College for Design and Social Inquiry

Most of the debate within public budgeting has centered on whether the incremental or non-incremental approach is best. In a theoretical context, little attention has been paid to the actual execution of an entity's budget. Specific theoretical objectives must be met for execution to take place: the objectives have been arranged in different ways, yet the basic requirements have remained constant. The dissertation compared these established theoretical objectives with actual budget execution; it concentrated on whether actual budgeting practice met the requirements of budget execution as depicted in normative theory. The research question asked to what extent is practice consistent with theory. The reality of budget practice was determined through survey responses. The questions were based on the procedures required for carrying out the theoretical objectives of execution. Surveys were sent to budget practitioners within the two-county area in southeast Florida. These individuals are responsible for public sector budgeting within their various entities on a state, county, and local level. The survey asked for the respondents perceptions of actual practice as it related to budget execution within their entity. The individual responses were evaluated and analyzed. Factor Analysis was used to determine the loading of eleven specific objectives. The patterns created by the factor loading were explored; it established how the objectives were viewed and whether there was a monolithic approach to execution. The results of the factor loading suggested that, in practice, budget objectives are not recognized as a cohesive process. Theory failed to match actual budget execution. Established procedures found in theory are only partially recognized by those who practice budgeting. A chi-square analysis of the survey results were examined to establish internal validity of the survey instrument and determine whether the responses were influenced by the independent variables. The results of the chi-square failed to note any influence on the responses.

Internet technologies provide a criminal opportunity for stock manipulation and fraud that costs investors millions of dollars every day. In order to reduce this loss and craft policies and procedures to deter future losses, securities regulators have been seeking to understand the process of Internet securities fraud, including the actions of investors and fraudsters that contribute to that process. The purpose of this study is to determine the properties of the Internet communication environment associated with fraudulent stock schemes in order to contribute to these efforts of securities regulators. In addition, an aim of this study is to introduce Foucault's concept of power/knowledge as a means for theory development in the fields of finance, criminology and public administration that specifically addresses manipulation and fraud in the stock market.

The complex problems of the twenty-first century cannot be effectively addressed with twentieth century top-down bureaucratic governance alone because of limited stakeholder participation in collective decision making and/or implementation. The somewhat limited stakeholder participation in the policy process, especially, that of target populations, can impact generating viable solutions to complex problems. Collaborative governance has emerged as a promising alternative to traditional management in addressing contemporary complex problems. Collaborative governance is thus a type of governance that promotes joint participation of state and non-state stakeholders in decision making and/or implementation by using agreed upon processes of engagement to collectively address problems. Such governance is especially beneficial for addressing the challenges posed by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). This dissertation uses the collaborative governance concept to explicate the efforts of HIV Health Services Planning Councils in Broward County and Palm Beach County of South Florida with the purpose of accentuating how collaborative governance works in providing various categories of services to meet the needs of people with AIDS (PWAs), as part of the implementation of the Ryan White CARE Act. The study focuses on critical variables of collaborative governance such as facilitative leadership and institutional design, the collaborative process variables such as trust building, commitment to the process and shared understanding, and outputs such as allocation priorities of the Councils. This study employed mixed methods in collecting data from various relevant sources.

This dissertation examines administrative roles within the context of everyday public administration. Specifically, it studies the relationship between administrative roles assumed by public administrators and (1) the perceived presence of administrative discretion, (2) individual level beliefs regarding involvement in policy formulation and (3) tenure with organization. This dissertation has a three-fold purpose. First, it delineates the types of roles assumed by public procurement specialists. Second, it tests whether administrative discretion, beliefs regarding participation in policy formulation and organizational tenure are significant in explaining the assumption of certain types of roles. Finally, the dissertation evaluates the implications for the public procurement process of the predominance of certain roles. vi The theoretical logic for this dissertation draws on the theory of representative bureaucracy and role theory. ... It is found that administrative discretion, individual expectations and organizational tenure are indeed important predictors of the assumption of administrative roles. Administrators who believe that they have access to relatively high levels of discretion and those who believe they should be involved in policy formulation are more likely to assume a representative type role. On the other hand, with increased tenure public administrators are less likely to assume a representative type role.

Intimate spaces play a key role in the development of human identity, constructing identity through an internalized experience of the house itself. Building on Bachelard's theories in The Poetics of Space, I argue that characters in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World gain a new awareness of self after experiencing nature as a substitute for the house. The emergence of a new identity occurs because nature offers protection from the forces that inhibit both D-503 and Keran's individual growth ; it offers the safety of the house that neither character is allowed in a private home : D-503 because of the panoptic space of the One state and Kerans due to the nature of the changing circumstances of the environment and his own biology that force him to accept his role as a "new" human and the jungle as "home".

This study used Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II, Form C to examine the preference for conflict management styles among Saudi and American faculty members. Additionally, the study examined the relationships between conflict management styles and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and propensity to leave the job. A random sample that consisted of (N = 300) faculty members was drawn evenly from Al-Baha University (BU) and Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to examine whether or not there are differences between American and Saudi faculty members in their conflict management styles. Nationality was used as the factor, and the five conflict management styles (Integrating, Obliging, Dominating, Avoiding, and Compromising) were entered as dependent variables. The level of significance was 0.05. Additionally, Pearson's correlation was used to determine if a statistically significant relationship exists between the five conflict management styles and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and propensity to leave the job. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Findings indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in conflict management styles between Saudi and American faculty members. Furthermore there were no significant correlations between any of the conflict management styles and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and propensity to leave the job. Results were discussed in light of literature review. Practical implications, limitations of the study, and recommendations were provided.

The current economic crisis has affected all aspects of life, which has resulted in political instability, personal financial troubles, and a growing number of business bankruptcies. While these are serious issues, simply developoing a government policy that injects an economy with money is not an appropriate means to achieve economic recovery and long-term economic development unless combined with an effective and efficient governing system. The present research studies whether the strong relationship between governance and growth exists during economic crises or only during non-crisis periods. The results of the current research show that the global economic crisis has had an influence on the relationship between governance and economic growth. In addition, this study found that different levels of development affect the relationship between governance and growth differently during times of crisis. Consequently, the results of the current research show the instability in the relationship between governance and economic growth during the economic crisis ; this unsteadiness is a sign of the need for long-term strategies to promote global and national good governance practices that are not adversely affected by crises.

Recently, empirical attention has been directed toward understanding public opinion about gun control laws. Despite this focus, three gaps are evident in extant scholarship. First, few current examinations have relied on recently collected, national data to explore predictors of public attitudes. Second, relatively little work systematically investigates whether type of weapon bans (e.g. handgun versus semi-automatic weapon) affects public support for a given gun control initiative. Third, and importantly, the general focus in prediction support for gun control measures has been on social and demographic factors. Little is known from a theoretical perspective about how other variables - such as knowledge of Constitutinal issues or perceptions of the U.S. Supreme Court - affect public attitudes toward gun control. Using national poll data collected in 2011 by Time magazine, this study addresses these research gaps by estimating several logistic regression analyses. Research and policy implications are discussed.

In recent years behaviroal management literature has created and utilized the concept of group emotional intelligence in work groups and work teams. This dissertation is a re-conceptualization and an empirical analysis of group emotional intelligence in the context of public administration work groups. This dissertation proposes a new conceptualization of GEI and utilizes it for the empirical measurement of GEI. By critically reviewing previous theoretical and empirical literature on group level phenomena and their measurement, this dissertation offers a re-conceptualization of group emotional intelligence. it also defines group emotional intelligence (GEI), creates a model for GEI, provides an empirical means of measuring (GEI) and demonstrates how GEI in groups can afect group performance and group learning ability.

The relationship between Public Administration and the people is one that requires legitimacy and compromise in order to solve complex problems. Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their families during the last fifty years have put forth an agenda that calls for the advancement of rights for the disabled and more integration into the larger society. In this arena, government, with post civil rights legislation like the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), plays a huge role in promoting social awareness and bringing down barriers of stigmatization, understanding, and access. This struggle is fought on many fronts. A significant part of the effort focuses on moving the locus of long-term care of the disabled, including the IDD population, from an institutional setting to the least restrictive setting that will foster social ties and integration. Since the early 1980s as part of this effort to deinstitutionalize the disabled, legislation at both the federal and state level has supported and incentivized the creation of Home and Community Based Service (HCBS) programs. HCBS waivers, as they are typically called, are also promoted as a means of containing government expenditures for long-term care. However, the effectiveness of these waivers is poorly understood. The critical questions being - Do HCBS waivers promote and create an environment that increases awareness of the needs of IDD individuals? Do the programs help reduce stigmatization, promote understanding, and increase access to services and activities that foster social interaction? Or, do HCBS waivers create a new "iron cage" where the intellectually or developmentally disabled are once again relegated to existing as second class citizens? In this research, programs are mapped and then evaluated to paint a better picture of how HCBS waivers change long-term care.