This study explores the demand and supply oriented factors that may contribute to the size of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. communities. This research tests demand theory, which indicated that nonprofit organizations grow more in communities where large service demand exists and when there is a service gap between community demand and government service supply. On the other hand, supply theories contend that nonprofit organizations are prevalent where a community carries the supply of human capital and financial resources and these supply of human and economic capital will mobilize nonprofit organizations to fulfill civic duties. For the scientific test of demand and supply theories, this study employs hierarchical linear model (HLM) and develops a longitudinal data set from multiple sources such as Department of Housing and Urban Development and National Charitable Center for Statistics, and Census. The proposed model analyzes how demand and supply indicators explain homeless serving nonprofit organizations size. The size of homeless service nonprofit was measured by three indicators: number of nonprofits, revenue of nonprofits and number of shelter beds. The findings of HLM analyses confirmed some of demand and supply factors that contribute homeless service nonprofit size. The communities with higher level of chronic homeless population …

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.

One key to reducing terrorism may be to understand why individuals join terror groups, and to find ways to meet their needs through alternatives to discourage membership in terrorist organizations. The study introduces the hierarchy of needs framework to capture all previous pieces of explanations on why individuals join terror groups under one big umbrella, in order to see the big picture. It does not do a meta-analysis, but rather tests the framework. This study is designed to find out what perceived needs commonly motivate individuals to join terror groups in general and specific terror groups in particular. The research uses Turkey's terrorism experience as a case study which is supported with data from real terrorist in Turkey. Findings of the descriptive analyses show that majority joined a terror group due to social and affiliative needs. The remaining analyses (bivariate, cross-tabulation and binary logistic regression) show that confitents who perceived esteem and recognition were more likely to become members of other/leftist terror groups, and that rightist terror group members in Turkey tend to have higher education. Education mainly affects a confitent's perception of two needs: social and affiliation and self-actualization. Other demographic variables (age group, region of birth, marital status) …

To effectively provide services to citizens, local governments have had to be creative. One approach has been the creation of volunteer programs to meet demands and expanding needs. Volunteer programs hold promise for creating meaningful engagement opportunities for citizens. However, limited organizational capacity, inadequate volunteer management practices, and difficulties in maintaining volunteer retention are concerns plaguing local government volunteer programs. Volunteer programs are often structured around a set of best practices thought to be necessary for ensuring the retention of volunteers. To apply best practices across the board would suggest that local government volunteer programs are similar in organizational structure, budget size, amount of citizen engagement, accountability concerns, and that they adopt similar bureaucratic procedures. Using human relations and bureaucratic theories as theoretical frameworks, four research questions are asked and answered: 1) What are the managerial and political challenges in volunteer management and retention for local government volunteer coordinators?, 2) What challenges are local governments' volunteer coordinators facing in using volunteer management practices?, 3) What strategies are helpful in retaining volunteers in local government volunteerism?, and 4) What challenges do local government volunteer coordinators face in engaging citizens? Data collection for this qualitative study was conducted using online surveys and …

This dissertation examines the impact of city-level characteristics (immigration-friendliness index, unemployment rate, and the percentage of Democrat Party votes) on the psychological resiliency of Latino immigrants. In the light of increased attention on the immigrant issue throughout the world, this study aims to develop our understanding of the factors that have the effect on the resiliency of immigrant populations. This dissertation examines these different characteristics by examining five different cities in Texas: Austin, Dallas, Fort-Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. The survey was distributed through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to those individuals who define themselves Hispanic or Latino. Results suggest that the city characteristics have a significant impact on the resiliency of Latino immigrants suggesting that local governments have a potential capability to increase the resiliency of the immigrant groups in the United States by embracing the notion that immigrants should be integrated into the fabric of the local community.

Why do megachurches participate in economic development, and who benefits from their participation? Frumkin's framework for understanding nonprofit and voluntary action and extra-role behavior are theories tested to answer these questions. My research employs a mixed-methods research design conducted in two phases. In phase one, I analyze 42 responses to an online survey to provide data about the prevalence and nature of economic development activities offered by megachurches in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Phase two involved 23 semi-structured telephone interviews with megachurch leadership to provide data that explains the rationale for why megachurches offer economic development activities and who benefits. Evidence from this research demonstrates that megachurches are participating in economic development for reasons consistent with both demand-side and supply-side arguments. Findings also show that megachurches take on extra-role behaviors for in response to community expectations and the values of members and staff. Implications for understanding partnership decisions and collaborations between faith-based organizations and local governments are discussed.

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 …

Successful service coordination for the homeless depends on the ability of diverse organizations to effectively collaborate. This study utilizes a life-cycle framework to expand on the collaborative governance theory by highlighting the different stages of collaboration that homeless service networks encounter. Activation, collectivity, and institutionalization are three stages used to uncover the unique nature of emergency discharge planning processes. Since collaboration is not a static process and government regulation for emergency discharge plans were recently enacted in 2012, collaborative networks encounter challenges and success factors at different stages. A qualitative case-study approach of organizational leaders in homeless service networks in Texas (Dallas, Ft. Worth and Houston) examines stages of collaboration. Results show common success and challenge factors identified among the three networks, but the factors take on different forms in relation to where the networks are at in the coordination stages. Practitioners can use the findings from this study as a guide to set up benchmarks and measurable objectives to identify strengths and weaknesses in their coordination processes.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is the primary public agency responsible for providing housing subsidies to low-income households. The Home Choice Voucher Program (HCVP) is currently the most significant housing subsidy. The voucher can be transferred to any location where the landlord is registered with the local housing agency to participate in the program. The mobility of the voucher is designed to decrease concentrations of low-income households in areas that lack economic, educational, and social opportunities. The results of the study found that race and income have a strong negative impact on the percentage of subsidized households and rental units. The findings also show that median area rents have a negative impact on subsidized households, while home values have a negative impact on subsidized rental units. There are more subsidized households and rental units in highly populated with many households living in areas with more transit stops. finally, the data showed that jobs paying under $3,333 per month had a negative impact on the percentage of subsidized housing units. These outcomes can provide insight for HUD and public housing agencies to assist in the utilization of subsidies and encourage more landlord participation to add units to the current …

Although governments try to create strict policies and regulations to prevent abuses, use of excessive force is still a problem for almost every country including Turkey. This study is intended to help Turkish National Police administrators to understand and prevent police use of excessive force. Studies on police brutality categorize three factors that explain why police officers use excessive force; these are individual, situational and organizational. In addition to brutality theories, job satisfaction literature is examined in this study to understand the use of excessive force. Job satisfaction is found to be related with burnout, turnover, stress, commitment, and performance. The impact of officers' attitude toward the criminal justice system and/or laws has not been tested widely. Police officers attitudes toward human rights laws are examined in this study to measure its impact on attitude toward use of excessive force. A secondary data collected in Turkey are analyzed by structural equation modeling which provides confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, and causal relationships between variables. It is found that police officers' attitude toward human rights laws is a significant predictor of their attitudes toward use of excessive force. Job satisfaction and education level are the other significant variables affecting attitude toward …

As a form of tax and expenditure limitations, property tax exemptions result in an utility gap between two groups of population residing in the same community: free-riders who are paying less than they receive and contributors who are paying more than they receive. This utility gap is problematic to municipalities because contributors may exit the city as this gap becomes wider. How do municipalities respond to the increasing amount of property tax exemptions? Using 41 Texas cities data from 2000 to 2016, this dissertation examines how property tax exemptions affect municipalities' fiscal behavior. The analysis indicates that property tax exemptions lead to higher property tax burden, change municipalities' revenue structure, and lead to less capital spending.

The study is undertaken for a more compressive understanding for organizational theory and its applicability to tendency towards improvisation during emergency times among individuals in Non Profit Organizations (NPOs) in Saudi Arabia. The analysis involved an examination of direct effect of learning on tendency towards improvisation and possible mediating effects between organizational learning and tendency towards improvisation among individuals in NPOs, while controlling for key demographic differences (e.g. individuals’ age, education level and years in service, number of full-time staff and volunteers). Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to full-time employees in 13 NPOs in three cities in the western area of Saudi Arabia, namely Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah (N= 304). The main statistical method employed to hypotheses examination was Structural Equation Modeling. The hypothesis examination resulted in three out of five hypnotized paths are to be significant. Two direct relations were interpreted as outcomes of organizational learning, with increases in the level of organizational learning is being positively related to individuals’ self –efficacy and agility. The third significant path interpreted as individuals’ agility is positively related to their tendency to improvise during emergency times, which indicates organizational learning has indirect effect on tendency towards improvisation. Finally, the applicability of organizational learning …

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 …

Citizen involvement in the production and delivery of public service has been a long time topic of interest and controversial debate among scholars. Essentially, the belief has been that if citizens are actively involved in the process, public organizations and communities benefit in numerous ways that will ultimately lead to increased citizen satisfaction. The purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between citizen involvement in the production of public safety and security and its effects on organizational efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. To test the assumption that citizen involvement is positively correlated to organizational success and organizational efficiency of law enforcement agencies, a citizen involvement index was developed and used as the independent variable in ordinary least square regression (OLS) analysis. Three separate models are developed to measure the impact of citizen involvement on law enforcement. Findings obtained through bivariate and multivariate analyses indicate mixed results. Bivariate analysis revealed that citizen involvement was negatively correlated to organizational efficiency while no statistically significant correlation was found in multiple regressions. In addition, through bivariate analyses, citizen involvement was positively correlated with crime rates reported to city police departments, whereas multivariate regression analyses indicated that citizen involvement does not …

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 …