Nonprofit organizations play a pivotal role in recent efforts

This longitudinal study tracks the generation of trust between a public agency and nine community-based nonprofits (CBNs) over a 10-year period. The evolution from active distrust to trust was demonstrated by the generation of ideological consensus and domain consensus achieved through sharing information, integrated responsibilities and authority, and collaborative decision making. Results indicate that public—nonprofit partnerships create a locus for the practice of the New Public Service. CBNs offer public administrators a bridge into disenfranchised communities and a point of engagement where partners join public agency resources and expertise with tacit knowledge of community through a trusted institution.

No abstract

Complementarity has become the new label to characterize the relations between elected officials and professional public administrators. In response to increasingly complex and challenging problems that face local government officials today, public administration scholars have explored how to improve the efficacy of interactions between elected and appointed officials. To do so, scholars have proposed that characteristics of quality interactions include mutual respect, understanding, communication, and partnership between the two parties. Inadequate empirical research, however, exists to help us understand what interaction quality means. This study fills an important gap in the literature by proposing and testing a multi-dimensional model to explain interaction quality. This study utilizes survey data collected from a nationwide sample of city managers in the United States and employs structural equation modeling.