A demographic and career profile of municipal ... - Wiley Online Library

Patrick Eamon O’Flynn Tim A. Mau

A demographic and career profile of municipal CAOs in Canada: Implications for local governance

Abstract: Little has been written about the Canadian municipal chief administrative officer (CAO). Given the growing importance of municipalities, it is an important gap in the literature. This article depicts CAOs as a group of older white men, highly educated and very experienced. Given the impending retirement of a significant number of CAOs, municipalities have an opportunity to achieve a greater degree of representativeness. The authors identify a number of research trajectories to enhance our knowledge and understanding of this critical administrative position. Sommaire : Il existe peu de documents sur les chefs des services municipaux au Canada. Étant donné l’importance croissante des municipalités, cela représente une grave lacune dans la documentation. Cet article décrit les chefs des services municipaux comme un groupe d’hommes blancs d’un certain âge, ayant un haut niveau d’études et une grande expérience. Comme un grand nombre d’entre eux vont prendre leur retraite d’ici peu, les municipalités ont une occasion de parvenir à un plus grand degré de représentativité. Les auteurs identifient un certain nombre de pistes de recherche pour améliorer nos connaissances et notre compréhension de cette fonction administrative cruciale.

Despite the growing importance of municipalities in our federal system of government and the critical role that chief administrative officers (CAOs) play therein, it is perhaps the least studied and understood senior government position in Canada. Very little has been written about the apex of municipal administrative power in this country, which stands in stark contrast to the extensive American and European literature on the subject matter (Mouritzen and Svara 2002). More than two decades after it was first published, the seminal study by T.J. Plunkett (1994) remains the definitive monograph on the role and purpose of these key functionaries in the Canadian context. While a few more specialized scholarly articles can be identified in the literature (David Siegel 2010; Ashton, Kushner and Siegel 2007; Begadon and Agócs 1995) in addition to a number of short Patrick Eamon O’Flynn municipal intern with Department of Political gratefully acknowledge comments.

is public relations coordinator, 3M Canada, and a former AMCTO the City of London. Tim A. Mau is associate professor in the Science at the University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario. The authors the editor and the Journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION / ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA VOLUME 57, NO. 1 (MARCH/MARS 2014), PP. 154–170 © The Institute of Public Administration of Canada/L’Institut d’administration publique du Canada 2014

MUNICIPAL CAOs IN CANADA

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non-academic pieces published in professional trade magazines like Municipal World (Slegtenhorst 2012; Kearns 2005a, 2005b) and a few unpublished dissertations (McIntosh 2009; Vance 1986; Price 1975), there is a lacuna in our knowledge of the CAO position and how it has evolved over time. While our broader research study has provided us with some insight into the changing role of CAOs as local government leaders, our purpose here is to provide a glimpse into the demographic and career profile of municipal CAOs in Canada similar to studies undertaken on the socioeconomic and professional profile of federal, provincial and territorial deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers in Canada (Evans, Lum and Shields 2007; Bourgault 2005; Bourgault and Dion 1991; Carroll 1991), cross-nationally (Carroll 1996) or in comparison to private sector executives (Varette and Zussman 1998). Given that there has been no nationwide in-depth published study of this critical administrative position since Plunkett’s (1994) study, which relied on data from a survey conducted in 1983 and was restricted to a brief review of their educational backgrounds, our study was designed to provide a more detailed overview of the individuals who comprise the municipal CAO community in Canada.1 Specifically, we examined a number of demographic factors, including age, gender and race, as well as the educational background and career profiles of a national sample of the CAO community as it existed in 2010. As might be expected given the demographic shift that is occurring in Canadian society more broadly, we discovered an aging municipal CAO community that will require significant renewal once the baby boomer generation retires, especially given the fact that the CAO community has high rates of attrition (McIntosh 2009:2).2 Moreover, in common with the studies inspiring this research (Evans, Lum, and Shields 2007; Bourgault 2005), our survey results similarly point to an ongoing recruitment challenge regarding the representativeness of the bureaucratic elite in the municipal sector. The article concludes by identifying future research trajectories that emerge from the data collected in this study, especially with respect to training and development initiatives for aspiring municipal leaders.

Methodology The data for this study was collected during the summer of 2010 with a survey and several semi-structured interviews. The survey was created using a web-based program (SurveyMonkey) and was delivered by email to members of the major municipal administrators associations in each province and the Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators.3

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Table 1. Distribution of CAO Survey Participants Size of Municipality

Region

Canada Atlantic Quebec Ontario Prairies British Columbia Territories

0–25,000

25–100,000

100–500,000

500,000+

Total

158 47 16 26 30 35 4

39 3 6 13 7 10 0

19 3 2 7 2 5 0

3 0 0 1 2 0 0

219 53 24 47 41 50 4

While relying on this method of distribution somewhat limited the number of potential participants, it was chosen because we expected that it would result in a higher level of participation and that the respondents would be more fully engaged in our study of the municipal CAO position. The results seem to bear this out. The survey was completed by 219 municipal CAOs from across Canada out of a sampling frame of 1,320, which represents a 16.5 per cent participation rate.4 Table 1 provides a brief look at the distribution of respondents according to the region of the country and the size of the municipality. The survey included questions on demographics (age, gender and education), professional experience and included a section on the responsibilities of the CAO position. To complement the data derived from the survey instrument, follow-up telephone interviews were conducted with 15 municipal CAOs. The interviewees indicated their interest and willingness to participate in a more in-depth interview as part of the original survey and represent a variety of demographic backgrounds and types and sizes of municipalities from most of the participating provinces and territories. The interviews provided more detailed information about the responsibilities of the municipal CAO position and an opportunity to gain further insight into the participants’ perspectives on the educational qualifications and professional experience required to successfully fulfill the role.

Demographic and professional profile of municipal CAOs Although Plunkett (1994) did not explicitly provide data regarding the age, gender and racial composition of CAOs, we suspected that the profile of the individuals filling the position fit a common mould for senior public servants at the time: older Caucasian men. However, unlike some progress


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made to promote diversity across the federal public service in recent years, particularly in the executive ranks, our research reveals that municipalities continue to have some way to go to ensure representativeness in the CAO community. Only one of our respondents was a visible minority, while 164 out of the 219 respondents were male and just over 40 per cent of them (89 out of 219) were over the age of 55. It seems, therefore, that local councils must make a more concerted effort not only to recruit younger candidates to renew the ranks of the CAO community, but also – and perhaps more importantly – to promote more qualified women and visible minorities to this critical leadership position.

Age As Table 2 reveals, more than 40 per cent of the surveyed population was over 55 years old, an age at which retirement becomes more common. While the senior-most manager in municipal government should have the most experience and, as a result, these individuals would be more advanced in age, it is disconcerting that such a large proportion of the surveyed population could retire at any time. In addition, another 42 per cent of the surveyed population is in the 45–55 age range, which means that a significant number of these individuals are also likely to retire in the next half-decade. This trend continues in all regions of the country, though in the Atlantic provinces only 30 per cent of participants were over the age of 55. The relative youth of municipal CAOs in Atlantic Canada, however, may be a result of the size of the municipalities in question. When analyzing the age of respondents, the population of the municipality in question does indeed appear to have an impact. Of those municipalities with a population of less than 25,000, only 36 per cent had a municipal CAO who was over the age of 55, whereas over 50 per cent of the CAOs in municipalities with populations over 25,000 were over the age of 55. This would explain the aberration in the Atlantic provinces as a whopping 89 per cent of the participants from that region represented municipalities that had less than 25,000 residents. This contrasts with the prairie provinces, where 73 per cent of participants were from municipalities with less than 25,000 residents, British Columbia (70 per cent), Quebec (66 per cent) and Ontario (55 per cent). It was not particularly surprising to find that the youngest participants were in the smallest municipalities; there were only six participants in the 25–35 year age category and they each represented municipalities with less than 25,000 residents.

Gender The results of our survey points to a severe underrepresentation of women in the municipal CAO position. As Table 3 reveals, only about one quarter of our respondents (55 out of 219) were female. There also appears to be

Gender

Male Female

Age Under 25 25–35 36–45 46–55 55+ Unknown

Population

Quebec

19 5

0 0 3 11 10 0

0 4 15 18 16 0

Atlantic Provinces

32 21

0 1 2 18 20 0

0 0 4 27 18 1

0 0 0 1 3 0

0 6 24 70 57 1

35 12

35 6

Prairie Provinces

Region

40 10

British Columbia

3 1

Territories

110 48

0– 25,000

Table 3. Gender of CAO Survey Participants

Ontario

0 1 4 19 22 1

0 0 1 6 11 1

37 2

14 5

100– 500,000

Population 25– 100,000

0 0 3 16 20 0

3 0

500,000+

0 0 0 2 1 0

164 55

Total

0 6 28 94 89 2

Atlantic Prairie British Provinces Quebec Ontario Provinces Columbia Territories 0–25,000 25–100,000 100–500,000 500,000+ Total

Region

Table 2. Age of CAO Survey Participants

158 PATRICK EAMON O’FLYNN, TIM A. MAU


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a relationship between the gender of the participants and the population size of the municipalities. In short, female participants were much more likely to be from smaller municipalities. In those municipalities with less than 25,000 residents just over 30 per cent of participants were female, whereas in those municipalities with more than 25,000 residents only 11 per cent of participants were female. In both cases the numbers support the notion that was repeated by our interviewees that senior municipal management positions were a sort of “old boys club.” One interview respondent went as far as to suggest that women are actually discriminated against as municipal CAOs; they were thought to have a more difficult time getting the top job and, once in the position, subjected to differential treatment. In terms of regional results, the Atlantic provinces once again provide a discrepancy with nearly 40 per cent of municipal CAOs being female. However, in this case the discrepancy is not related solely to the population of the municipalities found in each region. Ontario had the lowest proportion of municipalities with less than 25,000 residents, but maintained the Canadian average of 25 per cent female municipal CAOs, while in the prairie provinces, where 73 per cent of participating municipalities had fewer than 25,000 residents, only 14 per cent of participating municipal CAOs were women. This suggests that while female participants were more likely to be found in smaller municipalities, other regional factors are at play.

Race Plunkett (1994) did not address the racial profile of the municipal CAO community. Our original survey also neglected to collect this data, but we felt that this information was ultimately important for a more complete understanding of the representativeness of this bureaucratic elite. In the summer of 2012, we contacted the original survey participants to determine whether they would be classified as visible minorities as defined in the Employment Equity Act. We were able to ascertain the racial profile of 159 of the 219 original survey participants. Of that number, 156 would be classified as Caucasian while only one respondent (less than one per cent) self-identified as a visible minority. The remaining two CAOs identified as Aboriginal Canadians.

Education and professional experience As Siegel (2010: 140) suggests, there has been a palpable transformation in the role of the CAO over time because of changes in the role of senior managers in public sector organizations and in the role of municipal governments. Being a successful CAO today requires effective leadership more so than the more traditional managerial skills and functions

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associated with the position. Both education and professional experience are important in preparing an individual to undertake the responsibilities of a municipal CAO, but given the new demands on these leaders, what types of education and experience are most applicable? We expected that CAOs would require a different educational background and range of professional experience to be effective in their roles; this was borne out by the data collected through the survey and interviews. As Table 4 reveals, the educational profiles of survey participants varied widely. The vast majority of participants had an undergraduate degree, and many – nearly 40 per cent – held a graduate degree. Some, however, were limited to a secondary school diploma. Participants who did not possess a post-secondary degree were not found in municipalities with more than 25,000 residents. Participants from larger municipalities were also more likely to have completed a graduate degree; the larger the municipality, the more likely the participant was to hold a graduate degree. For instance, approximately 33 per cent of participants from municipalities with less than 25,000 residents held a graduate degree, whereas the numbers were 48 per cent for those in the 25–100,000 population category, 57 per cent for those in the 100–500,000 population category and 100 per cent for those in municipalities with more than 500,000 residents. This trend applies across all of the regions studied by the survey, and the percentage of participants from each region that held a graduate degree was similar with the exception of Quebec, wherein an astounding 62.5 per cent of participants had earned a graduate degree. When interviewed, municipal CAOs, from all types and sizes of municipality and from all of the regions, expounded the importance of a strong education. Many believed that in the coming years a graduate degree would become the professional standard for municipal CAOs. The survey results indicate that this may already be happening: five of the six participants in the 25–35 age category either hold, or are currently completing, a graduate degree. The educational background of the participants and the subjects they studied varied greatly. The most commonly identified fields for undergraduate degrees, diplomas and certificates were programs relating to public administration (19.6 per cent of the total), with finance, accounting and business programs a close second (15.9 per cent). This is a palpable shift from the Plunkett (1994) study, which asserted that the majority of municipal CAOs were trained as engineers. In 2010, this appeared not to be the case with only 8 per cent of participants citing engineering as their educational background. The subject of study was not impacted by the size of municipality. In short, the data pertaining to education present two important findings. First, municipal CAOs are generally well educated and, according to the CAOs interviewed, the standard for the position will soon be a

Graduate Degree

Educational Background

Quebec 4 7 1 1

2 3 6 5 7 3 9

Atlantic Provinces

9

2

1

11

1

3

26

7

5

3

38

Public Administration

Engineering

Planning/ Geography

Finance/ Accounting/ Business

Law

Unknown

Other

Public Administration

Business

Other

None

26

9

3

9

18

6

0

5

11

3

4

Ontario

28

4

9

0

13

2

1

7

1

5

12

Prairie Provinces

Region

31

8

7

4

20

4

0

10

3

1

12

British Columbia

2

0

2

0

1

0

0

1

0

0

2

Territories

106

14

23

15

67

8

1

25

9

8

40

0– 25,000

Table 4. Educational Background of CAO Survey Participants

20

6

6

7

13

4

1

7

5

6

3

8

6

3

2

3

5

2

3

2

3

1

100– 500,000

Population 25– 100,000

0

1

1

1

0

1

0

0

1

1

0

500,000+

134

27

33

25

84

18

4

35

17

18

43

Total


161

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graduate degree. This is not all that surprising given the scope and complexity of the job that the municipal CAO is currently entrusted to perform; success in this environment will require a range of technical skills garnered through graduate studies in business or public administration as well as the softer interpersonal skills associated with effective leadership. Second, it does not appear to matter what type of education an individual receives. Indeed, numerous interview participants noted that they viewed education as a process in which basic skills are learned – the ability to absorb information, communicate effectively and think critically – rather than one that prepared them to be municipal CAOs. While educational achievement is an important element in preparing aspiring municipal CAOs for the demands of the position, it is not the only relevant factor. The other major piece of the puzzle is professional experience. As our research showed (see Table 5), the sector in which that experience is acquired is of particular importance. An astounding half of all participants listed experience in the municipal sector as the only professional experience they had. Equally important is the finding that 99 per cent of respondents had some degree of municipal experience prior to becoming CAOs, which in many cases was combined with private, provincial or federal public sector experience. Over 50 per cent of the respondents to our survey had over 20 years of experience and nearly 75 per cent had over 15 years of municipal experience. There is also a relationship between experience levels and municipal population; as the population increases, the years of experience increase. For example, all of the nineteen CAOs who had less than five years of experience worked in municipalities with less than 25,000 residents, while nearly 60 per cent of the participants from municipalities with more than 100,000 residents had more than twenty-five years of experience (see Table 6). Once again, geographic region should not have a significant impact on our understanding of the importance of municipal experience. These results are not surprising; as the municipality increases in size so does the complexity of the task of providing a range of public goods and services for residents of the community, which necessitates a certain level of maturity and experience if the CAO is to provide the requisite administrative leadership. Most interview participants suggested that experience is equally as important as education. While education teaches basic skills needed to succeed as a municipal administrator – research, critical thinking, communication – it is only after working in a municipality that one becomes accustomed to making important decisions, managing staff and interacting with council, with the latter being particularly challenging (Siegel 2010; Plunkett 1994). Practical experience also helps an individual develop a set of skills difficult to teach in a classroom, including political sensitivity,

0 0 2 6 1 0

0 1 12 19 9 0

Private

Municipal and Provincial/Federal

Municipal and Private

Municipal, Provincial/ Federal and Private

Provincial/Federal and Private

Time in 0–5 years Municipal 5–10 years Sector 10–15 years 15–20 years 20–25 years 25+ years

0

2

7

6

0

0

32

1

0

12

4

0

0

24

0

2

11

3

0

0

34

0

1

1

1

0

0

1

0

13

48

19

1

0

77

0

2

4

1

0

0

12

Population

1

0

4

7

0

0

27

2

0

0

0

1

0

0

1

15

56

28

1

0

118

15 7 6 9 5 11

0 1 2 5 3 13

1 2 1 5 11 27

0 5 4 1 11 20

2 3 7 13 6 19

1 0 1 1 1 0

19 14 17 23 29 56

0 2 2 8 6 21

0 2 2 3 1 11

0 0 0 0 1 2

19 18 21 34 37 90

Atlantic Prairie British 0– 25– 100– Provinces Quebec Ontario Provinces Columbia Territories 25,000 100,000 500,000 500,000+ Total

Region

Table 6. Years of Municipal Experience of CAO Survey Participants

15

12

Professional Municipal Background Provincial/Federal

Population

Atlantic Prairie British 0– 25– 100– Provinces Quebec Ontario Provinces Columbia Territories 25,000 100,000 500,000 500,000+ Total

Region

Table 5. Professional Background of CAO Survey Participants


163

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confidentiality and, perhaps most important of all, professional behaviour. In short, practical experience is necessary for success in the position of municipal CAO. That is not to say that all aspiring municipal CAOs require years of municipal experience prior to a top appointment – some participants became municipal CAOs shortly after completing an education – but the experience certainly helps provide a CAO with the necessary background preparation and competencies to provide effective leadership.

Discussion and implications One of the traditional values of the public service in Canada is representativeness; in other words, the goal has been to foster public service institutions, which broadly reflect the face of Canadian society. As Evans, Lum and Shields (2007: 613) have documented, there are several tangible benefits arising from a representative bureaucracy: from a symbolic commitment to share power to better decision-making arising from having a broader range of knowledge and experience to draw upon to enhanced cooperation from underrepresented groups in society and to having a larger pool of candidates from which to recruit the best and brightest into the public service. As comparable studies of the federal, provincial and territorial bureaucratic elite have revealed, ensuring the representativeness of the bureaucracy is an ongoing challenge. In his seminal study on social class and power in Canada, Porter (1965/1967) wrote of a federal bureaucracy, constituting an intellectual, social, political and economic elite that was largely white, Christian and male. Prior to 1975, women were completely absent from the senior public service (Bourgault 2005) and even as recently as 1983 women comprised less than 5 per cent of the executive group (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/res/stats/demo11-eng.asp). Focusing exclusively on the deputy minister cadre, Bourgault (2005: 3) discovered that a paltry 6% of these appointments were granted to women between 1867 and 2003 – although women were awarded a marginally more respectable 22 per cent of the deputy ministerial appointments between 1997 and 2003 – lending support to the notion that the upper echelons of the federal public service comprised a bastion for older, white men. This, too, was the conclusion of other studies of the Canadian bureaucratic elite (Evans, Lum and Shields 2007; Carroll 1991). While Evans, Lum and Shields (2007) found that women accounted for as much as 54% of the core federal service labour force, and while they conceded that a feminization of the public service had taken place in the previous decades, they also contended that gender imbalances remained at the highest levels. They concluded: “The demographic variables we were able to probe inform us that our most senior civil servants remain predominantly male, white, well-educated and


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accredited” (Evans, Lum and Shields 2007: 631). Although concerned by these results, they were nonetheless optimistic in that the representation of women in the public service elite had improved appreciably over the past three decades and that further gains would invariably be made in future. More recent evidence suggests that their optimism was not unfounded. As the Treasury Board Secretariat’s 2011 demographic snapshot of the federal public service reveals (whose URL in February 2013 was http:// www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/res/stats/demo11-eng.asp), even though some deficiencies remain, great strides have been made in the past thirty years, especially the past decade, to improve the representation of women, visible minorities, Aboriginals and the disabled in the ranks of the federal public service. In the core public administration, the representation of people with disabilities (5.4 per cent) and visible minorities (7.8 per cent) in the executive group exceeded their workforce availability of 4.0 per cent and 7.4 per cent respectively. With respect to gender representation, women now constitute 44.9 per cent of the executive group, which is only slightly below their workforce availability of 45.5 per cent. Aboriginal Canadians with 3.8 per cent representation in the executive group remain the most underrepresented group in the federal public service (workforce availability of 4.5 per cent), but even in this designated group the gains have been considerable, almost doubling their representation since 2001. It is against this backdrop that we assess the current demographic profile of the Canadian municipal CAO community. Unfortunately, our data suggests that the population of local administrative leaders does not reflect the representativeness that has been emerging in the federal public service. Rather, the picture that materializes at the local level for CAOs is more similar to patterns reported in the studies of the upper echelons of the federal and provincial public services in Canada between 1991 and 2007: a demographic profile disproportionately male, white and both highly educated and highly experienced (in this instance with over 40% of respondents possessing more than 25 years of experience in a local government setting). In most respects, our results mirror those of the 2008 survey of Canadian municipal CAOs conducted by Gordon McIntosh for his unpublished doctoral dissertation. His sample population (484 municipal CAOs) was similarly classified as “well-educated, older and experienced” (2009: 79) with some 75 per cent of his respondents over the age of 44. Given that our survey was administered two years later, it is not at all surprising that we discovered an even larger number of CAOs falling into the over 45 age category (nearly 84 per cent of our sample). As was the case in our study, McIntosh also found that younger CAOs tended to be at the helm in smaller municipalities. With respect to educational attainment, McIntosh discovered a much smaller number of CAOs (22 per cent of the survey

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population) had a graduate degree than in our study, where some 40 per cent of the respondents had earned one, but 97 per cent of the CAOs in his study possessed some qualification beyond high school (i.e., diploma, undergraduate or graduate degree). The importance of municipal experience and a combination of experience in all sectors was also highlighted by McIntosh’s findings with 39 per cent of his respondents indicating that their experience was primarily in local government, with an additional 37 per cent identifying that their experience was from all sectors (including municipal). The critical point of departure between our surveys was regarding the gender distribution of the position. Only 25 per cent of our participants were female, which would lead us to conclude that women are currently severely underrepresented in the municipal CAO cadre in this country. McIntosh’s (2009) survey, however, with 44 per cent of the respondents being female, suggests that while some degree of underrepresentation of women in the ranks of the municipal CAO may persist, the problem may not be as severe as our data seems to indicate. Even his earlier survey from 2000, which involved the participation of 616 CAOs, 36 per cent of whom were female respondents, infers a level of representativeness that is much better than our data would imply. Moreover, it is highly probable that in the past decade more women would have been appointed to the position of municipal CAO, which would support the higher level of female representation discovered in McIntosh’s 2008 survey. Therefore, since our sample may be skewed, it would be prudent to temper our conclusions about the gender distribution of this important administrative position. In all likelihood the situation is not as dire as we originally imagined on the basis of the gender distribution of the respondents to our survey. Having said that, all of the available evidence still suggests that the number of female municipal CAOs is less than what we would expect given their workforce availability. The gender distribution of municipal CAOs is an issue that warrants further investigation, not simply to ascertain whether women continue to be underrepresented, but also – and more importantly – to determine whether women view the role of CAO differently from their male counterparts, how their leadership and management styles converge or diverge and whether the inclusion of women in this role alters the nature of representation in local government. These are all questions that have been explored in reference to the city manager in the United States (Fox and Schuhmann 1999), but have yet to be grappled with in the Canadian context. Other avenues of research should be undertaken to explore similar questions about the impact of race on filling municipal CAO positions. With only one visible minority amongst our survey participants, it is impossible not to be concerned about the lack of ethnic diversity amongst


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the occupants of this critical senior administrative position. According to 2006 Statistics Canada census data, just over 16% of the Canadian population would be classified as members of a visible minority with a total workforce availability of 13%. While the vast majority of the visible minority population would be concentrated in a very small number of large municipalities, given the high degree of mobility of municipal employees as part of their career progression we would expect to see a significantly higher percentage of municipal CAOs from visible minority groups. The CAO community as a whole, therefore, does not appear to reflect the diversity present in this country, which we would argue is problematic from the perspective of promoting good governance. In other words, given the homogeneity of the CAO cadre there is an obvious concern that municipalities are missing out on the potential benefits associated with a greater diversity in terms of thinking about and responding to the increasingly complex array of issues that are now confronting municipalities. Given that over half of our respondents were over the age of 50, one of the most significant challenges facing municipalities is how to replace the experience and expertise of the large number of CAOs in the twilight of their careers and to do so in a way that ensures a greater degree of representativeness. This raises questions with regard to both municipal succession planning as well as leadership training and development, both of which will require further research. First, to what extent do municipalities have well developed succession planning strategies for ensuring smooth transitions to new administrative leaders? After all, there is no clear career pathway to becoming a municipal CAO. Aspiring CAOs could be accountants, planners, engineers or lawyers, but once appointed they need to quickly replace their narrow functional expertise with a broader corporate perspective as general managers (Plunkett 1994). This means that municipalities must do a better job of broadening the experience of their most talented managers to other functional areas of the organization. Research in the United States has suggested a fourfold classification of the career paths of city managers, namely ladder climbers, long servers, lateral movers and single-city careerists (Watson and Hassett 2004: 195), but we have no comparable knowledge regarding the pathways of Canadian municipal CAOs. Second, with the growing importance of municipalities to the health and vitality of Canadian governance more generally, how are municipalities ensuring that the individuals appointed to these critical leadership positions are equipped for success? In other words, are those who are interested in becoming CAOs receiving suitable training and development opportunities to build their skill sets as both managers and leaders? Siegel (2010) has cogently articulated the need for leadership amongst this group

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of key local administrators and our own research has highlighted the shift in the role and function of the municipal CAO over time, noting that the ability to lead is as critical as the ability to manage. Public sector leadership competencies have been implemented with some degree of success in other jurisdictions (Mau 2009), but is it possible to embrace the use of competencies for hiring and evaluating municipal CAOs? While it is not feasible for all municipalities, especially the thousands of smaller ones, to develop their own competency profiles for their senior executives, there may be a role for the provincial governments or the various professional associations at the provincial and/or national level to drive such a process.

Conclusion The municipal CAO is a critically important, yet sorely neglected, position in local governance. By providing a preliminary glimpse into the demographic and career profile of municipal CAOs in Canada, we hope to provide a starting point for understanding the individuals who sit at the apex of local administrative power and spur further research about these key functionaries, but many research questions need to be addressed. Our survey of a sample of these local administrators portrays them much in the same way that the provincial and federal bureaucratic elite in this country have been depicted in comparable studies: as a group of older white men, highly educated and possessing a great deal of experience. Unlike the federal public sector, however, where tremendous progress has been made in the past decade in particular to ensure that the senior ranks of the bureaucracy reflect the diversity of Canadian society, we discovered that local governments have collectively yet to embrace representativeness in the same way. Given the demographic profile of the Canadian CAO community, there will be a significant renewal in this position in the next decade. Good governance necessitates that municipalities take action and plan for this impending change by both hiring more women and visible minorities into these key administrative posts and ensuring that all aspiring CAOs possess the requisite managerial and leadership skills to succeed in this challenging position.

Notes 1 It should be noted that there have been four surveys of municipal CAOs in Alberta conducted every three years since 2001. These surveys are more limited than our own in that they consider a narrower range of demographic data, focusing primarily on the educational background and career profile of the CAOs, and only apply to administrators in that one province. Available online at http://www.municipalaffairs.alberta.ca/ am_chief_administrative_officer_surveys.cfm. 2 Of the 219 municipalities that participated in our original study, 62 of them (28 per cent) had already replaced their CAO by July 2012.


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3 The following associations participated in our study: Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators (CAMA); Professional Municipal Administrators of Newfoundland and Labrador; Association of Municipal Administrators of Nova Scotia; Association of Municipal Administrators of New Brunswick; Association of Municipal Administrators of Prince Edward Island; l’Association des directeurs généraux des municipalités du Québec; Ontario Municipal Administrators Association; Urban Municipal Administrators Association of Saskatchewan Society of Local Government Managers of Alberta; Local Government Management Association of British Columbia; Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories; and the Association of Yukon Communities. 4 According to the 2006 Statistics Canada data, there are 3,813 municipal governments across the country (Tindal et al. 2013: 5), which means that our sample size was 5.7 per cent of the total population.

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