xecutive turnover can have profound eff ects on city poli- is article identifi es how political changes, ected in the composition of the city council, and eco- uence city manager e empirical analysis demonstrates that political confl ict uence the likelihood ects can be complex. In particular, the infl uence of ndings’ implications for
urnover in top administrative positions has
been linked to management diffi culties in
public, private, and nonprofi t organizations.
ects on an organization’s
D roege and
). Th is F eldman
). City manager turnover is
everal empirical studies have D eSantis and Renner Renner 1990; Whitaker and DeHoog 1991 ). T urn-over among managers often is attributed to either
“push” or “pull” factors (e, e.g., D eHoog and W hitaker 1990 ). Push factors prompt managers to leave their current positions becau of political c onfl ict or diff erences in style, orientation, or policy between the managers and their councils. Pull factors entice managers to leave their current positions for professional, fi nancial, or personal advancement.
W
e build on this theoretical foundation and propo a model that captures the push and pull factors as they relate to economic development and political confl ict, as well as other environmental and fi scal factors. Th is model, which builds on earlier ca studies and attitu-dinal surveys, provides a method for direct measure-ment o
f such factors as change or stability in council membership and economic well-bein
g among the nation’s larger cities. T
h e empirical model is estimated with time-ries panel data from all council-manager cities with populations greater than 75,000. Th is group encompass the 143 largest U.S. cities with
council-manager governments in the period from 1987 to 1999. Th e analytic approach allows us to
discern the direction, strength, and magnitude of
push and pull factors on city manager tenure. C ity Managers and Turnover C ity managers once were viewed as neutral techni-cians with limited roles in the policy-making process, but scholars increasingly came to appreciate that, for managers, the paration between politics and administration often was more symbolic than factual (
M iller 2000
thf; S tillman 1974 ). In fact, managers’ leadership in city
policy making is a recurrent theme in the contemporary literature ( N albandian 1999 , 2000; S vara 1990, 1998 ). In
addition to their traditional management role, city managers
arbara Coyle M cCabe rizona State University ichard C. F eiock
lorida State University urnover among City Managers: Th e Role of Political and C ity managers once were viewed as neutral technicians with limited roles in the policy-making process, but scholars
increasingly came to appreciate that, for managers, the paration between politics and administration often was more symbolic than factual. J ames C. C lingermayer
M urray State University C hristopher S tream U niversity of Nevada
are now expected to undertake community building and to facilitate democratic process between the community and its government ( N albandian 1999 ). Th e issues city managers bring before the council, the information they prent to support their recommen-dations, and the direction they provide to the employ-ees who carry out programs all thrust managers into the policy-making process. City managers have be-come such an integral part of the policy process that policy proposals frequently originate with the man-ager rather than with the council ( M artin 1990;
M organ and Watson 1992; Newell and Ammons 1987 ). In particular, city managers are expected to play a key role in the formulation of economic devel-opment policy ( B anovetz 1995; Wright 1969 ).
B ecau of the visible outcomes of economic develop-ment, this role focus attention on city managers, who may be awarded credit for their city’s economic success or blame for its failure.
B ecau of city managers’ role in the policy process, their tenure is important. Change from one city man-ager to another has signifi cant policy implications if
diff erent managers bring diff erent preferences, skills, and backgrounds to the job. Among other things, turnover aff ects the city’s implementation of local innovations such as experimentation with new rvice delivery approaches, the ability to enter into long-term obligations by issuing debt, or the capacity to make future commitments through
contracting ( C lingermayer and
Feiock 2001; Feiock and
C lingermayer 1993; Feiock,
Clingermayer, and Das 2003 ).
A s important as city manager
tenure is, it is at times tenuous,
in part becau of the basic
structure of career paths in city
management. City managers tend to be highly edu-cated, well-paid, and mobile professionals. Some 80 percent do not come from the community they rve ( D eSantis and Newell 1996 ). Mobility is central to the city manager’s typical career path, which often proceeds from appointment as assistant manager to manager of a small town and, fi nally, to city manage-ment posts in larger or more prestigious communities ( B arber 1988; Paul 1981 ). Managers of larger cities (tho with populations of 100,000 or more) fre-quently follow a somewhat diff erent career path in that a substantial minority (about 45 percent) of the managers spend their careers working in the city in which they eventually rve as managers. Many larger cities, it appears, “grow their own” man-agers through career paths available within the city (Watson and Hastt 2004). T urnover remains a key issue, however, whether a change in the manager’s position comes from within the city’s ranks or from another city. C ity managers’ prominent role in city policy, coupled with their dependence on the pleasure of the councils they rve, also aff ects manager turnover. Typically, the manager is hired by the city council and is subject to removal at any time by its majority vote. Th ough the council-manager form of government often is per-ceived as inhibiting or assuaging community confl ict ( B anfi eld and Wilson 1963; Lineberry and Fowler 1967 ), confl ict can be at the heart of city manager turnover. In a study of 39 city manager turnovers in 10 Florida cities, K ammerer et al. (1962) found that two-thirds of the exits were involuntary terminations by the council. Most terminations resulted
from po-litical disputes. A more recent Florida study found that political disagreements also indirectly infl uence voluntary terminations becau managers may leave their positions preemptively, before confl ict with the council reaches the “fi ring point” ( D eHoog and Whitaker 1990 ). T urnover and confl ict among council members led city managers to exit their positions in Chicago-area municipalities ( K aatz 1996 ). T urnover in elected offi ce may signal political controversy that will soon put politicians and administrators at odds, result-ing in the manager’s departure. In short, turnover on city councils may lead to turnover in city managers.
C ity characteristics, particularly demographic compo-sition and the city government’s fi scal condition, have also been linked to manager turnover. In heteroge-
neous areas, cleavages bad on
wealth, race, or other social
conditions can lead to confl icts
that spill over to local govern-
ment. Administrators rving in
more affl uent and racially ho-
mogenous communities may
experience less confl ict, resulting
in lower turnover rates. For
example, W atson and Hastt (2003) relied on the 2000 national survey data from the International City/County Management Associa-tion (ICMA) to identify “long-rving” city managers (tho who retained their positions for 20 or more years). Less than 5 percent of the survey respondents had rved such terms, and most of the cities in which the managers rved were relatively homogenous, politically stable cities with populations under 30,000 ( W atson and Hastt 2003 ).
Th e city’s fi scal condition also may contribute to manager turnover. Previous work has explored how demographic factors and such fi scal policies as taxing, spending, and borrowing infl uence tenure but report only modest eff ects (Feiock and Stream 2002). In communities with strong fi scal capacity, low taxes, and low debt, the performance of managers may be noncontroversial. Similarly, smaller, wealthier, more homogenous communities may be more politically stable and experience less turnover among managers.
C ity characteristics, particularly demographic composition and the city government’s fi scal condition, have also been linked to manager turnover.
E conomic Development and Manager Turnover
R ecent work has begun to examine how government performance can aff ect employment opportunities for city managers. Examining administrators’ actual per-formance in offi ce is problematic, given the diffi culty of defi ning and measuring good and bad performance. Yet in studies of electoral cycles
and retrospective voting (e,
<, F iorina 1981 ), rearcherso1
have ud the economic perfor-
mance of a politician’s jurisdic-
tion as an indicator of the
incumbent administration’s accomplishments. Th e city’s
economic performance is a simi-
larly reasonable proxy for city
manager performance.
L ocal economic development has long been en as an important undertaking for city managers ( W right 1969 ). Economic development and growth are key policies in most cities, from declining older cities to expanding urban areas ( L ogan and Molotch 1987; Peterson 1981 ). From large, undeveloped tracts in growing areas to abandoned buildings in depopulat-ing regions, all cities have vacant land and face the importance of economic development or redevelop-ment ( B owman and Pagano 2004 ). Th is policy imperative is refl ected in city managers’ attitudes. Th e ICMA’s 2000 State of the Profession survey found that managers identifi ed economic develop-ment as one of the most important issues facing their jurisdictions (Renner 2001). City managers have increasingly been assigned responsibility for managing economic development within the city ( B anovetz 1995 ). Becau city managers may be given credit for income growth in the community, successful economic development eff orts can create job opportunities for the managers. Recent work suggests that if city managers can creatively u development policies to attract growth, they can ca
sh in the development gains on the job market and move to more lucrative positions in larger com-munities or private fi rms ( S tein 1990 ; Feiock and Stream 2002).
I f managers can credibly claim credit for their city’s economic success, it is likely that they can be as-signed blame for its economic woes. Focusing on the city’s economic well-being may make it possible for empirical analysis to account for the strength and magnitude of both the push and pull factors that
infl uence city manager tenure. Managers of cities experiencing income growth are apt to be “pulled” to new, more attractive positions, whereas managers of cities suff ering from a lack of or actual decline of income growth are likely to be “pushed” from their jobs. Th e relationship between city economic growth and manager tenure is complicated by the fact that the idea of growth or decline has an implicit temporal dimension in which the prent is compared with the past. Th e theoretical and empirical problems arising from this simple fact center around the length of time needed to discern economic “trends” and then to
award the manager either credit
or blame. In his landmark study
of congressional action, A rnold
(1990) found that poor out-
comes are more likely to lead to
a swift eff ort to lay blame than
good outcomes are to an eff ort to
bestow rewards. Following this道真英语
logic, a lack of income growth
administration什么意思
over the short term may contri-
dreambute to councils’ dissatisfaction
with city managers and lead to eff orts to push them from offi ce. Over the longer term, however, economic growth and development may be credited to the city managers, boosting their reputations and pulling them to other positions.
W e attempt to sort out the push and pull forces of economic growth by parately measuring short-term economic changes and longer-term economic growth trends. Th e empirical analysis reported in this paper identifi es how both short-term income change and longer-term income growth in an administrator’s community infl uences his or her tenure in offi ce.
R earch Design
Th e eff ects of council turnover and city economic well-being have not been subjected to systematic, large-scale empirical tests. Th e empirical work to date has relied primarily on relatively small ca studies in a single state (e, e.g., W hitaker and DeHoog’s 1991 study of 33 Florida managers) or lf-reported re-spons to city manager surveys (e.g., K aatz, French, and Prentiss-Cooper 1999 ), which may either not be generalizable beyond the single state or depend too heavily on the professionalized perspectives of city managers.
Th is study advances an innovative design and employs a large national sample of council-manager cities to estimate more precily the eff ects that economic growth and change in city council composition have on manager turnover. Th is analytic approach provides a generalized picture of the individual factors aff ecting city manager tenure in the context of the model’s other variables.
Th e model was estimated with a pooled cross-ctional time ries of 143 U.S. cities with council-manager governments and populations of at least 75,000. Focus-ing on large cities not only provides more complete data but also allows us to examine turnover in communities
Th e relationship between city economic growth and manager tenure is complicated by the fact that the idea of growth or decline has an implicit temporal dimension in which the prent is compared with the past.
where more ambitious candidates contend for offi ce and turnover among elected leaders reprents greater confl ict and uncertainty. Th e dependent variable is a dichotomous measure indicating whether there was turnover in the offi ce of city manager from the previ-ous year. Th e variable was coded as 1 when turnover occurred in that year and 0 when the incumbent man-ager remained in his or her position. We constructed this annual turnover measure from 1987 to 1999 for 143 cities, noting, for each city in each year, whether turnover took place. Th e data were gathered from various volumes of the National League of Cities’
D irectory of City Policy Offi cials and the ICMA’s
M unicipal Yearbook(1984 –90).
I ndependent Variables
Th e independent variables include measures of turn-over among elected council members, demographic characteristics of communities, the fi scal condition of the cities, and economic growth. Our main “push” variables are turnover among elected council members and short-term economic change. We assume that council turnover is a matter of degree, such that the greater the amount of turnover, the greater the poten-tial impact on manager tenure. We measured the extent of council turnover by calculating the propor-tion of members who had rved four years earlier but were no longer rving on the council. Measuring turnover in this fashion accommodates variations in cities’ council sizes and electoral cycles and refl ects our view that council turnover is best captured in relative rather than absolute terms. We expect that the greater the proportion of incumbent council members who leave, the more likely the manager will exit. To deter-mine council turnover rate, we identifi ed the members of local governing bodies each year from 1983 to 1999. Th e data were collected from the same sources as the information on manager turnover. Changes in council membership were recorded, and the propor-tion of new members relative to incumbent members three years prior was calculated for each city in each year. Economic change can mean growth or decline. Th e short-term economic change measure needs to capture short-term up or down turns in
the local economy. Th erefore, we measured short-term change as the diff erence in estimated city per capita personal income from the previous year reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. For some cities, short-term economic change values were negative.
Th e key “pull” factor is the economic growth trend over time. We measured growth trends with the aver-age change in per capita personal income over the previous four years bad on the data described earlier. Th e growth trend can take on positive or negative values, but we expect that positive, longer-term eco-nomic change will “pull” managers to other positions. Other community characteristics that have been linked to city manager tenure include city population, population change, per capita personal income, and percentage of nonwhite residents ( F eiock et al. 2001 ). We expect large and fast-growing communities will experience more frequent manager change, whereas wealthy and racially homogeneous communities will experience less turnover. Th e measures were taken from the U.S. Census. City fi scal variables include per capita own-source revenue, an indicator of fi scal ca-pacity; per capita property taxes; the city bond rating: and per capita long-term debt. Th e data were drawn from various volumes of the Census of Government Finance and the Annual Survey of Government
F inance, as well as from published and online reports provided by the Geographic Division of the U.
S. Bureau of the Census. Th e fi scal and demographic variables were lagged by one year.
A ccounting for City Manager Change
Th e data were pooled so that we have 14 annual ob-rvations for each city from 1986 through 1999. A pooled time-ries cross-ctional design allows us to capture variations that emerge over time while con-trolling for diff erent units in space. Moreover, the pooled design allows us to estimate the model on a larger sample. We also needed to control for constant unmeasured diff erences among cities (i.e., fi xed ef-fects). Th e prence of fi xed eff ects was confi rmed by a signifi cant Hausman test statistic. Th erefore, we esti-mated manager turnover using a fi xed-eff ects logit procedure, which made it possible to estimate the chance that an independent variable would result in city manager turnover while holding the other factors in the model constant.
E stimates of the likelihood of manager turnover pre-dicted by the model are reported in t able 1. Th e likeli-hood ratio, chi-square, suggests that the data provide a good fi t to the model. A signifi cant t-score for a logit parameter estimate provides an indication of whether various push and pull factors aff ect city managers’ tenure. Th e extent of council member turnover, as expected, is a strong predictor of administrative turn-over. Th e greater the proportion of council members who do not retu
rn to offi ce, the greater the chance that the city manager will leave. Holding all other variables constant at their means, the probability of manager turnover is .18 when 75 percent of the coun-cil members from four years earlier are still rving. Th e probability increas to .33 when only 25 percent of the members are still rving. On the other hand, the cities’ demographic characteristics and fi scal con-ditions included in the model —p opulation, popula-tion growth, racial composition, debt levels, and property taxes, among others —h ave no statistically signifi cant infl uence on turnover.
Th e cities’ income levels and economic change each
aff ect the chance of turnover. Th e l evel of per capita income is negatively related to turnover, suggesting that
the more well off the community, the more likely it is to retain its city manager. Th e relationship between change in the city’s economic condition and change in its management is dependent on both the duration and the direction of the economic change. Th e chance of city manager turnover increas if the city’s economy is wor this year than last but is unaff ected by short-term economic gains. Positive economic news apparently takes longer for its eff ects on turnover to be felt and only
becomes evident when cities have made longer-term economic gains. Th e eff ects, though statistically strong, are more modest in magnitude. A sharp, short-term economic decline increas the probability of turnover by about 2 percent, and a
longer-term economic surge has a
similarly small impact on manage-
rial tenure.
commerceD iscussion
Th e fi ndings reported here suggest
that city managers’ careers are
subject to the forces of both politi-
cal and economic change in the
communities they rve. When
result
there is substantial change on the
city council, the likelihood of turnover in the city’s top administrative post increas. Greater proportions of new council members suggest a lack of political stabil-ity, induced either through confl ict or through institu-tional mechanisms such as term limits. Th e smaller the share of “old guard” council members, the more likely it becomes that a change in the city’s direction also will be signaled by the city manager’s exit. Th is generalized fi nding corroborates the impressions of city managers gathered through national surveys, as well as the pat-terns depicted in ca studies. Although this may be conventional wisdom, it has lacked systematic confi r-mation until now. By holding other factors aff ecting manager tenure constant, our empirical results demon-strate the powerful, direct, and independent eff ect of political change on city manager tenure. C ities’ economic condition aff ects city managers’ tenure across veral dimensions but surprisingly, their governments’ fi scal condition has no signifi cant infl u-ence. Subjects that often spark confl ict and debate such as property taxes and debt levels have no signifi -cant eff ect on city manager tenure. Th e overall eco-nomic condition, measured in terms of per capita income, has a signifi cant, positive eff ect on city man-ager tenure. Th e likelihood of manager turnover is diminished in wealthier cities, such that the higher the per capita personal income, the lower the chance of city manager turnover. Residents of pushbutton
more affl uent communities, presumably with greater slack in their personal budgets, may be more content with the status quo and less apt to push their cities’ managers from offi ce than residents of other cities. On the other hand, managers of wealthier cities simply may choo not to be pulled to other positions, where their jobs would include the additional challenges faced by cities with less prosperous residents. In short, managers of cities with residents who are well off are less likely to experience either the push or pull factors felt by man-agers of other cities.
C ommunities that experience short-term economic declines or stasis, as well as tho that experience longer-term economic growth, are apt to have slightly higher manager turnover than other cities. Th e
eff ects have great statistical power but are small in size, increasing the chance of the manager leaving by only about 2 percent. Taken together, the fi ndings sup-
port city managers’ beliefs,
reported in surveys, that eco-
robertfrostnomic development is impor-
tant to their cities, but, for the
fi rst time, demonstrate that
economic change in their com-
munities has little eff ect on
their careers.
Th e results should reassure
the managers of larger cities,
confi rming their worldview of the importance of politics and economic change but giving it scope and scale. Th e fi ndings may not hold true for smaller cities, however. Given city managers’ typical career paths, moving from smaller to larger cities as their careers mature, push and pull factors may play out with greater force in cities with fewer than 75,000 residents. For managers of smaller cities, our fi ndings of the temporal dimensions of good and bad outcomes may rve as a cautionary tale. If bad economic news is going to result in city manager turnover, it is apt to happen quickly. For cities
with growing economies, the opposite relationship holds. Good outcomes, it ems, must be experienced over a longer period before credit can be claimed. Th is sug-gests that for city manager tenure, push factors are apt to be related to a fairly current issue. Pull factors, on
T able 1L ogit Estimates of the Likelihood of Manager Turnover
V ariable B Standard
Error t-score
Council turnover 3.5737 1.9941 1.79
Short-term economic change−0.01310.0032−4.05
Longer-term economic change0.02070.0038 5.49
Demographic characteristics
Log of population−4.5064 3.3676−1.34
Population change0.00000.00000.86
White population−1.3316 3.2363−0.41
Per capita personal income−0.00300.0006−4.84
City fi scal condition
Long-term debt−0.00000.0004−0.05
介词英语Fiscal capacity0.00040.00140.28
Property taxes0.00700.00770.91
Bond rating−0.6932 1.1271−0.62
Log likelihood−80.8324
Likelihood ratio chi-square279.11
N 143
C ommunities that experience
short-term economic declines or
stasis, as well as tho that
experience longer-term
economic growth, are apt to
have slightly higher manager
turnover than other cities.
