Municipal managers’ responsiveness to public demands: connecting attitudinal willingness, behavioral willingness, environmental and organizational factors

Public responsiveness, or bureaucratic responsiveness to citizen demands, is central in public administration theories. It has become a key concept regarding the appropriate role of bureaucracy and professional administrators in a democratic political system. In city management, responsiveness to public demands should be particularly addressed given the fact that local professionals have constant and direct contact with local residents. This dissertation builds on existing studies that identify the determinants of public responsiveness. One significant research gap of existing researches was noticed, that is, few studies have included public administrators’ willingness into the analysis framework. Current studies have identified organizational factors, environmental factors, features of policy clients and problem intensity as predictors of public responsiveness. However, examining public responsiveness without assessing individuals’ willingness would neglect their own interpretation and interaction with the environmental and institutional factors. It is at the individual level that the functioning of environmental and organizational factors is enacted. This dissertation project focuses municipal managers’ public responsiveness in the formulation of local budgets. The main research questions of this study include: (1) What is the actual level of municipal managers’ public responsiveness? (2) Given the importance of municipal managers’ attitudes, how can we foster their favorable attitude toward public responsiveness? In other words, what are the determinants of their attitudinal willingness to be responsive to public demands? (3) What are the determinants of municipal manages’ public responsiveness? How do municipal managers’ attitudinal and behavioral willingness connect environmental and organizational factors in determining their public responsiveness? The data in this dissertation was collected from New Jersey and Pennsylvania municipal managers. The seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) result indicates that the factor with the strongest impact on municipal managers’ attitudinal willingness is successful implementation and practices in other municipalities. It highlights the importance of social learning in acquiring and assimilating social knowledge. In the public responsiveness model, the structural equation modeling (SEM) result confirms that a thorough understanding of the determinants of public responsiveness cannot be separated from examining municipal managers’ attitudinal and behavioral willingness. It further suggests that environmental and organizational factors tend to enhance municipal managers’ public responsiveness (1) through institutional constraints; (2) through enhancing their perceived behavioral control.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Yuguo Lia