XiaoHu Wang

Sustainability Leadership in a Local Government Context: The Administrator's Role in the Process

Sustainability in a local context involves not only environmental practices such as energy conservation, but also policy efforts to involve communities, develop organizational capacity, and encourage widespread adoption. Sustainability leadership is the promotion of an array of practices, over time, by a broad array of actors including council members, citizens, state legislators, and others—that is, the type of social change leadership defined by Van Wart in Dynamics of Leadership. However, the key role of public administrators in local sustainability has largely been ignored in the literature. Using a national database from U. S. cities, this study provides an organizational-change explanation of the important subroles of administrators in local sustainability. It finds that administrators can have a substantial function in sustainability leadership by engaging citizens, enhancing technical expertise, mobilizing financial resources, and developing managerial execution capacity for sustainability. Effective administrators help overcome dispersed public perspectives, organizational constraints, and technical challenges in local sustainability, which can result in better organizational performance of sustainability policies.

Sustaining Networks in Emergency Management: A Study of Counties in the United States

The increasing scope and severity of disasters has led to the wide adoption of collaborative practices through networks in the field of emergency management. Networks are most effective when they can be sustained over time. This study develops a model of the factors that influence network sustainability in emergency management. Using data from a national survey of county emergency managers in the United States, the study finds that convergence of organizational goals, utilization of information and communication technology, and, most important, interorganizational trust are all significant influences on network sustainability in emergency management. The results indicate the significant role of trust-building among emergency managers in sustaining an emergency management network.

Financing Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement: Evidence from U.S. Cities

Financial support is critical to sustain and improve the implementation of sustainability policies and initiatives. How capable are local governments to finance sustainability? Why are some governments more financially able than others to fund sustainability? How does stakeholder engagement improve financial capacity for sustainability? This study provides an explanation for sustainability funding that emphasizes political behaviors of institutional players in budgetary decision making. Using a database from U.S. cities, we find that an effective approach to enhance financial capacity for sustainability is to engage stakeholders to mobilize political support and technical expertise needed in resource allocation decisions for sustainability. Specific strategic actions to enhance financial capacity are recommended as part of a long-term and structured effort to sustain sustainability funding in local government.

Public Executive Leadership in East and West: An Examination of HRM Factors in Eight Countries

The Asia-Pacific region is known for examples of public managers taking initiative for addressing large challenges and opportunities, but recent concerns are that public leadership is greatly reduced in the new democratic and media-conscious era. Comparative data from South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the United States, India, Brazil, and Chile show that perceptions of strong public executive leadership in Asia-Pacific are similar to those in the United States (respectively 40% and 35%). Perceived leadership is greater in stable, one-party regimes (Malaysia, Mainland China), than in those that have party turnover (Taiwan, South Korea). This article also argues that HRM factors affect the calculus of leaders’ initiative-taking, and finds that in both the East and West public executive leadership is associated with HR factors affecting recruitment, selection, compensation, appraisal, rewards, and satisfaction with civil service systems. This article calls for further research and strategic HRM actions that strengthen public executive leadership in democracies.

Local Government Strategies for Financing Energy Efficiency Initiatives

Sustainable development has quickly become an important theme in local governments facing environmental challenges. Energy efficiency can be part of local efforts to sustain economic development while protecting the environment and natural resources. Based on a national database, this study examines U.S. city governments’ strategies to finance energy efficiency. The result suggests that energy efficiency financing (EEF) has become part of local sustainability strategies. In the study, we offer an explanation for energy efficiency funding that emphasizes political behaviors of institutional players in budgetary decision making. We examine factors influencing adoption and progression of EEF. The results highlight the importance of explaining results of EEF to citizens. Technical expertise from professional organizations helps start EEF programs. A Democrat-leaning consistency is important to adopt EEF, but only in cities without substantial strategies promoting EEF. Cities with revenue declines are less likely to implement EEF.

Best Practices of Best Performers: Evidence from the Florida Sterling Council Award Winners

Organizational performance is critical to the achievement of organizational goals. Performance excellence is dependent on many internal as well as external organizational factors. What factors affect the performance of high-performance organizations? This study analyzes the efforts to achieve performance excellence of eighteen organizations that have received awards from the Florida Sterling Council. The Sterling Award envisions performance improvement in such areas as the enhancement of organizational leadership, the creation and constant upgrading of strategic planning, and the customer focus of services and activities. Thus the Sterling Awards provide a unique opportunity to empirically examine how organizational factors contribute to organizational performance in highly performing organizations. The analysis of eighteen organizations that have won Sterling Awards makes it possible to specify the building blocks of a highly performing organization. The results reveal important lessons learned from high-performing organizations.

Integrating ICT adoption issues into (e-)leadership theory

While e-government and e-administration have been much researched, e-leadership has not.Traditionally, e-leadership has been defined as ICT-mediated communication only.E-leadership should include ICT adoption competence for both personal and enterprise use.Technology adoption models can be usefully adapted for leadership theory building. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are having a profound effect in society and organizations. However, the literature on ICT adoptionfrom selection to implementationhas not been well integrated into leadership theory. This is particularly true in terms of adoption. Leaders must adopt ICTs not only for their own competencean antecedent condition for what is considered e-leadership, but choose, recommend, and support implementation of ICTs for their organizations/units to use. Leaders are also expected to become effective in dealing and navigating the challenges of leading within the digital space. At this moment, there are two pertinent literatures: the technology adoption literature and the enterprise resource planning literaturewhich can be considered an important special case of leadership change management literatureand which could provide the theoretical basis for developing a unified theoretical perspective on e-leadership. This article provides a framework and propositions to connect these literatures by focusing on the effects of individual leader characteristics on the ICT adoption process from both a personal and enterprise-wide perspective. Study limitations and future research opportunities are outlined.

Building Network Implementation Capacity: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT Network research increasingly draws attention to capacity affecting outcomes. This study examines network implementation capacity and develops a framework that focuses on three dimensions: financial, managerial, and technical capacity. It also contributes by focusing on the Network Administrator Organization (NAO)-type network. Based on a case study of two large eco-financing networks in China, this study finds positive impacts of network implementation capacity on policy outcomes. It also draws attention to network strategies and their impact on capacity. It identifies the positive effect of efforts to maintain network stability as well as negotiation and participation strategies on network implementation capacity. This study draws attention to implementation capacity as a determinant of network outcomes and suggests that studies in public administration give greater attention to NAO-type networks.

Financing conservation: some empirical evidence from Florida local governments

Government is the primary financer of conservation services, but conservation financing in government is rarely studied. This study makes two contributions to understanding conservation financing in government. First, it develops a framework to classify and analyse conservation funding. Applying this framework to the data from Florida county governments, this study finds that conservation funding has become more stable and secure. More resources are used for large and long-term capital projects that benefit not only the current generation but also future generations, which reflects the ultimate goal of conservation. Second, this research offers an explanation about why some governments spend more on conservation than others. The results suggest that conservation funding in government is the result of combined forces in environmental pressure of economic activities and budgetary politics. The paper concludes that government should develop a structured conservation funding strategy that includes close monitoring of environmental pressure and proper political and institutional responses to the pressure.

E-leadership: an empirical study of organizational leaders’ virtual communication adoption

Even though e-leadership was broadly defined in 2001 (Avolio et al.), there has been surprisingly little progress (Avolio et al., 2014). In order to make a better progress, the authors recommend dividing the field into four quadrants to facilitate the research focus. It can be divided by e-leadership phases (the adoption of technology phase vs the quality of use of technology phase), as well as the purposes (e-leadership as virtual communication vs e-leadership as management of organizational structures). The paper aims to discuss these issues.,This study provides a model of e-leadership as communication adoption at the individual level (ECAMi). Structural equation modeling was used to test a previously published model by Van Wart et al. (2017a). The model included select traits and skills (as antecedent conditions), awareness of ICTs, evaluation of ICTs, willingness to expend effort in learning about ICTs, intention to use ICTs, and facilitating conditions.,The overall model demonstrates a good fit. It can be concluded that the ECAMi represents a valid model for understanding e-leaders’ technological adoption. It is also found that while all select skills and traits are significant – energy, responsibility and analytical skills stand above the others.,To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this represents the first effort to operationalize e-leadership.