Municipal Development Through Voluntary Engagement of Companies? Risks, Chances and Recommended Actions

The presented research project aims to analyze the voluntary engagement (Political CSR) of private firms and their role in German municipalities. Against the background of the increasing cost and legitimacy pressures German municipalities are confronted with and in line with the growing research interest on urban governance the project is taking shape around the research question that tackles the cultural patterns of urban elites and their interaction. Besides the already introduced pressures Municipalities are facing various other challenges: German cities are competing across national boundaries to remain attractive, the role and tasks of the municipality are in a process of re-definition, cities budgets for voluntary tasks are decreasing, the German government recently published a National Strategy for CSR promoting win-win-situations and municipal mission statements and their implicit reforms are causing new areas of conflicts. On the other side businesses have professionalized their CSR activities in order to improve their reputation and to gain legitimacy. Furthermore, they also want to do promote their political-economical interest. These challenges underline the relevance of the PhD project and therefore introduces the research question, how local politicians and public servants are dealing with CSR. In 2012 80% out of 2000 German companies have had CSR projects. The importance of CSR for municipalities is increasing. Yet, the relationship between municipality and economy is undefined. Indeed, there is no framework or best practice model. To which extend is the financial sponsoring of tasks acceptable and where are the boundaries towards lobbying? Is such a sponsorship leading towards an urbanization of injustice and does it question the legitimacy of the political administrative system? Consequently, frictions and misunderstandings between urban elites from politics, public administration and economy exist. The research question asks for the cultural variables that influence urban governance arrangements of German cities. The values, attitudes, perceptions and role models of urban elites are of major interest. The project is based on the academic core disciplines of public management and administration, including organizational as well as administrative culture, political culture and new sociological institutionalism. The hypothesis of the project argues that the values and attitudes of the actors in question shape their perception on voluntary engagement of companies. The empirical field of inquiry is populated by German cities with 300.000 inhabitants. The project has a mixed-methods approach and follows two steps. First, an internet-based survey will be send to relevant elites of two cities of interest. Second, qualitative semi-structured interviews will be conducted with selected participants of the first step. For the purpose of the analysis the project introduces a fourfold table of governance arrangements, which consists of a structural and a cultural variable. First, the structural variable asks whether there is need for (financial) sponsoring through companies. Second, the cultural variable inquires the attitude towards companies. The fourfold table can be related to urban governance models of Pierre. Hopefully, I will be able to present the final results of my PhD project at the general conference. It has a high practical as well as academic relevance.