Public Administration Commons^™

Looking Through Their Lenses: An Analysis Of Virginia Environmental Nonprofits' Roles And Challenges In Shoreline Management For Coastal Resilience, Taiwo C. Olanrewaju Lasisi

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Environmental nonprofit organizations have emerged to attend to the environmental needs of individuals and communities. Some of these needs are usually those that have been neglected, given insufficient attention, or cannot be singularly handled by the government. In advocating for coastal resilience, environmental nonprofits have been identified as actors who address coastal issues like sea-level rise, flooding, and shoreline management.

Shoreline management involves building setbacks and formulating short and long-term defense strategies such as building living shorelines, ripraps, bulkheads, and tree plantings. These strategies formed the basis of coastal defense in coastal zones. Shoreline management is a significant area of …

Why Do Nonprofits Fail? A Quantitative Study Of Form 990 Information In The Years Preceding Closure, Mackenzie Arbogust

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Nonprofit organizations are an important piece of the community and economy in the United States. Each year, nonprofit organizations close their doors and stop providing services to the community. While there are large amounts of literature around financial health and vulnerability and governance best practices of nonprofit organizations, few of the studies have ever looked specifically at failed organizations. In general, the end stages of the life cycle of nonprofit organizations have not been well studied and are not well understood. This study draws on resource dependency theory and institutional theory to identify financial and governance factors that may serve …

A Case Study Of Participant Responses To Organizational Change Involving Technology In The National Security Domain: How Informal Processes Iterate Structure And Outcomes, Brian E. Martinez

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Nuanced differences between organizations and the pace of change within the national security domain have routinely produced equivocal results involving information and communication technology (ICT) development. These results are characterized by unpredictable costs, unrealistic delivery schedules, and dubious ICT performance in-use. This research is a case study exploration of organizational change involving technology (also referred to as ICT) in the national security domain of the public sector.

This research used machine learning and manual content analysis to compare the results of three experiments on interview transcripts. The first experiment investigated linkages between empirical and interpretive elements of organizational change. Empirical …

Exploring Conceptualization And Operationalization Of Interorganizational Interactions: An Empirical Study, Andrew Paul Williams

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Collaboration and other forms of interaction between complex arrangements of private, nonprofit, and public organizations to address challenging policy problems now occurs routinely. In many cases collaboration is mandated by law, and often disbursement of grants to nonprofits is contingent upon demonstrating collaboration with other organizations. To understand this contemporary landscape of public administration and develop cumulative knowledge, theory requires reliable and valid constructs of collaboration and other forms of interorganizational interaction. Theoretical rigor then underpins practice, including the growing discipline of evaluating the level of interaction between organizations or an organization’s “collaborative capacity,” and to understand more broadly how …

The State Of Representation And Segregation Among African American Women At The U.S. Department Of Commerce: An Examination Of The Intersection Of Strategic Planning With Race And Gender, Sesha Joi Moon

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

The intent of this dissertation is to examine the state of representation and segregation among African American women across the workforce at the United States Department of Commerce. This study employs a triangulated research design to examine the relationship between elements of strategic planning and the employment patterns of African American women. This study's qualitative analysis includes a content analysis of 13 agency-specific strategic documents published between FY 1994 through FY 2010. This data is supplemented with a longitudinal trend analysis of personnel data for fulltime, permanent employees retrieved from the National Finance Center for the same time period. The …

Relational Exchange In Nonprofits: The Role Of Identity Saliency And Relationship Satisfaction, Jennifer Anne Taylor

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Research and practice in nonprofit fundraising has increasingly been focused on the benefits of relational exchange. This dissertation examines relationships between donors and nonprofit organizations and their impact on the charitable giving levels using identity salience and relationship satisfaction as key mediators of nonprofit relational exchange. Previous research has shown that there are a plethora of charitable giving motivations that contribute to supportive behaviors in the nonprofit context; however, this research does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the intervening variables. This study modified previous studies by introducing relationship satisfaction in addition to identity saliency, as mediating constructs. Results confirm …

Social Networking And Individual Performance: Examining Predictors Of Participation, Michael Anthony Brown Sr.

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation addresses relationships between social networking and individual performance. The "act" of social networking is a process and practice by which people and organizations are drawn together by family, work or hobby to interact via websites. The explosion of these new network connections in the workplace suggests the need for an exploration of the various ways organizations can affect and improve performance and productivity.

This dissertation suggests a social networking participation model that may help organizations predict and understand the value proposition that affects acceptance or rejection of participation. Innovation adoption, governing by network and social capital are important …

Regional Emergency Response Teams: Case Studies In Hampton Roads, Virginia, Thomas E. Poulin

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

The majority of local governments lack sufficient resources to respond effectively in an independent manner to a disaster or large-scale emergency. To achieve success, they must work closely with other organizations. The research problem is that regional emergency response relationships are not well understood, which could lead to ineffective or inefficient practices. The research purpose was to describe and analyze regional emergency response in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The research methodology involved a qualitative approach, utilizing interviews and archival research. Organizational leaders of the Hampton Roads Marine Incident Response Team and the Southside Tidewater Regional Hazardous Materials Response Team were interviewed …