<p>The global diffusion of neoliberal economic policies is one of the most significant events in modern history. This research applies current knowledge on policy diffusion to the analysis of the diffusion of two major neoliberal urban policies among Chinese cities, namely land banking and privatization of urban infrastructures. Both policies are believed to have contributed greatly to the rapid growth of China's urban economy, and reflect the idea of capitalizing a city's tangible assets and utilizing market institutions to manage them so as to achieve economic gains. </p><p>Borrowing insights from existing diffusion theories developed by scholars from different background, this research explores the determinants of the policy innovation decisions by utilizing three theoretical models: (1) The internal determinants model, which presumes that the factors causing a local state to adopt a new policy are political, economic, and social characteristics of the local state. (2) The regional diffusion model, which posits that the geographical proximity affects diffusion by encouraging emulation and competition among neighboring states. (3) Institutional diffusion model, which proposes that a new policy may be adopted to prove the legitimacy of the organization, to cope with environment uncertainties by modeling others, to conform to the will of other organizations on which the adopters depend. </p><p>This study emphasizes the role of the Chinese states, both at the central and local levels, in building neoliberal market institutions. It pays particular attention to the effects of provincial governments' pressure, and shows that local states' dependency on higher level authorities has limited the effectiveness of such interventions. Moreover, I highlight the influence of horizontal intergovernmental relations, such as competition and emulation, on the diffusion processes, and argue that it is an important factor that has promoted the national-wide expansion of neoliberal policies. The results of this study enrich our understanding on how local policy makings are influenced by complex intergovernmental relations, and how do local states balance between local economic interests and political loyalty to higher levels when they formulate local development agenda.</p> / Dissertation

Almost 30 years ago, public relations scholars began to process the idea that the concept of culture was important to public relations practices. In particular, scholars questioned what influence culture might have on the communication process and relationship building between organizations and their stakeholders. Yet, today culture is still an understudied concept in the public relations literature. The purpose of this study is to analyze how of organizational culture, as defined by Sriramesh, J. E. Grunig, and Dozier (1996), is significant to the relationship outcomes in public relations. The theoretical framework for this study consists of organizational culture theory and organization-public relationship theory. A quantitative survey was used to measure an external public's perceptions of organizational culture and organizational-public relationships within an academic department. The research measures of authoritarian/participative culture to determine how it is related to the dimensions of organizational-public relationships, including control mutuality, trust, satisfaction, commitment, communal relationships, and exchange relationships. The results suggest how an organization can utilize perceptions of organizational culture and relationship management from external publics to develop and implement effective communication strategies.

In my dissertation I propose three counterintuitive social mechanisms to alleviate the risk that collective production will fail to maintain participant involvement and respond to demand. My first study, based on a panel dataset of edits and views of articles in the English Wikipedia, shows that, although collective production lacks a price-like mechanism to estimate demand for the goods it produces, consumers’ contributions act as such a signal to expert producers. In the second paper I examine the theory that collective production participation is greatest when social norms of collaboration are obeyed. Using a large panel dataset of production networks and normrelated behavior in Wikipedia, I show that social norm infringement is not completely detrimental to participation because norm enforcement increases the likelihood that the beneficiary producer continues participating. In my third paper, I rely on interviews with experienced Wikipedia producers to examine whether producers’ ties to non-participants in collective production increase the likelihood of turnover, and whether producers’ embeddedness in collective production reduces turnover risk. Surprisingly, I find that producers with networks rich in ties to non-producers and with a task-oriented approach to collective production are those least likely to stop participating.

Even before the current economic meltdown, waves of downsizing, starting in the late 1970s, had swept corporate America, eroding workers’ expectations of economic security. But not only did downsizing become more prevalent during this period; its basic nature changed. Previously, firms had cut jobs temporarily, to adjust the size of their workforce during a downturn. Since the late 70s, firms have increasingly cut jobs in both good and bad times, in order to boost stock price. My dissertation examines the inter-group power dynamics underlying the transformation of workforce downsizing as a shareholder-value strategy. Examining both downsizing announcements from more than 700 leading U.S. corporations between 1981 and 2006, and actual implementation of the announced downsizing plans, I find at work in the process a shift in ideology, from an emphasis on corporate growth and conglomeration to an emphasis on profitability and shareholder value, an ideology that both reflects and intensifies the growing influence of shareholders over firms and the declining role of labor. My first empirical chapter examines the role of institutional investors and shareholder-value-oriented managers in the transformation. The second empirical chapter examines the potential resistance from labor unions and shows how the anti-union stance of the public policy regime in the 1980s weakened unions’ power to resist. The last empirical chapter examines the role of investors, unions, and executives in the implementation of announced downsizing plans and demonstrates the contested nature of the implementation process. Together, these three chapters illustrate the class politics simmering under the surface of the acceptance of downsizing for shareholder-value maximization, and emphasize the role of agency and power, as constructed by particular institutional logics, not only in promoting but also resisting the process of institutional change. / Sociology

In this dissertation, I integrate research on role-based coordination with concepts adapted from the team effectiveness literature to theorize how minimal team structures support effective coordination when people do not work together regularly. I argue that role-based coordination among relative strangers can be interpersonally challenging and propose that team scaffolds (minimal team structures that bound groups of roles rather than groups of individuals) may provide occupants with a temporary shared in-group that facilitates interaction. I develop and test these ideas in a multi-method, multi-site field study of a new work structure, called pods, that were implemented in many hospital emergency departments (EDs) and were sometimes designed to function as team scaffolds.

How does interservice rivalry affect American civil-military relations? In three essays, I develop theoretical propositions about the relationship between interservice rivalry and civil-military outcomes; propose a two-stage model of civil-military interaction surrounding use of force decisions; and investigate the correlates of interservice rivalry with a focus on budget pressure.

This study, which was conducted in Sweden, was based on four qualitative semi-structured interviews. The aim of this study was to create an understanding of how a municipality designs the sanction for youth offenders called ”youth service” based on the law that establishes the existence of such a sentence. We interviewed social workers that work at the department of youth service in the municipality of Gothenburg, who exclusively deal with youth offenders’ sentenced to youth service as their job assignment. We asked the social workers how the municipality of Gothenburg has designed and structured its youth service as well as how and why the chosen design came to be. The result was thermalized with four topics: how is youth service designed? The reasoning behind Gothenburg’s design, the adjustment of the process of evaluating the suitability of the sentence youth service for the young offender and lastly, collaboration. Our analysis was based on neo-institutional organization theory and on protective factors that protect against negative outcomes. Based on the result that the semi-structured interviews yielded we found that Gothenburg’s designed work method very well resembled the law and guidelines issued two years subsequent the date the law gained legal force. Additionally, we found that the department for youth service in Gothenburg influenced the guidelines that were issued two years after the law gained legal force. To which degree could not be determined in this study, however some of the social workers stated that Gothenburg did not have to adjust to the guidelines when they were issued and that it was satisfying for them that the National Board of Health and Welfare listened to their organization in the process preceded the issuing of the guidelines. Lastly, the interviewed social workers reported that the municipalities collaborate regarding the design of their respective youth services to increase uniformity. The interviews indicated that Gothenburg’s designed work method was considered successful in that other municipalities contacted Gothenburg in order to study how they worked with the sanction that is youth service. This collaboration might lead to an increase of municipalities acquiring Gothenburg’s work method, which in the future may lead to a nationwide institutionalization of Gothenburg’s designed work method with youth service.

<p>In today&rsquo;s global, dynamic, and uncertain business environments, the need for developing leaders and managerial talent throughout the organization is increasingly evident, especially for multinational companies. While the important role of job assignment for leadership and managerial development has been well recognized, there is no aligned, comprehensive global leadership development model. This study focused on understanding leadership development assignments and experiences of successful Japanese managers who are functioning in for-profit multi-national Western companies in the consumer products industry in Japan. A sequential explanatory mixed method design incorporating phenomenological interviews was used to first explore work-related strengths and developmental experiences and key competencies of 24 high performing managers working in the consumer goods industry, representing three different companies. 6 individuals were selected to participate in the phenomenological interview process. </p><p> Key findings from phase 1 research among 24 respondents are (a) while challenging job is the most effective method for leadership development, that alone cannot always develop effective leaders, and (b) effective leaders have more number of challenging assignments and work experiences. Phase 2 research, phenomenological interview was conducted among 6 most effective leaders selected based upon 360 feedback survey results. There were 3 types of developmental experiences those effective leaders found very effective: (a) business challenges, (b) interpersonal and cultural challenges, and (c) developmental relationship. Key findings from phase 2 research are (d) effective leaders have experienced dual challenges from key developmental work&mdash;both business challenge and interpersonal (or cultural) challenges, (e) they possess both business skills and interpersonal skills, (f) they have learned and strengthened both business management and interpersonal skills through overcoming challenges on the job, (g) they have a positive and open mindset and positive attitudes toward new challenging, learning and achievements, (h) they have learned through self reflection during and after developmental experiences. Of note, all of them have had a significant learning and influence from their boss(es) in their career. </p><p> Incorporating the findings from this research, I recommend a systemic leadership development approach that integrates challenging assignments with reflective learning, skill development supports, 360 feedback, and thorough performance review system, involving boss. </p>

<p> The efficiency and efficacy of the U.S. healthcare system has been in question for decades. We spend more per capita than any other industrialized nation while consistently realizing inferior health outcomes for our population as a whole when compared with many industrialized nations. In 1965, the proportion of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) attributed to healthcare was approximately 6%. Today, the share of GDP spent on healthcare by the United States is almost 18%. This number is 5% higher than the next two countries, the Netherlands and France (spending 12.0% and 11.8% of their GDP on healthcare respectively) according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The proportion of GDP spent on healthcare in 2020 is estimated to reach 20%, with the nation's increasing healthcare expeditors reducing resources available for other worthy government programs, eroding wages, and undermining the competitiveness of U.S. industry. </p><p> This dissertation explores longitudinal outcome data for Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients in healthcare in the dimensions of patient outcomes (mortality, complications and patient safety), as well as hospital financial and efficiency measures (average length of stay, expense per discharge and profitability). Source data from Truven Health Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) are used to evaluate changes in level, immediacy/latency and trend in the years prior to versus the years after becoming a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient. In support of the hypothesis, being a recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in healthcare explains slight enhancements in clinical outcomes, while hospital financial and efficiency measures all showed overwhelmingly positive operating results.</p>

<p>Although many organizations aspire to be diverse, both in their internal composition and external collaborations, diversity's consequences for organizational outcomes remain unclear. This project uses three separate studies to examine how diversity within and across organizations influences organizational outcomes. The first study uses original data from a national study of organizations to analyze how an organization's internal social composition is associated with its performance. It advances diversity-performance research by demonstrating how the mechanisms of social bridging and social bonding can work together within a diverse organization to improve its performance. The findings suggests that an organization can improve its performance by having socially diverse members who interact often and in ways that engage their social differences. The second study integrates social capital theory and network analysis to explore the relationship between interorganizational networks and organizational action. It uses cross-sectional and panel data from a national study of congregations to analyze the collaborative partnerships congregations form to provide social services. This study demonstrates that a congregation's network ties, net of the effects of its internal characteristics, are significantly associated with the number and types of social service programs it offers. The third study illustrates how an organization's external ties can shape its action by examining black churches and their responses to people living with HIV/AIDS. It uses data from a nationally representative sample of black congregations and draws on institutional theory to analyze congregations as open systems that can be influenced by their surrounding environment. This study indicates that black churches that are engaging their external environment are significantly more likely to have an HIV/AIDS program. Overall, by analyzing how individuals interact within organizations and how organizations interact with one another, these three studies demonstrate how diverse networks influence organizational outcomes.</p> / Dissertation