Hee Soun Jang

CLIMATE PROTECTION AND ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY POLICY IN CALIFORNIA CITIES: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

ABSTRACT: Local governments have undertaken climate protection and energy sustainability policy actions to comply with state environmental protection legislation. However, noncollaboration and high up-front costs involved in sustainability programs hinder some cities from adopting climate protection and energy sustainability policy actions. This study examines climate protection and energy sustainability policy actions in 172 California cities and develops a framework from literatures in environmental protection policy, institutional analysis, policy innovation, policy entrepreneurship, and urban politics to construct hypotheses which are tested with data from a 2010 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) survey. Comparative descriptive analyses indicate that California cities are more advanced in the use of these policy actions than the rest of theUnited States. A set of Poisson regression and negative binomial regression analyses provides evidence that financial independence, education, homeownership, form of government, ICLEI membership, and the intergovernmental impacts of entrepreneurial state legislators influence the use of these policy actions at the local level. The influence of these factors differs across sustainability, environmental conservation, and energy use reduction policy actions.

A Theoretical Framework on the Determinants of Strategic Cities: Empirical Results From Florida City Governments

Strategic planning is a commonly used management technique, but most state and city studies on strategic planning are descriptive and have not developed a clear theory as to why cities use strategic planning. In this paper, we develop a framework for measuring cities’ use of strategic planning, that includes factors related to form of government, community wealth, and other community attributes as well as the more commonly examined factors related to internal city management capacity. Rather than using a dichotomous dependent variable of “use” or “not use,” we use an index of four strategic planning activities to represent the extent of strategic planning use. We test our multivariate model using ordered logit and data collected from a 2005 survey of Florida city managers, mayors and chief administrative officers. We find support for all four of the major theoretical factors in our model. More strategic cities are more likely to be council manager cities, heterogeneous in population, depend less on sales tax revenue, have risk-taking leadership, use more contracting out, and have staff who participate in professional networks.

Motivations Behind Using Performance Measurement: City-wide vs. Selective Users

Abstract This article identifies and describes the utilisation of performance measurement in Florida local governments. Two research questions are considered here: which factors influence Florida city governments to use performance measurement? And how do the factors associated with cities that are city-wide users differ from cities that are selective users? The paper develops a framework constructed from literatures in performance measurement and management innovation to develop hypotheses that are tested with 2005 Florida local government data. This study finds strong support for the role of community attributes, form of government and internal capacity as contributors to the use of performance measurement. The study also finds the factors that influence city-wide users are different from factors that influence selective users, especially with regard to revenue size and the reward/incentive system.

Institutional Collective Action Issues in Nonprofit Self-Organized Collaboration

This study explores self-organized voluntary nonprofit collaboration to investigate why and under which circumstances nonprofit organizations participate in voluntary-based informal collaboration. To answer this question, we extend the institutional collective action (ICA) framework to identify the reasons why nonprofit organizations participate in informal collaborative arrangements. Based on data derived from a national survey of nonprofit organizations, we report evidence that the internal organizational conditions, embedded relationships, service areas, and client population of nonprofits influence their participation in informal collaborations.

To Use or Not to Use Strategic Planning: Factors City Leaders Consider to Make This Choice

Over the past 30 years, local governments in the US have used a variety of administrative reforms to help clarify goals and improve performance to adjust to changing political and social environments, and demands for new services. Osborne and Gaebler’s (1993) Reinventing Government and the National Performance Review work argued that government should be run in a more strategic manner, be more attuned to customer needs, less bureaucratic, and more innovative. As a result, since the early 1990s, strategic planning and new public management (NPM) approaches, such as performance management and contracting out, have been widely used in local governments. City administrators were early users of strategic management processes such as strategic planning and performance management approaches (Vinzant and Vinzant, 1996). Strategic planning is still popularly used in local governments because it helps them respond to external forces that use their services and impact their agencies, and to reorganize their internal capacity in order to provide better public services to stakeholders.

Why do residents participate in neighborhood associations? The case of apartment neighborhood associations in Seoul, South Korea

ABSTRACT Private governments are organized by residents to resolve collective action problems in neighborhoods and provide services that are public in nature for the community residents. This article builds knowledge of private governments by examining apartment complexes in Seoul, South Korea, and explores the determinants of citizen engagement in neighborhood associations. Apartment complexes in Seoul are forming physical neighborhoods that make its segregated life boundary distinct. This research proposes that the neighborhood associations in Seoul may create social spaces where people pursue human values and social goods and promote civic engagement in the community. To explain factors that affect residents who participate in neighborhood associations, we analyzed the Apartment Community Survey in Seoul. The results indicate that residents who participate in social groups and community programs and live in communities for a long time are more likely to participate in neighborhood associations