Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1985

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Political Science

Major Professor

William Lyons

Committee Members

Patricia Freeman, Hyrum Plaas, Mike Fitzgerald

Abstract

This study investigates the meaning, measurement and improvement of municipal service productivity. The focus is on the refinement of a methodology for measuring intercity productivity and its quality of service dimension. An analysis of relative service productivity is performed for the thirty-one full service Tennessee municipalities between 10,000 and 55,000 population.

The regression-based fiscal analysis of intercity productivity employs FY 1983 total expenditure data for six municipal services as the dependent variable and workload, labor costs and relative service quality scores as independent variables. Quality scores are based on the Relative Service Quality Index which is also used to classify cities into high and moderate service quality strata. Regression equations are calculated for the two service quality strata, the product of which is the Relative Productivity Index representing actual municipal expenditure deviations from the regression-based projected expenditures taking into account municipal variations in workload, labor costs and service quality.

Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients are used to analyze the differences in relative service productivity. Six categories of variables were included in the analysis: characteristics of the chief executives, legislative officials and department heads; organizational priorities; organizational characteristics; management techniques; financial factors; and community characteristics. Several statistically significant relationships emerged from the analysis that help to explain differences in relative productivity.

The findings indicate that some of the important explanatory variables are different for or vary in their impact on the relative productivity of high and moderate quality of service cities. Among the more important explanatory variables for each quality group are: the tenure and education of council members and department heads; the presence of System 3 organizational characteristics, the absence of employee incentives, the extent of service privatization, the total revenue per capita collected, the extent of reliance on intergovernmental revenues versus own-source revenues on a per capita basis, and the per cent of the population 65 years or older.

The findings imply that conditions of fiscal stress rather than organizational wealth promote higher productivity. Those cities that rely more extensively on local property taxes rather than intergovernmental revenue are more efficient in their service operations. Cities that contract with private firms or other governmental entities for service provision and those that have a System 3 organizational climate also are the more productive cities in this study.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS