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Abstract
The study examines how two major strategy formulation approaches influence city governments’ decision to collaborate. Collaboration with governmental and nongovernmental actors gives rise to varying levels of risks, which can be managed by using the appropriate strategy formulation approach. Using data from a national survey of cities, we find that formal strategic planning catalyzes cross-sectoral collaboration but is not associated with government-to-government collaboration. Logical incrementalism has a consistently negative relationship with collaboration regardless of sector. The findings indicate that collaboration can be limited by city governments’ capacity to undertake formal strategic planning and their propensity to engage in incrementalist decision-making.
Notes
1 Not a few scholars have lamented this condition. See, for example, Thomson and Perry (Citation2006) or Emerson and Nabatchi (Citation2015).
2 For O’Toole (Citation1997, p. 45) networks are “structures of interdependence involving multiple organizations or parts thereof, where one unit is not merely the formal subordinate of the others in some larger hierarchical arrangement”. The term “network” is not the same as “networking.” Networking, according to Meier and O’Toole (Citation2010, p. 1027), refers to “contacts with key actors in the environment for the purpose of identifying and implementing mutually acceptable, even attractive, jointly determined decisions.” In other words, networking is the “external behavior of public managers, specifically their efforts to establish ties with actors from organizations, units or programs located outside of their own organizations” (Jimenez, Citation2017, pp. 451–52).
3 Provan and Milward (Citation2001, p. 417) use the term to refer to “a collection of programs and services that span a broad range of cooperating but legally autonomous organizations.”
4 Mandell and Keast (Citation2014, p. 256) write that “Collaborative networks are formed to deal with very complex problems that no one organization or group is able to deal with on their own. In addition, they are formed because the participants recognize that the way they currently operate is no longer working and new and innovative solutions are needed to address the problem(s) involved.”.
5 Feiock’s (Citation2007, p. 48) institutional collective action (or ICA) includes “Bilateral contracting and multilateral collective action are mechanisms by which two or more governments act collectively to capture the gains from providing or producing services across a larger area.” Although his initial conceptualization of ICA focuses on interlocal cooperation, Feiock (Citation2009, p. 362) subsequently included private and non-profit organizations, writing “Although less recognized in the literature, non-profit and for-profit producers may also seek to manage and coordinate interlocal public service provision.” .
6 For Ansell and Gash (Citation2008, p. 544) the term refers to a “governing arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets.”.
7 Or “the particular mode of, or system for, public decision making in which cross-boundary collaboration represents the prevailing pattern of behavior and activity,” according to Emerson et al. (Citation2012, p. 6).
8 Defined by Bryson et al. (Citation2006, p. 44) as “the linking or sharing of information, resources, activities, and capabilities by organizations in two or more sectors to achieve jointly an outcome that could not be achieved by organizations in one sector separately.”.
9 Others offer a more expansive range of collaborative arrangements. Mandell (Citation1999, p, 5), for example, conceives of collaboration as a continuum that ranges from “loose linkages” to “more lasting structural arrangements.” Within this collaboration range are “joint powers agreements, contracting out, or public-private partnerships…” (pp. 5–6).
10 Some descriptions of the rational planning model follow closely that of Simon’s (Citation1957) portrayal of the rational decision-making model in classical economics (see, for example, Methe et al., Citation2000). Others emphasize that rational planning transpires under Simon’s (Citation1957) bounded rationality (see Andrews et al., Citation2009; Elbanna, Citation2006). Whether completely rational or only limitedly so, rational planning is described as formal, analytical and logical (Andrews et al., Citation2009; Boyne, Citation2001).
11 Based on the suggestion of an anonymous reviewer.
12 Others refer to this as “organizational homophily” (see Chen & Sullivan, Citation2023).
13 Burns and Stalker (Citation1994), for example distinguish between the mechanistic form of organization (characterized by hierarchy, formal rules and regulation, vertical communication, and structured decision-making) and organic form of organization (characterized by less rigidity, more participation, and empowerment of workers).
14 Closely related to the concept of organizational proximity is Frederickson’s (Citation1999) “administrative conjunctions,” which represent ties among public sector actors across jurisdictions based on a system of shared values and professional norms.
15 Of particular importance are transaction costs or the costs incurred by organizations in developing, negotiating, and monitoring the enforcement of rules in collaborative undertakings (Feiock, Citation2009, Citation2013).
16 At the time of survey planning, the 2012 Census of Governments had yet to be released.
17 Because of space consideration, the results are not presented here but are available from the authors.
18 A different approach is confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in which a researcher groups items, ideally informed by a theory postulating a relationship among items and the underlying construct. A potential issue with this approach is that it imposes a preconceived factor structure largely determined by the researcher rather than the data.
19 The bivariate correlation analysis does not show any high correlations among the independent variables. The results are not presented here but are available from the authors on request.
20 We run other regression analyses (not presented here). For example, we included a dummy indicating the position of the respondent (manager vs. budget/finance directors) and did not find a statistically significant result. These results are available from the authors.
21 Richardson et al. (Citation2009) uses the term common method variance.
22 In their exhaustive examination of CSB in the public administration literature, George and Pandey (Citation2017) write that “an unbalanced approach on CSB has recently emerged in public administration, where papers that draw on a survey as single data source are greeted with a blinkered concern for potential CSB issues.” They argue that “claims about CSB’s influence might be exaggerated” and advise instead for “a more thoughtful and discriminating approach to papers using a survey as single data source” (p. 247).
23 For a contrary view on the usefulness of the test, see Podsakoff et al. (Citation2003) who discuss several issues with the Harman test.
24 The covariance explained by each factor with rotation is: 23.36% for the formal strategic planning factor, 18.18% for governmental collaboration, 12.71% for nongovernmental collaboration, and12.32% for logical incrementalism. Unrotated, the covariances explained are: 26.68% for the formal strategic planning factor, 19.51% for governmental collaboration, 11.35% for nongovernmental collaboration, and 9.02% for logical incrementalism. These results are identical whether using the original measurement scale of the survey items, or using z-scores for standardized measurement. The full results are available from the authors on request.
25 For example, local governments partnering with for-profits or non-profits to apply for federal grants are hindered by local competitive bidding policies. When a local government applies for a federal grant and chooses a specific private/non-profit as a co-applicant, it may effectively be violating local competitive bidding rules as it has already pre-selected the private/non-profit even before the money comes through. Bidding is often required when the grant money has been secured, and projects can be contracted out. Non-profits also cannot participate in joint-lobbying with a governmental entity as they are generally prohibited from engaging in lobbying activities lest they lose their tax-exempt status. In addition, for-profit and non-profit actors do not have taxing authority and cannot be part of tax-base sharing arrangements.
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Minji Hong
Minji Hong is a doctoral candidate of Public Management and Policy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Her research interests primarily include the financial management of state and local governments and nonprofits.
Benedict S. Jimenez
Benedict S. Jimenez is a Professor of Public Budgeting and Finance at Georgia State University. He leads the Public Budgeting and Management Lab (publicbudgetinglab.org) which undertakes research on issues affecting the ability of state and local governments to finance and provide critical public services.