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Abstract is available to download.

Abstract is available to download.

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Learning from faillure is especially important for innovators, who often have to take risks and fail many times in order to generate innovative and effective ideas and practices to make classrooms and institutions better places to learn and work.

<div>The following dissertation presents three, stand-alone chapters on incentives and organization in the analysis of public policy. The first two chapters use administrative data from the court system of North Carolina to (1) provide evidence of strategic scheduling decisions for felony cases around judicial rotations and (2) evaluate a wide range of alternative measures of judicial severity, a common methodology used in random judge assignment for evaluation of sentencing on recidivism and in the broader field of scoring and third-party evaluation. The first chapter presents a variety of tests for strategic scheduling, finding systematic variation in the disposition of cases by judges in their election district and by defendant gender. The second chapter presents coefficients from two-stage least squares estimates of the effect of incarceration, probation, and sentence length on recidivism, finding broadly consistent results in direction, but with a significant degree of variation in point estimates and confidence interval size. In addition, alternative indexes sometimes pass and sometimes fail balance and monotonicity tests. Finally, evidence is presented that there are multidimensional elements to judicial propensities around sentence type and sentence intensity, indicating that a single severity index may miss important variations in judge types that are meaningful to defendant outcomes. The third chapter uses data from the 1992 to 2017 Censuses of Agriculture to evaluate the impact of the Land Contract Guarantee Pilot Program (LCGP) on the share of new farmers in counties across the United States. Estimates of shares of new farmers from a difference-in-differences model are then used to assess the impact of new farmers on aggregate measures of farm capital and federal program participation. In general, the LCGP has a significant and positive effect on the share of new farmers. Counties with higher shares of new farmers are less likely to participate in federal conservation programs and have lower total machinery assets. An event study approach that includes data from 2017, when the LCGP was expanded nationwide, confirms positive effects from the program, but offers conflicting views on farm capital and program participation. It is suggested that this is likely a result of additional programs put in place in the 2014 Farm Bill, and future research is proposed to address this conflicting sign.</div>

Understanding the effects of national culture differences on cooperation and performance is a problem facing the United States and South Korean Air Component Command Headquarters. Little is known about the dynamics of national cultural differences within the headquarters, and as a result, little attention is given to educating members on how to manage multicultural relationships. Guided by Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and Schein's model of organizational culture, the purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study was to understand the factors influencing national cultural differences among the United States and South Korean staff officers (N =178) assigned to the Air Component Command Headquarters, Republic of South Korea. Primary data were collected using the 2013 Values Survey Module. The following 6 dependent variables were examined: power distance, individualism, indulgence, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation. These data were analyzed via bivariate correlation, independent-sample t tests, and one-way analysis of variance. Analysis of variance and t-test findings indicated that an increase in cross-cultural experience (military exchanges, foreign language proficiency, and years lived abroad) influenced national cultural scores. Additionally, to a moderate extent, bivariate correlation analysis showed that national cultures could also be affected (positively and negatively) by differences in participant education levels, military seniority and time served, years lived abroad, military exchanges, and foreign language experience. Implications for positive social change include increasing national cultural awareness among Air Component Command members as a method for improving collaboration and military readiness.

This research investigates how the nature and scope of vocational education and training (VET) in Victoria has changed as a result of legislation passed in 1990 to enable privately owned Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) to provide government accredited training. An interpretive paradigm and multiple data gathering techniques have been applied. These included the examination of primary historical and economic documents which demonstrated why the VET system changed in Australia and quantifiable statistics which illustrated how the system changed over the period covered; from 1990/1 to 2002/3. Semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of 21 RTOs assisted in exploring the impact of the entry of privately owned RTOs into the Victorian training market. The wide experience and in-depth knowledge of the VET sector by the researcher acted as an underpinning device. The evidence from my interviews illustrated how the privately owned RTOs in my sample provided relevant, customised and contextualised training, differentiated their services to ensure they met client needs, responded rapidly to changes in demand and exhibited considerable adaptability in their arrangements for training delivery. This adaptability extended, amongst other things, to the location, timing and mode of delivery. It became apparent that the increased diversity found, had unintended consequences. These included an increase in the perceived complexity of the VET sector for those working within it and adversely affecting the extent to which national consistency has been achieved.