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Enhancing Local Government: Critical Success Factors for Effective Council-Community Relationships
Author: Duane Donovan
Supervisors: Phil Osborne
18 September 2025
Donovan, D. (2025). Enhancing Local Government: Critical Success Factors for Effective Council-Community Relationships [Master's thesis, Otago Polytechnic]. Research Bank. https://doi.org/10.34074/thes.7063
Abstract
Local government has a major impact on the lives of all New Zealanders. It is the system that provides essential services people use every day. As these services are paid for by locally raised taxes it is in the common interest that they be managed as efficiently and effectively as possible. Investigating this subject identified the research aims for this study. This study examines how the relationship between a Council and its community groups can be a resource to improve outcomes. Using an interpretivist philosophy and constructivist methodology it examines the multiple realities to find common themes amongst them. By conducting semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis it aims to examine what the critical success factors are for quality relationships between the Waitaki District Council (WDC) and Waitaki community groups. This was built on a literature review of both local government and community partnerships. This research discusses the historical context for the current state of local government. It examines key legislation impacting the development of the sector. This is combined with a theoretical examination of what constitutes community partnerships. This foundation is explored through the theoretical framework of the resource-based view of strategic management. The collected data is analysed by combining the theoretical framework, historical context, and the research proposition. The data is analysed using a multi-iteration coding process with member checking to find the key interpretations that answer the research question. This leads to the identification of eight critical success factors for quality Council-community group relationships. The analysis enabled the development of a conceptual model. This identified four stages of relationship development, and how the eight critical success factors as manifested at each stage. The model can be applied to evaluate a relationship, and to provide recommendations to optimise it. The critical success factors are explored through the resource-based view lens. Following this, four recommendations for the WDC are made. Based on the interpretation of the data, it is recommended that WDC: (1) deepen engagement regarding their transformation project with the community groups, (2) examine using their Stronger Waitaki model to deliver other strategic outcomes, (3) consider the adoption of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and, (4) increase the visibility of the governance group in the community. In that chapter there are also recommendations for future research that could build on this study. This research finds that community groups are a valuable resource for a Council. By working in partnership with them the Council can improve outcomes at low to no cost. As higher quality relationships led to better outcomes it is in the best interests of Council to apply the eight critical success factors to optimise them.
Keywords
local government, community partnerships, resource-based view, critical success factors, Waitaki District
Licence
This thesis is publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
