Laurence J. O’Toole

Managerial Networking: Issues of Measurement and Research Design

The study of networks is a growth area in public management. This article argues that small studies of networks need to be supplemented with large n studies that permit one to include more theoretically relevant control variables and to deal with issues of causality. Using survey data from several hundred agency heads, this article presents a reliable measure of management network activities that has demonstrated substantial empirical import. If the right network nodes are selected, contact information on only a limited number of nodes is needed. Who initiates contacts within the network is also shown to be important.

Introduction Part Four: Infrastructure: The Road to Eternity?

The following three chapters examine questions of participation raised by infrastructure projects, taking for study diverse examples from the fields of waste and transport policy. Such projects are frequently controversial for policy-makers and the public who pay and vote for them. This is firstly because various policy rationales may conflict with each other. For example, high-speed rail may indeed be better for the environment than new motorways but is it really sustainable to travel so fast and far if it is based on nuclear sourced electricity? Secondly, infrastructure policies are intrusive in physical terms, as they will demand considerable intervention in the natural environment and they are nearly always doomed to be on somebody else’s ‘backyard’.

Introduction Part Three: Strategic Planning

The contributions in this part all deal with strategic planning processes or more fundamental decision-making processes that are undertaken along ‘interactive’ lines. One of the major problems with early environmental policies is that they led to ‘problem displacement’, shifting problems to other areas, other parts of the environment or to the future rather than resolving them. Strategic planning is a potential means to prevent such displacement and it may also offer opportunities to link together various environmental issues to prevent new problems being created when others are solved. Along similar lines, debates are needed every now and then about the fundamentals underlying environmental policies.

Introduction Part Two: Local Agenda 21

In Rio de Janeiro, June 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) agreed upon Agenda 21. This initiative, an international action programme for the next century, emphasised, among other things, co-operation between local authorities and groups in tackling environmental problems. About 2,500 actions were agreed upon in Agenda 21, two-thirds of which are to take place at the local level along the credo ‘think global, act local’. Taking this cue for action at heart, some 2,000 municipalities in 50 countries have started LA21 activities.