Organizational fragmentation and service performance of municipal water districts

Existing research identifies numerous organizational and contextual covariates that influence how public sector service organizations perform. In the context of drinking water provision, functional fragmentation (via specialized utility districts) and the resulting competition is often touted as a means to achieving better service results. However, fragmentation can potentially result in excessive density or disproportionate resource partitioning between water utilities, perhaps even resulting in serial underperformance. Evidence from municipal water districts shows that, while the argument for competition-service quality link appears to be valid, the concentration-service quality link and the incidences of performance path-dependencies should be of significant concern to local governments.