Management Models and Performance in the Municipal Administrations: Evidence from Swiss Local Governments

By preparing, implementing and controlling political decisions, the municipal administrations contribute to fulfilling public tasks (Steiner and Kaiser 2013). These tasks have become more complex in recent years and... [ view full abstract ]

By preparing, implementing and controlling political decisions, the municipal administrations contribute to fulfilling public tasks (Steiner and Kaiser 2013). These tasks have become more complex in recent years and professional competence is required. Claims by the citizens regarding professionality, efficiency and customer orientation are also raising (Ladner et al. 2013). Meanwhile, local governments have undergone reforms of their political and administrative systems. We therefore want to investigate how the municipal administrations are organized and how they cope with fulfilling their manifold tasks. Especially, we are interested in the performance of the local administrations and the management models by which they are organized. Knowledge about the organization of the administration and its influence on the performance is still scarce (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2013). Therefore, the research questions raised in this paper are: By what management models are the municipalities organized? What is the (self-assessed) performance of the municipal administrations and what are their main difficulties? What is the connection between the selected management model and the performance of the municipal administration?
The empirical analysis of the paper is conducted using the Swiss case. Due to different cantonal legislations and heterogeneous population sizes, the municipal administrations in Switzerland are very diverse. In many small Swiss municipalities, one or two persons alone fulfill the tasks of the local administration. On the other hand, cities have large administrative apparatus. Thus, the Swiss municipalities are an interesting case to investigate for this study.
The underlying data for this hypothesis-based paper come from a longitudinal survey, which was conducted in all municipalities in Switzerland in 2005, 2009 and 2016. The data is analyzed using frequency analysis and regression analysis.