Under its Fit for the Future reform programme, in May 2016 the New South Wales (NSW) government forcibly merged a number of municipalities, including the Armidale Dumaresq Council and the Guyra Shire Council in the New England region of northern NSW. Whilst scholarly attention has focused on the likely impact of municipal mergers on council performance at the system‐wide level (Bell, Dollery & Drew 2016; Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy, 35, 99), much less effort has been devoted to the analysis of the perspectives of council managers and employees involved in forced consolidation. In order to address this gap in the literature, in this paper we present a case study of compulsory council consolidation of the Armidale and Guyra councils based on interviews with senior managers as well as a survey of council workers.

中文翻译：

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合并行动：阿米代尔地区委员会合并过程中的参与者观点

在适合未来改革计划，2016年5月，新南威尔士州（NSW）政府强行合并了多个城市，包括新南威尔士州北部新英格兰地区的Armidale Dumaresq委员会和Guyra Shire委员会。尽管学术界将注意力集中在市政合并对全系统理事会绩效的可能影响上（Bell，Dollery＆Drew 2016; Economic Papers：a Applied Economics and Policy Journal，35，99），但工作量却少得多致力于分析参与强制合并的理事会管理人员和员工的观点。为了解决文献中的这一空白，本文基于对高级管理人员的采访以及对议会工作人员的调查，对Armidale和Guyra议会的强制性理事会合并进行了案例研究。