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- All Subjects: Public Administration
- Creators: Gerber, Brian
Description
In many respects, the current public child welfare system closely resembles that of over 100 years ago. Then, as well as now, nonprofit child welfare agencies are the critical providers of service delivery to vulnerable children and their families. Contemporary nonprofits, however, are confronted with social and fiscal pressures to conform to normative practices and behaviors of governmental and for-profit organizations. Simultaneously, these agencies may also feel compelled to behave in accordance with a nonprofit normative ethic. Yet, scholars and practitioners are often unaware of how these different forces may be shaping the practices of child welfare agencies and, the nonprofit sector in general. This multi-paper dissertation examines how managerial and organizational practices of child welfare nonprofits are influenced business, government, and other nonprofit organizations and the extent to which processes process of institutional isomorphism in child welfare nonprofits are happening. Data was collected from a national ample of 184 child welfare administrators to explore marketization practices, collaboration behaviors, and managerial priorities of these agencies. Multinomial logistic, ordered logistic, and ordinary least squares regression, and historical analysis help shed light on the contemporary practices of these agencies. The results reveal that these agency's behaviors are shaped by government control, influences from the business community, identification with a nonprofit mindset (i.e., nonprofitness), funding streams, and various other factors. One key finding is that identification with a nonprofit mindset encourages certain behaviors like collaboration with other nonprofits and placing greater importance on key managerial priorities, but it does not reduce the likelihood of adopting business management strategies. Another important finding is that government control and funding does not have as strong as an influence on child welfare nonprofits as expected; however, influence from the business community does strongly affect many of their practices. The implications of these findings are discussed for child welfare agencies and the nonprofit sector in general. The consequences of nonprofits operating similarly to business and government are considered.
ContributorsRobichau, Robbie Waters (Author) / Catlaw, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Nahavandi, Afsaneh (Committee member) / Gustavsson, Nora (Committee member) / Wang, Lili (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Management of emergency or crisis events relies on the collaborative efforts of a wide range of organizations. How to coordinate their efforts becomes a pressing challenge for public administration. This three-essay dissertation informs our understanding of public agencies’ inter-organizational coordination in preparation for and response to emergencies and disasters. The first essay provides an overview of emergency coordination research by systematically reviewing the fragmented inter-disciplinary literature on the topic for the past two decades. Through the analyses of 64 articles, the essay maps major theoretical traditions of emergency coordination research and identifies the need for further theoretical explorations. The syntheses of findings from the literature provide empirical strategies for improving response coordination effectiveness. The review reveals that current research predominantly focuses on response coordination with little understanding of coordination at other emergency management phases. Building upon the first essay, the second essay examines coordination in the preparedness phase. By introducing the configurational approach to emergency management research, the study explores which configurations of organizational attributes – and environmental characteristics – lead to active emergency preparedness coordination. A configurational model for preparedness coordination is proposed along with three propositions. The study conducts a large-N fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to analyze U.S. public transit agencies’ inter-organizational coordination in preparation for extreme weather events. Findings demonstrate the value of configurational thinking and suggest the importance of managerial commitment. The third essay extends the current inquiry on response coordination by reorienting the focus to the role of human agency. Drawing from institutional logic theory, the study identifies the systems of cultural elements (i.e., institutional logic) that affect inter-organizational response coordination actions. Influential managerial practices are also specified. The empirical context of this study is the local government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Arizona. Findings demonstrate that coordination actions are under the influence of professional and community logics. Empirical evidence also corroborates the importance of management practices for coordination. Taken together, the dissertation contributes to emergency management research by engaging novel theoretical perspectives and diverse methodological approaches. It provides actionable strategies for public managers to improve coordination effectiveness.
ContributorsXiang, Tianyi (Author) / Gerber, Brian (Thesis advisor) / Howitt, Arnold (Committee member) / Mossberger, Karen (Committee member) / Welch, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The roles of American Universities/colleges assets, knowledge and partnerships with local governments during disasters and emergencies become more important but have not been emphasized sufficiently in the scholarship community. Universities/colleges have provided disaster services in partnership with local government through different ways: providing facilities and logistical support (e.g., disaster sheltering), critical knowledge support (e.g., disaster information forecasting), and human resources and special expertise support (e.g., university hospitals and voluntary work of nursing and medical students/faculty). Through 34 interviews with emergency managers from both universities/colleges and local governments, and a national survey of 362 university emergency managers, this dissertation finds that: First, previously established partnerships between universities/colleges and local governments can reduce coordination costs when disasters happen and can facilitate new partnerships on disaster preparedness. Second, local government capacity gap in responding to disaster needs is a critical precondition for universities/colleges to participate in the disaster service co-provision, which is not specified or examined by other co-production, co-creation, or co-management theories. Third, internal coordination efforts within universities/colleges can facilitate external coordination activities with local governments to guarantee efficient disaster service provision. Fourth, a disaster resilience culture needs to be facilitated within universities/colleges to develop a robust disaster response plan. Furthermore, first response providers’ health and wellbeing should get more attention from universities and local governments to maintain a sustainable and healthy workforce as well as efficient disaster response.
ContributorsYu, Suyang (Author) / Welch, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Bozeman, Barry (Committee member) / Gerber, Brian (Committee member) / Sapat, Alka (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
Applying the theory of dynamic capabilities, this research explores the procedures and the outcomes of adaptations in disaster relief nonprofit organizations. Using the in-depth interviews and survey data from the managers of disaster relief nonprofit organizations in Arizona, Florida, and New Jersey, this research answers three key questions: 1) How do disaster relief nonprofit organizations apply their dynamic capabilities to make adaptations? 2) What are the impacts of dynamic capabilities, including sensing, learning, integrating, and coordinating capabilities, on the performance of disaster relief nonprofit organizations in service provision, public policy engagement, and community social capital cultivation? 3) Taking the network of Voluntary/Community Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD/COAD) as an example, can the dynamic capabilities of disaster relief nonprofit organizations explain the variation of network engagement and the gained benefits from the network among the VOAD/COAD members? The results show that the procedures of adaptation in disaster relief nonprofit organizations are associated with a rhizomic rather than a linear approach, which is implied by the theory of dynamic capabilities. Strategic connectivity, temporal simultaneity, and directional flexibility are the three critical features of the rhizome model. Additionally, dynamic capabilities significantly influence organizational performance in service provision, public policy engagement, and social capital cultivation, although sensing, learning, integrating, and coordinating capabilities shape performance differently. Moreover, network engagement, as an uncommon practice for disaster relief nonprofit organizations, is also impacted by the dynamic capabilities of disaster relief nonprofit organizations. The result shows that dynamic capabilities, especially learning capability, can promote the acquired benefits of disaster relief nonprofit organizations by bringing them more support in volunteer management and financial opportunities.
The findings not only advance the current discussion about nonprofit engagement in disaster management but also add knowledge on dynamic capabilities in the third sector. The exploration of adaptations in disaster relief nonprofit organizations and the operation of the VOAD/COAD network provides valuable implications to both nonprofit managers and government officials.
ContributorsLi, Peiyao (Author) / Wang, Lili (Thesis advisor) / Mook, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Gerber, Brian (Committee member) / Gall, Melanie (Committee member) / Kapucu, Naim (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Knowledge advancement occurs when the creation of new and useful knowledge encompasses and supersedes earlier knowledge. A rapidly growing number of scholars with state-of-the-art research tools has led to the growth of knowledge exploration in almost every field. It, however, has been observed that the findings of new studies frequently differ from previously established evidence and even disagree with one another. Conflicting and contradictory results prevail in the literature. This phenomenon has puzzled many people with respect to which findings are reliable and which should be considered as valid. Inconclusive results in the literature inhibit, rather than facilitate, knowledge advancement in sciences. Meta-analysis, which is referred to as the analysis of analyses, designed to synthesize findings from a large collection of quantitative analyses that produce inconsistent results has become a major research method in the fields of medicine, education, and psychology; however, the method has been slow to penetrate research in nonprofit and public management (NPM). This study, therefore, discusses how meta-analysis contributes to knowledge advancement in the fields of nonprofit and public management by using nonprofit commercialization as an example to examine its impact on nonprofit capacity and donations, respectively. The attention of this discussion is directed toward how the use of meta-regression models is able to offer new and useful knowledge that encompasses and supersedes earlier knowledge in the literature with evidence-based results. Moreover, this study examines whether the use of SEM-based meta-analysis produces equivalent results when compared with results from traditional meta-regression models. The comparison results suggest that the use of SEM-based meta-analysis is able to produce equivalent results even when missing data are present. Overall, this study makes at least two contributions. First, it introduces a newly-developed method for conducting meta-analysis to the field of NPM. This method is especially useful when there are missing data in data sets. Second and most importantly, this study demonstrates how knowledge advancement in NPM can be achieved by conducting meta-analysis.
ContributorsHung, Chia-Ko (Author) / Hager, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Lecy, Jesse (Committee member) / Wang, Lili (Committee member) / Calabrese, Thad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The Maricopa County Heat Relief Network (HRN) is an ad-hoc partially self-organized network with some attributes of hierarchical coordination that forms each year to provide heat relief and hydration to residents in need by operating as cooling centers. These HRN organizations are a collection of non-profit, governmental and religious organizations. This dissertation looks at the HRN from a complexity governance perspective and engaged different parts of the network in interviews to learn more about their perspective in delivering heat relief. Further, participatory modeling with a prototype agent based model was done with the HRN coordinating agencies to look for emergent outcomes in the HRN system and learn from their perspective. Chapter one evaluates organizational theory and complexity with climate adaptation, hazard preparedness and resilience in the HRN. Chapter two presents results from interviews with HRN facility managers and evaluates their perspective on how they function to offer heat relief. Chapter three finds that the HRN is a good example of complexity governance when engaged through a participatory agent based modeling approach. Chapter four engages the HRN coordinators in participatory agent based modeling interviews to increase their systems level awareness, learn about their perspective on heat relief delivery, and how the system can be improved. Chapter five looks across the different levels of the HRN investigated, the facility managers and coordinators, for differences and similarities in perspectives. The research conducted in this dissertation shows different levels of systems awareness of the different parts of the HRN and how participatory modeling can be used to increase systems awareness. Results indicate that there was very little horizontal network connection between HRN facility managers and most of the interaction was vertically coordinated indicating opportunities for increased network communication in the future both horizontally and vertically if communication interventions were put in place.
ContributorsUebelherr, Joshua (Author) / Johnston, Erik W., 1977- (Thesis advisor) / Hondula, David M. (Committee member) / Mossberger, Karen (Committee member) / Gerber, Brian (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017