A growing number of traditional school boards and city mayors are looking for the next generation of school superintendents to come prepared with a variety of professional backgrounds to provide instructional leadership for school districts. The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to examine and describe the experiences, of five urban non-traditional superintendents. Associated research methods, namely interviews with study participants and the identification of major themes emerging from the data, were employed. Six emergent themes were revealed, including change agent, accountability, political connection/clout, school reform, student achievement and excellent leadership. Profiles of the participants were offered to provide a context for the results of this study. In relation to the major themes, these participants believed that their backgrounds in corporate worlds and other professions uniquely prepared them for the increased challenges of today’s school superintendency. They all indicated that they assumed the helms in their respective school systems for altruistic reasons. However, once on the job, the participants noted that they suffered personally and professionally. They found themselves victims of little respect from the community, media and from their own governing bodies. In terms of preparation for the job, the non-traditional superintendents practiced self-study through reading leadership and journal articles and by attending conferences. The participants also experienced different challenges in gaining certification for the superintendency due to disparate state regulations governing licensure. Several recommendations resulted from the findings of this study. Since academic performance is the primary indicator of success or failure in education today, future researchers in this area might consider a quantitative analysis of student achievement in districts led by non-traditional superintendents compared to academic performance in those systems led by their traditional counterparts. In addition, it is suggested that these participants’ views on superintendent preparation and certification and on governance issues may be considered by school districts, state and federal agencies and by universities as they develop future policy and programs. Other recommendations addressed the need to study female non-traditional superintendent governance and non-traditional leaders in smaller school districts as it relates to these issues.

This dissertation offers a new narrative for the local woman suffrage movement in nine rural counties in Texas. I argue that, unlike cities, where women used dense organizational networks to create a coherent suffrage movement, conservatism inherent in rural Texas denied suffrage advocates the means to achieve similar objectives. Rural women nevertheless used the suffrage campaign to articulate feminist sensibilities, thereby reflecting a process of modernization ongoing among American women. Rural suffrage advocates faced unique obstacles, including the political influence of James E. Ferguson, who served as Governor for almost two administrations. Through Ferguson's singular personality, a propaganda campaign that specifically targeted rural voters, and Ferguson's own tabloid Ferguson Forum, rural voters found themselves constantly bombarded by messages about how they should view questions of reform in their state. The organizational culture that sustained suffrage organizations in urban Texas failed to do so in rural Texas. Concerned for their status, rural women scorned activism and those who pursued it. Absent an organized campaign, the success of suffrage initiatives in rural Texas depended on locally unique circumstances. Key factors included demographic trends, economics, local politics, and the influence of frontier cultural dynamics. The tactics and rhetoric employed by rural suffragists in Texas generally reflected those used by suffragists nationwide. While rural suffragists mustered arguments grounded in natural and constitutional rights, rural voters responded more to the claim that votes projected woman's feminine virtue into public life, which accommodated prevailing attitudes about woman's place. The First World War supplied rural suffragists with patriotic rhetoric that resonated powerfully with Texans. Rural Texas women successfully reframed public dialogue about women's roles, articulating feminist ideas through their work. Unlike rural clubwomen, suffragists pursued the ballot as a means to improve the status of all women. Feminist ideas increasingly obtained with women in visible leadership, and eventually reached all rural women, as countless hundreds registered to vote, and still more educated themselves on political issues. In doing so, rural women in Texas joined women across America in challenging the limits of domesticity and envisioning a fuller role for women in public life.

This dissertation contains two essays on the effect of welfare reform on child- birth, marriage, and divorce. In the first essay, I exploit the cross state variation in welfare reform implementation to identify its effect on birth rates. The results from multinomial logit models suggest that the welfare reform significantly increased the probability of marital births. The out-of-wedlock birth rates decreased but this effect is not significant. The strong work incentives decrease birth rates in both marital and non-marital statuses suggesting that bearing a child is not appealing for women who are more progressive in careers. However, the most aggressive welfare policy significantly increases marital birth as expected. Birth rates among teenage girls are not affected by the welfare reform. I further investigate the effect of the family cap policy. Using a semi-natural experiment, I compare the birth rate of women who already have had a second or higher order birth (treatment group) to women who have had one child (comparison group), in states with and without family caps. The difference in difference estimates reveal a strictly negative effect of family caps on the higher order birth rates as expected. In the second essay, I use reduced-form estimation and cross-state variation in timing of reform adoption to extract both mechanical and behavioral effects of welfare reform on marriage and divorce likelihood. I construct a flow measure of marriage and divorce by matching individuals in the Current Population Survey from March 1988B to 2002 and observing changes in marital status. I introduce a converse matching procedure to detect women who are not in the survey for two consecutive years. I find that the welfare reform has a significantly negative effect on marriage rates and an insignificant effect on divorce rates. The Difference-in-Difference estimates suggest that marriage among disadvantaged women is negatively affected by the welfare reform. I also provide a theoretical model to decompose the effect of welfare reform on marriage due to each of the components of the reform, i.e., time limits, work sanctions, earnings disregards, and maximum cash benefits. My results provide a novel explanation for the effects of work incentives and welfare restrictions on marriage.

Due to the urgency of not losing more urban high school students to academic failure and dropping out, the most promising reform efforts must be investigated. One of the most promising ways of creating successful high school reform that has been advocated is through restructuring schools into community-like organizations, often called professional learning communities. Yet, limited empirical research has been conducted concerning professional learning communities, especially in urban high schools. Thus, this research sought to understand how two urban high schools, one comprehensive high school in a large urban center and one small career academy high school in a medium-sized urban center, implemented professional learning communities as a leadership-initiated reform strategy for math and science teaching. Year-long interactions with each high school including in-depth observations and eighteen interviews, nine personnel from each site, revealed that certain organizational structures (e.g. social and human resources, structural conditions) must be in place for professional learning communities to have the potential to be a successful reform effort. Specifically, the way in which leadership supports professional learning communities through structure, pressure, and support was important. Both studies show that school context and leadership significantly affect the quality of professional learning communities and their ability to reform their instructional practices in order to increase student achievement.

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The administrative reform in all of the countries, all depends on via "the government reform" making the government performance results able to improve, and the government service outsourcing has become the most important strategy for government reform. Along with the rapid development of the information tech, and the popularization of the applications, introducing information tech to the government service of the high-efficiency, low cost, flexibility, fast response is the basic conditions for the modern government forging ahead into 21 centuries. "The government information service outsourcing" results in how to establish availably amid in the "partner relationship" a new topic in the long term, as well as under the condition of parts of information service providers lacking of the information professional knowledge with government agency to the government service. How to construct and lead to a "cooperation mechanism" strategic goal and reinforces efficiency is a successful key point to the outsourcing. The target of "cooperation mechanism" is "the management of the conflict" in the aspects of negatively, in addition to solving the conflicts that have appeared, also ought to think twice about the reason of the conflict, and avoid the possible conflicts. In the aspects of aggressively, it is to "move forward towards the whole target", whose aims consist in reaching to team up the goal availably. The purpose of the cooperation does not depend on the none of the conflicts, also, within the scope of cooperation. In other words, the cooperative "effectiveness" of one of both sides¡¦ achievement must meet with the following objectives in the meantime: first, it can't deviate from the whole goal; second, it must ensure to accomplish the whole objective benefits. Confronted with the conflicts appearing in the interval, this research proposes a new point of view as well as food for thoughts: ¡§Is there any chance these regarded as the reformed objects "bureaupathologies " cause critical factor of the conflict?". We refer to various organization theories and methods, originated from feeling have on the spot "examination mechanism", and we wish we could break through politician system constituent "black box" mode of every kind of "shell" block, and find out not appropriate "processing" hidden under the politician post authority. We expect to expel " bureaupathologies " to solve and reduce the development of the conflict. Now we think of Kaohsiung City property management system outsourcing as the individual cases study. We can illustrate practical manipulation inspection, propose the concrete conclusion and suggestions, and raise the capability of "Cooperation mechanism", in order to promote the success of ¡§government information service outsourcing".

The purpose of this study is to discuss the relationship among educational reform stress, working values, and organizational commitment perceived by primary school teachers. First, relevant literature on educational reform, job stress of teachers, working values, and organizational commitment is collected, investigated, and analyzed. Next, the framework of the research is devised, the questionnaire is edited and pre-tested, and the research instrument of this study¡X¡§Questionnaire of Education Reforms and the Work Attitude of Primary School Teachers¡¨¡Xis developed accordingly. Then, primary school teachers of Kaohsiung county are used as research population, from which 810 teachers in 67 schools are randomly sampled as research subjects. 761 copies of the 810 questionnaires issued are returned, among which 750 copies are valid. The returning ratio is 92%. After questionnaires are collected, statistics methods, such as descriptive analysis, t-test, one way MANOVA, Pearson's product-moment correlation, canonical correlation, and stepwise multiple regression, are used to analyze them. Finally, results of this study are discussed. Conclusions of this study are as follows: a) The greatest education reform pressure primary school teachers feel is ¡§workload¡¨, and the second greatest is ¡§curriculum reform¡¨. b) The highest value primary school teachers emphasize is ¡§organizational security¡¨, and the second greatest is ¡§interpersonal relationship¡¨. c) Primary school teachers are mostly content with organizational commitments which are ¡§a hard-working attitude¡¨, ¡§the inclination to keep the job¡¨ and ¡§organizational identity¡¨. d) Primary school teachers have different educational reform pressure, work values, and organizational commitment due to their different backgrounds. e) The less educational reform pressure primary school teachers feel the higher commitment they make. f) The higher work value primary school teachers emphasize the higher commitment they make. g) For most of primary school teachers, education reform pressure and organizational commitment are related in a negative way. h) For primary school teachers, work values and organizational commitment are related in a positive way. i) The relationship among education reform pressure, work values and organizational commitment of primary school teachers. j) Education reform pressure and work values can predict organizational commitment. And interpersonal relationship is a major predicator variable. According to the above conclusions, this study brings about the following results: A. For educational administrative organization: a) Education reform should include complete complementary packages, increase the number of teachers to reduce teacher's workload. b) Raise work values and strengthen teacher's organizational commitment. c) Accredit and support elementary teachers¡¦ highly positive hard-working attitude. B. For School Administrative: a) Encourage elementary teachers attending educational workshops, acquiring future knowledge, and adapting changes. b) Set reasonable work goals, improve the work environment and reduce teacher's work pressure. c) Strengthen teacher's ability to manage pressure and improve their mental and physical health. d) Build excellent interpersonal relationship and interactive patterns. e) Establish a rotation mechanism of teacher's holding concurrent administrative jobs and increase the opportunities of teachers' participation in the decision-making of school affairs. f) Guide and show concerns for young and inexperienced teachers in order to solidify their sense of cohesion. C. For teachers: a) Actively attend workshops and conferences to increase professional knowledge. b) Seize any opportunities to participate in administrative work. c) Expand social circles to improve interpersonal interactive relationship. D. Submit suggestions to object of study, research methods, research variables, and research instruments respectively, as some people of interest might pursue the topic of this study further.

It has been widely acknowledged that boundary problems resulting from urban growth is one of the persistent issues at the local level. At least three main problem areas have been identified: fragmentation of the planning system, inefficiency in the service provision and the scale of local participation. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the restructuring of the organizational structure and statutes of local authorities in terms of boundary changes, amalgamation and annexation with reference to the Turkish case. The city of Denizli has been taken as a case study as there has been a recent change in the municipal boundaries which brought the annexation of small-sized municipalities to the Denizli Municipality. The thesis problematizes the Denizli case in terms of planning processes, service provision and local participation. The experience of other countries and the literature on this issue are to be used in order to provide a yardstick against which the case of Denizli could be measured.

Based upon the view that changes in institutional environment have an effect on transaction attributes, which will make anew the choice of economic organization, the purpose of the thesis is to explain the organization development and structure change of Mainland China's non-state-owned enterprises. It tries to modify O. E. Williamson's theory of governance structure in order to theorize China's economy more suitably. More importantly, the thesis describes a specific dimension of transaction ¡Ðthe need for "political reliance" in the transitional economy, with which we supplement and/or on substitute Williamson's (1999) concept of "probity". We find out that the need for political reliance in stead of probity, is the key to understanding why and which kind of governance mechanism is more "efficient" in managing transaction in Mainland China's non-state-owned section. The theory we establish is applied to explaining the organization development and structure change of Mainland China's non-state-owned interprises, which have experienced different need of political reliance in different stages of China's economic reform. Especially suitable for the theory to explain is about the surge and fall of the unique form of organization, i.e. the so-called "Gua-kau"(±¾¾a) enterprises. The thesis also predicts the tendency of structure change in Mainland China's non-state-owned seitor by using the same theory.

It will be hard to do or be easy to do when an organization starts to change. It is so called that think globally and act locally. This research is a system thinking approach of study about how an organization starts to change. It is a case study of the household-registration offices in Taipei and Kaohsiung. This case is selected with its bureaucracy in the past, but now we can see their changes. It is worthy to study more deeply. This research begins with studying the development process of the household-registration offices in Taiwan and then inquires the backgrounds and results, which could help us to understand it. This point of view focuses on the changing processes in 1990¡¦s. Household-registration offices in Taipei and Kaohsiung began their reforms from 1990 early. It is the incentive that mayors in Taipei and Kaohsiung could be elected directly by the residents in the two cities. However, computerization was the main reason that satisfied people substantially. Computerization makes the waiting time shorten. Household-registration offices could focus on many conveniences to the people further. The reform of household-registration offices in Taipei and Kaohsiung began with the simple change and it could be seen the result immediately. The reform of household-registration offices in Taipei and Kaohsiung started with some slight matters. For instance, bureau chiefs build a promotion system and a merit system, and they earned staff¡¦s support to continue making change. Improving the environment of offices could make officers happy and then change their attitudes, so it is easy to earn citizens¡¦ commendations. Merit system could promote competition among offices and make officers endeavor further. Moreover, we can say that morale, merit, and competition can make the actions of reform produce reinforce feedback loops. It should be noticed that bureau chiefs¡¦ requests and participations in reform are the key factors to start changing, and then changing will become everyone¡¦s job. The result is to earn citizens¡¦ satisfaction.