Public Administration Commons^™

Public Administration, Methods Approach: History Research--Selected Bibliography, Sue Ann Gardner

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Public administration, methods approach: Historical research. Includes a list of bibliographical references pertinent to the topic.

Where Have All The Local Politicians Gone? A Preliminary Examination Of Causes And Impacts Of Acclamation In Canada’S Municipal Governments, Sheena Earl

MPA Major Research Papers

Why are local government acclamations so common, and is it a problem for municipal democracy? This paper provides a preliminary examination of local uncontested elections through the exploration of various opinions and arguments raised on this topic. Since the academic literature on acclamations at the local level is extremely sparse, information was gathered through a content analysis of online newspaper articles and by performing interviews with current mayors from some of the most and least competitive municipalities following the 2018 election cycle. The following eight reasons for the occurrence of acclamations are referenced in the non-academic literature, many of which …

Literature Review: How U.S. Government Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article emphasizes the increasing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and national security policy making. It seeks to inform interested individuals about the proliferation of publicly accessible U.S. government and military literature on this multifaceted topic. An additional objective of this endeavor is encouraging greater public awareness of and participation in emerging public policy debate on AI's moral and national security implications..

Writing As A Nonprofit Leadership Tool, Samantha Weinberg

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

When writers use their skills towards a nonprofit’s mission, they can help enhance communities and change lives. There are roles in the nonprofit sector that are very writing centric, such as grant writers and communication specialists, that writers commonly hold. However, writing is also a necessary skill for those in management or leadership positions in nonprofit organizations. This capstone project explores the kinds of writing skills and deliverables that are critical to the responsibilities of nonprofit managers and how writing impacts the effectiveness of nonprofit managers and organizations.

Hope: The Core Of Social Justice, Emily K. Locke

Public & Community Service Studies Student Scholarship

The purpose of Hope: The Core of Social Justice, is to defend the role of hope in social justice movements. For those who are aware of or who face systematic oppression, the idea of having hope can seem ineffective or even detrimental to any progress in overcoming such systems. But, by clearly defining hope and analyzing its characteristics, one may find that the goal of hope and the goal of any social movement are nearly identical. Philosophical, theological, psychological, and historical references help to shine light on the limited conceptions many have of hope and to support the idea …

Ending The Notion Of “I Do Not Belong Here” Recommendations For Predominantly White Institutions To Support First Generation Student’S Success, Perla Castillo Calderon

Public & Community Service Studies Student Scholarship

Ever wonder what it means to be a first-generation college student? This thesis focuses on bringing visibility to the first-generation identity college students carry. Divided in two parts, the first part explains what it means to be first-generation, how mentoring programs are supposed to run, and how beneficial extracurricular activities are for both students and the institution as a whole. This first part is based on research and interviews I have conducted with current undergraduate Providence College students. The second part is a proposal for a centralized space where the first-generation identity is celebrated and have easy to access resources.

Women In County Government Leadership: Using Personal Power To Overcome Self-Sabotage, Jamie R. Crews

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this explanatory mixed methods study was to identify and describe self-sabotaging behaviors experienced by female county government executives and to explore the impact these behaviors have had on their career development. A secondary purpose of this study was to identify strategies employed by female county government executives to overcome self-sabotaging behaviors.

Methodology: An explanatory mixed methods research design was used to explore the use of self-sabotaging behaviors of 9 female county government executives in Southern California. A 10-item survey instrument was administered to participants, followed by a semistructured interview consisting of 13 scripted questions. Data collected …

Study Abroad And Liminality: Examining U.S. American Collegiate Undergraduate Student Engagement In Risky Behaviors Betwixt And Between Borders, Jill L. Creighton

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

One of the most niche sub-arenas of public administration, higher education administration, involves preparing future leaders and scholars for global perspectives. This original research examined whether collegiate, traditionally-aged, undergraduate student risky behavioral choices rose during the study abroad experience as compared to when in the home collegiate environment. After investigating the literature an opportunity to connect the phenomena of domestic risky behavior, collegiate study abroad, and tourism materialized. The anthropological concept of liminality served as the theoretical perspective that anchored the construction of this research. This study was conducted using a post-positivist epistemology, a non-experimental design, and an original survey …

Popular Culture Informing Public Administration: Messages And Prospects For Social Equity, Sean Mccandless, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

In the discipline of public administration, popular culture remains under-examined in scholarship and under-utilized in pedagogy. However, the field would benefit from greater integration of popular culture to expand understandings of governance, especially in that it provides important representations of and messaging about some of today's most pressing social equity issues. To contextualize popular culture in public administration, we use critical discourse analysis as a frame to demonstrate how popular culture can inform public administration, especially regarding social equity. We argue that popular culture should be more extensively covered in public administration, because it offers a lens for better understanding …

Perceived Employment Barriers Involving Program Managers Assisting Unemployed Young African American Males, Michael P. Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

For unemployed, young, African American males who face significant barriers to jobs, public employment training centers have become a critical last option. For 2016, the U.S. federal government appropriated more than $6.9 billion to states for Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act programs and approximately $3.4 billion in federal formula funding for partner programs. The research problem in this study concerns the lack of adequate employment-based policies and programs that guide the workforce employment process between program managers and recipients, in particular, young, African American males. Guided by Ingram, Schneider, and DeLeon’s theory of social construction and policy design, this study examined …

Seeing Transparency More Clearly, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, transparency has been proposed as the solution to, and the cause of, a remarkable range of public problems. The proliferation of seemingly contradictory claims about transparency becomes less puzzling, this essay argues, when one appreciates that transparency is not, in itself, a coherent normative ideal. Nor does it have a straightforward instrumental relationship to any primary goals of governance. To gain greater purchase on how transparency policies operate, scholars must therefore move beyond abstract assumptions and drill down into the specific legal, institutional, historical, political, and cultural contexts in which these policies are crafted and implemented. The …

Public Administrator Choice Idaho School District Finance Policy Observed, Cameron Marcus Arial

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Physical facilities are essential for Idaho public school districts to fulfill their constitutional mandate “to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.¹ Because these physical facilities cost millions of dollars to construct, a common and prudent means of financing them is to borrow through the municipal bond market. Accessing the bond market to obtain these needed funds is an infrequent and complex process for most Idaho school districts and the administrators who are charged with carrying out these financings. For this purpose, school administrators look to the guidance of financial professionals to …

The Economic Value Of A Place-Based Resource For Regional Development, Aisling Conway Lenihan, Helen Mcguirk

Dept. of Management & Enterprise Publications

Regional economic development has long been acknowledged as an important objective of government policy. Natural resources are also recognised as drivers of economic development. However, the importance of place-based resources such as peripheral coastlines and Harbour areas are less understood. This research provides insights into an industry based on its region’s natural resource and the value it generates for sustainable economic development. Using the world’s second largest natural Harbour region, the current research measures the economic activities associated with the Marine Leisure Industry in Cork Harbour, and estimates the economic impact on the local economy. The research establishes a multiplier …

Tribal Governance In American Indian Country, Terry E. Mcdonald

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Public Administrators seek to synthesize, comprehend, and clarify challenging problems of social progress as it relates to the administration of public services. We must, therefore, think about all forms of governance to have a comprehensive understanding of the discipline. If civilization ignored the prehistory of the past 600 million years, from the Late Precambrian Era through the Mesozoic, there would be a consequential loss of knowledge. A comprehensive understanding would be absent regarding one of the fundamentals in our evolution – life's ability to avoid demise by symbiosis and adaptation. In the same way, we may have overlooked an essential …

Mining The Evidence: Public Comments, Evidence-Based Policymaking, And A Controversial Mine, Sun V. Nguyen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In policymaking, evidence-based policymaking is an essential method for influencing policies and decisions by telling decision-makers “what works” (Head, 2008). Western sciences typically make up most of the evidence decision-makers use, but because people are boundedly rational in understanding and incorporating it—politics, values, and beliefs impact thought processes— scholars and policymakers also include other types of knowledge to make decisions. One way for decision-makers to incorporate other types of knowledge into policies is through public comments. Although public comments may provide different types of knowledge to improve policy decisions, decision-makers face challenges with valuing different types of knowledge as evidence. …

Tweeting In Public: How Florida's Public Information Officers Use Twitter To Engage The Publics They Serve, Jessica B. Scott

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study expands Twitter interactivity research in the area of public relations. A content analysis of tweets from public information Twitter accounts in Florida counties examines the degree to which county public information officers interact with the publics on Twitter. Engagement on Twitter is examined using a coding scheme adapted from previous research (McMillan, 2002; Otterbacher, Shapiro, & Hemphill, 2012; Parmelee & Deeley, 2017), which is a more sophisticated measure of interactivity than merely counting the presence of replies and retweets. Findings indicate that when public information officers engage in mutual discourse, or the exchange of information in two-way communication, …

The Organizational Antecedents Of Public Service Motivation In The Korean National Assembly Staff Workforce, Eunhyoung Kim

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Over the past few decades, research on public service motivation (PSM) has flourished internationally in the field of public administration. The concept of PSM, i.e., motivating public sector employees to pursue the public interest and thus contribute to the society, fits well within the core interest of public administration. In addition, PSM has been found to be associated with important organizational constructs that are related to public sector employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and performance. There have, however, been surprisingly few studies that have examined PSM in public domains other than the executive branch of government. Moreover, while there is a large …

Analyzing The Effectiviness Of A Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Targeting At-Risk Opioid Abuse Patients, Treadway Childs

Public Administration ETDs

The effectiveness of a prescription drug monitoring program in coordination with a prescription opioid recidivism program was examined at a semi-rural community hospital. Patients were identified by a multi-disciplinary committee to be at-risk for opioid misuse or abuse, and were denied prescription opioids. Patients were considered eligible for the program if they had over 12 emergency department visits in the previous 12 months, or 6 visits in the previous 6 months, depending on how long the hospital had records on a patient. Patients who were placed in the prescription opioid recidivism program could not receive opioids at this hospital. The …

Municipal Resource Guide To Leading Practices In Cost Savings, Martin Horak, Andrew Sancton, Rachna Goswami, Umera Ali

Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance – Publications

Ontario municipalities of all sizes face pressure to “do more with less.” Commissioned by the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs, this Resource Guide provides municipal officials with single-source information about a range of current leading practices in cost savings in small and mid-sized Ontario municipalities. Municipalities across the province are continually developing innovative practices that save costs without incurring service level reductions. Most of these practices involve small-scale initiatives that result in modest savings. Yet even modest savings add up over time, and multiple small initiatives in a single municipality can make a big difference. In addition, by providing an …

Effects Of A Policy Development Process On Implementing An Equity-Based Policy, Morakinyo A. O. Kuti

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Unstable residential and inadequate academic environments lead to poor educational outcomes for low-income students in urban areas. In 2011, Ohio enacted a law to create a college preparatory boarding school (CPBS) for low-income students by 2013. However, Ohio's CPBS has not yet been established, thereby denying these students an opportunity to attain skills needed to enter college. Using the policy feedback theory (PFT) and Fredrickson's theory of social equity (SET) as foundations, the purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the nature of implementation barriers and propose solutions by exploring 2 successful CPBS programs in Maryland and Washington, D.C. …

Employee Perceptions Of Merit Pay And Its Influence On Work Performance, Michael John Mcknight, Sr.

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The work performance of employees remains a vital factor both in an organization's viability as well as in the prosperity of its employees. Merit pay can influence employee performance and is one of the most frequently used monetary reward incentives for motivating employees to achieve a higher level of performance. The problem is the limited knowledge on how state employees in a southern state perceive merit pay and how those perceptions may influence employee work performance. Using a conceptual framework built from elements of various motivational theories including Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Herzberg's 2 factor theory, the purpose of …

Beliefs, Costs, And Policies Influencing African American Men's Decisions On Psa Screening, Mary Frances Carter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite the growing concerns about routine prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in men, little is known about the societal and economic impact of screening among the African American population. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore beliefs among African American men about PSA screening, funding for screening, and the role of the United States Preventive Service Task Force in addressing the problem. Guided by rational choice theory, data collection consisted of completion of a health beliefs survey, face-to-face interviews, field notes taken during interview, and interview audio recording. The population for the study included African American men residing …

Backend Challenges And Issues For Electronic Government, Salim Y. Alkindi

Information Technology Master Theses

The term electronic government (also called e-government, or eGov) refers to multidisciplinary projects that are complex in nature. Since the beginning of the Internet revolution many countries have adopted e-government as a step toward enhancing the delivery of public or governmental services to citizens by what are called e-services. A typical request for a service is initiated and passes through an electronic service (“e-service”) portal, or a front office. The term front office application usually system can be defined as designates software seen and used directly by an end user. This software provides the capabilities needed to collect the user …

Nonprofit Management, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Nonprofit management has emerged as an important adjunct and/or subfield of public administration, largely due to the increasing use of contracted services by public agencies. In the course of this development, the meaning of nonprofit for public administration has been transformed. This article was first prepared for a PAR-affiliated website and a somewhat different version was subsequently published as a book chapter in the source cited below.

Unbent Science, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

A fraught area in recent times has been the unwillingness of the political executive to accept scientific findings generated in the civil service or in the academy in the face of controversy over regulatory matters on which they bear. Issues about “bending science” became particularly acute during the second Bush presidency, when political refusals to accept scientific findings and political controls over the manner in which some scientific issues were addressed disheartened the civil service, produced strident objections from the science community, and made restoring the integrity of governmental science both a campaign issue for candidate Obama and a pursuit …

Linking Goal Perceptions To Employee Performance In The Public Sector : Assessing The Mediating Role Of Psychological Empowerment And The Moderating Role Of Work Context, Jaehee Jong

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A substantial number of management and psychology studies have examined the positive effect of goal setting on organizational outcomes (Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002). Conceptually, goal setting theory is as applicable for motivating an employee in the public sector as it is for motivating an employee in the private sector (Latham, Borgogni, & Petitta, 2008). There have, however, been relatively few studies that have examined employee motivation as a linking mechanism between goal setting and employee performance in the context of public sector organizations (Perry, Mesch, & Paarlberg, 2006; Wright, 2001, 2004). In addition to suggesting the motivational mechanism underlying …

The Impact Of Public Service Motivation On Reentry Managers' Decision-Making Practices, Marie Pryor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this exploratory study is to examine the effects of public service motivation (PSM) in predicting decision-making of criminal justice personnel (reentry managers) in the management of former prisoners. The overarching research question seeks to answer if, and in what way, PSM score influences reentry managers' approach to their work with the formerly incarcerated, who are in transition from prison back into the community. The main assumption of this study is that those reentry managers with a higher PSM score will be more inclined to take an assistance oriented approach with former prisoners and be more likely to …

Payroll Fraud: Effects Of Ghost Names On The Government Wage Bill In Ghana, Gilbert Nyaledzigbor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Policy makers believe that there are ghost workers, persons who do not work yet receive salaries, on Ghana's public sector payroll. However, little is known about the factors that create opportunities for ghost workers. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to extend Cressy's conceptualization of the fraud triangle theory to test the applicability of Reinikka and Svennson's graft estimation model by using nonprobability quota sampling to select 85 heads of public agencies for participation in a cross-sectional survey. The research questions focused on the relationship between size of government agency, the estimated number of opportunities for ghost workers, and …

Interorganizational Performance Comparisons Using Quality Assurance Audit Results, Raymond E. Keeler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 requires government agencies to conduct performance measurements of their contractors for purposes of evaluation and comparison. To be most meaningful, performance comparisons need to consider all relevant characteristics that are of importance to the agency. Yet, bounded rationality theory states that managers of complex programs may have insufficient time and resources to consider all potentially relevant factors. Therefore, metrics used for decision making need to incorporate all relevant factors before the information is provided to decision makers.

Over the last several decades, government agencies have increasingly identified Quality Assurance compliance as …

An Analysis Of Capacity Issues Within The Division Of Mental And Behavioral Health For The State Of Nevada, Jeffrey Buchwald, Tara Cooley, Enrique Mazon Jr., Jessica Sifuentes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Background

Nevada’s competitiveness in receiving federal funding has been a serious and contentious topic that has steered recent efforts to ascertain ways the state can increase and utilize federal dollars efficiently. Nevada is positioned 53rd out of 53 U.S. states and territories in bringing federal dollars to the state, missing out on $1.5 billion annually (Gustafson, 2012). Nevada spends far less on Medicaid (per capita) than any other state. Medicaid is a key factor in improving Nevada’s position; however, there are additional non-formula funding opportunities that are missed every year.

Purpose

The purpose of this evaluation project is to identify …