ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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Description
Organizational classifications are critical to a wide variety of stakeholders. Within the domain of higher education, researchers use established classifications for sample selection or within empirical models to account for unobserved organizational characteristics. Colleges and universities, as well as their political principals, often use classifications to form peer-groups and reference sets through which organizational performance is assessed. More broadly, classifications provide aspirational archetypes to an organizational field.
Using American higher education as the empirical context, this dissertation introduces Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) as a method to identify the structure of an organizational field and to classify organizations within this structure. Using measures of model fit and concerns for interpretability, this investigation determined that 13 distinctive organizational designs are present in the field of American higher education. Derived groupings are compared to the 2018 Basic Classification from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Opportunities and challenges for operationalizing this derived classification are discussed.
Using American higher education as the empirical context, this dissertation introduces Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) as a method to identify the structure of an organizational field and to classify organizations within this structure. Using measures of model fit and concerns for interpretability, this investigation determined that 13 distinctive organizational designs are present in the field of American higher education. Derived groupings are compared to the 2018 Basic Classification from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Opportunities and challenges for operationalizing this derived classification are discussed.
ContributorsWhitman, Kyle Joseph (Author) / Crow, Michael M. (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Derrick M (Thesis advisor) / Maroulis, Sprio J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Theories related to social identity provide insight on how gender may be meaningful in organizations. This dissertation examines how psychosocial outcomes for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty are influenced by the proportion of women in productivity, support, and advice networks in gendered academic institutions. Psychosocial outcomes are defined as the psychological and social perspectives of the organizational environment. Gendered aspects in organizations are of theoretical importance because they provide opportunities to investigate how STEM faculty attain psychosocial outcomes. An underlying argument in gender literature is that women, compared to men, are more likely to provide emotional support. As women’s presence in STEM departments increases, STEM faculty are likely to rely on women to provide emotional support which may influence psychosocial outcomes of the work environment.
Universities are considered to be gendered organizational environments, where masculine and feminine characteristics are evident within their processes, practices, images, and through distribution of power. Universities are broadly categorized as two types: research focused and teaching focused universities. Both university types are deeply involved with the education of students but promotional standards for faculty members and the primary focus of these universities is dictated by the categorization of research versus teaching. University structuring is gendered, making them an ideal setting to investigate questions related to identity and psychosocial outcomes. Drawing from gendered theory, social identity theory, social network theory, and social capital theory, I ask the following research question: Does the proportion of women in informal networks influence psychosocial outcomes within gendered university settings?
To examine how psychosocial outcomes are influenced by informal networks, I use survey data from a 2011 National Science Foundation funded national survey of STEM faculty across universities in the United States (U.S.). I find that psychosocial outcomes vary by university type, faculty gender, and a high proportion of women in three types of academic informal networks. I conclude with a discussion about what the results mean for practice and future research.
Universities are considered to be gendered organizational environments, where masculine and feminine characteristics are evident within their processes, practices, images, and through distribution of power. Universities are broadly categorized as two types: research focused and teaching focused universities. Both university types are deeply involved with the education of students but promotional standards for faculty members and the primary focus of these universities is dictated by the categorization of research versus teaching. University structuring is gendered, making them an ideal setting to investigate questions related to identity and psychosocial outcomes. Drawing from gendered theory, social identity theory, social network theory, and social capital theory, I ask the following research question: Does the proportion of women in informal networks influence psychosocial outcomes within gendered university settings?
To examine how psychosocial outcomes are influenced by informal networks, I use survey data from a 2011 National Science Foundation funded national survey of STEM faculty across universities in the United States (U.S.). I find that psychosocial outcomes vary by university type, faculty gender, and a high proportion of women in three types of academic informal networks. I conclude with a discussion about what the results mean for practice and future research.
ContributorsCamarena, Leonor (Author) / Feeney, Mary K. (Thesis advisor) / Bozeman, Barry (Committee member) / Stritch, Justin (Committee member) / Welch, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Research and Development (R&D) tax credits are one of the most widely adopted policies state governments use to incentivize R&D spending by firms operating in a state. R&D spending is associated with increases in firm productivity, innovation, and higher wages. However, most studies into these tax credits examine only the effect the credit has on firm-based R&D spending and assume the increases in R&D spending mean states are receiving the social and economic benefits endogenous growth theory predicts. This dissertation connects R&D tax credits with the expected outcomes of R&D spending increases to evaluate the efficacy of the tax credits. Specifically, the dissertation connects R&D tax credits to the movement of researchers between states, innovative activity, and state fiscal health. The study uses a panel of U.S. PhD graduates and a fixed-effects linear probability model to show R&D tax credits have a small but statistically significant impact on PhDs moving to states that have the tax credit. Using a structural equation model and a latent innovation variable, the dissertation shows R&D tax credits have a small but significant impact on innovative activity mediated by R&D spending. Finally, the dissertation examines the effect of R&D tax credits on a state’s short- and long-run fiscal health by using a distributed lag model to illustrate R&D tax credits are associated with decreases with fiscal health.
ContributorsSelby, John David (Author) / Bretschneider, Stuart (Thesis advisor) / Bozeman, Barry (Committee member) / Siegel, Don (Committee member) / Swindell, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Previous studies of turnover have focused mainly on factors influencing turnover intention or turnover behavior. Fewer studies delve into career outcomes after individuals’ turnover. However, turnover is not the end of the decision-making process. Due to the boundaryless career (Arthur, 1994) and extensive job mobility in the modern workforce (Stewart, 2002), it is timely to know the effect of turnover on individual career evolvement. The three essays in this dissertation will delve into turnover and career outcomes using data of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) personnel in the United States. The first essay explores the effect of past voluntary and involuntary turnover on individuals’ job satisfaction, salary, and number of people supervised. The second essay compares gender differences in voluntary turnover patterns and the effects of voluntary turnover on career outcomes. The third essay delves into STEM personnel job mobility across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, with a focus on sector switch and job satisfaction change.
ContributorsWang, Qingqing (Author) / Bozeman, Barry (Thesis advisor) / Bretschneider, Stuart (Committee member) / Stritch, Justin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This study examines determinants of the length of conflict between firms and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). I hand collect firm disclosures of the number of years open for federal tax purposes to create a proxy for IRS conflict length. Using this proxy, I find evidence that larger firms, firms with more book-tax differences, and firms facing higher IRS attention and audit probabilities are associated with lengthier IRS conflicts. In contrast, firms with higher deferred tax assets, intangibles, return on assets, and firms disclosing participation in the Compliance Assurance Process program are associated with shorter IRS conflicts. Additional analyses show IRS conflict length is positively associated with manager risk preferences and poor tax accounting quality. I also find lengthier IRS conflicts are associated with higher future tax risk and higher audit fees. Tax controversy is becoming increasingly important for firms but remains relatively understudied. I provide empirical evidence on cross-sectional variation in IRS conflict length.
ContributorsPaparcuri, Christian Simon (Author) / Brown, Jennifer L. (Thesis advisor) / Huston, George R (Committee member) / White, Roger M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This dissertation consists of three essays, each examining distinct aspects about public organization adaptation to extreme events using evidence from public transit agencies under the influence of extreme weather in the United States (U.S.). The first essay focuses on predicting organizational adaptive behavior. Building on extant theories on adaptation and organizational learning, it develops a theoretical framework to uncover the pathways through which extreme events impact public organizations and identify the key learning mechanisms involved in adaptation. Using a structural equation model on data from a 2016 national survey, the study highlights the critical role of risk perception to translate signals from the external environment to organizational adaptive behavior.
The second essay expands on the first one to incorporate the organizational environment and model the adaptive system. Combining an agent-based model and qualitative interviews with key decision makers, the study investigates how adaptation occurs over time in multiplex contexts consisting of the natural hazards, organizations, institutions and social networks. The study ends with a series of refined propositions about the mechanisms involved in public organization adaptation. Specifically, the analysis suggests that risk perception needs to be examined relative to risk tolerance to determine organizational motivation to adapt, and underscore the criticality of coupling between the motivation and opportunities to enable adaptation. The results further show that the coupling can be enhanced through lowering organizational risk perception decay or synchronizing opportunities with extreme event occurrences to promote adaptation.
The third essay shifts the gaze from adaptation mechanisms to organizational outcomes. It uses a stochastic frontier analysis to quantify the impacts of extreme events on public organization performance and, importantly, the role of organizational adaptive capacity in moderating the impacts. The findings confirm that extreme events negatively affect organizational performance and that organizations with higher adaptive capacity are more able to mitigate those effects, thereby lending support to research efforts in the first two essays dedicated to identifying preconditions and mechanisms involved in the adaptation process. Taken together, this dissertation comprehensively advances understanding about public organization adaptation to extreme events.
The second essay expands on the first one to incorporate the organizational environment and model the adaptive system. Combining an agent-based model and qualitative interviews with key decision makers, the study investigates how adaptation occurs over time in multiplex contexts consisting of the natural hazards, organizations, institutions and social networks. The study ends with a series of refined propositions about the mechanisms involved in public organization adaptation. Specifically, the analysis suggests that risk perception needs to be examined relative to risk tolerance to determine organizational motivation to adapt, and underscore the criticality of coupling between the motivation and opportunities to enable adaptation. The results further show that the coupling can be enhanced through lowering organizational risk perception decay or synchronizing opportunities with extreme event occurrences to promote adaptation.
The third essay shifts the gaze from adaptation mechanisms to organizational outcomes. It uses a stochastic frontier analysis to quantify the impacts of extreme events on public organization performance and, importantly, the role of organizational adaptive capacity in moderating the impacts. The findings confirm that extreme events negatively affect organizational performance and that organizations with higher adaptive capacity are more able to mitigate those effects, thereby lending support to research efforts in the first two essays dedicated to identifying preconditions and mechanisms involved in the adaptation process. Taken together, this dissertation comprehensively advances understanding about public organization adaptation to extreme events.
ContributorsZhang, Fengxiu (Author) / Welch, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Barton, Michael (Committee member) / Bretschneider, Stuart (Committee member) / Feeney, Mary K. (Committee member) / Maroulis, Spiro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Local governments are creatures of their ecosystems. In this dissertation, institutional influences on local government finances are assessed both theoretically and empirically in this three-essay dissertation. Employing two tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) and local government form, this dissertation evaluates how these three components along with the local government ecology, influence financial outcomes around local fiscal condition, revenue capacity, and forecasting bias. First, this dissertation examines the effect of removing assessment restrictions on the solvency of local governments. As all TELs are not equivalent, expected impacts from assessment restrictions should be comparatively minimal. Using a multiple synthetic matching design, I match Minnesota municipalities against weighted counterfactuals before the lifting of assessment restrictions in 2011 and evaluate outcomes. Results indicate that municipal solvency was unaffected by a release from assessment restrictions.
The second essay evaluates the moderating effect of voter support of TELs on property taxes. I propose that municipalities in favor of restrictions would have limited tax growth, even without restrictions; and oppositional constituencies face the greatest shift. Using voter support for the Taxpayer Bill of Rights Amendment in Colorado as a moderator, constituent preferences differentiate the change in property tax trends from implementation of the amendment. Employing both a Hausman-Taylor model and a comparative matching design, a significant relationship is found between the impact of property tax restrictions and the preferences of local government voters.
In the last essay, I investigate an association between form of government and municipal revenue forecasting bias. Granting that a municipal governments form alters the nature of the governance that it provides; the essay presents that a reformed council-manager form of government would have lower revenue forecast bias via political pressure than a mayor-council form. Results from pooled ordinary least squares design indicate no statistically significant relationship between forecast bias and municipal form of government.
The dissertation serves to illuminate, and eliminate, some institutional predictors of local government finances, and intones an ecological dominance over local government finance. Further, the dissertation provide significant nuance in how additional research can provide definitive answers on the effects of structural changes on the finances of local governments.
ContributorsShumberger, Jason D (Author) / Singla, Akheil (Thesis advisor) / Bretschneider, Stuart (Thesis advisor) / Swindell, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Street-level bureaucracy (SLB) theory argues that public servants take shortcuts when making decisions about the delivery of public services. These shortcuts can lead SLBs to treat citizens unfairly. Public administration and political science researchers have found some evidence that street-level bureaucrats act in biased ways towards ethnic and racial minorities, citizens of lower socioeconomic status, and religious minorities. I expand on the SLB literature on discrimination by examining whether SLBs discriminate based on the political ideology of citizens. According to the Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis, individuals act in biased ways towards others whose political values conflict with their own. Using the Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis, I test whether SLBs working in local governments discriminate against citizens based on political ideology and whether discrimination is related to type of service delivery (e.g. needs based versus universal). I carry out two audit experiments to test for discrimination. One audit experiment tests for political ideology discrimination in a need-based program among a sample of public housing authorities in the United States (US). The sample is limited to areas where over 60% of citizens voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2020 Presidential Election (n = 274)—and where over 60% voted for the Republican candidate (n = 274). The other audit experiment tests for political ideology discrimination in the delivery of a universal service using a sample municipal parks departments in US cities. The sample is cities with over 25,000 residents where at least 60% of citizens in the county voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2020 Presidential Election (n = 227) and counties where at least 60% of citizens voted for Republican candidate (n = 227). The treatment signals that an email is from a conservative citizen, a liberal citizen, or a citizen with no identifiable political ideology. The results of my dissertation provide some support for the Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis and evidence indicates SLBs discriminate based on political ideology. The results do not find differences in political discrimination for needs-based public service delivery compared to universal public service delivery.
ContributorsOlsen, Jared (Author) / Feeney, Mary K. (Thesis advisor) / Favero, Nathan (Committee member) / Miller, Susan M. (Committee member) / Stritch, Justin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This study examines the roles and impacts of U.S. foundation grantmaking for women, as well as the influences of the foundations’ institutional characteristics on their grantmaking practices by employing a mixed-methods research design. In the first quantitative phase, this study explores three major research questions: (1) How has foundation grantmaking for women changed in the U.S.? (2) Whether and how foundations’ institutional characteristics are related to their grantmaking activities for women? (3) Whether and how foundation grantmaking for women has influenced women’s status? To address these research questions, I collect and analyze data on the U.S. foundation grants for women during the period between 2005 and 2014 from the Foundation Center and data indicating women’s status at the state level from various sources. The second qualitative phase focuses on examining the second and third research questions further by employing a comparative case study approach. Specifically, I conducted semi-structured interviews with directors or staff of the selected five foundations supporting women’s causes. The results show that foundations supporting women’s causes have focused more on their advocacy role than their charitable role by distributing their grants to programs for women’s rights/studies. Additionally, a foundation is more likely to give grants for women’s rights/studies when the organization is younger, with a higher total giving size, in the Western region, in the state of liberal ideology, or an independent foundation. Furthermore, a state with a larger amount of foundation grants for women (per woman) reveals a higher women’s status. The case study findings indicate that differences exist in how foundations implement their grantmaking decisions for women and how foundations assess their grantmaking impact on women. It also shows some evidence that foundations’ grantmaking decisions and impact assessment strategies for women are affected by the foundations’ institutional characteristics such as women’s leadership. This dissertation sheds light on our understanding of current trends of U.S. foundation grantmaking for women that was less focused and makes both theoretical and practical contributions to the nonprofit sector by suggesting a framework to assess the impact of foundations in society.
ContributorsHan, Hyunrang (Author) / Wang, Lili (Thesis advisor) / Shockley, Gordon E. (Committee member) / Mook, Laurie (Committee member) / Robichau, Robbie W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This research investigates how public organizations interpret and respond to the threats they face. Drawing on the open interpretative framework and progressing through its stages (i.e., data collection, interpretation, and action-taking), the three studies of the dissertation build on each other to examine how US public transit agencies deal with the risks posed by extreme weather events. The first study analyzes the “data collection” stage and draws on information processing theory to investigate how various sources of information shape public agencies’ risk perceptions. Integrating administrative data with a 2019 survey of US transit managers, results show that reliance on scientific sources of information is positively associated with perceived risk of extreme weather events. The effect of contracting on risk perceptions is contingent upon agencies’ outsourcing strategies. The second study expands on the first one and focuses on the “interpretation” stage, examining how organizations cultivate a shared perception of extreme weather events. Analyzing in-depth semi-structured interviews with public managers employed at four transit agencies, the study identifies and describes three processes that foster the development of intersubjective interpretations: conversation, suppression, and shared experiences. Informed by the findings of the first two studies, the third one examines the role played by organizational interpretative processes in enabling the undertaking of adaptive actions. I test my expectations using data coming from a follow-up 2023 national survey of public transit managers. Findings underscore the importance of “debative cooperation” and cross-agency boundary-spanning activities in facilitating the development of shared cause maps and favoring adaptation. Overall, the dissertation provides an integrated and comprehensive investigation of the organizational and social elements that shape effective risk management and adaptation to extreme phenomena.
ContributorsCaldarulo, Mattia (Author) / Welch, Eric W. (Thesis advisor) / Feeney, Mary K. (Committee member) / Stritch, Justin M. (Committee member) / Kingsley, Gordon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024