Abstract
From an instrumental perspective, public administrators are expected to analyze their environment. They are also expected to take proactive steps to manage environmental impacts. These actions are intended to ensure that public administrators are able to achieve their goals. Part of analyzing their environment involves the engagement of stakeholders. Stakeholder engagement is believed to provide public administrators with insights into how they can better evaluate innovative policy options that allow them to overcome limited administrative capacity. Stakeholder engagement is also believed to allow public administrators with opportunities to mobilize support in light of political opposition. The purpose of this article is to test these claims within the policy area of municipal contracting out. In the article, we find strong support for these ideas. Thus, our findings should inform public administration theories about the role and importance of stakeholder engagement.
Highlights
From an instrumental perspective, public administrators are expected to analyze their environment
Our findings provide strong support that environmental conditions lead to more external stakeholder engagement
Still, when we examined prior studies that have listed external stakeholders within a given policy area (e.g., Schalk, 2011; Thomas & Poister, 2008;Walker, Avellaneda and Berry, 2011; Weible, 2007), we found that all major categories of stakeholders in these prior studies were included on the Alternative Service Delivery (ASD) list of external stakeholders
Summary
Public administrators are expected to analyze their environment. Literature on New Public Management (NPM), governance, collaboration, and strategic management describes public administrators as proactive rather than reactive These literatures suggest that public administrators are instrumental and strategic and may engage with stakeholders purposively to achieve goals and yield benefits (Bingham, Nabataichi, & O’leary, 2005; Bryson, Crosby, & Bloomberg, 2014; Bryson, Patton, & Bowman, 2011; Moore, 1995; Moynihan, 2003; West & Bowman, 2004). The primary purpose of this survey was to explore the nature of contracting out in local governments, a portion of the survey focused on stakeholder engagement We use this data along with data from the U.S Census Bureau to explore the extent to which stakeholders within this particular policy area are engaged. The topic of contracting out is often described in the strategy literature as the adoption of innovation given that it is viewed as a new approach to service delivery by municipal governments (Damanpour & Schneider, 2008; Mandell & Steelman, 2003; Walker, 2006). Do innovative policies test government’s instrumentality (Borins, 2001; Damanpour & Schneider, 2008; Vigoda-Gadot, Shoham, Schwabsky, & Ruvio, 2008) they provide a acute setting for studying instrumental approaches to public management
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