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- Creators: Arizona State University
Description
Using experience, observations, data, current research, and writings in the field of volunteer management, it was determined there was a need to study the effects of leadership/management practices on the productivity outcomes of a volunteer construction workforce. A simple wood bench that would be tiled and painted was designed to test the areas of Time, Waste, Quality, Safety, and Satisfaction of different volunteer groups. The challenge was bolstered by giving the teams no power tools and limited available resources. A simple design of experiment model was used to test highs and lows in the three management techniques of Instruction, Help, and Encouragement. Each scenario was tested multiple times. Data was collected, normalized and analyzed using statistical analysis software. A few significant findings were discovered. The first; the research showed that there was no significant correlation between the management practices of the leader and the satisfaction of the volunteers. The second; the research also showed when further analyzed into specific realistic scenarios that the organizations would be better to focus on high amounts of Help and Encouragement in order to maximize the productivity of their volunteer construction workforce. This is significant as it allows NPO's and governments to focus their attention where best suited to produce results. The results were shared and the study was further validated as "significant" by conducting interviews with experts in the construction nonprofit sector.
ContributorsPrigge, Diedrich (Author) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Thesis advisor) / Wiezel, Avi (Committee member) / Badger, William (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation explores the effect of school competition on the human capital accumulation of students. Policies that expand the scope for school choice have become increasingly popular largely due to the belief that this will create incentives for low-performing, incumbent schools to improve academic outcomes. However, there is a general lack of empirical support for these positive academic spillover effects in most contexts. In the first chapter, I demonstrate that if schools respond to competition through channels not typically considered in standard arguments in favor of school choice, it means that these policies may lead to negative, unintended consequences for academic achievement. I find that increasing the number of schools serving a given market can have a negative effect on test scores through creating incentives for schools to increase the provision of non-academic services that do not contribute to academic preparation, and through the creation of excess costs in the public school system. I use an empirical strategy designed to address strategic location decisions by new entrants as well as student selection across schools to show that entry of a new charter middle school during a recent large-scale charter expansion in North Carolina decreased average traditional public middle school test scores across a school district.
The second chapter considers the extent to which policymakers have tools available to them that can improve the ability of competition to generate the increases in test scores at incumbent schools that they have prioritized. I show that the efficacy of school choice can be improved by providing short-term, partial reimbursements to public school districts for increases in charter school enrollment by resident pupils. I also demonstrate that these effects occur not only due to the direct increase in district revenue associated with reimbursements, but also because the presence of this aid reduces the incentives of school administrators to compete for students through non-academic channels. The empirical strategy that I use to generate these results leverages plausibly exogenous cutoffs for aid eligibility induced by a unique policy in the state of New York.
ContributorsTobin, Zachary Benjamin (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis advisor) / Silverman, Daniel (Committee member) / Murphy, Alvin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022