Veterans in higher education are not a new phenomenon, but over the past decade, policies put in place in organizations designed to support this population have grown in number and impact. This manuscript is assembled as a series of studies that investigate the strategic management implementation of adopting these policies impacting veterans in two ways: (1) as clients, or students, and (2) as bureaucrats, or employees. It begins by analyzing policies adopted to support student veteran success and transition in order to determine which actually play a role in student veteran outcomes, graduation. Findings suggest that the policies that touch student veterans at the beginning of their higher education journey, a veteran-specific orientation and single point-of-contact, correlate positively with graduation rates at both the 6- and 8-year measures. This project then looks at the strategic management tools used by universities to drive behavior and decision-making within the organization, including the mission statement, strategic plan, long-term goals, as well as other veteran-specific strategic tools. Diversity seems to be a common theme amongst both university-wide and veteran-specific tools, indicating that veteran inclusion is a diversity initiative. Finally, this manuscript looks at how the strategic management tools impact adoption of population-specific policy asking, “What is the strategy of being ‘military friendly’?” As it turns out, there is not one. Outside of veteran human resource policy, most policies are seemingly adopted ad hoc. Possible reasons for this absence of strategy, including the fundamental misconception of veterans as being “at-risk,” are discussed and practitioner recommendations are made. / 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 / November 14, 2019. / military friendly, policy, strategic management, strategy, student veteran, veteran / Includes bibliographical references. / Frances Berry, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Daniel Fay, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Douglas Schrock, University Representative; David Berlan, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_752438 |
| Contributors | Kinch, Abra Kathleen (author), Berry, Frances Stokes (professor co-directing dissertation), Fay, Daniel F. (professor co-directing dissertation), Schrock, Douglas P. (university representative), Berlan, David G. (David Gregory) (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Social Sciences and Public Policy (degree granting college), Askew School of Public Administration and Policy (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (195 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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