Administration: The Operational Demands of Local Economic Development

Contemporary local economic development often requires that development profes-sionals act as catalysts for orchestrating other governmental and nongovernmental actors in the pursuit of effective development policy strategies. Collaboration and cooperation across multiple actors, organizations, and governments is now the stan-dard modus operandi for many municipalities. The empirical analysis presented here indicates that the process of designing and administering local economic development policy may vary according to the types of policies and institutions adopted in the juris-diction. Findings suggest that the adoption of certain development policies and insti-tutions may actually induce collaboration in cities. Local economic development, thus, places demands on the development professional that are more visible and per-haps more consequential than in years past. The work of the local development professional is increasingly based in intersectoral, interorganizational, and intergovernmental collaboration. Collaboration is a concept that describes the process of facilitating and operating multiorganizational arrangements for solving problems that cannot be achieved, or achieved easily, by single organizations. As Kettl (1996) maintains, for most of the 20th century, much of government power grew from expertise, but changing technol-ogy and varying loci of information have moved governing away from this monopolistic position. In economic development, policy-making resources such as finance, information, and knowledge no longer reside exclusively in the city government but with counties, utilities, chambers of com-merce, development corporations, and many others. Presumably, the city development profes-sional must collaborate with other actors to tap the capabilities and resources needed to instigate and maintain policy efforts. This article presents the results of an examination of economic policies in 237 cities in the Midwest. Hypotheses about the linkage between specific development policy approaches and the extent of collaboration that their adoption entails are tested, using data fro