Professional Cities: Accredited Agencies, Government Structure, and Rational Choice

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: McCabe, Barbara Coyle; Ponomariov, Branco; Estrada, Fabyan
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas at San Antonio; University of Texas System; University of Texas at San Antonio; University of Texas System; University of Texas at San Antonio
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/puar.12806
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 295-304
• 关键词: local-government; city-managers; bounded rationality; political-science; public-policy; performance; INNOVATION; determinants; diffusion; FRAMEWORK

摘要

Accreditation, long used to signal quality among hospitals and universities, has been available to police, fire, and public works departments since the late 1980s. For public service departments, accreditation is a voluntary process that demands significant organizational resources without a guaranteed outcome. Why would city officials devote scarce resources to such an endeavor? Two explanations are examined. First, accreditation may be a rational response to a history of trouble or the potential for future crisis. Second, municipalities may use accreditation to build a reputation for professional administration of public services. The authors use Poisson regression to test these explanations on a new data set of midsize cities.