The Use of Management Tools in Municipal Government: A National Survey

Abstract

Students and practitioners of urban management have long been interested in the management capabilities of local government, stemming from the reform era and its concern with instituting businesslike administrative practices in municipal government. In more recent times, beginning roughly a decade ago, this concern reemerged in the form of a perceived imperative to implement more sophisticated management technology in city halls in order to enable them more effectively to utilize their own resources and the vast infusion of federal grant funds to combat the web of urban problems that had come to be recognized as a national responsibility. The lack of adequate management capacity was seen as a chief inhibiting factor which characterized most U.S. cities in the 1960s. The overall tone of a report by the OMB Study Committee on Policy Management Assistance published in 1975 sounded the call for greater management capability at all levels in the intergovernmental system and for the federal government to assist local units in capacity building.' A year later a comprehensive ACIR report on improving urban America noted that even if the states and federal government implemented numerous recommendations concerning local governmental structure, legal restrictions, grant programs and so forth, there would still be a problem in getting adequate public services because of the inadequate management and functional capability that unfortunately is the hallmark of most existing local governments today.2 A report issued by the American Society for Public Administration in 1979 further documented both the need to improve management capacity at the state and local level and the importance of federal involvement;3 and more recently it has been asserted that even though the federal involvement might be debatable, few would quarrel with the need to strengthen state and local management.4 The continued movement toward capacity building has a somewhat different impetus now than a decade ago given the changing context of urban management.

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