Albrecht, Tamee

Local service providers in cities around the world face both acute and chronic pressures to which they will need to adapt in order to continue to provide reliable public services. For water utilities, these pressures may include climatic shifts, demographic changes, infrastructure failures, water quality degradation and supply chain disruptions, among others. How water utilities choose between various adaptation actions available to them is not well understood; however, their adaptations decisions can influence their exposure to future risks and their long-term adaptation strategies.

To investigate what influences water utility adaptation, we conducted focus groups with local drinking water utilities in the U.S. We identify five types of institutional dependencies arising from the polycentric institutional environment and present a conceptual model that demonstrates how these dependencies constrain the choice of adaptation pathways for water utilities, for instance, by impacting the feasibility of or transaction costs associated with adaptation actions. Our results suggest that water utilities lack full autonomy over decisions that impact their ability to adapt to change.

Water utilities are public service organizations that provide an essential service. As socio-environmental pressures—related to climatic changes, population shifts and aging infrastructure among others—build, water utilities will face a myriad of difficult decisions. Because water supply is a socio-technical system, decisions regarding water provision are driven not only by technical and economic influences, but also by norms, rules and practices at both the organization and sector levels. Yet, how these institutions affect water utility decision-making is not well understood.

In this study we draw on insights from institutional theory and socio-technical systems theory to examine water utility decision-making. Using the concept of institutional logics, we examine the rationalities that influence decision-making regarding infrastructure repairs, operational practices, system disruptions and responses to external mandates using case studies of eight drinking water utilities in the U.S. We find that multiple co-existing logics interact to influence water utility decisions. Logic interaction can take various forms—one logic might dominate, be compatible with or reinforce other co-existing logics—and affects which logic guides a utility’s decision in the end. These findings help better understand how water utilities may respond to socio-environmental pressures by clarifying the role of sense-making in water utility decision-making.