The Road to Routinization: A Functional Collective Action Approach for Local Sustainability Planning and Performance Management

• Author: Aaron Deslatte,Rachel M. Krause,Christopher V. Hawkins
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X221111065
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Research Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X221111065

State and Local Government Review

2022, Vol. 54(4) 310 –327

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X221111065

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Research Article

1137322SLGXXX10.1177/0160323X221111065State and Local Government ReviewDeslatte et al.

research-article2022

The Road to Routinization:

A Functional Collective Action

Approach for Local Sustainability

Planning and Performance

Management

Aaron Deslatte

1

, Rachel M. Krause

2

,

and Christopher V. Hawkins

3

Abstract

When confronting complex challenges, governments use basic bureaucratic design heuristics –

centralization and specialization. The complexity of environmental and climate issues has drawn

recent attention to the ways in which fragmented authority inf‌luences, and often challenges,

the policy choices and institutional effectiveness of local governments. Sustainability planning

and improved performance are potential benef‌its stemming from the integration of responsibili-

ties across silos. Our central proposition is that institutionalized collective-action mechanisms,

which break down siloed decision-making, foster more successful implementation of sustainability

policies. We empirically examine this using two surveys of U.S. cities and f‌ind evidence that formal

collective-action mechanisms positively mediate the relationship between broader agency involve-

ment and more comprehensive performance information collection and use. However, we iden-

tify limits to the role of planning in fostering a performance culture. Specif‌ically, cities that have

engaged in broader planning conduct less-comprehensive performance management, likely due

to measurement diff‌iculty and goal ambiguity.

Keywords

sustainability planning, performance, functional collective action, local government management

Introduction

Local governments face a growing imperative to

strategically plan for and manage an array of

external threats and opportunities. From address-

ing pandemics and police reform to climate mit-

igation and adaptation, strategic planning and

performance management are approaches gov-

ernments have available to prioritize and evaluate

organization-wide missions, increase their legiti-

macy with the public, and adjust to changing

1

O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs,

Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

2

School of Public Affairs & Administration, University of

Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

3

School of Public Administration, University of Central

Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

Corresponding Author:

Aaron Deslatte, Assistant Professor, O’Neill School of

Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, 1315

E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-1701, USA

Email: adeslatt@iu.edu

Deslatte et al. 311

circumstances (Bryson 2018; Deslatte 2020;

Maher, Hoang and Hindery 2020).

However, although individually valuable,

local governments often struggle to integrate

their planning and performance efforts (Poister

2010).

One potential explanation for this diff‌iculty is

that traditional government structures, organized

around the basic bureaucratic design heuristics

of centralization and specialization, are not

well-suited for addressing complex, functionally

transboundary challenges. Although the estab-

lishment of administrative silos around distinct

responsibilities increases eff‌iciency in some con-

texts, it can create coordination challenges when

semi-autonomous units are asked to contribute to

an overarching objective—as necessarily occurs

around both comprehensive planning and perfor-

mance management efforts. This is termed a

functional collective action (FCA) dilemma.

While it can manifest around multiple issues

and in many organizational contexts, FCA has

been most studied around climate protection

and sustainability efforts in local government

(Krause and Hawkins 2021; Hawkins, Krause

and Deslatte 2021; Yi andCui 2019). The multi-

dimensional natureof these issues and their links

to distinct environmental, economic, and social

processes, make them opportune and substan-

tively important issue lenses through which to

examine this administrative dynamic.

This study addresses a gap in the local gov-

ernance, strategic management and perfor-

mance literatures by elucidating the distinct

roles that specif‌ic administrative units and coor-

dination mechanisms play in integrating plan-

ning and performance management. Within

public administration research, the strategic

planning and public performance literatures

are often described as having many overlapping

objectives, often representing different vantage

points of the same organizational systems

(Andrews and Boyne 2010). Strategic planning

and performance management both depend on

measuring performance and incorporating this

information into subsequent decisions or adap-

tations. In practice, they are typically under-

taken sequentially and are separated by a

lengthy implementation phase. The feedback

loops between them may not be present or

robust. Thus, public administration scholars

have long argued for greater attention to why

and how strategic planning and performance

management practices may be more or less

integrated (Bryson, Berry and Yang 2010;

Moynihan and Pandey 2010; Poister and

Streib 2005; Poister 2010).

Within local government sustainability,

efforts often begin with the initiation of a plan-

ning process in which city staff and community

stakeholders collaborate to identify relevant

issues, formulate goals and establish action

steps to achieve those goals (Laurian and

Crawford 2016). Robust planning efforts also

identify benchmarks and assign specif‌ic actors

responsibility for the completion of tasks.

Cities may adopt a variety of plans, including

sustainability and climate action plans, resil-

ience/disaster mitigation plans, and comprehen-

sive plans and economic development plans.

Within a single city, these plans touch on

varying environmental, economic, resilience

or social priorities and may or may not be coor-

dinated with each other (Deslatte and Stokan

2020).

Performance management, or the collection

and use of performance information, occurs

later in the process, after some degree of imple-

mentation. Ideally, it would be a natural out-

growth from the initial planning process with

collected and assessed data shaping subsequent

rounds of planning. However, sustainability

planning goals are often constructed with little

practical thought towards future data collection,

instead specifying a range of quantitative and

qualitative information on climate change,

resource conservation, community develop-

ment, racial justice, or green infrastructure,

which may in turn point to a dizzying assort-

ment of outputs and outcomes as performance

indicators (Opp, Mosier and Osgood 2018).

Instigating performance information collec-

tion across departments or units - the minimal

f‌irst step in demonstrating sustainability perfor-

mance gains - requires signif‌icant coordination

to standardize metrics and establish processes

for communicating information to key stake-

holders, policymakers, and the public. By

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