School of Public Administration

The link between organizational theory and its application in practice is explored in this research through the lens of Peircian semiotics. An investigation is conducted of how organizations convey their culture through mission and vision statements and the reflection of these statements within New Institutionalism. Through the use of a novel computational model that merges quantitative analysis with traditional qualitative methods, this study evaluates the relevance and effectiveness of institutional theories. The three main schools of New Institutionalism—rational choice, historical, and sociological institutionalism —are examined to determine how well municipal mission and vision statements align with the theories' principles. The analysis interprets organizational communications identifying similarities or differences between theoretical concepts and the expressions of found organizational culture. The findings produced by the analyses offer insights into the relationship between theory and practice. It highlights the challenges in interpreting the intended meanings behind organizational communications, as well as, the practical utility of theoretical models for organizational behavior. This study contributes to the organizational theory library by introducing a new methodological approach to examine and compare institutional theories and the communicative strategies.

Policy formation involves an interplay of decision-making processes that shape all policy process stages. A critical aspect of the design process is selecting policy tools to align with policy goals. The First Step Act (FSA) (2018) aims to reduce recidivism and reform sentencing through a robust policy tool portfolio. However, questions persist about how policy tools are selected. This dissertation evaluates the policy design, tool choices, and collaborative networks associated with these choices. Grounded in the social construction framework and using content analysis and discourse network analysis (DNA), this dissertation examines how policymakers select policy tools to achieve functionality.
Research question one explores the complementarity of the FSA’s policy tool portfolio, and results demonstrate alignment between policy goals and corresponding policy tools. Research question two examines how social constructions of target populations and political affiliations influence policy tool choices; hypothesis one reveals that liberal policymakers align with those with similar political affiliations. Results from hypothesis two indicate liberal policymakers adopt a rehabilitation orientation tool approach, viewing target populations as investments and deserving of support structures. The findings also highlight limited interaction with government agency officials, reflecting a need to incorporate more administrative voices into legislative discourse.

For more than two decades Congress has failed to pass the DREAM Act, a legislation intended to secure a pathway to legal status for undocumented youth brought to the United States as children. Within the broader U.S. immigration domain, the case of the DREAMers (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) is particularly apt for exploring the dynamics of the policymaking process. Bringing together the theoretical framework of the Multiple Streams (MSF) and the methodology of the Narrative Policy Analysis (NPA) this research illuminates how narrative construction affects policy action. This dissertation integrates the two frameworks through collection and analysis of opposing policy narratives of legislators and other stakeholders involved in immigration policy debates over a twelve-year period.
To advance this research objective, this study sought to understand how problem framing affects policy making, how competing policy coalitions construct policy narratives regarding immigration, and how immigration policy narratives affect the enactment of legislation. In addition, extending the critical examination of the narratives of opposing coalitions illuminates how political and professional elites use language to reinforce existing power structures and advance divergent views of immigration.

As cities respond to accelerating climate impacts, scholars have identified climate gentrification as a phenomenon exerting displacement pressures on low-income communities, including ethnic enclaves. While climate gentrification pathways literature primarily addresses economic causes and effects, an opportunity exists to better understand policy contributions and social impacts surrounding resilience and displacement.
For this dissertation project, I expanded the concept of climate gentrification pathways to examine connections between displacement, resilience strategies, and urban planning. Using an interpretive approach, I explored how an ethnic enclave experienced and responded to displacement pressures, especially regarding social impacts related to (climate) gentrification. In addition, this project compared resilience and planning policies and strategies discourse with community discourse related to climate gentrification.

In this dissertation, I examined the lived experiences of people experiencing homelessness (PEH) and their perceptions of protective actions when making evacuation decisions during disasters or extreme weather events. Compared to other members of society, individuals experiencing homelessness during disasters face unique challenges, including a lack of shelter, transportation, access to news, and the need to carry all their belongings. This vulnerability is further heightened when natural disasters occur, as they lack physical protection, leading to increased exposure to hazards and adverse weather effects.
The literature on homeless evacuation decision-making is limited (Donley & Wright, 2012), and the direct experiences of PEH and their decision-making processes during natural disasters remain underexplored (Brookfield & Fitzgerald, 2018; Brown et al., 2013; Every & Thompson, 2014; Gaillard et al., 2019; Settembrino, 2017). Additionally, the unsafe living conditions of PEH, coupled with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 virus, posed unique challenges for homeless communities, increasing the risk of virus transmission and exacerbating social disparities.
In this study, I explored PEH’s lived experiences and perspectives when making evacuation decisions during disasters. I utilized Lindell and Perry's (2012) Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) as the theoretical framework. The PADM enabled me to analyze various factors influencing the evacuation decisions of PEH, including their physical aspects (shelter use and mobility) and social context (relationships with other PEH and employment). The findings presented in this study are the result of 41 in-depth semi-structured field interviews with PEH living unsheltered in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County.

Representative bureaucracy theory has mainly been used to understand how identities related to race, ethnicity, and gender influence how bureaucrats administer public services. Although representation through lived experience has expanded the scope of the theory, this theoretical thread has mostly focused on the perspectives of management. In addition, the literature has generally analyzed the values, beliefs, and actions of minoritized bureaucrats rather than those of the racial and ethnic majority. The purpose of this dissertation is to employ lived experience and traditional representative bureaucracy theories to understand the influence of first responders’ experiences with addiction on their viewpoints regarding the humanness and deservingness of clients with opioid use disorder; examine how white first responders perceive clients of different races; and analyze the effect of lived experience on sentiments regarding clients of color.
In this dissertation, I surveyed county- and municipal-level EMS-providers and law enforcement workers in the United States, utilizing a survey experiment and mediation models for the analysis. Results show that indirect and direct lived experiences—respectively, having a family member or friend who has experienced an addiction and feeling addiction has had a direct impact on respondents’ lives—predicted increases in client deservingness, mediated by ascribed humanness and driven largely by EMS-providers. However, responding to opioid overdoses and administering naloxone— on-the-job lived experiences—were associated with reduced deservingness and ascribed humanness in both law enforcement and EMS organizations. Regarding the race of the client, white police personnel had more positive views of white clients with opioid use disorder relative to Black and unidentified clients, with effects amplified by on-the-job and indirect experiences but blunted by direct experiences.

In this dissertation, I examined employee turnover during the Great Resignation. In my methods, I used the short-form Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, the Scribd Questionnaire on Employee Turnover, and additional survey questions more applicable to our modern environment. A survey was conducted using Amazon Mechanical Turk that consisted of a sample of (N=1,036) professionals from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors who were either still employed with their organizations or had turned over in their roles within the last year.
Using correlation analysis, pictograms, regression analyses, and other tests, I inspected employee turnover, job satisfaction, and their effects on the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. The significance level was set at p-value = 0.10 in all regression analyses. Findings indicated validity in the claims that job satisfaction had a significant impact on turnover during the Great Resignation, the Great Resignation is related to characteristics, such as time of life, age, and work experience, and the Great Resignation contextually provided a trigger on turnover. However, the claim that the private, public, and nonprofit sectors have an impact on turnover during the Great Resignation proved to be inconclusive. A deeper analysis of hypotheses and results, limitations, recommendations, and prospective future studies are further provided in this dissertation.

This dissertation examines some of the challenges women face in the public sector in New York City. Workplace communal and agentic attributes and transactional and transformational leadership provided the theoretical frameworks through which women are viewed when they ascend to executive or managerial positions in city agencies. Communal and agentic attributes delve into feminine and masculine roles, the leadership challenge and biases toward women, and the preference in leadership style for women and men.
Scholars organize these attributes to help us understand gender stereotypes whereby men are described as independent, assertive, and initiating, while women are described as caring, emotionally expressive, and responsive to others. Because leadership has been associated with men for centuries, women leaders’ evaluations create incongruencies. Perceived social norms are activated in people’s minds about women not conforming to their gender role and communal attributes and the expectations of what a leader should be. Therefore, the perceived dissimilarity creates a dilemma and potential for prejudice against women leaders. Some policies, non-discriminatory laws, and different administrations changed some of those perceptions and enabled women to lead numerous city agencies in New York City. Nevertheless, challenges remain.

This dissertation examines the varied ways that government action is portrayed through different newspapers across the political spectrum. Most of the existing literature about the relationship between media and government is focused on media power, fictional portrayals of government, or on specific issues or topics. While more recent studies have examined the idea that presentations of government may be vastly different from one news outlet to the next, no one has examined different portrayals of government action. Furthermore, there seems to be a belief that political bias affects how news is presented, but very little study of why or how that came to be. This dissertation fills that gap by analyzing how different newspapers portray government action (specifically EPA regulations). The findings help determine how each news outlet manipulates the stories they present and why news media behaves this way.
A Burkean Cluster Analysis was conducted on articles from three newspapers, one from the left of the political spectrum, one from the center, and one from the right, as well as on press releases from the Environmental Protection Agency. News articles about EPA regulations were read and indexed. Indexing an article allows the researcher to find relationships between EPA regulations and commonly occurring themes across a newspaper’s coverage, as well as the structures that bind those relationships together. These themes and structures act as the data for the rest of the study. An analysis of the themes and structures was conducted to find each news outlet’s most featured ratios. These were then generalized to determine a news outlet’s motive or motives, the rationale for why they choose to frame news stories about government action in specific ways.

Social capital is critical to the entities' disciplinary environment and the ability to produce high quality financial reports. Although prior literature on for-profit setting indicates that social capital impacts both governance (Ferris, et al., 2017) and financial reporting quality (Jha & Chen, 2015; Jha, 2019), this area has received less attention in non-profit literature. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the impact of the social capital of a non-profit organization's (NPO) headquarter area (also known as community social capital) on the NPO governance and disclosure quality (i.e., the quality of Form 990).
The study hypothesizes and finds that the community social capital of an NPO headquarter area has a positive impact on its governance. The positive relationship suggests that NPO social capital and governance play a complementary role, where managers in high social capital face strong disciplinary environment and enjoy strong social connections and professional reputations and thus have fewer incentives to resist the adoption of sound governance practices. Similarly, the study also hypothesizes and finds that the community social capital of an NPO headquarter area has a positive impact on its disclosure quality. This finding suggests that community social capital disciplines NPO self-interested managers' behavior to manipulate financial numbers in Form 990 disclosures.