Public Administration Commons^™

A Study Of Rural Nonprofit Board Communication And Collaboration, Angela-Janine C. Crawford

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This case study explored the perceptions, experiences, and significant internal communication and collaboration problem(s) faced by a rural nonprofit board of directors experiencing a growth transition. Specifically, this study addressed (a) how a rural nonprofit's board members perceived their communication and collaboration skills and practices, and (b) the training needed to improve board communication and collaboration policies and practices. Ten rural area study participants shared their experiences and made recommendations for board communication and collaboration training. Exploring the perceptions, understandings, and capacities of the rural nonprofit board members revealed how specific communication and collaboration policies and practices affected their organization's …

A New Tool For New Times? Using Geographic Information Systems In Foundations And Other Nonprofit Organizations, Jeffrey L. Brudney, Christopher R. Prentice

The Foundation Review

The literature on nonprofit organizations exhorts them to understand and develop their communities’ strengths and capacities. Yet, identifying those communities, appreciating the conditions that affect them, and integrating organizational stakeholders can pose difficulties for any nonprofit, including foundations.

This article examines how a tool relatively new to nonprofits — geographic information systems — can be used to support community building by bringing together different stakeholders. A geographic information system is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data, thus allowing an organization to map its community and share that visualization with its stakeholders.

This article …

Political Affiliations And Interagency Collaboration In Emergency Management In Nigeria, Charles Otegbade

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Collaboration has been indispensable in resolving many contemporary problems involved in emergency/disaster management, but it is unclear if key determinants of collaboration established through studies focused on the Western world would apply to countries outside the West. The purpose of this cross-sectional non-experimental study was to examine the effects of political affiliation, an established determinant, on collaboration among emergency management agencies (EMAs) in Nigeria. Barnes's theory of social network and Lévi-Strauss's theory of social exchanges framed the study. Survey data were collected from a sample of 38 EMAs out of the population of 812 EMAs; they were affiliated with 6 …

Why Local Governments Collaborate: Perspectives From Elected Officials And Local Government Managers On Regional Collaboration, Stephanie D. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the factors that influence a local government’s decision to engage in regional collaborations. Analysis of 7 local government managers and eleven elected officials revealed that the decision to engage in regional collaboration was influenced by external factors, organizational factors, and internal motivations. Elected officials and local government managers identified a disaster occurrence, fiscal stress, outside agencies, jurisdictional benefit, and communication as key factors. Further, this research highlights the importance of the role of the elected official in intergovernmental arrangements, the role of the local government manager as the policy entrepreneur, and the influence of shared norms and …

Funder Collaborations — Flourish Or Flounder?, William Porter, Kelly James, Robert Medina, Barbara Chow

The Foundation Review

Funders regularly collaborate to leverage their influence, channel their funding, and mobilize grantees in the same direction. Our sector’s default assumption is that more collaboration is better — even as too many collaborations end with a whimper instead of a bang. Why do some funder collaborations flourish, and others flounder?

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Education First participated in a half-dozen joint funding efforts to support the success of the Common Core State Standards in the nation’s K–12 public education system. Looking critically at these efforts, we learned lessons about why some collaborations are more effective.

Funder collaborations …

Collaborative Governance And Anticorruption In Postwar Monrovia, Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Public sector corruption is a major problem in Monrovia. Successive national

governments have instituted anticorruption measures in the 1970s and 2000s, and anticorruption agencies were established to eradicate corruption. However, there appears to be a significant lack of resources and political willpower to prosecute corrupt government officials. A failure to curb political corruption indicates that current policies are not working. Government works when there is a perception that it delivers results and that the needs and safety of the citizenry are protected. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenology study was to gain a deeper understanding of public sector corruption at …

Bringing The 21st-Century Governance Paradigm To Public Affairs Education: Reimagining How We Teach What We Teach, Nadia Rubaii

Public Administration Faculty Scholarship

Effective governance in the 21st-century demands a different set of competencies than prior generations, with greater emphasis on collaborative leadership, global intercultural competence, and the ability to respond nimbly to rapidly changing circumstances. Many public affairs programs have changed curriculum content to place greater emphasis on these topics. Given the extent to which such changes are altering how public issues are defined, how policies are adopted, and how programs and services are delivered as much as what those problems, policies, and programs are, then how we teach is arguably as important as what we teach. This article argues that current …

Collaborating For Synchronized Disaster Responses In The National Capital Region, Marilyn Peppers-Citizen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In many urban areas, there are multiple and overlapping layers of governments, which can be problematic for purposes of emergency operations planning for a multiple jurisdiction disaster response. The purpose of this single case study of the National Capital Region was to understand (a) the emergency operations planning collaboration process and (b) how cross-sector collaboration results in synchronized regional disaster responses. Theories of competitive federalism and cross-sector collaboration served as the basis of this study. Research questions explored how organizations collaborate; their organizational structures, processes, and practices; and how relationships between them affect collaboration. Data were collected through reviews of …

Key Characteristics Of Teacher Leaders In Schools, Angela Lumpkin, Heather Claxton, Amanda Wilson

Administrative Issues Journal

Teacher leaders who share their specialized knowledge, expertise, and experience with other teachers broaden and sustain school and classroom improvement efforts. Teacher leaders can transform classrooms into learning laboratories where every student is engaged in relevant and well-designed curricular content, every teacher embraces the use of more effective instructional strategies, and authentic assessments provide evidence of rich student learning. This work describes four essentialities associated with teacher leaders: a focus on student learning, along with the importance of empowerment, relationships, and collaboration. In addition to gleaning insights from the literature, examples of the impact of teacher leaders in schools are …

Collaborative Preference: The Role Of Homophily, Multiplexity, And Advantageous Network Position Across Small And Medium-Sized Organizations, Troy A. Voelker, William C. Mcdowell, Michael L. Harris

Administrative Issues Journal

The purpose of this paper is to examine collaboration between individuals across organizations. While both for profit and not-for-profit organizations utilize collaborative efforts, the factors that are important for bringing individuals and businesses together for collaboration still remain somewhat unresolved. In this paper, colleague similarity, the quality of pre-existing relationships, and the relative power of the other colleague are all examined for their correlation with the desirability of collaboration with that individual. In a study of pastors of small and medium sized churches in a southwestern protestant conference, we examined these areas through the lenses of homophily theory, multiplicity theories, …

Leading Professional Learning Communities Toward Efficacy, Laura S. Witherington

Administrative Issues Journal

As Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), defined by DuFour et al (2008), continue to sweep into schools across the nation, school administrators need the tools to assess the productivity of the teachers’ collaborative teams. PLCs provide the structure for teachers to analyze student achievement data and design common formative assessments. The PLC Efficacy Rubric discussed in this presentation was developed for use in the College Ready in Mathematics and Physics Partnership grant funded by the National Science Foundation to provide school administrators the tools to evaluate teachers’ collaborative work and guide them to increased success. This presentation introduces the five indicators …

Diversity, Networks And Performance: An Empirical Analysis Of Metropolitan Planning Organizations In The United States, Yujin Choi

Public Administration - Dissertations

Achieving network performance is a vital goal in response to the increase of inter-organizational networks public organizations involve. The primary aim of this research is to examine the factors that predict performance in public management networks by disentangling the idea that collaboration requires both diversity and unity. Drawing upon diversity theories, social capital theory and management literature as theoretical lenses, this dissertation serves to investigate the following questions:

1. What is the collaborative decision-making process in inter-organizational networks?

2. How does social capital mediate the relationship between network member diversity and performance?

3. How does network management strategy moderate the …

Closer Than “Arms Length”: Understanding The Factors Associated With Collaborative Contracting, Anna A. Amirkhanyan, Hyun Joon Kim, Kristina T. Lambright

Public Administration Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on collaborative relationships between contractors and government agencies and explores which contract characteristics, contractor traits, and environmental factors are associated with the development of such relationships. The study uses data from the Partnership Impact Research Project, a three-round longitudinal survey of over one hundred child care centers and Head Start agencies in Ohio. Our findings suggest that stronger collaborative contracting relationships are associated with greater contract specificity, better contractor service quality, and contractor affiliation with a larger organization. On the other hand, a contractor’s financial autonomy and nonprofit status are negatively related to collaborative relationship strength. We …

A Flower Blooms In The Desert: Managing For Collaboration, Josphine Gatti Schafer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This is a dissertation about local, regional and federal agencies charged with the development of parks, trails and natural areas in Southern Nevada. The context for the delivery of this service is a network. Networks are an increasingly common context for service delivery in the United States; however, their value for constituents has been questioned. Some suggest that the advantages of capacity building and social capital that are expected when organizations work across their typical boundaries are not as significant as expected. This dissertation provides knowledge to add to this debate.

The dissertation is an in-depth case study that evaluates …

Organic And Sustainable: The Emergence, Formalization And Performance Of A September 11th Disaster Relief Organization, David A. Campbell

Public Administration Faculty Scholarship

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, spawned 252 new nonprofit organizations. We know little about these organizations, including how they emerged, formalized, met constituents' expectations for immediate performance, and ultimately survived. This article explores these issues through a case study of one successful organization, the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund. Using concepts from disaster, organizational ecology, and entrepreneurship research, the analysis identifies six propositions that link these literatures, notably the role of resource acquisition in formalization and the role of legitimacy in both fund development and organizational endurance. The study contributes new knowledge about the role of collaboration …

Collaboration As Paradox : The Case Of The Patuxent River, Md Nutrient Control Strategy, Morris Bidjerano

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Collaboration has increasingly emerged in recent years as a new paradigm in public management. This collaborative trend, however, has contradicted the longstanding American political tradition of conflictual contestation of competing interests and adversarial legalism. Consequently, it has presented public managers with the challenge of dealing in reality with the "tensions between alternative forms of management practice" (Huxham and Vangen 2005, 245). In most accounts, watershed management has recently become a particularly active arena for that clash of opposing collaborative and conflictual managerial practices.

Policy Mandated Collaboration, Jan Ivery

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This exploratory study examined the collaborative strategy used by Tri Cities Partnership (TCP) to facilitate the collaborative process required by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to receive Continuum of Care funding. The study examined partner perceptions of TCP's leadership, organizational structure, benefits and drawbacks of participation, and relationships with partners. A follow-up survey and key informant interviews explored themes related to organizational affiliation with TCP, benefits and drawbacks of participation, relationships with partners, challenges impacting the ability of TCP to facilitate collaboration and strategies for involving key stakeholders. The study also identified factors that motivate …

Exploring Interactions During Multiorganizational Policy Implementation: A Case Study Of The Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program, Madeleine Wright Mcnamara

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Organizations face implementation challenges compounded by complex and interconnected public problems. In the environmental arena, the inabilities of individual organizations to resolve these problems independently are exacerbated by the scope, duration, and tremendous diversity of tasks coupled with a lack of funding. As a result, multiorganizational arrangements are created as public, private, and nonprofit organizations work together to implement policy. These relationships increase organizational capacities through the diversification of resources and expertise.

Multiorganizational implementation is complicated by various legal authorities, missions, goals, and operational procedures that guide individual organizations. One way to approach these complexities is to expand our understanding …

Slides: Palmetto-Peartree Preserve: Community Forestry In Eastern North Carolina, Mikki Sager

Community-Owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences, and Lessons Learned (June 16-19)

Presenter: Mikki Sager, Palmetto-Peartree Preserve, NC

17 slides

Working Together To Stop Domestic Violence: State-Community Partnerships And The Changing Meaning Of Public And Private, Kristin A. Kelly

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The increasing reliance in the United States on state-community partner- ships to address social problems represents both new opportunities and new dangers. This article presents examples of both possibilities through a consideration of contemporary collaborations between state and nonstate actors in the development of a public response to domestic violence. This discussion provides the basis for an elaboration of a conceptual approach to public/private relationships that replaces the traditional dichotomy with a triangular relationship, of state, family and community. By improving on our ability to think through the complex relationships between these three spheres, it is argued that this model …