The dissertation examines factors influencing nonprofit organizations' contribution to collaborative governance for climate change adaptation and nonprofit roles in the collaboration. Why an organization collaborates with others has long been a concern of scholars. However, in a majority of empirical studies, collaboration has been considered as a dichotomous concept. To fill the gap, this study considers organizations' contribution to collaboration, i.e., collaboration level in terms of power, joint activities, human resource, funding, and information sharing. To understand contribution of nonprofits to collaboration for climate change adaptation, this research employs the institutional collective action framework suggesting that organizations work together when expected benefits are greater than collaborative risks. Survey data from 101 nonprofit private organizations (beyoungri mingan danche) in South Korea, which are legally defined in the Assistance for Nonprofit, Nongovernmental Organizations Act, are analyzed. Finding is that government funding and social relationship are strongly associated with nonprofit contribution to collaboration, highlighting that the financial stability of nonprofit organizations and mutual trust among entities based on routine interaction are critical motives for nonprofit collaboration. Finding also reveals that Korean nonprofits mainly play a role as social capital creators in climate change adaptation. The finding also highlights that Sang Bu Sang Jo …

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.

The dissertation investigates the form of network governance in the context of U.S. homeless service networks (namely continuum of care programs; CoCs). This research examines CoC homeless service networks by applying the institutional collective action (ICA) perspectives to understand the forms of network governance as a reflection of network context. The ICA perspective has been applied to understand the rational behavior of network members for the network governance form to mitigate the collective action problems. The ICA perspective helps understand why network members accept specific governance structures with their expectation to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs and uncertainty in their process of collaboration. This dissertation uses the data of CoC networks and point in time data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2019 and Census. The data developed for this study offers the homeless incidences, geographical characteristics, and governance structure based on the contact information. For an in-depth understanding, interview by CoC leaders was integrated. This dissertation consists of four essays about 1) Literature review on network governance and the theoretical argument in the ICA framework, 2) Background and network governance of the U.S. homeless service networks, 3) Factors affecting the choice of network …

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 …

Local government in the United States have been collaborating across institutional boundaries, collaborating with other local government to share their resources in the delivery of goods and services in their communities. Although local governments have collaborated for a long time, mixed analysis resulted on which form of government is most effective in the delivery of goods and services based on structure and stability of their financial conditions. This dissertation introduces technology as a key component in the collaborative process in implementing smart initiatives among communities. This dissertation uses surveys conducted from ICMA and Smart City Council, 2016, and a case study comparing two smart cities to test the hypotheses; which structure of government is more effective and whether an increase in financial condition encourages more collaborative efforts. The data reveals that the council-manager form of government is more efficient, however, in contrast, to the case study which indicated that both forms of government were efficient in implementing smart initiatives, however, differences in collaborative efforts were seen based on structure. The results of this analysis provide significant new information for both scholars and practitioners.

This dissertation argues that stormwater management is fragmented both at that vertical fragmentation (at the level of intergovernmental relations) and horizontal fragmentation (within the level of governments). The first essay focuses on the institutional arrangements used by states to implement stormwater management policies. Building on the race to the bottom literature, I examine the impact of the institutional arrangement centralization on state water quality in California, Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota. A five-year (2013-2018) permitting cycle was used to analyze five dimensions: formalism, coercion, education, prioritization, and accommodation.There is an inverse relationship between the quality of stormwater and the degree of centralization in the institutional arrangements adopted by state governments to implement their stormwater management policies. The second essay focuses on a local government's decision to join an inter-local agreement to comply with federal/state stormwater management policies. Building on the transaction cost framework, the study used a cross-sectional design to analyze a case study. The case study consists of 119 cities subjected to stormwater regulation requirements in northern Texas during 2017. The dependent variable is the membership of the regional inter-local agreement, and the independent variables are the number of neighboring cities and population density. Community wealth, public works spending, stormwater …