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- All Subjects: property taxes
- Creators: Bretschneider, Stuart
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