Public Managers and Metropolitan Governance
Local government managers play a unique and often poorly understood role in responding to problems such as suburban sprawl, pollution, poverty concentration, and infrastructure decline. I am a social scientist and assistant professor at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. At the O'Neill School, I direct the Metropolitan Governance and Management Transitions (MGMT) Laboratory. My research focuses on the roles that public managers play in enhancing economic, environmental and social sustainability at the local and metropolitan scales. The goal is to build cumulative knowledge which can help local governments advance sustainable economic and community development.
The problems local government managers face today are vast – from fiscal sustainability to social inequality, pollution and climate change. One way the MGMT Lab will tackle this complexity is through national - and metropolitan-level analyses and mixed-methods designs to explore sustainable development and resiliency. I have recently completed one grant-supported project examining how fragmentation influences inter-local collaboration on sustainability utilizing surveys of U.S. cities and interviews with Chicago-area city managers.
My current focus is to expand on this effort with city managers through both experimental designs and interview-based, qualitative strands to explore ways for measuring and managing sustainability performance. Part of this challenge of urban sustainability is that we only dimly understand public perceptions of the appropriate role of local governments in pursuing these policy objectives. To better understand citizen perceptions, I am exploring how city managers can “frame” performance information to communicate successes and failures in a way which overcomes politicization of the topic. But managers also have their own cognitive biases and aversions to risk. One of the goals of this ongoing research program is to help city managers make evidence-based decisions as they try to improve the sustainability of services and resources. Another goal is to identify ways to overcome collaboration risks, competitive pressures and governance fragmentation which characterize most metropolitan regions.
A priority of the MGMT Lab is taking an inter-disciplinary approach to studying sustainability transitions. Over the next four years (2019-2023), I am working with a research team at Arizona State University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Nevada-Reno to study transitions in water management in U.S. cities. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation and launched through the support of the National Center for Socio-Environmental Synthesis (SESYNC).
I have studied Bayesian inference and network analysis at the University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). My research has appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Urban Studies, Urban Affairs Review, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Policy Studies Journal, and other outlets. I have presented papers at conferences for the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), the American Political Science Association (APSA), Public Management Research Conference (PMRC), the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), and the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), among other conferences and invited workshops. In 2018, I was awarded the Clarence Stone Scholar Award by the Local and Urban Politics section of APSA.
I have also watched state and local policy processes from different professional vantage points. Prior to changing careers, I worked as a government reporter for 15 years. During that time, I covered city councils, school boards, state legislatures and state and national political campaigns in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Florida for news organizations including The Kansas City Star, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gannett News Service and the Orlando Sentinel.
The problems local government managers face today are vast – from fiscal sustainability to social inequality, pollution and climate change. One way the MGMT Lab will tackle this complexity is through national - and metropolitan-level analyses and mixed-methods designs to explore sustainable development and resiliency. I have recently completed one grant-supported project examining how fragmentation influences inter-local collaboration on sustainability utilizing surveys of U.S. cities and interviews with Chicago-area city managers.
My current focus is to expand on this effort with city managers through both experimental designs and interview-based, qualitative strands to explore ways for measuring and managing sustainability performance. Part of this challenge of urban sustainability is that we only dimly understand public perceptions of the appropriate role of local governments in pursuing these policy objectives. To better understand citizen perceptions, I am exploring how city managers can “frame” performance information to communicate successes and failures in a way which overcomes politicization of the topic. But managers also have their own cognitive biases and aversions to risk. One of the goals of this ongoing research program is to help city managers make evidence-based decisions as they try to improve the sustainability of services and resources. Another goal is to identify ways to overcome collaboration risks, competitive pressures and governance fragmentation which characterize most metropolitan regions.
A priority of the MGMT Lab is taking an inter-disciplinary approach to studying sustainability transitions. Over the next four years (2019-2023), I am working with a research team at Arizona State University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Nevada-Reno to study transitions in water management in U.S. cities. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation and launched through the support of the National Center for Socio-Environmental Synthesis (SESYNC).
I have studied Bayesian inference and network analysis at the University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). My research has appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Urban Studies, Urban Affairs Review, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Policy Studies Journal, and other outlets. I have presented papers at conferences for the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), the American Political Science Association (APSA), Public Management Research Conference (PMRC), the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), and the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), among other conferences and invited workshops. In 2018, I was awarded the Clarence Stone Scholar Award by the Local and Urban Politics section of APSA.
I have also watched state and local policy processes from different professional vantage points. Prior to changing careers, I worked as a government reporter for 15 years. During that time, I covered city councils, school boards, state legislatures and state and national political campaigns in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Florida for news organizations including The Kansas City Star, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gannett News Service and the Orlando Sentinel.
