Premium
The influence of management on the cost of fire protection
Author(s) -
Donahue Amy K.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of policy analysis and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.898
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1520-6688
pISSN - 0276-8739
DOI - 10.1002/pam.10179
Subject(s) - business , fire protection , per capita , workforce , public service , government (linguistics) , public sector , public economics , operations management , economics , public administration , economic growth , engineering , political science , sociology , population , linguistics , philosophy , civil engineering , demography , economy
An important and unresolved issue central to the study of government performance is how the actions of managersand the nature of organizations affect the cost of public services. This paper presents an empirical analysis offire departments that estimates the influence of managerial choices on per capita spending within a simultaneouspublic production system. It does so by refining a theoretical cost model from the field of public management toinclude fundamental dimensions of government organizations and administration. Two‐stage least squaresregression analysis is then employed to examine the fire protection case. The results of the analysis substantiatethe intuition that managerial practices and decisions influence the cost of a public service. They show that thecost of fire protection depends significantly on the outcomes of a department's fire prevention and suppressionactivities, some key aspects of a department's management practices, the configuration of its workforce andequipment, its legal structure, and factors in its external environment. © 2004 by the Association for PublicPolicy Analysis and Management.