The Effective Local Government Manager, 3rd Edition, reflects the rich history and modern reinvention of a profession that sprang up at the beginning of the twentieth century. What does it mean to be a local government manager in today’s world? What can a manager accomplish? What internal as well as external resources must the manager harness? What motivates the manager’s employers, colleagues, and employees? For the student contemplating a career as a manager in public service, The Effective Local Government Manager is almost obligatory reading. Many instructors have built introductory courses on local government management around The Effective Local Government Manager. For the young assistant in a city or county, or for the mid-career manager assessing new challenges, The Effective Local Government Manager offers insights on your role and how you can best serve your community. It explores the manager’s many roles and responsibilities—interacting with the community, the governing body, local government employees, and other governments. It offers the most up-to-date theory and practice of local government as well as tools of management. This book is used as a text in ICMA University's Emerging Leaders Development Program.

Perfect Introductory Text for Students Aspiring to Local Government Management CareersFor the student contemplating a career as a manager in public service, The Effective Local Government Manager is almost obligatory reading. Many instructors have built introductory courses on local government management around The Effective Local Government Manager.Essential Tools for Professional Local Government ManagersFor the young assistant in a city or county, or for the mid-career manager assessing new challenges, The Effective Local Government Manager offers insights on your role and how you can best serve your community. It explores the manager¿s many roles and responsibilities¿interacting with the community, the governing body, local government employees, and other governments. It offers the most up-to-date theory and practice of local government as well as tools of management.

Managing Local Government: An Essential Guide for Municipal and County Managers offers a practical introduction to the changing structure, forms, and functions of local governments. Taking a metropolitan management perspective, authors Kimberly Nelson and Carl W. Stenberg explain U.S. local government within historical context and provide strategies for effective local government management and problem solving. Real-life scenarios and contemporary issues illustrate the organization and networks of local governments; the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of city and county managers; and the dynamics of the intergovernmental system. Case studies and discussion questions in each chapter encourage critical analysis of the challenges of collaborative governance. Unlike other books on the market, this text’s combined approach of theory and practice encourages students to enter municipal and county management careers and equips them with tools to be successful from day one.

Managing Local Government Services, 3rd ed. is a comprehensive text on the subject of local government services relevant to local governments of all sizes. This edition is refocused and updated to include the demographic, economic, technology and cultural trends that affect the management of service delivery. New chapters discuss the shift from ¿government¿ to ¿governance,¿ alternative methods of service delivery, community development, and the five management practices that are fast becoming the standard for professional local government management.Each chapter lays out the manager¿s responsibilities in each service area, and provides effective policies, practices, and procedures. Short case examples give you a practical look at the goals, challenges, and solutions in the manager¿s world.

How will increasingly diverse cities and counties strengthen their political leadership for the 1990s and beyond? How can mayors and other officials become effective leaders in government structures that deny them executive power and diffuse their political leadership? What kind of leadership will this be and what impact will it have? Facilitative Leadership in Local Government shows how officials can reach beyond the structural limitations of their position and work with the constraints of fragmented power to build strong and effective government. In this book, James H. Svara and expert contributors offer local government officials and those that work with them a guide to a successful new model of leadership--facilitative leadership. The facilitative leader accomplishes objectives by enhancing the efforts of others. Rather than seeking power for themselves, facilitative mayors or chairpersons seek to empower the city council and the city manager by stressing collaboration and collective leadership among all parties so that all can work effectively together.