What do we tell small towns? The effect of collaborative mechanism choice on sustainable development in constrained communities

Compared to larger cities, smaller local governments with economic and social disadvantages are less understood in their progress toward sustainable development. Since economic growth is often central to constrained local governments, their constrained capabilities exacerbate the challenge for public managers to shift gears from traditional economic development to sustainable development. When capabilities are limited within existing functions, the municipality may need to look outside its organization to meet its goals. Public administration scholars have argued that collaboration can help overcome such challenges. However, a significant gap remains in understanding that the choice of different capability-based collaborative mechanisms affects organizational outcomes. This paper examines how the choice between alternative capability-based collaborative mechanisms influences the sustainable development efforts of resource-constrained local governments. Using Institutional Collective Action (ICA) as a theoretical lens, we contend that public managers choose mechanisms that minimize the risk of collaboration. Drawing on novel Bayesian machine-learning methods and data from smaller, resource-constrained local governments in Indiana, we find evidence that collaborative mechanisms that reduce information-related collaboration risks drive greater engagement in local sustainable development. Additionally, this effect becomes larger when the municipality uses more than one collaborative mechanism. These results suggest that, considering the extreme resource constraints of smaller and rural local governments, collaborative mechanisms can generate positive-sum effects for sustainable development efforts.