<p>Rapid global urbanization over the last few decades has intensified the challenge of providing adequate water and sanitation services to urban residents. Meeting this challenge has been the focus of domestic and international development efforts, including Millennium Development Goal 7.C. This research studies three institutional and governance attributes theorized to improve government service outcomes, testing hypotheses that the attributes are associated with greater country progress on providing urban water and sanitation access. The attributes are: a) decentralized services; b) sector-wide strategy and investment coordination; and c) civil society engagement. Country-level experience is analyzed using a series of ordered logistic regression models for a sample of 75 low- and middle-income countries. UN GLAAS survey data is used to derive country-specific variables for the three attributes. These, along with control variables representing country background conditions, are analyzed relative to four country progress outcome variables, two each for water and sanitation. The outcome variables, (covering the 2000 to 2012 time period), are derived from the UN JMP dataset that tracks urban access rates by country. Based on results from these models, four country case studies look in-depth at implementation of the attributes and highlight aspects that can help or impede country progress. Overall, findings show that decentralization is helpful to sanitation progress, but not water progress, likely due limitations of capacity and funding faced by sub-national levels of government. Three explanations are proposed for why decentralization may impact water and sanitation differently. Results for sector planning were mostly inconclusive, except that it was shown helpful to water progress over the 12-year period. Study of this attribute would benefit from additional wide-scale data collection. Civil society engagement was consistently shown to help country progress in both water and sanitation, and several examples of engagement are profiled to demonstrate how it can improve service outcomes. The last chapter relates findings to theories about government provision of public goods. The extent to which the three attributes help achieve efficiency, supply, equity, and social welfare goals is discussed. Finally, practical recommendations for strengthening sector institutions and governance are presented with application to governments and international aid donors.

<p> The Civil Rights Act was enacted more than 5 decades ago, and its provisions forbade discrimination on the basis of race in hiring, promoting, and firing. Yet some researchers argue that racial discrimination issues are still prevalent in the United States. They contend that modern racial discrimination is more covert and takes the form of racial microaggressions, which are subtle conscious or unconscious insults and derogatory attitudes directed towards minorities. Researchers have not fully addressed the prevalence of racial microaggressions in U.S. workplaces, however. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of naturalized African-Americans regarding racial microaggressions in U.S. federal agencies. The research problem was examined through the lens of critical race theory. Ten participants from the Social Security Administration were selected using snowball sampling. Data were collected through semi structured phone interviews and then examined using thematic content analysis to identity key concepts and develop a coding structure, from which 9 themes emerged. Findings revealed that participants experienced racial microaggressions in the form of bias, prejudice, false assumptions, nepotism, favoritism, and unfair denial of opportunities for promotion and professional development while at work, which affected their morale and productivity. This study may contribute to positive social change by helping leaders of U.S. federal agencies to understand their multicultural and diverse workforce and work environment. U.S. government officials could also use this study as a basis for policy decisions that may improve racial relations in U.S. federal agencies.</p><p>

My thesis is focused on the personnel management in public administration at local self-government units, which currently gains importance due to the ongoing reform. Human resources form the basis for quality and efficient work of offices. The aim of thesis is to analyze and evaluate personnel management in selected offices of Prague including recommendations for its improvement. The theoretical part, mainly focused on role of official in public administration and activities of personnel management, in addition to scientific literature is based mainly on Act No. 312/2002 Coll., on Officials of local self-government units. The practical part is based on the results of empirical research on which the current evaluation is made and provided recommendations.

The thesis is focused on personal activities in local government units. First, the thesis outlines the theoretical foundations of public administration in the context of its reforms. Then there is described the theoretical basis of personal activities. The aim is through analytical methods to evaluate the recruitment, adaptation and education of employees in local government units. The theoretical part is followed by empirical research that is concerned with the level and the quality of the personnel activities in practice. From empirical research are drawn recommendations to improve the current state of human resource management in local government units.

This diploma thesis deals with the process analysis and documentation of the Czech Trade Inspection Authority, a market surveillance authority in the state administration. The main objective of this thesis is the mapping of operational processes within the organization and identification of their potential weak points. The author of the thesis then proposes ideas for their improvement. The main tool for process analysis is the 5. criterion of the CAF model (Common Assessment Framework), which takes into consideration the specific needs of public administration. The thesis then focuses on the analysis of documentation, tries to find its strengths and weaknesses and finally ideas for its improvement.

The thesis called "Analysis of the Human Resource Management Effectiveness in the Area of Public Administration Focused on the Development and Education of Employees" deals with procedures of human resources first at the general level and then continues by introducing and evaluating their characteristics in the area of public administration. The attention is mainly paid to education of employees and descriptions of individual methods and procedures. Additionally, applicability in public administration where strict legislation is enforced is studied. My thesis is a synthesis of both theoretical knowledge and its concrete application at the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic. All human resources activities are evaluated as the research in isolated areas would not be objective. At the end of the thesis, individual aspects of human resources and human resources activities in the area of public administration resulting from practical findings received from the Ministry of Transport are critically evaluated and certain recommendations which could lead into increase in effectiveness of the human resource management in the area of public relations are set.

The fast and easy global movement of capital throughout the financial system, from lenders to borrowers and through intermediaries and financial market participants, has been recognized as a source of instability associated with illiquidity and financial crises. The purpose of this research was to better understand how regulation either enables or constrains capital movement. The theoretical framework comprised 2 contrasting public policymaking models, Arrow's rational-comprehensive model and Kingdon's garbage can model, which were used to derive opposing hypotheses. The research question addressed the nature of the relationship between Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) regulations and the flow of capital into Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMOs) when lenders share their borrower-related loan risks through intermediaries with other market participants. This quantitative study was a quasiexperimental time series design incorporating an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model using secondary data published by the U.S. government. The 2 independent variables were regulatory periods involving 2 CDSs regulations and the dependent variable was capital in the U.S. financial system that is deployed to CMOs. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000's ARIMA model (1,2,1) was significant at p < .05 and was negatively correlated to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008's ARIMA model (1,1,0), r = -.91, n = 18, p < .001. These results suggest that regulations cannot be relaxed and then reinstated with predictable results. The potential for positive social change is from stable financial institutions that mutually benefit depositors and borrowers.

This thesis lies at the nexus of scenario planning and strategy. Scenario planning is a foresight activity used extensively in strategic planning and public policy development to imagine alternative, plausible futures as means to understand the driving forces behind the uncertainties and possibilities of a changing environment. Despite significant application in both private and public sectors, and a growing body of academic and practitioner-orientated literature, little empirical evidence exists about how organisations actually use scenario planning to inform strategy. Moreover, the emerging Strategy-as-Practice (S-as-P) perspective, which has exposed strategy to more sociological pursuits, presented a way of conceiving and studying strategy not as something an organisation has, but rather as something people do. By examining the activities of scenario planning, understanding its use as an example of episodic, interactive strategizing, S-as-P provides a theoretical lens through which to perform a much-needed empirical analysis of the scenario-to-strategy process. A second goal of the thesis is to advance understanding of the S-as-P perspective by addressing recent criticisms as well as contributing to the growing body of practice-based research. The central research question which guides the thesis is, how does an organisation use scenario planning to inform the strategic planning process? To answer this question, the research vehicle is a single, in-depth case study of community planning in Fife, which extends from 1999 until April 2008. A detailed, longitudinal narrative of Fife’s scenario planning and strategy process is presented before using empirical evidence from the case to understand how an organisation manages the scenario planning process, how scenario planning affects policy development, and how cognitive processes manifest physically in an organisation. The thesis concludes that scenario planning created a sensemaking/sensegiving framework that provided structural and interpretive legitimacy which facilitated communicative activities and helped the Fife Partnership understand and improve the interconnectedness of Fife’s public services and community planning process. While contributing to the S-as-P research agenda, the investigation of the scenario-to-strategy process also revealed, and solidified, a number of criticisms that challenge the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical validity of the strategy-as-practice perspective.

Thesis (D. Phil.(Information Science))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-250).

Governments around the world have been increasingly adopting an ‘outcomes-focus’ in the design of policy and the management of public services, the implications of which have been subjected to increasing scrutiny within public administration (Boyne and Law 2005; Elvidge 2012; Heinrich 2002; Housden 2016; Lowe 2013; Lowe 2017; Wimbush 2011). Yet wherever an outcomes-based approach has been applied, be it within performance management (Bevan and Hood 2006; Lowe 2013; van Thiel and Leeuw 2002), budgeting (Perrin 2006; Ryan 2003), or commissioning, its achievements have fallen short of expectation (Wimbush 2011). Outcomes have predominantly been conceptualised and operationalised within what this thesis calls a ‘Rationalist’ approach, linked to the New Public Management context within which an outcomes-focus was popularised. This approach assumes we can understand the factors which drive outcomes, plan appropriate service interventions, harness the resources and commitment needed to put such interventions into practice, and manage such interventions towards their expected end points. Outcomes however are inherently complex phenomena – they are always transboundary, always co-produced by the individuals who experience them, and always impacted by a large number of unpredictable and uncontrollable factors in their external environment. Public management theory and practice finds itself at a crossroads: an imperative to improve outcomes, and a paradigmatic inability to do so – a challenge which scholarship is just beginning to respond to (Housden 2016; Lowe et al. 2016). This thesis contributes an alternative ‘Complex Systems’ theoretical framework which responds to (rather than simplifies or externalises) the inherent complexity which outcomes present. This theoretical framework draws on complex adaptive systems theory to enable a ‘Complex Systems’ approach to the management of outcomes. The framework is based on the conception of outcomes as emergent products of complex systems, and integrates three defining components of complex adaptive systems (self-organisation, distributed agentic learning, and attractor states) to enable an endogenous process of service transformation in conditions of uncertainty. This theoretical framework provides public management with more solid footing for understanding, analysing and designing outcomes-focussed interventions, with distinct advantages relative to existing outcomes-based approaches, in pursuing complex public service outcomes. The thesis applies this framework through a multiple embedded case study analysis (Yin 2009) of the Early Years Collaborative, a large-scale multi-agency Quality Improvement Collaborative operating across Scottish local authorities, as it seeks to improve a set of population-level child development outcomes.