Suchergebnisse

Municipal leadership in Kansas City centers on the nonpartisan principle & the council-manager plan. Unlike many other cities with nonpartisan requirements, Kansas City has produced a nonpartisan system that has proved workable over a 20-yr period. But continuance depends on the viability of the Citizens Assoc, a nonpartisan - or bipartisan - group which has dominated Kansas City pot from its inception in 1941 to the present time, with a 4-yr break from 1959-1963. The Assoc has experienced some difficulty in keeping its leadership vital & in maintaining a sufficiently broad base to permit participation by the diverse elements of the community. The leadership responsibility of the Assoc, resumed in 1963, is of major importance in maintaining a stable source of power. Also, relations between the mayor & the manager are crucial, as experiences in the immediate past have shown. Under present arrangements, official & private groups are co-operating in achieving public objectives. A new sophistication is now being demanded of those to whom the manager is accountable. AA.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the City Public Schools" Leadership Academy has met its primary goal of preparing public school administrators to serve the school division. This study is built on research that reveals that there are a number of principal preparation programs available for future school leaders that do not adequately prepare the applicants for leadership roles. Collaborative partnerships between school divisions and colleges and universities are being formed in order to prepare public school leaders for the administrative demands of today's public schools, challenged by the mandates of the No Child Left Behind legislation. In particular, school divisions are forming grow-your-own leadership academies in order to meet the need for filling positions that are being vacated by retiring administrators. This study utilizes mixed-methodologies comprised of quantitative and qualitative data. Eleven completers of the City Public Schools" Leadership Academy who obtained administrative positions in the division during the 2004-2006 school years were a part of the study. In addition, their supervisors participated in the study. The research highlights, in quantitative data, the survey responses of ten novice administrators who were completers of the City Public Schools" Leadership Academy. Seminars that the novice administrators experienced were based on the six Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards. Thus, the survey and interview questions were adapted from the ISLLC standards. Adding richness to the study is the data that was generated in the form of in-depth interviews with the eight principals and five supervisors of the novice administrators. Findings revealed that the novice administrators had an overall perception that the City Public Schools" Leadership Academy prepared them to be school leaders. Although the supervisors felt, that the novice administrators were prepared, there were a few areas where they felt the program was in need of improvement. Additional findings gave school leaders a basis from which to make programmatic decisions that should result in a more effective leadership training program. ; Ph. D.

Since the progressive era, American cities have generally expanded their authority in policymaking and service provision. State governments have at times acted to preempt city authority on particular points of policy, but it is unclear whether the threat of this action inspires caution in the decision making of city leaders. The results of an experimental survey distributed to elected city officials across the United States show that a perceived threat of preemption does not significantly discourage city leaders in supporting a proposed broadband internet service provision. These results suggest that political pressure in the form of preemption is not persuasive to city leaders, and that local representational interests are likely more influential on municipal government.

AbstractUsing new archival materials, internal publications, and gazetteers as its sources, this article studies the conduct of disaster governance in Tianjin city during the Great Leap Forward famine from 1958–1962. The city was organizationally well able to implement disaster relief efforts, and early on it took a number of measures to control and mitigate the food crisis that began in the city in early 1959. However, Maoist campaign-based disaster management could not work well when other campaigns were prioritized in its stead. Lacking central sanction for a major disaster relief effort, city leaders resorted to strategies that prioritized its residents over suburban peasants and outsiders. The city actively sought resources from outside while trying to prevent their outward flows. The city's own production of vegetables must not be overlooked as one of the reasons for better survival rates among urban residents, but even this policy was hampered by other Great Leap Forward initiatives. In the case of Tianjin, urban disaster governance of the famine was inward-looking and, at the same time, constrained and reliant on the central government.

This study sought to establish the effectiveness of strategies used by local government leaders in combating violation of children's rights in Arusha City using the descriptive design. The population involved 168 local government leaders from 24 Wards whereby the sample of 96 was picked through simple random sampling, but the response rate was 71 (73.9%). Validity was assured through expert judgment and the reliability was established through determination of the Cronbach's Alfa which was above 0.6 for each variable. The study established that strategies used by local government leaders in combating violation of Children's rights include desks at police stations for children right cases, education to the community, protection committees that coordinate and monitor violation of children's rights, local government authorities providing legal aid, perpetrators being prosecuted so that legal action can be taken against them and free family events and activities for children's rights education. The strategies were perceived to be effective except for children's desk at police stations. Identified challenges included some cases not being reported, poor cooperation from victims, corruption, lack of political will and ineffective policies. It is recommended that appropriate organs should strengthen the use of strategies listed in this study in order to curb violation of children's rights issues. There is a need for transformations in handling reported cases at the police desks. Finally, the government authorities should find ways to curb the identified challenges that faced initiatives used by local government leaders in combating violation of children's rights in Arusha city.

Annotation, Some of today's best urban leaders don't work for the government -- they can be found in nonprofit organizations that serve the working class and poor populations. Based on interviews conducted in major cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and New York, this study focuses on exceptional leaders who have developed effective solutions to the complex problems of our inner cities, including education, economic development, and community safety. The book includes profiles of innovators such as Robert Woodson, founder of the Washington, D.C. based National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, whose work on affordable housing, gang violence, and black entrepreneurship earned a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (the "genius" award); MacArthur Fellowship and Heinz Prize winner Bob Moses, founder of the Algebra Project that prepares low-income students for joining today's technology-dominated workforce; Rheedlen Center head Geoff Canada, who received the Heinz Prize for his "anti-violence among youth" work; and Reverend Eugene Rivers, one of the founders of the Ten-Point Coalition that helped to reduce gang violence in Boston. The New Urban Leadership investigates how and why expert problem solvers chose their career paths, what qualities make them especially successful in their work, and the methods they use to train the next generation of urban leaders

AbstractDo the choices of city leaders matter for local economic conditions? While existing literature focuses on how the preferences of local officials influence city policy, we argue that the managerial skill of local leaders should condition their ability to achieve their goals. We conduct an original phone survey of over 300 mayors and city managers across the USA to learn about their management practices. Using a two-way fixed effects design that holds fixed a rich battery of individual and city-level characteristics, we examine how changes in leadership affect economic growth, a common goal for local officials. We find that when local leaders employ the "best practices" of organizational management, their cities grow across a range of indicators. These results are strongest for the subset of leaders who mention a growth-related goal for their time in office, suggesting that managerial skill allows local leaders to more effectively achieve their objectives.

High Point, North Carolina, once known as the "Home Furnishings Capital of the World" for its vast manufacturing complex, has suffered intense deindustrialization over the past 60 years. During this same time, however, High Point has competed with much more prominent cities to become the world's most important furniture exposition node and a major design, fashion, and merchandising center. Exploiting its inexpensive real estate—what amounts to a planetary rent gap—and its furniture design heritage, city leaders have aggressively offered the furniture world unprecedented control over its downtown landscape for the twice–annual exposition. Over the past 35 years, however, there have also been growing efforts to combat the domination of the city by exchange value considerations privileged by outside real estate interests such as private equity firms Bain and Blackstone. This article documents, first, the loss of a resident–centered downtown to the pursuit of exchange values and, second, the mobilizations to reclaim resident–centered use values. As it does, it interrogates what the High Point case can teach us about the small city in the quickly transforming global context.

interest in studying city competitiveness has skyrocketed in the past few years, although the topic itself is far from new. Mayors and city leaders have long worried about the obstacles to job creation, competitiveness, and economic growth that plague their cities. The objective of this paper is to present key findings from the quantitative analysis of the drivers of competitiveness in cites around the world.

How do local government leaders perceive the development of their leadership competencies and the methods they have used to acquire competencies to meet on-the-job challenges in a city context? There have been few attempts to document leaders' perceptions of the competencies they need or how they get developed; however, the critical and ubiquitous role of city government demands that we increase understanding of these crucial issues. Not only does a majority of the world's population already live in urban areas (i.e., areas in which competent local governmental activity is required), but this percentage is forecasted to increase from 55% to 68% by 2050. Also, the nature of local government is evolving and, as a result, there has been renewed attention on local governments and the practices of local governmental leaders. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to generate knowledge about (a) what specific competencies support leadership practice in one city government, and (b) how competencies are developed. More specifically, this study explored city government leaders' perceptions of (a) the challenges faced and the competencies needed to address contemporary on-the-job issues, and (b) the methods that have been employed to acquire the required competencies by leaders in one city government. This study employed a case study/cross case analysis research design and included 12 participants in senior administrative positions in a large, metropolitan city in California. The cases were developed through semi-structured interviews and narrative analysis. A cross-case analysis procedure was employed in the second phase of the analysis to generate aggregate answers to the research questions driving the study. The findings suggest that the local government leaders who participated in the study relied on competencies related to relationships, knowledge, and strategic processes acquired largely through informal methods. Also, in some cases, participants reported that they relied on unique competencies or methods that they perceived as important for their practice. This research is significant because no previous study of this sort focused directly on the perceptions of local government leaders. The study generated recommendations about developing competencies when formal training may not be effective.

© 27th European Conference on Information Systems - Information Systems for a Sharing Society, ECIS 2019. All rights reserved. The smart city concept is used as tool by local and municipal governments to deliver benefits relating to people, government, economy, mobility, environment and living. By embedding technologies and the internet of things in the city's infrastructure, smart cities aim to generate insights that drive local improvements and accrue to a global level. The smart city is also viewed as a transformative lever for government. As cities move beyond smart city pilot showcasing projects, they face the challenge of embedding smart city initiatives in business-as-usual. Despite ambitious goals and high stakes, little is known about the work that leaders perform in undertaking this transformation. This study explored the leadership practice of smart city leaders in Denmark, Holland, USA, Australia and New Zealand. We focus on how leaders drive transformation from showcasing to becoming a sustainable smart city, and the challenges faced. As result we present a framework of six barriers to overcome and five enacted leadership roles to transform the city of today to a future sustainable smart city. We use institutional logics as a lens to discuss and explain the challenges faced by city leaders and their critical role as innovation agents and boundary spanners in smart city transformation.

Contrasts the reactions of public sector unions in France & New York City to proposed austerity programs. France's supposedly small, weak, & divided unions sparked a successful national revolt -- closing universities & shutting down public transportation -- & forced the government to back down from its budget-cutting package. In New York, well-organized & well-funded union leaders charted a strategy of apeasement & largely accepted the proposals of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. These "six-figure socialists" are taken to task for failing to challenge the mayor, promoting the status quo, & being separated from the concerns of their members. It is argued that the dues check-off compels workers to buy services from a particular union whether they like it or not, & the lack of union leader accountability has led the union model to resemble serfdom more than capitalism. M. Greenberg