Stephen Greasley

The Impact of Political Leadership on Organisational Performance: Evidence from English Urban Government

Abstract Many commentators view the political management reforms of English local government with some scepticism, raising concerns about the desirability of stronger leadership and the efficacy of institutional reform in encouraging stronger leadership. Using data from a five-year evaluation of the impact of the Local Government Act 2000, this paper reports evidence suggesting that institutional variation does influence the way that organisations operate and can have a positive impact on their performance, though the results are mixed with the internal decision-making elements showing most difference, whilst there is less evidence of effects in relation to partnership working and engagement with the public. In hung and balanced authorities an internal focus on managing coalitions and party competitors is judged to impede the role of leaders in partnership working. In the concluding section, the paper develops the concept of facilitative leadership, which will continue to influence reform of local government and the practice of political leadership in local government. Policy-makers, by giving leaders the right mix of resources and incentives, can improve the effectiveness of urban political leadership and encourage the trend towards facilitative leadership.

Does Government Performance Matter? The Effects of Local Government on Urban Outcomes in England

This paper applies an extensive literature that argues that political leadership and local government activity enhance urban performance. Using the State of the Cities Database of 56 Primary Urban Areas in England, it tests for the impact of consolidated governance, political stability, planning performance, average service performance, local government capacity and planning development expenditure on jobs and population growth from 1995 to 2005. The regression analysis finds that the competence of service delivery is weakly associated with full-time jobs growth and that a consolidated governance structure is weakly associated with greater population growth. None of the other tests is statistically significant. Overall, the findings place doubt on the salience of the political determinants of economic performance in English cities for the period in question.

Can we make environmental citizens? A randomised control trial of the effects of a school-based intervention on the attitudes and knowledge of young people

The aim of this study was to determine whether school-based intervention can help in making environmental citizens. A randomised control trial of 448 primary school students and their families in 27 primary schools located in Vale Royal, North West England was carried out between January and July 2008. The interventions were two types of class-based instruction on environmental issues, one long and the other short, which were designed to increase environmental awareness. Environmental attitudes and behaviours were measured by surveys completed by the students in their classes and in their homes before and after the interventions. The analysis reports school averages of the questionnaire responses, followed by regression analysis using robust clustered standard errors. The results show no statistically significant differences between schools in the intervention groups compared to the control group schools. The rising environmental awareness of the control group during the intervention may partly explain the positive results of existing non-experimental studies.

Maintaining Ethical Cultures: Self regulation in English Local Government

Abstract The establishment of an ethical framework to govern councillor conduct has been an important and controversial aspect of local government reform in England. Both the detail of the statutory code and the associated system of enforcement have been subject to criticism. As a result of some of these problems future reform and policy is likely to rely to a greater extent on local authorities and their standards committees creating a culture of ethical governance. This paper uses evidence gathered from case studies in eight English local authorities to describe the methods they use to support cultures of ethical governance.