Premium
Love Thy Neighbour: A Social Capital Approach to Local Government Partnerships
Author(s) -
Dollery Brian,
Grant Bligh,
Crase Lin
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8500.2011.00719.x
Subject(s) - alliance , local government , social capital , consolidation (business) , extant taxon , business , government (linguistics) , service (business) , service delivery framework , venture capital , public relations , public administration , economics , marketing , sociology , accounting , political science , finance , law , social science , linguistics , philosophy , evolutionary biology , biology
While controversy surrounds compulsory consolidation as a means of improving the operational efficiency of local government, the literature suggests that gains can accrue to groups of local councils which form voluntary alliances as platforms for shared service delivery. However, real‐world experience has demonstrated that voluntary alliances in local government are difficult to establish and do not always endure in the longer term. After reviewing the limited extant scholarly literature on shared services and local council voluntary alliances, as well as applications of the social capital approach to inter‐organisational endeavour, such as the Weber and Weber (2010) venture capital model, this article argues that the social capital approach can offer insights into local council cooperative alliance and shared service models.