Perceptions of council member–department head interactions in local government

• Date: 01 November 2016
• Author: Michael R. Ford,Douglas M. Ihrke,Nathan J. Grasse,Brian D. Cherry
• Published date: 01 November 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1597

■Academic Paper

Perceptions of council member–

department head interactions in local

government

Michael R. Ford

1

*, Douglas M. Ihrke

2

, Brian D. Cherry

3

and

Nathan J. Grasse

4

1

Department of Public Administration, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, Wisconsin USA

2

Department of Public and Nonprofit Administration, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee,

Wisconsin USA

3

Department of Political Science Northern Michigan University, Marquette, Michigan USA

4

School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario Canada

In this article, we use data collected from municipal council members and department heads in Michigan municipal-

ities with over 10 000 residents to determine how, and why, they view the quality of their interactions with one

another. Building theories of small group dynamics and political control of bureaucracy, we test several hypotheses

and conclude that council members and department heads hold divergent views of their interactions with one another

and that their views are determined by government form and community characteristics. We conclude with simple

steps that local government officials and administrators can take to improve their small group dynamics and

governing performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

The relationship between elected officials and gov-

ernment employees has long been of core interest

to scholars of public administration. Woodrow

Wilson’s (1887) seminal essay philosophically en-

grained the complex relationship between political

and administrative actors into the very foundation

of the field. Others, including Frederickson (1980)

and Svara (1990), built on Wilson’sideasusing

practical models explaining political control over the

bureaucracy (Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, & Licari

2012). In this article, we apply theories of small group

dynamics to the question of political control over

bureaucracy. Theories of small group dynamics,

broadly,positthatthequalityofgroupinteractions

in an organizational setting impact the overall per-

formance of an organization (Golembiewski 1995;

Gabris, Golembiewski, & Ihrke 2001; Gabris and

Nelson 2013; Ford and Ihrke 2015). At its simplest,

organizations exhibiting positive group dynamics

obtain better outcomes than organizations with neg-

ative group dynamics. Specifically, we use data col-

lected from council members and department heads

serving in Michigan local governments to answer

two research questions:

1) How do city council members and department

heads view their interactions with one another?

And

2) What are the structural determinants of council

member and department head perceptions of

council–department head interactions?

*Correspondence to: Michael R Ford, Department of Public

Administration, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, 800 Algoma

Blvd., Oshkosh, WI 54901, USA. E-mail: fordm@uwosh.edu

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 16 Number 4 pp 368–375 (2016)

Published online 29 January 2016 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1597

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.