This dissertation uncovers the underlying structure of inter-organizational information sharing in the public sector from three different theoretical perspectives. Drawing on theories in social networks, policy networks and public management, this study answers the following questions: 1) why are city governments more likely to share information with one another when they belong to the same county? 2) when do local governments share information with one another under a competitive environment? 3) what motivational bases exist for public managers to willingly learn from other governments’ experiences, which, in turn, will lead to more frequent information sharing between governments. To answer the first question, one chapter explores why and when county jurisdiction helps city governments overcome the collective action dilemma in inter-governmental information sharing based on the insight of the ‘strength of strong ties’ hypothesis that ‘people help their friends first, acquaintances later (chum strategy)’. Using exponential random graph model (ERGM), the analysis of economic development information (EDI) sharing patterns among 34 cities in the Orlando metropolitan area confirms that EDI sharing between strong-tied municipal governments, ones sharing the same county jurisdiction, is more likely to take place under two specific conditions: 1) when cities are expected to get more collective demand for the information from others and 2) when they have greater demand for the information. This finding suggests that county jurisdiction boundary functions as a barrier in the exchange of EDI between municipal governments. Regarding the second question, a subsequent chapter investigates how inter-governmental competition affects the tendency of local actors sharing information with one another. Informal policy networks and formal contracts are distinctive governing mechanisms for addressing collaboration risks. Institutional collective action (ICA) theory suggests that a formal contract will be preferred over an informal policy network in inter-governmental relationships, as partner’s defection risk increases under a competitive environment. This paper builds on and extends this proposition by advancing and testing a more complete explanation for local government’s preference of one mechanism over another and investigating how it varies depending on the level of competition in each dyadic local government relationship. This is demonstrated through the development of a substantive measurement strategy for dyadic economic development competition between governments, as well as the assessment of the validity and reliability of the measure. Estimation of QAP network regressions reveals that local governments prefer a formal contract over an informal policy network with their partners when the competition between them increases. However, competition does not necessarily reduce the use of informal policy networks between local actors but rather results in more frequent informal networks between them. The conclusion discusses the practical implications of the findings for government managers and how the measurement approach advanced in this study can be applied to studies of inter-governmental relations in other policy arenas. Lastly, this dissertation additionally explores how public service motivation (PSM) is associated with government officials’ willingness to learn from other governments’ practices drawing on the debates of public sector benchmarking and PSM theory. Benchmarking between local governments has become an important topic in public administration. In benchmarking practice, local government officials play important roles in deciding what they learn, who they learn from and how to adopt and adapt to the lessons. However, less attention has been paid to why local government officials to willingly take lessons from their peer governments. Focusing on a particular type of motivational basis, public service motivation (PSM), this study assesses how PSM and its four dimensions are associated with local government officials’ willingness to learn from other governments’ practices. / A Dissertation submitted to the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / 2019 / August 27, 2019. / County Jurisdiction, Information Sharing, Intergovernmental Competition, PSM, Public Sector / Includes bibliographical references. / Richard C. Feiock, Professor Directing Dissertation; Robert Mark Isaac, University Representative; Frances Stokes Berry, Committee Member; Ralph S. Brower, Committee Member.

A few ruling individuals from party organizations overpowered Indonesia’s post-authoritarian, representative democracy. The legislative process of the 2017 Election Act was the case study employed to examine this assumption. The underlying thinking was that there was a contest between “wealth power” (oligarchy) and “participation power” (democracy). The power of wealth controls the party and government institutions. Notwithstanding the presence of participation power, there was, however, no balance between wealth power and participation power, because the formal control of politics was in the hands of party oligarchs. The study purpose was to bridge the gap in knowledge by exploring how the party oligarchs maintained the policymaking, reputedly using cartelized strategies, to defend the status quo. By employing the oligarchy and cartelization theories, the central research question of this inquiry focused on how the party oligarchs, allegedly using cartel work-patterns, mastered the policy process in post-Suharto Indonesia. A qualitative case-study was used with in-depth interviews with 15 participants for data collection and the N-Vivo program for data analysis. Qualitative findings indicated that the party oligarchs engineered the legal process in parliament applying cartelized strategies to defend privileges they obtained from collusive interpenetration with the state. The implications for social change include informing members of parliament, other policymakers, and civil society groups of the cruciality of comprehending the modus operandi of oligarchic cartels. Understanding the “oligarchic cartelization” theoretical postulate is a fundamental step for party members to improve their performance in public offices. The results of this study can also be a useful reference for pro-democracy activists to defend the ontological essence of public participation in implementing representative democracy at an appropriate level.

Organizational culture and leadership styles of a leader are important to staff members' commitment in a nonprofit organization, yet little is understood about the role of leadership style and the degree to which staff are committed to organizational effectiveness in nonprofit organizations. Using Avolio and Bass' conceptualization of transformational leadership as the theoretical foundation, the purpose of this descriptive study was to examine the organizational culture, leadership styles, and nonprofit staff members' commitment in 1 large organization in the United States. Survey data were collected (N = 100) through an instrument that combined Cameron and Quinn's Organizational Cultural Assessment and Avolio and Bass's Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. These data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to examine organizational culture relative to leadership style. The statistical analyses in this study examined organizational commitment and organizational culture in each leadership style. There were differences in the proportion of organizational commitment and organizational culture among leadership style, which were measured using coefficients of variation. Notably, when participants perceived a leader to exhibit transformational leadership traits, there also were greater proportions of perceptions of organizational commitment and positive organizational culture within those groups. The implications for positive social change stemming from this study include recommendations to organizational leadership to identify the employees' backgrounds, cultures and practice, and to determine the organizational culture's relevance. These recommendations may increase engagement and job satisfaction, thus reducing turnover, increasing profitability and influencing organizational commitment, resulting in a highly productive workforce.

Tenure can affect administrative continuity and proper governance in cities that employ the council-manager form of government, as most public policy proposals originate with the city manager. Literature regarding low tenure in medium and large communities is relatively well explored; however, little is known about the relationship between length of service and leadership style among small municipalities. Using Hersey and Blanchard's theory of situational leadership as a theoretical framework and the Leadership Behavioral Analysis IIRTM Self (LBAIIRTM Self) as an instrument, this study looked at managers' leadership flexibility and effectiveness and whether selection of an appropriate leadership approach impacts length of service in the city manager role. An additional questionnaire was used to determine gender, educational level, the racial homogeneity of the community served, and tenure. A random sample of 350 city managers of small municipalities were surveyed by mail and 25 percent of the surveys were returned (n = 90). Data were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlations and t-tests. Findings indicate that there are no statistically significant relationships between any of these variables, including tenure, and a manager's leadership flexibility and effectiveness, suggesting that leadership ability and tenure are not related. These findings are not consistent with the academic literature regarding public leadership. This study contributes to social change by providing city managers and other municipal leaders with more nuanced information about tenure and leadership and can be used by city managers and city councils in making policy decisions, including decisions about appointment to the city manager position.

In public policy literature, there is a lack of research that integrates social construction theory within the advocacy coalition framework, and far less is known about how these theories address policy change and processes related to programs for disabled veterans.The purpose of this study was to conduct a policy analysis to evaluate how well the needs of veterans are met through the U.S. Veterans' Disability Compensation (USVDC) program. In a case study of a city in the southeastern U.S., gaps between formulation and implementation of USVDC policy were examined. The theoretical frameworks used in this study were Hacker's formulation and implementation gap to analyze policy, Schneider and Ingram's conceptualization of social construction, and Sabatier and Weible's advocacy coalition framework. The central research question for this study explored the extent to which the USVDC program meets the needs of disabled veterans (DVs). Data consisting of over 355 USVDC formulation and implementation documents, from March 2007 through August 2013, were coded using a priori codes and content analysis methodology.Findings indicate the USVDC policy subsystem struggled to manage the claims backlog that grew to over one million claims. Between April 2013 and September 2013, an emphasis to reduce the claims backlog improved stalled policy formulation, resulting in a shift to positive social constructions for DVs.Implications for positive social change include improved collaboration between policy makers, the Veterans' Administration, and recently transitioned target group DVs, to reshape policy formulation and implementation to further improve the quality of life for sick and injured veterans when entering the USVDC policy subsystem.

Among men living in the United States, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death, and, excluding skin cancers, it is the cancer diagnosed most frequently. While incidence and mortality rates have been declining, the American Cancer Society estimated that there were 220,800 men diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 27,500 prostate cancer deaths in 2015. Various patient-level and community-level factors have been shown to influence the differential patterns of diagnosis, care, and outcomes for men with prostate cancer. Detailed information regarding the utilization of health services by prostate cancer patients, particularly those with higher propensity for health services use, could be used to inform efforts intended to improve the coordination and delivery of care to work towards the elimination of disparities. The purpose of the study is to facilitate a better understanding of the determinants of health services utilization by older males with prostate cancer in the United States by examining the relative influence and interaction effects of factors characterizing individual patients and their county of residence. Andersen's behavioral model of health services utilization is used as a framework to guide this study. A cross-sectional design is used to analyze administrative claims data from the 2008 Medicare Provider Analysis Review (MEDPAR) file (n=5,754). County-level data from Area Health Resources File (ARHF) are merged to include the community and contextual characteristics. American Hospital Association (AHA) annual survey data are also used to examine the importance of hospital attributes in a subset analysis (n=555). A two-stage approach is used for analyzing the data. First, several social and demographic variables are included in automatic interaction detector (AID) analysis to identify relatively homogenous subgroups of patients with similar service utilization patterns for emergency room visits and hospital length of stay. Second, regression analysis is performed in the full dataset including all patients, and in each subgroup to determine the amount of variance explained by predictor variables categorized as predisposing, enabling, and need-for-care factors. Hierarchical logistic regression is performed to analyze the variability in emergency room use, and hierarchical multiple regression is performed to analyze the variability in hospital length of stay. The results show that the need-for-care factors are dominant predictors of service use. However, the relative importance of the predictor variables varies by subgroups of prostate cancer patients identified in the initial AID analysis. The findings lend some support of the use of an integrated approach to examine the personal and social determinants of health services utilization by prostate cancer patients enrolled in the U.S. Medicare program. The theoretical framework and analytic approach employed in this study make it possible to obtain an in-depth understanding of the influential factors associated with emergency room use and length of stay for all-cause hospitalizations, which can be used to inform future research and efforts aimed at developing targeted interventions to improve the coordinated care and to reduce health disparities among Medicare beneficiaries with prostate cancer.

Social media tools, as the advanced technology, have penetrated into nonprofit management field prevalently. Nonprofit organizations adopt social media tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest for attracting potential supporters, raising advocacy, and running fundraising campaigns. Social media tools break the limitation of time and space through the Internet. They change the way of how people communicate and interact with each other. The philanthropy industry hopes that social media tools could bring them the new opportunities to engage with their stakeholders, such as donors, volunteers, and customers. However, since this technology is still developing, the studies of using social media in nonprofit field are still at the infant stage. Many nonprofit practitioners are confused and questioning the effectiveness of adopting social media for civic engagement. The dissertation aims to examine how to adopt social media advantageously for helping nonprofit organizations to engage with their stakeholders. Therefore, this study uses a mix of methodology to examine how social media tools could help nonprofit organizations to gain a stronger relationship with their stakeholders. Also, the study explores in more details about the content that nonprofit organizations have sent on their social media platforms. To develop the theoretical framework, this study used social capital and social exchange theory as the guidance. To observe and examine the strategy of using social media in nonprofit organizations, the study is inspired and adopts the social media typology from Lovejoy and Saxton's (2012) research and the communication models from Lewis, Hamel, and Richardson's work (2001). The study proposed that to gain a stronger relationship with the stakeholders, nonprofit organizations should apply a well-designed comprehensive strategy with multiple goals on their social media platforms. This strategy should consider more about the stakeholders' desires and needs and allows the organizations to communicate with the stakeholders effectively. Also, the study also argues that the content that an organization presents on its social media would impact on the stakeholders' interaction greatly. The study targeted on the art/culture/humanities nonprofit organizations in the United States (n = 195). Data was collected directly from the targeted organization's social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter). The regression analysis was conducted to investigate what strategy that nonprofit organization used could gain a high engagement from their stakeholders. A content analysis was also conducted to explore what posts and tweets could influence how stakeholders react. The results indicate that most nonprofit organizations realize the importance of adopting social media, but a few of them still have not embraced the benefits of the technology essentially. Comparing with the activities on Twitter, both nonprofit organizations and their stakeholders were more active on Facebook. On social media, the primary goal for most nonprofit organizations was to disseminate the information. But sending out the information can be an effective strategy. If a nonprofit organization could combine their values/missions/programs with the hot spot on social media, it can promote the stakeholders' engagement greatly. Building a dialogic content on the organization's social media is still overlooked. But no evidence in this study shown that initiating a dialog would receive a high engagement from the stakeholders. The results of this study also show that a nonprofit organization delivered the posts or tweets more frequently does not necessarily mean it would receive a higher interactivity from its stakeholders. The organization's size (the annual budget) does not influence how nonprofit organizations used their social media tools to interact with their online stakeholders. Overall, the study explored how art/culture/humanities nonprofit organizations used their Facebook and Twitter to interact with their online stakeholders. The study helps both the researchers and the practitioners to understand the strategies of using social media tools in nonprofit organizations. It also reveals several practical examples to illustrate what kind of social media content could attract or discourage the online stakeholders' engagement. The study is also a good benchmark report for nonprofit practitioners to evaluate their social media usage.

The dissertation employs Andersen and Newman's conceptual framework of health service utilization to examine continuity of care among homeless people. The research context is the Health Care for the Homeless Program which provides free health and medical care to thousands of homeless people in 19 major U.S. cities. The study examines continuity of care for a common illness episode among homeless people, namely peripheral vascular disease of the lower limbs and related disorders. Continuity is modeled as a function of predisposing individual, illness level, and health service system characteristics. The analysis uses multiple regression statistical methods to assess whether and the extent to which individual and health system determinants have net effects on continuity. The findings suggest two related theoretical implications. First, there are multiple sources of continuity. Second, health service system and individual characteristics affect continuity net of each other. The findings also suggest several practical implications including the importance of full-time outreach staff, verbal instructions to return for care, and more extensive weekly hours at each delivery site, just to name a few.

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