Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Assessing The Impact Of Intergovernmental Grant Policies In Education - The Case Of Florida, Nga (Angie) Le

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades, grant funding from federal and state governments has played an increasing role in school finance. However, prior research shows that education grants are not always effective, and the resources distributed to school districts are often not efficient. Increased federal and state funding does not always improve schools’ effectiveness but instead may trigger greater bureaucracy and a mass-production vision in local education administration.

This research aims to provide a theoretical foundation for and empirical evidence on the impact of intergovernmental aid in education and inform future policy reforms. This study investigates the effects of federal and state grant …

The Impact Of Governance Structure On Performance Of U.S. Performing Arts Centers, Karen S. Fuller

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an analysis of the governance structures and functioning of performing arts centers (PACs) in the United States. PACs provide important public services to local communities by exposing the public to arts and culture. There are two research objectives in the analysis. The first objective is to delineate the forms of PAC governance structures. The second objective is to assess how these governance structures affect PACs’ functioning. The dissertation contributes to understanding of management of PACs. Overall, the study identified 187 PACs in the country, with at least one PAC in every state.

With respect to the first …

Absolute Impunity: On The Legacies Of 9/11 & The Policies Of The War On/Of Terror, Bryant William Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

It has been a little over twenty years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and thus we are also going to be coming up on twentieth anniversaries of some of the most heinous restrictions on civil liberties in US history (though there is a lot of competition) and the twentieth anniversaries of instance after instance of unjustifiable atrocities committed in the name of the Stars and Stripes. Through autoethnographic reflection in conversation with Netflix’s Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2021) and Spencer Ackerman’s Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (2021), …

Managing Collaborative Networks In Post-Disaster Recovery: A Case Study Of 2015 Nepal Earthquake, Barsha Manandhar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Governing the network of public, private, and non-governmental organizations is increasingly becoming the standard practice to ensure effective post-disaster recovery and reconstruction processes and outcomes. While prior research has discussed different challenges in network settings, few studies have examined the challenges faced by public managers who lead post-disaster recovery networks. Similarly, there is a dearth of knowledge on how the management of these networks affects disaster-stricken populations are affected by the management of these networks. This dissertation addresses such lacunae using a case study of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), an organization established by the Nepali government to execute post-disaster …

Transformative Constitutionalism And The Adjudication Of Elections In Kenya, Carl Bevelhymer

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The judicialization of politics has been an ongoing and expanding global phenomenon for decades. In Kenya, the record number of cases brought before courts prior to and following the 2017 elections is evidence of the continued growth and spread of the judicialization of politics, and more specifically elections; it is also the result of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, which introduced a new form of governance, expanded the number of elective seats and mandated judicial and electoral reforms. One of the most remarkable events of the 2017 election period was the Supreme Court’s nullification of the presidential election due to electoral irregularities. …

Understanding The Individual And Organizational Attributes Of Servant Leadership In Local Governments, Pallavi Awasthi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Servant leaders are driven by a natural feeling to serve first which manifests into a conscious desire to lead. The servant leadership style emphasizes internalizing ethical behavior, along with empathy and service orientation in creating value for the community which is critical in public administration. While the servant leadership concept has gained much interest among business management scholars, it has received little attention in public administration. This dissertation aims to fill this wide gap in public administrative leadership scholarship by investigating the role of servant leadership in public administration.

Specifically, the dissertation seeks to understand individual (servant identity and moral …

Representative Bureaucracy In Government Contracting: Examining Supplier Diversity Policy Implementation, Evelyn Trammell

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Government organizations have struggled to balance democratic values of inclusiveness and equity with an efficient and effective bureaucracy since the early years of the administrative state. A representative bureaucracy offers a solution where effective and efficient public service delivery can be achieved while reflecting the interests of historically underrepresented social groups in policy decisions. The theory of representative bureaucracy states that organizational actors that share characteristics with constituents are more likely to respond to their interests through policies and implementation activities. Employing a mixed methodology, this study examines whether and how representativeness of local government decision-makers affects contracting policy implementation …

Dysfunctional Uses Of Performance Information In Public Organizations: Understanding The Determinants Of Gaming Behavior, Shawn Benaine

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of performance information in decision-making is central to the practice of public management and is a common feature of modern governance (Kroll, 2015; Moynihan, 2008). The purposeful use of performance information brings about many benefits for public organizations, such as enhanced democratic accountability and responsiveness, as well as improved managerial decision-making in the public interest. However, there are dysfunctional uses of performance systems, such as performance gaming. This is a behavior where organizations or individuals manipulate data or effort in a way that undermines organizational goals. The dissertation seeks to understand what factors mitigate performance gaming. Prior research …

Adoption, Stringency And Impact Of Performance Management Systems: The Case Of U.S. Public Higher Education, Lilia Silverio Minaya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to a better understanding of performance management systems (PMS) by examining adoption, stringency, and impact of performance-based funding (PBF) in public institutions of higher education within the United States. The public sector has been under increasing pressure to be more accountable to stakeholders—that is, to perform better at lower cost. Yet, tracking the effectiveness of performance systems has been challenging, given the host of factors that affect results. Because of the growing use of performance systems, it is important to understand what factors affect the adoption and stringency of such systems, as well as their effectiveness.

Currently, …

The "New" Black In The New South: Negotiating Race And Space In North Carolina's Immigrant Communities, Masonya Joy Bennett

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores identity and subject formation among black immigrant populations in Charlotte, N.C, a non-traditional gateway city. It interrogates claims made by regional scholars and policy-makers that, due to recent demographic shifts and economic development, Charlotte embodies the “New South”, a designation signifying the transition from an agricultural to a corporation-based economy and from a racially polarized to a multicultural society. Based upon 18 months of ethnographic research utilizing a mixed method approach among immigrants of African descent in the trans-ethnic enclave of East Charlotte, the dissertation focuses on the role of space, place, material culture and affect in …

Public Service Values And Disparate Performance: The Case Of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (Hcv) Program, Melissa Gomez Hernandez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public administration scholars accept that public service values guide administrators’ behavior. This guidance also derives from social and cultural values that motivate administrators’ individual attitudes. A part of the field recognizes that public servants play an active role during the implementation process through their daily use of discretion. Nevertheless, public administrators’ values and attitudes are rarely linked to policy implementation and organizational performance. In consequence, public policy evaluation seldom considers the role of values and attitudes of those implementing policy.

This study examines how public administrators’ values and attitudes towards citizens shape policy implementation and influence organizational and program performance. …

Understanding The Organizational Factors That Impact Police-Community Relations, Andrea Marie Headley

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There has been a significant amount of attention refocused on problems surrounding police and communities of color. The most consistent remedy identified has been reforming police departments, which is an organizational-level solution. However, only minimal strides have been made in empirical research to understand the organizational correlates associated with police-community relations. Thus, this research investigated the impact that police departments’ organizational and managerial characteristics have on police-community relations.

The key contributions of this research to the literature are three-fold. First, a composite indicator of police-community relations was developed by compiling a large nationwide dataset of local police-departments. This multidimensional indicator …

Election Administration Within The Sphere Of Politics: How Bureaucracy Can Facilitate Democracy With Policy Decisions, Nicholas S. Martinez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public bureaucracy finds itself in a strange place at the intersection of political science and public administration. Political science finds that, within representative democracy, discretion granted to bureaucrats threatens the nature of democracy by subverting politicians who represent the will of the people – bureaucracy vs democracy. At the same time, public administration holds that, in the interest of promoting democracy, bureaucracy should be objective in its implementation of policy in a way that eliminates the influence of politics from decision-making – politics vs bureaucracy. Those positions are seemingly contradictory in nature. From one perspective, bureaucracy is undemocratic because it …

The Cultural Competence Of Response & Recovery Workers In Post-Earthquake Haiti, Christa L. Remington

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cultural competence is critical to public service, yet it is often ignored and underutilized, especially in post-disaster response and recovery. The current literature on cultural competence and frameworks developed by the private sector do not fully consider the complexities of a post-disaster public service context. This project explores the importance of cultural competence in post-disaster response and recovery, identifies effective training methods and organizational policies which may present barriers to competence acquisition, and proposes a new theoretical framework by which to assess cultural competence in international response and recovery work.

This study used focus groups with Haitian beneficiaries (n=7), in-depth …

Gender And Authority In The Public Sector: The Case Of Local Government Chief Administrative Officers In The United States, Sebawit G. Bishu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2016, women represented 16.6% of all Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs) in local governments across the United States. Previous studies have investigated gender disparities in managerial representation, which is explained by the glass ceiling phenomenon; however, little is known about whether the women that occupy these male dominated positions have the similar levels of responsibilities as their male counterparts. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is to understand if gender disparities in levels of work authority manifest as a new form of the glass ceiling. Work authority in this study is operationalized as CAOs’ sanctioning authority (control over personnel operations) …

Policymaking In The Gulf Region: The Case Of Privatization Policy In The State Of Kuwait, Shahed Altammar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to explore the policy processes in Kuwait by examining the recent privatization legislation, which has been adopted but not yet implemented. First, the research reports data from elite interviews, focus groups, and document reviews about policymaking, to illuminate the processes that lead up to the adoption of privatization. Limited data of this nature currently exist. Second, it is anticipated that findings reported in this study will be of theoretical relevance to scholars of comparative politics and particularly to privatization theorists.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the differences in policymaking processes between …

Government Capacity And The Acquisition, Implementation, And Impact Of Arra Funds, Nakhyeok Choi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examined transportation grants provided to states under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Some states acquired more grants and utilized them in a timelier manner than others. This dissertation examined why this is the case, utilizing System Theory and Resource Based Theory as the intellectual framework. Human resource and financial resource capacities were viewed as the principal drivers of success and studying this managerially controllable variables underpin the analysis.

Though many studies have examined ARRA since 2009, my dissertation is the first to simultaneously examine the three stages of the ARRA transportation grant process: acquisition, …

Organizational Social Capital And Performance Information Use: Analyzing The Link And Its Implications For Public Management, Michele Tantardini

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of performance information is the backbone of performance management. Performance information use refers to the willingness of public managers or other relevant stakeholders to incorporate quantitative or qualitative data in their decision-making. Both routine and nonroutine performance information is considered essential in managers’ decision making. Understanding the organizational factors that motivate public managers to use performance information is an important topic in the literature and practice of performance management.

Although the number of studies on information use is growing, little is known about the impact of Organizational Social Capital (OSC). OSC is composed of the sub-dimensions of social …

Successes And Shortcomings In The Implementation Of National Sustainable Development Strategies: From The Greening Of Governance To The Governance Of Greening, Rachel Emas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The interdependence between the economy and the environment necessitates integrated policymaking that recognizes the biological limits of our world and the scarcity of these natural resources. At the 1992 Earth Summit, countries agreed to adopt a National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS) which should comprise the integration of economic, social, and environmental policies across sectors, territories, and generations; country ownership and commitment; broad participation and effective partnerships; development of the necessary capacity and enabling environment; and focus on outcomes and implementation. Working from these key factors and based on decades of international research and peer reviews of these policies, this study …

Factors Affecting The Adoption Of New Technology: The Case Of 311 Government Call Centers, Susan Caroline Young

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Government call centers (311) were first created to reduce the volume of non-emergency calls that were being placed to emergency 911 call centers. The number of 311 call centers increased from 57 in 2008 to about 300 in 2013. Considering that there are over 2,700 municipal government units across the United States, the adoption rate of the 311 centers is arguably low in the country. This dissertation is an examination of the adoption of 311 call centers by municipal governments. My focus is specifically on why municipal governments adopt 311 and identifying which barriers result in the non-adoption of 311 …

The Influence Of Hope Vi Public Housing On Public Schools, Donna A. Comrie

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, public school enrollment is typically organized by neighborhood boundaries. This dissertation examines whether the federally funded HOPE VI program influenced performance in neighborhood public schools. In effect since 1992, HOPE VI has sought to revitalize distressed public housing using the New Urbanism model of mixed income communities. There are 165 such HOPE VI projects nationwide. Despite nearly two decades of the program’s implementation, the literature on its connection to public school performance is thin. My dissertation aims to narrow this research gap. There are three principal research questions:

(1) Following HOPE VI, was there a change …

Political Strategy, Leadership, And Policy Entrepreneurship In Japanese Defense Policy And Politics: A Comparison Of Three Prime Ministerships, Daniel L. Clausen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the end of the Cold War, Japan’s defense policy and politics has gone through significant changes. Throughout the post cold war period, US-Japan alliance managers, politicians with differing visions and preferences, scholars, think tanks, and the actions of foreign governments have all played significant roles in influencing these changes. Along with these actors, the Japanese prime minister has played an important, if sometimes subtle, role in the realm of defense policy and politics. Japanese prime ministers, though significantly weaker than many heads of state, nevertheless play an important role in policy by empowering different actors (bureaucratic actors, independent commissions, …

Community Development Districts: The Entrepreneurial Side Of Government, Gina Scutelnicu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to reduce the cost and size of government public service delivery has become more decentralized, flexible and responsive. Public entrepreneurship entailed, among other things, the establishment of special-purpose governments to finance public services and carry out development projects. Community Development Districts (CDDs) are a type of special-purpose governments whose purpose is to manage and finance infrastructure improvements in the State of Florida. They have important implications for the way both growth management and service delivery occur in the United States. This study examined the role of CDDs for growth management policy and service delivery by analyzing the …

Managing Small-Medium Cities In A Time Of Globalization: Experiences And Evidence From Florida’S Public Managers, Nadine V. Wedderburn

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how public management practitioners in small and medium-sized Florida cities perceive globalization and its impact on public management practice. Using qualitative analysis, descriptive statistics and factor analysis methods, data obtained from a survey and semi-structured interviews were studied to comprehend how public managers view the management and control of their municipalities in a time of globalization. The study shows that the public managers’ perceptions of globalization and its impact on public management in Florida’s small-medium cities are nuanced. Whereas some public managers feel that globalization has significant impacts on municipalities’ viability, others opine that globalization has no …