Collaborative Research: Assessing the impact of lead agency cross-functional authority on city sustainability outcomes

传统上，地方政府是围绕职能组织的，机构和部门由他们生产和提供的服务来定义。虽然根据具体专门知识划分的组织结构可以提高效率，但当各国政府试图解决跨越多个单位的复杂问题时，这种分散就成了问题。城市可持续性是跨越传统上由单一政府组织内不同单位承担的众多责任的问题的典范。这项研究考察了市政府的行政安排、其政策采纳和实施选择以及可持续结果之间的关系。它强调了牵头单位跨职能机构的作用-我们将其定义为一项倡议的行政领导对市政府其他相关单位的影响力-并评估其对当地可持续发展成果的影响。这项研究从组织、政策、可持续城市系统和网络科学出发，推进了融合研究，以提高功能性集体行动(FCA)框架的精确度和稳健性。它对牵头机构跨职能权力的决定因素及其对政策成果的影响提供了重要的洞察--现有的研究强调这种权力是基本的，但没有充分运作。以城市可持续发展为政策视角，我们采用混合方法收集和分析来自地方政府官员重点小组、公共和私人档案库以及全国调查的数据，以：(A)对跨职能权力机构进行细化的概念化和经验性衡量，以反映其影响的各种层面和机制；(B)制定一套可在各城市进行比较的多种可持续发展成果衡量标准的综合国家数据集；以及(C)创建关于跨越十年的地方可持续发展政策的第一个纵向数据库，这通常被认为是细致入微地检查政策执行和政策变化所需的最少时间。数据的收集将有助于改进对当地机构和治理理论的测试，其分析将促进城市管理和可持续发展成果的进步。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Local governments have traditionally been organized around function, with agencies and departments defined by the services they produce and deliver. Although organizational structures compartmentalized according to specific expertise can produce efficiencies, this fragmentation becomes problematic when governments attempt to address complex problems that transcend multiple units. Urban sustainability is an exemplar of issues which cut across numerous responsibilities traditionally held by distinct units within a single government organization. This research examines the relationship between municipal governments’ administrative arrangements, their policy adoption and implementation choices, and sustainability outcomes. It highlights the role of lead unit cross-functional authority—which we define as the clout that an initiative’s administrative lead has over other relevant units in the city government—and assesses its impact on local sustainability outcomes. In so doing, this research contributes to an evidence-based understanding of how public organizations function in order to enhance their design, management, and overall effectiveness.This work advances convergence research drawing from organizational, policy, sustainable urban systems, and network science to increase the precision and robustness of the Functional Collective Action (FCA) framework. It provides important insight into the determinants of lead agency cross-functional authority—which extant research has highlighted as fundamental but inadequately operationalized—and its influence on policy outcome. Using urban sustainability as our policy lens, we employ a mixed-methods approach to collect and analyze data from focus groups of local government officials, public and private archival repositories, and a nationwide survey to: (a) develop a refined conceptualization and empirical measure of cross-functional authority that captures its various dimensions and mechanisms of influence; (b) develop a comprehensive national dataset of multiple sustainability outcome measures that are comparable across cities; and (c) create the first longitudinal database on local sustainability policies spanning a ten year period, which is often considered the minimum amount of time necessary for nuanced examination of policy implementation and policy change. The collection of data will enable improved testing of local institutional and governance theories and its analysis will facilitate advances in urban management and sustainability outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.