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

地方政府传统上是围绕职能组织起来的，机构和部门是根据它们提供和提供的服务来确定的。虽然根据具体专长划分的组织结构可以提高效率，但当政府试图解决超越多个单位的复杂问题时，这种分散就成了问题。城市可持续性是一个典型的问题，它跨越了传统上由单一政府组织内的不同单位承担的众多责任。本研究探讨了市政府的行政安排，其政策的采纳和实施的选择，以及可持续发展的结果之间的关系。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。本研究通过实证分析，有助于理解公共组织如何发挥作用，从而提高其设计、管理和整体效率。本研究从组织、政策、可持续城市系统和网络科学等方面推进融合研究，提高功能性集体行动（FCA）框架的精确性和稳健性。它提供了重要的洞察主导机构的跨职能权威的决定因素，现有的研究已经强调，作为根本的，但不充分的操作，及其对政策结果的影响。以城市可持续发展为政策透镜，我们采用混合方法收集和分析来自地方政府官员、公共和私人档案库以及全国性调查的焦点群体的数据，以：（a）开发一个精确的概念化和跨职能权威的实证测量，捕捉其影响力的各个维度和机制;（B）建立一个综合性的国家数据集，其中包括多个可持续性成果措施，这些措施在各城市之间具有可比性;以及（c）建立第一个跨越十年的地方可持续性政策纵向数据库，这通常被认为是对政策执行和政策变化进行细致审查所需的最短时间。数据的收集将有助于改进对地方机构和治理理论的测试，其分析将促进城市管理和可持续性成果的进步。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.