我们的研究聚焦于地方服务管理情境中的民选政治官员和行政管理者的关系。我们使用韦克的意义建构理论分析政治与行政分界。在蒙特利尔供水服务案例的基础上,我们的研究表明,公共部门专门知识的缺失以及政治视野的不足,导致管理者设想的行动与可获得资源的不匹配。组织目标需要有政治性考量,以便在政策制定过程中对民选官员和管理者产生交互影响。这种合作或者政治与行政的互补性,允许分享意义建构,对符合组织使命的管理研判和考虑公务员建议的战略决策都是必不可少的。对实践工作者的启示一些城市基础设施,比如水处理设施,人们既不容易看见也不容易接触。因此,有时关于公共设施的状况,其管理者的解释与市民及民选官员的认识可能存在很大差异,达成共识成为挑战。民选官员必须依靠有能力的公务员为他们提供可靠的信息,以使他们能够利用掌握的相关事实进行权衡。同时,民选官员维持供水管理的战略掌控地位,以便使公共活动有效服务于政治远见,也是符合公共利益的。 Our research focuses on the relationship between elected political officials and administrators in a local service management context. We use Waker’s theory of construction to analyze the political and administrative boundaries. Building on the case studies of water services in Montreal, our research shows that the absence of expertise in the public sector and the lack of political visibility have led to mismatches between the actions envisaged by managers and the resources available. Organizational goals require political considerations to interact with elected officials and managers during policymaking. This cooperation, or the complementarity of politics and administration, allows the construction of shared meaning to be constructive and is essential to the regulatory judgments that govern the mission of the Organization and to the strategic decisions that take civil service recommendations into consideration. Implications for Practicing Workers Some urban infrastructure, such as water treatment facilities, is neither easily seen nor accessible. As a result, sometimes there may be a big difference between the interpretation of managers and the awareness of citizens and elected officials about the state of public facilities, and consensus building is a challenge. Elected officials must rely on capable civil servants to provide them with reliable information so that they can make use of the relevant facts at hand to weigh them. At the same time, it is also in the public interest that elected officials maintain a strategic control of water supply in order to effectively serve public life in a political foresight.