This dissertation examines the factors influencing a state’s decision to adopt a local government investment pool (LGIP), the institutional arrangements used in managing them, and the effect of the institutional types on LGIP performance. The dissertation extends the policy adoption theory with insights from investment theory to demonstrate that management credibility influences the likelihood of a state’s LGIP adoption. The study finds that the quality of financial management, the quality of professional leadership, proximate state neighbors who have previously adopted an LGIP, and economic factors determine a state’s proclivity to policy adoption. The dissertation also describes the institutional arrangements used in managing LGIPs and develops typologies based on their institutional arrangements. The dissertation compares LGIPs depending on the risk aversion of their institutional arrangements. The research extends the risk-return tradeoff in investment theory to LGIP institutional arrangements. The empirical findings show that LGIP institutional arrangement that has greater risk report higher performance. The dissertation also finds that competition in the LGIP market due to multiple vendors, and periods of economic recession account for higher performance because of higher risk-taking behaviors associated with them. This dissertation promotes public funds investment laws that emphasize prudent management of government finances and guides managers of the public purse on the types of institutional choices that optimize returns with minimal risk.
Challenging a long-held attachment to the medical model, this research develops a cultural model placing local governments at the center of policy making and refocusing policy attention on mobility, housing, the built environment and services. To examine the phenomenon of age friendly policy adoption by cities and the magnitude of adoption, a 21-question web-based survey was administered to a sample of 1,050 cities from the U.S. Census having a population over 10,000 and having at least 14% of their population aged 65 years and over. The goal of the questionnaire was to help identify what kind of policy objectives cities establish to facilitate the opportunity for older adults to live healthy and independent lives in their communities as they age. Multiple linear and ordinal regression models examined the likelihood of policy action by cities and provide evidence as to why some cities support more age friendly policy actions than others. Evidence illustrates theoretical advancement providing support for a cultural model of aging. The cultural model includes multiple factors including bureaucratic responsiveness reflected in the management values of the administration. Findings show variation in the integration of a cultural awareness of aging in the municipality's needs assessment, strategic goals, citizen engagement strategies, and budgetary principles. Cities with a cultural awareness of aging are more likely to adopt age friendly policies. Findings also provide support for the argument that the public administrator is not the driving sole factor in decision making. A shared spaced with mobilized citizen need of individuals 65 and over is identified.
The flypaper effect states that grants-in-aid increases public spending more than a comparable increase in personal income. If aid increases spending, then there is the possibility that it displaces own-source revenue or a portion of the aid itself is used to meet other priorities of governments, fungibility. Different local government structures have the tendency to prioritize either the operating or capital budget. Empirical evidence shows that federal and state grants have different flypaper effect. While fungible state aid is allocated to the operating budget, that of federal goes to the capital budget. Council-manager and mayor-council form of governments do not allocate fungible intergovernmental aid differently between the capital and operating budgets.
This dissertation answers three research questions: "What differences and similarities exist among neighborhood associations in the United States, Japan, and Seoul, South Korea?," "What are the civic roles of neighborhood associations in apartment complexes in Seoul, South Korea?," and "What factors promote neighborhood associations to play civic roles in urban governance?" To answer the first question, this research analyzes the purposes, governance structures, roles, and legal substance of neighborhood associations by reviewing previous studies, public and legal documents, court cases in the U.S., and by conducting interviews. To answer the second and the third questions, a 2016 survey, "Understanding the Roles of Neighborhood Associations in Urban Governance" was conducted with 154 representatives of neighborhood associations in Seoul. Social capital theory, government failure theory, and third party government theory were used to create hypotheses that test proposed relationships about neighborhood interactions, community characteristics, and the civic roles played by neighborhood associations. The findings show that neighborhood associations have adopted several roles including service provider, partner in public service delivery for local government, and advocate for residents in urban governance. The findings also show that social capital created by neighborhood interactions and community characteristics facilitates neighborhood associations to play civic roles in urban governance.
This dissertation attempts to answer how social and economic mechanisms operate in individual, community and state levels to impact volunteering. Both social processes and economic factors significantly impact the amount of volunteering. However, researchers have a tendency to explain volunteering only by one of these factors. As both theories are equally important in explaining volunteerism, the development of a coherent theory is necessary to combine economic and social theories. This dissertation suggested that, when evaluated together, the influences of the economic factors on volunteering diminish as individuals get more connected with the other members of the society. The three-level analysis of the volunteering largely supports the primary hypothesis of the dissertation that economic concerns for volunteering are crowded out when individuals or the society is highly connected. This finding can help practitioners design better strategies to enhance volunteering such as creating opportunities for the members of the society to interact with each other.
This dissertation uses property values to investigate the economic effect of public expenditures for operations and capital improvements on place value. Given the increasing role of nonprofit services in augmenting those of cities and school districts, the dissertation research investigates whether nonprofit expenditures join those of cities and school districts as Tiebout commodities, thereby contributing to place value. Furthermore, the research examines whether those expenditures contribute to reducing the inequities in the distribution of property wealth. The conceptual framework for the dissertation is the Tiebout model and its various extensions. The model proposes that individuals have different preferences for public goods and services, and there are many jurisdictions that vary in the services provided. Consequently, individuals shop around for the community that best matches their preferences and locate in the one that maximizes their utility. If the model correctly predicts households' behavior, then the quality of public goods and services provided by a community will affect its desirability. The more attractive a community, the higher the demand for its properties, which results in higher property values. The dissertation research finds that city public capital spending positively impacts property values in two ways. Property values respond positively to (1) the announcement of capital investments (i.e., ongoing capital expenditures), and (2) the amenity created when capital projects become operational (i.e., when operating expenditures are combined with capital stock). The results also show that nonprofit capital stock and spending on operations affect property values differently depending on the nonprofit category. The findings further reveal that local public and nonprofit spending benefit owners of lower and medium valued properties more than owners of higher valued properties. This finding suggests that local government and nonprofit spending contribute to reducing inequities in the distribution of property wealth.
The increasing demands of efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector encourage political leaders and policy makers to adopt and apply advanced techniques and solutions to overcome flaws in public organizational performance. Entrepreneurship was introduced in several Western countries as a way to improve their processes and management through adopting private sector management principles and market-oriented techniques. In 2015, Saudi Arabia announced its 2030 vision, which introduced hundreds of innovative and creative initiatives aiming to overcome issues of the turbulent environment, future oil depletion, budgetary pressures, and public demands for efficiency and effectiveness. Building on interdisciplinary perspectives, this study investigates entrepreneurial orientation among Saudi public employees from all administrative regions across the country. Building on McClelland's theory of motivation, this study hypothesizes that the motives of need for achievement, need for affiliation, and need for power are positively associated with entrepreneurial behavior. It also hypothesizes that excessive organizational hierarchy, formalization, and lack of autonomy constrain employees' entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, this study adopts a sociological perspective in proposing solutions for facilitating entrepreneurial orientation among public employees by hypothesizing that human and social capital promote an entrepreneurial orientation. Multiple regression analysis reveals that Saudi public employees with a higher level of need for achievement and need for power tend to be more entrepreneurial, while need for affiliation fails to predict entrepreneurial orientation. Furthermore, the findings suggest that a high level of hierarchy and formalization in public organizations is negatively associated to entrepreneurial orientation, while a high level of autonomy is positively associated with entrepreneurial orientation. Finally, the study finds that employees with a high level of breadth and depth of experience (human capital) are more likely to be entrepreneurial, while a high level of bonding social capital and bridging social capital promote a negative and a positive entrepreneurial orientation, respectively.
This research builds on social exchange theory and self-determination theory to better understand the relationships between employee engagement, demographic and personal attributes, and public service motivation (PSM). It hypothesizes that employee engagement and demographic and personal characteristics (education, income, gender, and parents working in civil service) will directly affect PSM. I also hypothesize that education, income, and gender will have an indirect effect and moderate the relationship between employee engagement and PSM. This dissertation uses a quantitative approach to investigate the hypotheses introduced with the conceptual model. This research uses structural equation modeling as a data analysis technique. Based on 704 valid questionnaires distributed to Saudi public employees in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, and Assir, the analysis shows that a higher level of employee engagement will lead to a higher level of public service motivation. It also reveals that a higher level of education will lead to a higher level of PSM.; the hypothesis that income positively affects PSM is not supported. Thus, this study finds that there is no significant relationship between income and PSM. Being female is found to be negatively associated with PSM. Therefore, the hypothesis that females are lower PSM than males is supported. Parents of public employees whose parents work or have worked in civil service demonstrated a high level of PSM compared with employees whose parents do not work in civil service. Regarding the moderation hypotheses, interestingly, the analysis shows that education, gender, and income do not moderate the effect of employee engagement on public service motivation.
A sizeable literature documents patterns of competition between local governments in metropolitan regions, while also exploring variation in such local government financial attributes as efficiency, budget size, fiscal disparity, and service equity, which are frequently bound together under the concept of fiscal health. However, the concept of fiscal health is broader and more sophisticated than any one fiscal measure, and empirical studies tend to focus only on multi-purpose governments. This study brings these concepts together to investigate how interlocal competition affects the fiscal health of different government types. This study answers three questions: What is a measure of fiscal health applicable to different government types? How does competition among cities and towns affect local fiscal health? How does the proliferation of special districts affect the fiscal health of local governments? This study measures the concept of fiscal health using factor analysis and examines the effects of competition among different government types on the fiscal health of both municipalities and special districts. Utilizing a pooled cross-sectional time-series approach and data from the U.S. Census Bureau for metropolitan statistical areas for every five years between 1972 and 2012,the study finds that competition among municipalities has adverse influences on the fiscal health of both municipalities and special districts, whereas interlocal competition among special districts results in improved fiscal health for special districts without a significant effect on the fiscal health of municipalities.
This dissertation aims to examine the relationship between interorganizational collaboration and the implementation of urban greening policy. Specifically, it discusses bonding and bridging relationships that explain a successful interorganizational collaboration, and to what extent these factors explain the perception of success in the implementation of public programs. The effects of risks of collaboration on the implementation of urban greening policy are also studied. To frame the analysis, this dissertation uses Feiock's institutional collective action (ICA) framework, which aims to understand successful interorganizational collaboration and policy implementation across sectors. The collection of data was carried out in Riyadh City in Saudi Arabia, which is located in the center of Saudi Arabia. In this study, the unit of analysis is the networks of relationships among organizations that work with the Royal Commission for Riyadh City (RCRC). The data were obtained from 44 organizations collaborating to implement urban greening projects in Riyadh City and were collected over 17 days from June 15, 2019 to July 2, 2019. The sampling technique used in this study was snowball sampling. The main statistical methods employed for hypothesis examination were social network analysis (SNA) and ordinary least squares (OLS). The key empirical results indicated that there were 12 major organizations most central within the network (i.e., 11 public organizations, and 1 private organization). Also, the findings revealed that among the 12 organizations, the most central organization within the network was the Ministry of Environment, Water, & Agriculture. Further, the empirical findings indicated that bonding relationships among organizations increase the levels of perceived success in the collaboration to implement urban greening projects. The results indicated that network betweenness (bridging) has no statistically significant effect on the perceived success in interorganizational collaboration. The findings revealed that the three categories of collaboration risks, coordination problems, division problems, and defection problems …
This dissertation analyzes how local governments adapt to the fiscal stress of major disasters. Unifying theories of fiscal stress with emergency management theories, the dissertation presents a model of what influences local governments coping strategy use following disasters. Using new survey data and secondary financial data on cities, counties, and school districts that experienced Hurricane Harvey, findings show that local governments adapt in a variety of ways; of 137 local governments that responded, 66 percent used some number of coping strategies, with only 5 of 62 possible strategies not being used by any local governments. For those which did adapt, they on average used 7.06 strategies, and tended to show a preference towards revenue increasing strategies and rebuilding the community through new capital projects, with less emphasis on expenditure cuts compared to some prior literature findings on fiscal stress. The results indicate that local governments step up and provide new services necessary during the recovery process, to serve their community, despite fiscal stress. A negative binomial model shows partial support for the hypotheses that local governments with lower prior fiscal condition and greater hazard exposure will use more coping strategies. The findings show mixed results on whether institutional rules that restrict financial structures lead school districts to use more coping strategies than cities during the recovery process.
This dissertation argues that the core of building smart cities is through the procurement and implementation of smart city technologies (SCTs) by either individual (i.e., smart city) or collaborative endeavors (i.e., smart governance). Given that urbanization problems (e.g., air pollution) usually spill over city boundaries, building smart cities as silos may not solve these problems. Therefore, utilizing smart governance in SCT procurement and implementation should be a better approach. Considering the potential benefits of smart governance, this dissertation addresses three overarching questions: (1) What is a smart city? (2) What is smart governance? and (3) Why do some cities choose to participate in smart governance while others do not? By developing a typology of smart governance, this dissertation categorizes three levels of smart governance based on cities' participation in cooperative procurement and implementation of SCTs. Data collected from the 2019 Smart Governance Survey confirm that the level of smart governance does vary among Texas cities. Applying transaction costs and institutional collective action (ICA) frameworks, the dissertation finds that public managers' perceptions on transaction costs and joint gains as well as cities' extant ICA mechanisms affect cities' participation in smart governance.
This research studied the relationship between social capital and household resilience. In particular, how bonding and bridging relationships affect household resilience was the question selected to illustrate this relationship between social capital and household resilience. Moreover, how the vulnerability of household impacts household resilience was also empirically examined. Social capital theory and vulnerability paradigm studies were used to discover explanations for why and how social connectedness and social vulnerabilities impact household resilience. Survey questionnaires were used to collect data in the main two cities in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh and Jeddah. A cross-sectional design was used to collect data. Statistical descriptions and inferences were conducted. In fact, multiple linear regression, T-test, and one way ANOVA were the three principal technics used to make statistical inferences. This study empirically found evidence there are relationships between bonding relationships and household resilience, and also relationships between the economic level of the household and household resilience. However, no evidence was found for relationships between bridging relationships and household resilience, or between other vulnerability factors and household resilience. Other vulnerability factors included gender, minority group, and language.
This dissertation examines the association between independent governance structure and various measures of good governance. The evaluation draws on observations of a dataset of 101 Texas public charities, in particular the organization's self-disclosed governance-related activities as reflected in the transparency, monitoring, and strategic tools available to the public. The study reveals that two measures of good governance are associated with an identified independent governance structure at the organizational level. In managing the governance of the organization, the study finds evidence that less emphasis is placed on the constituted strategic direction clauses listed in the articles of incorporation of the organization. The research suggests that each of the fiduciary stewardship concerns need to be addressed by the legal governing body in order to fulfill good governance as an outcome quality measure.
The current study projects the third-person perception phenomenon into the area of emergency management, specifically regarding risk communication in the context of religious gatherings. This study utilized the Umrah religious gathering in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, during summer 2019 as a case study (N = 257). This study aimed to investigate whether pilgrims perceive there was a greater effect of health information on others than on themselves. Survey results were translated and then coded and analyzed statistically using SPSS software. The findings indicated that third-person perception existed among pilgrims. Specifically, the perception of pilgrims that the influence of news about MERS-CoV, believed to be undesirable in its effect on themselves, was greater on others than on themselves was found statistically significant. Further, the findings indicated that the more pilgrims watched, listened to, or read news about MERS-CoV, the larger the effect of the news they perceived on themselves and others was. Thus, exposure to MERS-CoV news did not increase, but rather decreased the perception of difference between self and others. Also, the empirical findings indicated that pilgrims who were knowledgeable about MERS-CoV could relate to the coverage. Moreover, if pilgrims believed they were affected by MERS-CoV news, they believed that the MERS-CoV news had a similar or greater effect on other pilgrims. The findings indicated socio-demographics had a partial effect on third-person perception, Finally, the stronger the perceived effect of MERS-CoV news on oneself, the more likely these pilgrims were to take protective actions against the MERS-CoV epidemic. However, the third-person perception anticipated in the use of impersonal communication (pamphlets, television, radio, newspapers, Internet, social media, text message, health clinics, mosques messages, public events, and billboards) and of interpersonal communication (friends, family member, or others you know) was not found significant. Moreover, the perceived effects of MERS-CoV news on others did …
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