The metro is run by Johannesburg's executive mayor Amos Masondo. The mayor takes overall strategic and political responsibility for the city, and leads a 10-person mayoral committee, essentially a city-level "cabinet". Each member of the mayoral committee has executive responsibility for a portfolio.

At the head of city administration is a management team run by city manager, Mavela Dlamini, who also sits on the mayor's committee to ensure a close working relationship.

The management team implements council decisions and monitors the performance of the various arms of the city. Reporting to the management team is an administrative head office based at the Metro Centre buildings in Braamfontein, which is responsible for overall administration, financial control, supply of services, and collection of revenues from rates and services charges. The fire department and ambulances, the metropolitan police and traffic control, museums, art galleries and heritage sites are all controlled by separate departments inside the central administration.

Some of the key city service functions are supplied by separate, self-contained entities, each run on business lines with its own CEO, each entering into service contracts with the administrative core. They are:

There are 10 utilities, including electricity (City Power), water and sanitation, and solid waste management, also known as Pikitup. Utilities are registered companies, run on business lines. They must be self-funding, receiving no annual grants from the city. They provide billable services direct to individual households.

Agencies include Johannesburg Roads, City Parks and Johannesburg Development Agency. Each of these performs a service to the public at large - there are no direct charges to individual consumers. These are also structured as separate companies, but they are reliant on the council for funding.

The zoo, Civic Theatre, bus service, fresh produce market and property company each compete in the open market to "sell" their wares to individual consumers who choose to pay for their services. These departments have been "corporatised" into separate businesses, run by new managements on performance contracts, and tasked to cut their subsidy levels by R100-million in the next five years.

The city has been divided into 7 administrative regions, each serving about 300 000 people, with the idea that smaller regions will be in closer contact with local communities. The regions have their own management structures, each headed by a regional director. The regions run certain services such as libraries, community clinics, sports facilities, housing and social services.

While utilities and head office are responsible for the actual supply of most services, the regions determine which services are needed, and monitor the delivery of those services. A key service of the regions are "People's Centres", local payment points for rates and taxes, and also places where residents can lodge complaints, report service problems, and more speedily perform council-related business like lodging or copying building plans.

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