Budgeting for Scope

Mark Moses ()

Chapter Chapter 9 in The Municipal Financial Crisis, 2022, pp 135-153 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Understanding what city government is, what it is capable of doing, and what it is incapable of doing provides a starting point for municipal officials to decide when and how to exercise local authority. A clear standard of purpose—i.e., to protect individual decision-making—addresses the needs of residents and delimits the organization’s scope. Such a decision-making standard subordinates the use of group force to the regard for residents’ decision-making autonomy. This autonomy enables residents to pursue their individual values in the community. By properly regarding what government is, using a decision-making standard for engaging the organization that is consistent with the residents’ individual needs, and considering all effects of the organization’s actions—municipalities have a new framework with which to move forward to undertake the proper scope of the organization’s activity. When I watched municipal officials approve new programs on behalf of the organization, their response to doubters was: “If it doesn’t work, we can always change it.” Municipalities need to make good on this promise, starting with the decision-making approach that gave rise to the proliferation of its activities and that distanced the organization from its residents. As the agent of the local monopoly on force, the truly successful and sustainable municipal organization ensures that it is doing only the things that it should be doing.

Keywords: Organizational scope; Green purchasing; Local vendor preference; Buy local; Municipal financial crisis; Municipal budgeting solutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-87836-8_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030878368

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-87836-8_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().