The Motivations for the Adoption of Management Innovation by Local Governments and its Performance Effects

This  article  analyses  the  economic,  political  and  institutional  antecedents  and
performance effects of the adoption of shared Senior Management Teams (SMTs)  a
management innovation (MI) that occurs when a team of senior managers oversees two
or  more  public  organizations.  Findings  from  statistical  analysis  of  201  English  local
governments  and  interviews  with  organizational  leaders  reveal  that  shared  SMTs  are
adopted to develop organisational capacity in resource-challenged, politically risk-averse
governments,  and  in  response  to  coercive  and  mimetic  institutional  pressures.
Importantly, sharing SMTs may reduce rather than enhance efficiency and effectiveness
due  to  redundancy  costs  and  the  political  transaction  costs  associated  with  diverting
resources  away  from  a  high-performing  partner  to  support  their  lower-performing
counterpart.