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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Community Improvement Plans: An Analysis Of Content And Outcomes Of Community Improvement Plans In Ontario, Paul Pirri Jul 2020

Community Improvement Plans: An Analysis Of Content And Outcomes Of Community Improvement Plans In Ontario, Paul Pirri

MPA Major Research Papers

Community Improvement Plans are an often used, but seldom studied economic development and planning tool used to spur economic growth within an economically depressed area. But are they effective? This paper answers two questions concerning Community Improvement Plans. First, “How are Community Improvement Plans used in the Province of Ontario?”; and second, “Is the execution of these plans resulting in greater economic prosperity for the communities that have enacted them?”. This work is undertaken by reviewing the content of 202 Community Improvement Plans across the Province of Ontario. Regression tests on municipal assessments from 2001-2018 to determine what effect the …


Beyond Books: Evaluating Maker Spaces In Ontario’S Municipal Library Systems, Lise Conde Mar 2020

Beyond Books: Evaluating Maker Spaces In Ontario’S Municipal Library Systems, Lise Conde

MPA Major Research Papers

This exploratory research paper looks at how Ontario’s municipal library systems evaluate their maker spaces and programming. The literature review provides context on the purpose and value of libraries, the structure and agency of municipal libraries in Ontario and academic and applied studies of program evaluation. The research seeks to answer four questions: What municipal libraries have maker spaces and what are their characteristics? How have they positioned this service in terms of purpose and value? How have they measured success? What can Ontario’s municipal library systems learn from the evaluation of maker spaces to position themselves for the future? …


A Need For Richer Public Service Motivation, Adam Dallas Levitus Mar 2020

A Need For Richer Public Service Motivation, Adam Dallas Levitus

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

While there are many outstanding questions surrounding the motivations of employees, a key problem is that there is not a defining construct to explain why public employees behave as they do. Although the concept of Public Service Motivation (PSM) has developed over the past three decades to help explain these motivations, there are still disagreements as to the definition, characteristics, and value of PSM. Moreover, this lack of congruity in the literature suggests that the underlying components of PSM, historically studied via cross-sectional quantitative surveys, have not yet been well-defined via rigorous theory-building. Accordingly, this study looks at PSM from …


Factors That Influence African American Male Retention In Public Four-Year Institutions, Shantya V. Plater Jan 2020

Factors That Influence African American Male Retention In Public Four-Year Institutions, Shantya V. Plater

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Due to the lack of policies at the federal and state level, 4-year public colleges and universities across the United States are left to develop retention policies at the institutional level to support their diverse populations. Retention rates for minority students lag behind their peers, especially African American male students. This study identified the factors that influence retention amongst African American male students at 4-year public colleges and universities. The theoretical framework used in this study was the Tinto model of academic and social integration. The data identified that financial resources, family support, and academic and social engagement influence the …


Social Comparison As A Policy Tool To Promote Corporate Environmental Responsibility, Enoch Chi Lok Tse Jan 2020

Social Comparison As A Policy Tool To Promote Corporate Environmental Responsibility, Enoch Chi Lok Tse

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Measures imposed on the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation, and Parks (MECP) have compelled the provincial agency in Ontario, Canada, to seek policy alternatives in carrying out its enforcement duties. Addressing this problem is important to the public, whose welfare is paramount, and to MECP managers, who must contend with the budget cuts. Smith’s social comparison theory provided the framework for this qualitative research study, in which the perceptions of MECP policy advisors regarding the applicability of social comparison as a policy tool to influence private sector firms to practice corporate environmental responsibility (CER) was explored in relation to air …


Older Adults' Access To Medicaid's Home-And Community-Based Services, Joe Henry Horton Jan 2020

Older Adults' Access To Medicaid's Home-And Community-Based Services, Joe Henry Horton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

As the U.S. population ages, the need for public policies regarding long-term care increases, as the need is unequal to demand. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and describe the role of senior service providers (SSPs) who have dealt with health policies from being responsible for the decision-making processes of implementing federal and state guidelines in Michigan on access and wait-listing of older adults for home and community-based services (HCBS). The theoretical foundation for this study was the social construction and policy design theory. The central research question sought perceptions of SSPs as to their ability to …


Predators And Principles: Think Tank Influence, Media Visibility, And Political Partisanship, Timothy Beryl Bland Jan 2020

Predators And Principles: Think Tank Influence, Media Visibility, And Political Partisanship, Timothy Beryl Bland

Theses and Dissertations

By some measures, the major U.S. political parties have become more extreme in their political positions in recent decades, and scholars have raised concerns about whether the policy expertise provided by today’s think tanks has become similarly partisan and polarized. Furthermore, there is a perception that certain overtly partisan and highly visible think tanks wield considerable and growing influence over the policy platforms of the major U.S. parties, using their media presence to shape public and policymaker views of particular issues. Using publicly accessible tax, media, and congressional data, my proposed study assesses the extent to which media visibility and …


The Use Of Performance Measurement And Management In Small Ohio Municipalities, Yvonne M. Christopher Jan 2020

The Use Of Performance Measurement And Management In Small Ohio Municipalities, Yvonne M. Christopher

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

As the dominant public management paradigm today, performance measurement and management systems are fundamental to increasing efficiency, accountability, and service quality in the public sector. Research into the practice at all levels of government has been expanding for decades in developed countries. However, the small local governments that comprise most U.S. municipalities are frequently overlooked as a topic of academic inquiry in public administration. This study aims to shed light on the extent to which the performance measurement methods prevalent at the state and federal levels have spread to small municipalities. Using elite interviewing methods and the four-point approach to …


Guerilla Government And Policy: Lessons From The Trump Administration’S Family Separation Policy, Omar Salinas Chacon Jan 2020

Guerilla Government And Policy: Lessons From The Trump Administration’S Family Separation Policy, Omar Salinas Chacon

Online Theses and Dissertations

In early 2017, two asylum officers went to reporters at Reuters to warn the public of a new immigration policy. This policy would see thousands of children separated from their parents; a humanitarian crisis engineered purposefully by the administration would be underway for the next years. Along the way, dissenters would try to stop the administration’s policy. In her seminal work The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerilla Government, O’Leary (2019) describes these types of events as guerilla government. Guerilla government occurs when public servants work against the desires of their superiors either out in the open or covertly. This is …