Defining the Role of the Smart-City Manager: An Analysis of Responsibilities and Skills

Purpose: The objective of this paper is to theoretically explore the role of the Smart City (SC) Manager in public organisations and municipalities and to analyse their main responsibilities, competences and required skills. Methodology: Based on an empirical questionnaire administered to a number of public employees, a Responsibility Index (RI) is defined in order to identify the SC domains that are opportune to be included under the responsibility of the newly introduced role of a SC Manager. The questionnaire is also an opportunity for understanding the main required competences and skills through a factor analysis and qualitative investigation of the responses. Findings: The analysis reveals that the SC Manager has to deal with both the hard and soft domains of the SC management task, thus configuring a horizontal role with limited budget responsibility. Moreover, the SC Manager is required to have city planning capabilities, legal competences, soft management skill abilities, and knowledge of economics and finance, besides some basic management curriculum requirements. Finally, she is required to be politically honest. Originality: The increasing social problems are challenging public administrations to adopt new strategies and actions in order to create smarter cities. With this regard, some cities have created a dedicated organisational unit focused on planning and implementation of SC projects, led by a SC Manager. However, academic and professional studies in this arena are still scarce. Indeed, since now, the research on SC has been hosted primarily in architecture and social sciences journals and in engineering and computer science ones, while only few authors have explored the issue under the lens of the managerial theories.