This dissertation examines the impact of major hurricanes on changes in GDP for counties in four states – Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. The analysis examines the effectiveness of intergovernmental financing for major hurricanes between 2000 and 2014. It also examines whether institutional proximity of the disaster management function to the Governor's Office and the career status of the director affect the speed of recovery from the disaster. The analysis also assesses the impact that a counties's prior experience at dealing with disasters has on the speed of recovery.

Evacuation is oftentimes the best means to prevent the loss of lives when residents encounter certain hazards, such as hurricanes. Emergency managers and experts make great efforts to increase evacuation compliance but risk area residents may procrastinate even after making the decision to leave, thus complicating response activities. Purpose - This study explores the factors determining evacuees’ mobilization periods, defined here as, the delay time between the decision to evacuate and actual evacuation. The theoretical model that guides this research is built on the protective action decision model (PADM). It captures both the social and psychological factors in the process of transferring risk information to mobilization action. The psychological process of risk communication originates from personalized external information and ends with the formation of risk perception, ultimately influencing evacuees’ mobilizations. Design/methodology/approach – Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the model is tested using survey data collected from Hurricane Rita (2005) evacuees in 2006 (N = 897). The residents of three Texas coastal counties (Harris, Brazoria, and Galveston) are randomly selected and telephone-interviewed. Findings – The findings indicate that mobilizations are affected directly by respondents’ concerns of the threats to their personal lives and costs and dangers on their evacuation trips. The …

In our society, American citizens expect public policies to result in programs that address social problems in ways that are both efficient and effective. In order to judge if these two values are being achieved, public programs are often scrutinized through program monitoring and evaluation. Evaluation of public programs often is a responsibility delegated to local-level managers. The resulting discretion has to be balanced with the need for accountability that is also inherent in public programs. Evaluation is often difficult because outcomes are not readily measurable due to the complexity of the problems faced in the public setting. The Upward Bound program provides an example of this. Upward Bound provides services to students from low-income families and those in which neither parent holds a bachelor’s degree in order to increase the rate at which participants complete secondary education and enroll in and graduate from postsecondary institutions. Upward Bound is implemented and evaluated based upon specifications decided upon at the local level. This discretion granted to local level managers has resulted in wide variations in the way the program is being evaluated. This presents a problem for evaluation and has resulted in inconclusive results as to the success of the program. …

The primary purpose of this research program is to confirm the spontaneous planning behavior in post-disaster operations while at the same time contribute to the development of the concept in a tornado type disaster. An additional goal also includes examining how the process takes place in resolving unanticipated problems as a disaster unfolds. This study uses qualitative methodology which is case study to probe the concept of spontaneous planning behavior to solve unexpected challenges as a disaster develops. Specifically, semi-structured, open-ended questions were utilized to collect data from stakeholders in eleven functional organizations in three impacted cities during the North Texas April 3, 2012, tornadoes. Findings indicate that debris removal and ensuring public safety, search and rescue, securing damaged neighborhoods, activation of emergency operations centers, damage assessment, restoration of communication system, public relations and media, and volunteer and donation management activities appear to have benefited from spontaneous planning behavior. Further findings suggest that the driving forces behind the phenomenon were gathering valuable new information, learning opportunity within the disaster, relative freedom and significant high degree of discretion, response was innovative with flexibility, and solutions waiting for problems features proposed in the integrated decision-making model (IDMM). However, it was uncovered that …

This study was an assessment of governmental expenditures for human resource programs on economic and social development in Jordan from 1948 to 1988. An assessment was made of the impact of governmental expenditures for education, health, and welfare on the growth of the economy as measured by gross national product (GNP) and the quality of life as measured by the physical quality of life index (PQLI). The major purpose of the investigation was to provide policy makers with an alternative way of assessing the influence of governmental expenditures on development.

As the American population ages, the issues of aging and work have gradually come to the forefront. An older and increasingly diverse workforce has raised concerns over job performance, labor costs, and alternative work demands. At the same time, evidence indicates that older workers continue to experience extensive labor market problems due to false assumptions on the part of managers about the limiting effect of age on employee performance. The public sector's ability to respond to age-related issues in the workplace has largely been ignored by both public practitioners and researchers. This study addresses the questions of whether age negatively influences public personnel decisions, and if so, whether such influences adversely affect the treatment of older workers. The results of the survey indicate that public managers are susceptible to age bias when making personnel decisions.

This dissertation explores how cities achieve fiscal sustainability—the financial capacity to consistently meet basic public service responsibilities regardless of economic conditions. Two research questions arise from the interplay between the local economy and fiscal sustainability. First, what management tools do cities use to achieve fiscal sustainability given that economic conditions are largely outside their control? Second, what explains the variation among cities in the financial management tools used to achieve fiscal sustainability? The financial management tools of interest in this study are revenue diversity and the size of the fund balance. It is conjectured that financial management tools interact with each other prompting the tools to function as policy substitutes for each other. Cities achieve fiscal sustainability by strategically choosing budget-balancing tools appropriate to their economic conditions. The study utilizes a cross-state comparison from 351 Massachusetts municipal governments using panel data from 2000 to 2009 and 993 New York municipal governments using panel data from 2001 to 2010. Using theories of fiscal sustainability and revenue diversification, several models are proposed that test the interactive effects of fund balance size and revenue diversity on fiscal sustainability. The results from the empirical analyses show that cities use various financial management tools to …

Civil society emphasizes the importance for citizens to be involved and developed in association with other people. The importance of socialization for citizens to learn civic values and develop virtues of tolerance and solidarity is generated by voluntary associations. Mediating structures are the entities that help to integrate disconnected elements of civil society and strengthen communities. Social capital is one of the elements that is actively utilized by mediating structures to connect people to, and get involved with others in mobilizing their efforts collectively for both public and private causes through volunteering. Traditionally only charitable nonprofits were perceived to be mediating structures. However, there are scattered examples of non-charitable professional membership 501(c)(6) associations engaging themselves and their members in social programs and community volunteering unaccountable for in the literature. Using the theories of mediating structures and social capital this research questions the assumption of limited applicability of mediating structures. Extensive empirical analysis of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) dataset is performed to determine how social capital and other organizational factors affect the performance of mediating roles by professional membership associations.

Disputes between patients and providers regarding life-sustaining medical treatment (LSMT) are universal across all U.S. states, yet policies regarding these disputes differ significantly. This dissertation determines that all 50 states have advance directive laws that protect a patient’s right to refuse LSMT even when a healthcare provider objects, yet only some states have policies that protect the patient’s right to choose to continue LSMT when a healthcare provider objects (a dispute known as medical futility). Some states have pro-patient laws that protect the patient’s right to make the final decision, while other states have enacted pro-provider medical futility policies that explicitly grant the provider authority to remove LSMT against the patient’s wishes. Finally, in one state, the law delegates the final decision to a third-party: institutional healthcare ethics committees. This dissertation studies the innovation and adoption of these 17 state medical futility policies, examining the theory that values determine both whether the state adopts a medical futility policy as well as what type of medical futility policy a state will adopt- as the policy actors that represent these values: policy entrepreneurs and interest groups. A comparative case study of successful third-party policy adoption in Texas contrasted against a failed effort …

This study investigated the perceptions of emergency managers regarding the degree of emergency management professionalism in Mexico and how it can be improved. The disaster of the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 was used as the starting point for this case study, as the prospects for more-frequent and more-intense disasters lend credence to the need for improved professionalism and, thus, effectiveness among emergency managers in the future. An expansive framework of emergency management professionalism mechanisms (or characteristics) and an additional compilation of new public management components (or values) were devised from the extant literatures found within the respective emergency management and public administration fields. The theory advanced by this study is that by integrating new public management components with emergency management mechanisms, professionalism in Mexico will improve and, thus, emergency managers will become more effective. ualitative field research was the methodology employed and it included interviews with 35 emergency managers in Mexico in corroboration with documentary evidence, to ascertain emergency managers' perceptions of professionalism in Mexico. The findings of this study determined that emergency managers in Mexico are implementing many of the mechanisms of professionalism but fewer new public management components. This study posits that by integrating new public management …

This work explores the relationship between municipal government debt and revenue diversification using a prism of institutional and fiscal interactions, concentrating on revenue fungibility effects over time and on the role of state-imposed constraints. A diversified revenue structure tends to stabilize revenue levels by balancing income-elastic and inelastic revenue sources. The impact of such diversity has been the subject of much research on expenditure and service levels among state and local governments. Considerably less research has been conducted on its potential relationship with debt, although capital financing is a necessary and often-utilized mechanism for funding capital and operational spending for local governments. Since it is well known that debt payments are fixed in the short run, they require sufficient revenue adequacy through economic highs and lows. It is thus argued that local governments with more diversified revenue structures are better able to utilize debt financing since revenue diversity mitigates the risk of borrowing by providing for greater fiscal predictability in the long run. This hypothesis is tested on two samples - a large sample of cities in Massachusetts from 2000 through 2009, as well as a cross-state sample, encompassing the cities from the majority of U.S. states. The findings of …