims of the study are to contribute to current research in two main ways. First, by addressing the question: Does CM enable local municipalities to be better environmental performers? In doing so, the study expands the very small number of studies conducted to date that examine performance and policy outputs of collaboration versus collaboration processes and procedures. Second, the study contributes to enlarging the very small number of relatively large N studies on collaborative public management that examine policy outputs. The main finding of this study highlights the important and positive role of CM in regard to local authorities’ environmental outputs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank Dr. Avi Gottlieb for his most valuable contribution in design of the Local Municipalities survey; to Sharon Malki, Bian Magala, and Gal Talit for their valuable contribution in implementation of the survey; Eyal Bar-Haim Adi Moreno, Carmel Blank, and Renana Shvartzvald for their assistance in the statistical analysis and their helpful comments and insights. Especially warm gratitude is expressed to all the respondents from Local Municipalities in Israel.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dorit Kerret

Dorit Kerret ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the Public Policy Department in Tel-Aviv University. She received her PhD from Tel-Aviv University and was a Fulbright and Rothschild Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. Her research is in the field of environmental policy and her current research focuses on the relationship between environmental behavior and positive psychology and its applications to public policy (‘positive sustainability’).

Gila Menahem

Gila Menahem ([email protected]) is a professor at the Public Policy Department in Tel-Aviv University. She received her PhD from Tel-Aviv University. She was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and CUNY Graduate Center. She specializes in governance, social capital and urban studies. Her current research focuses on metagovernance, collaborative management and policy narratives.