College of Design and Social Inquiry

Recent concern in the United States about human trafficking has been directed
primarily on the foreign victims that are brought into the United States rather than on U.S.
citizenship who become involved. However, the topic has broadened and has significant
impact on the daily lives of U.S citizens. Taking a human rights perspective, this
dissertation explores how human trafficking has been used as a “brand” to achieve
political and/or economic objectives. Human trafficking has taken away the human rights
for individuals and threatens their security. This dissertation is grounded in Critical Theory
and uses narrative analysis as a methodological framework. Using 99 public documents
from Global Report on Trafficking in Persons by the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime, International Labor Organization, and Office for Victims of Crime and other
Departments of the U.S working on human trafficking issues, with the support of Nvivo
software, the dissertation insists that human trafficking violates human rights, has no
capacity to support human emancipation, and causes human beings to be treated as animals or objects or commodified a brand. Even though a brand is a mark and logo in economic
development and refers to objects, not human beings. Human development is the objective
that everyone wants to achieve. Regardless of development, the welfare of all human
beings must be the chief concern; every effort to halt all human emancipation must be
initiated immediately.

This dissertation examines factors with influence on the organizational cultural competence of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) systems. The purpose of this study was to draw on theories of representative bureaucracy and transformational leadership to assess cultural competence in Emergency Medical Services systems from the perspective of EMS leadership, within careful consideration of the external environment in which EMS systems operate.

The purpose of this dissertation was to add to the literature on the school choice
debate and educational voucher programs through an analysis of Florida’s John M.
McKay Scholarship Program for Students with Disabilities. This dissertation looked at
the major aspects of school choice theory, parental satisfaction, and reasoning for choice.
A theoretical framework for analyzing school choice programs was put forth in this
dissertation through an analysis of the over-arching dynamical elements that have shaped
the administrative and political arguments for and against these programs. A
comprehensive review of the literature on school choice comprised a substantial part of
this study due to the need for citizens to better comprehend the origins and evolution of
school choice planning and programming.

This dissertation suggests that network governance theory may have reached an impasse, and in order to pursue its advance, new methods need to be used. It tests the viability of actor-network theory on providing new insights on network governance, which could contribute to the strengthening of network governance theory. The author suggests that actor-network theory may offer both an epistemology and ontology that intents to not impose current definitions and divisions of traditional social science. By doing so, actor-network theory focuses on the performance of associations rather than on the traditional categories of structures, institutions, individuals or groups -- characteristic of most network governance studies.

Criminologists have long since documented a connection between peer deviance and personal deviance. Some theories suggest that this connection is due to a learning process where individuals may adopt the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of those with whom they have significant interactions, such as friends. While individuals may be susceptible to learning anti-social behavior from peers, it is unclear if certain personality characteristics may affect this relationship. The purpose of this study is to determine if differences in specific personality characteristics, such as self-esteem, introversion and extroversion, can have a moderating effect on the pressures to participate in the use of drugs and alcohol that are projected on to individuals during their adolescent years. The findings of the current study can lead to new pathways in substance use prevention and personality assessment in conjunction with risk assessment for juveniles during their middle and high school years.

Narratives are a very important part of public policy negotiations and
deliberations. Public policy research has shown that policy narratives are manipulated to
fit the motives of the creators and enforcers of that narrative (Stone, 2002). The creators
and enforcers of these narratives use symbols, language, and other techniques to ensure
that the narrative survives and dominates the political and social environment by
becoming the favored policy prescription (Stone, 2002; Miller, 2012; Jones & McBeth,
2010; Schneider & Ingram, 1993). This study employs a qualitative content analysis to trace the genealogy of the following narratives that make up the “Stand Your Ground” discourse from 2005-2013: (1) Prosecutorial Discretion Narrative, (2) Vigilante Justice Narrative, (3) Race Narrative, and (4) Law-abiding Citizen Narrative. The “Stand Your Ground” discourse is used to test what this dissertation terms the “institutionalized policy narrative” thesis which
states, Policymakers and policy advocates use policy narratives which consist of powerful
symbols, politically motivated language, and ideographs to both shape and respond to
public opinions by appealing to both the heart and intellect of the public. Once a
winning narrative becomes institutionalized it is nearly impossible to replace that
winning narrative even in the wake of a powerful new emerging narrative.

This dissertation evaluates the veracity of Richard Scott’s three pillars of
institutionalization: regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive. The test of his theory is
whether the processes and practices within the environments of the three pillars can
account for differences between academic performance and athletic performance in
Miami-Dade County, Florida public schools. Scott’s model of institutionalization works
better in predicting academic success than it does athletic success in the context of this
study as evidenced by the majority of the findings coming from the scholastic realm.
The primary methodological approach was to obtain publicly available measures
of academic performance and resources for 31 high schools in Miami-Dade County, FL,
and then evaluate relationships between these academic indicators and measures of 􀀃
􀀃school athletic performance. Pearson (parametric) and Spearman (non-parametric)
correlation coefficients were calculated to estimate the strength of association between
school characteristics and measures of academic and athletic performance. These
analyses further informed the construction of stepwise multiple linear regression models
that regressed the dependent variable (a measure of academic or athletic performance)
with a range of possible independent variables all related to individual school
characteristics.
Improvement in the academic categories included in this dissertation (math,
science, reading, and writing) has been the goal of a great deal of legislation that deals
with education at the federal, state, and local level. The top indicator of a school’s
academic performance was the number of highly qualified teachers within a school.
Cultural-cognitive pillar indicators of socioeconomic status, including minority rate and
percentage of students in a school who are eligible for free lunch, were negatively
associated with academic performance. Thus, normative and cultural-cognitive processes
can have a significant impact on whether laws and legislation have their intended effect.
In the end, it is reasonable to conclude that all three pillars complement each other in
interdependent ways within Scott’s institutional framework with different pillars taking
prominence as time and circumstances change.

In this dissertation, a theoretical framework is developed from Camilla Stivers' (2002) argument that images of expertise, leadership and virtue are used to defend public administration's legitimacy in the face of criticisms about the inefficiencies of government and the power wielded by bureaucrats. Stivers argues that these legitimizing and traditional images have historical and cultural roots in ideas associated with masculinity, and that this harms women in the public sector. The realm of policing faced similar criticisms and defended its legitimacy by altering practices, the day-to-day actions of police practitioners. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the possibility that police practitioners have defended their legitimacy on the same basis as public administrators have done by offering images of expertise, leadership and virtue, which Stivers (2002) claims are deeply gendered. Using Ethnographic Content Analysis (ECA), imagery is qualitatively examined using using Stivers' (2002) descriptions of characteristics, qualitiers, values and actions that she associates with images of expertise, leadership and virtue... Masculine images of virtue portray the police as dedicated and committed professionals who protect the citizenry through laudable programs and initiatives. Masculine images of leadership are less prevalent, but consistently portray the police as controlling and direction-setting visionaries. Alternative imagery patterns include leadership images more aligned with femininity, such as collaboration and cooperation. Throughout the thirty-one years, these patterns of images are observed, despite differences in practices associated with the three paradigms of policing.