Over the past thirty years, local and regional authorities have been faced with major reforms that have had an impact on management, particularly senior and middle management. Organizational hybridization, moving from a hierarchical duality to a tripartite relationship with strong stakeholder influence, has generated role tensions, as has unresolved institutional hybridization. The key idea is that in local authorities, the influence of political leadership in governance, which takes precedence over expert leadership, encourages role tensions. These, linked to organizational, relational, environmental or personal variables, have led to dysfunctions that have increased hidden costs. The implementation of a "Horivert" management style, derived from Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM), would facilitate the evolution towards partnership-based governance, which would reduce role tensions, dysfunction and hidden costs. In addition, the use several indicators to measure hidden costs would make it easier to monitor variations in role tensions. Based on an empirical study of a local authority, the aim of this contribution is to analyze the role tensions experienced by local authority managers, to study how they manifest themselves, to measure (partially) the hidden costs and how to reduce them by acting on role tensions.
