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Is all well in the neighborhood? Conflict on neighborhood boards in Milwaukee
Author(s) -
Ihrke Douglas M.,
Johnson Terri
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
nonprofit management and leadership
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.844
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1542-7854
pISSN - 1048-6682
DOI - 10.1002/nml.41
Subject(s) - scrutiny , context (archaeology) , government (linguistics) , social capital , variance (accounting) , public relations , sociology , political science , capital (architecture) , capital city , local government , public administration , law , business , economics , economic geography , geography , accounting , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology
Neighborhood organizations have become more important players in urban areas in recent years due to a renewed interest in social capital and an emphasis on the continuing development of community. With this elevated status comes more responsibility for the delivery of services to citizens and scrutiny by these very citizens, the press, and government officials. Much of what we know about neighborhood organizations comes from our observations of board deliberations. Through these deliberations board members make decisions that affect neighborhood constituents. In this study we examine the context in which neighborhood boards in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, make decisions. Using theory borrowed from the literature on local government boards, we develop a series of testable hypotheses relating to the level of conflict on these boards. Our findings indicate that conflict is relatively low across boards in Milwaukee; however, the number of board member and certain behavioral variables explain a significant amount of the variance in the level of conflict.