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The influence of early events in the history of a country, a social phenomenon, or an organization on later developments has received significant attention in many social science disciplines. Often dubbed 'path dependence,' this influence occurs when early events influence later outcomes even when the original events do not reoccur. 'Path dependence,' however, has received little theoretical or empirical attention in public administration. This article discusses how early events in an organization's history can come to influence later outcomes. The article then empirically tests for the presence of path dependence using data from Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships in England and Wales, a cross-organizational collaboration inside local government. We find that early choices by the leader of the collaboration about which activities to prioritize to create collaboration set in motion a path creating collaborations that were more successful and less successful, producing differences in crime results almost a decade later. The most successful early priorities involved getting partner organizations to act in collaborative ways, rather than working to improve the attitudes of these organizations toward collaboration. We argue that path dependence should be examined in public administration research from a, prospective, prescriptive perspective, to learn more about what early managerial actions can produce better later results. Adapted from the source document.

Many senior government leaders who have attempted to achieve ambitious goals have been quite successful, though others (sometimes very visibly) have not succeeded. What do those who succeeded do differently? Is their success just a matter of luck? What (if anything) do the most successful public sector leaders have in common across agencies with very different missions? To explore these questions, the authors use a reputational approach to identify success, relying on independent experts to nominate leaders from the two most recent completed presidential administrations. In order to understand what successful leaders do differently, the authors also use a control group for comparison. The authors test a range of hypotheses based on the public management literature. Successful leaders do a number of things that control group members generally do not. Examples of these techniques are general good management techniques, including using a strategy planning process, using performance metrics, and working proactively to gain support from external stakeholders. By contrast, change management techniques, which we had expected to distinguish successful leaders, are also used by unsuccessful leaders. Thus, their use does not differentiate the successes.