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Public School Choice : An Impact Assessment

Description: The goal of this thesis is to understand the consequences of educational choice in the public school system. The research takes place in San Antonio, Texas. The research encompasses meaningful comparisons between three sets of low income students and their families: 1) those who chose to remain in their attendance-zone school, 2) those who enrolled in the multilingual program, and 3) those who applied to the multilingual program but were not admitted because of space limitations.
Date: December 1995
Creator: Davis, Casi G. (Casi Gail)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Prospects for Privatization of the Turkish Telecommunications System

Description: Turkey is considering privatizing its telecommunications system. Any developing country must analyze whether its economic, social, and institutional environment is appropriate for the privatization of a utility. The purposes of this study are (1) to establish a model to assist policy makers, (2) to analyze whether Turkey meets the prerequisites for telecommunications privatization, and (3) to provide Turkish leaders pragmatic policy alternatives pertaining to privatization of the Turkish Teleco… more
Date: December 1992
Creator: Eroglu, Ismail
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Megachurches and Economic Development: A Theoretical Understanding of Church Involvement at the Local Level

Description: Why do megachurches participate in economic development, and who benefits from their participation? Frumkin's framework for understanding nonprofit and voluntary action and extra-role behavior are theories tested to answer these questions. My research employs a mixed-methods research design conducted in two phases. In phase one, I analyze 42 responses to an online survey to provide data about the prevalence and nature of economic development activities offered by megachurches in the Dallas-For… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: English, Ashley E.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Assessing Local Governments’ Debt Financing Strategies

Description: This dissertation assesses the importance of a specific debt instrument, the Certifi- cate of Obligation in the state of Texas. It conceptualizes the Certificate of Obligation as a type of contractual debt that enables local governments to finance their capital projects. This dissertation is guided by three research questions: (1) What are the various types of debt instruments employed by local governments and what are their relative advantages? (2) How prevalent is the use of a specific debt i… more
Date: December 2013
Creator: Lung, Wei-Liang
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Examining the Psychological Resiliency of Latino Immigrants in Five Texas Cities: Policy, Economics, and Politics – The Case of the Latino Community

Description: This dissertation examines the impact of city-level characteristics (immigration-friendliness index, unemployment rate, and the percentage of Democrat Party votes) on the psychological resiliency of Latino immigrants. In the light of increased attention on the immigrant issue throughout the world, this study aims to develop our understanding of the factors that have the effect on the resiliency of immigrant populations. This dissertation examines these different characteristics by examining fiv… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Icer, Mehmet Mustafa
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Examining the Impact of Community Policing on Public Attitudes toward Fear of Terrorism, Resilience, and Satisfaction with Police in the Face of New Terrorism

Description: This dissertation examines the impact of citizen's perception of community policing on public attitudes toward fear of terrorism, resilience for a future terrorist attack, and satisfaction with the police in the face of new terrorism. In particular, considering the changing nature of terrorism in recent years as a response to the centralized homeland security efforts, this dissertation attempts to develop our understanding about the extent to which community policing could be a strategy in deal… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Ayazma, Tayfun
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Impact of Surveillance Technology on the Behaviors of Municipal Police Departments

Description: Citizen complaints about inappropriate use of force indicate negative police-public relations, unresponsive police services, and the unresponsiveness of police management to citizens' concerns. However, the effective delivery of key policing services depends on the performance of individual police officers. Surveillance technology can monitor and control the behavior of officers, ensuring that police officers provide high quality policing services that meet the needs of citizens. Examples of su… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Ulkemen, Sinan
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Needs and Membership in Terrorist Organizations

Description: One key to reducing terrorism may be to understand why individuals join terror groups, and to find ways to meet their needs through alternatives to discourage membership in terrorist organizations. The study introduces the hierarchy of needs framework to capture all previous pieces of explanations on why individuals join terror groups under one big umbrella, in order to see the big picture. It does not do a meta-analysis, but rather tests the framework. This study is designed to find out what p… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Ekici, Siddik
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Understanding and preventing police use of excessive force: An analysis of attitudes toward police job satisfaction and human rights laws.

Description: Although governments try to create strict policies and regulations to prevent abuses, use of excessive force is still a problem for almost every country including Turkey. This study is intended to help Turkish National Police administrators to understand and prevent police use of excessive force. Studies on police brutality categorize three factors that explain why police officers use excessive force; these are individual, situational and organizational. In addition to brutality theories, job s… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Akdogan, Huseyin
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Among Public Employees In Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, Mexico

Description: This study develops a theoretical framework to examine the major dimensions of transformational leadership style (TLS), public service motivation (PSM), organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and public organization performance (POP). It is hypothesized that when employees perceived a public organization is practicing a transformational leadership style, they are likely to have a favorable view on the performance of their organization, but the effect is indirect and mediated by OCB. At th… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: León Cázares, Filadelfo
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Current Status of Hazard Mitigation in Local Emergency Management: an Examination of Roles, Challenges, and Success Indicators

Description: This dissertation used an organizational structure framework to examine the current status of hazard mitigation from the perspective of emergency managers from four organizational structure categories. This study addressed three primary research questions: (1) What is the role of the local emergency management office in hazard mitigation and what is the function of other stakeholders as perceived by local emergency managers? (2) What are the challenges to achieving hazard mitigation objectives … more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Samuel, Carlos
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Interactive Effects of Tax and Expenditure Limitations Stringency with Revenue Diversity and the Council-manager Form of Government on Municipal Expenditures

Description: This dissertation examines the effects of tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) stringency and its interaction with revenue diversity and the council-manager form of government on municipal general fund expenditure. TELs are explicit rules that states impose to reduce local government spending. TELs stringency varies from state to state, leading to difficulties in assessing their impact across the nation. This dissertation proposes a new means for measuring the stringency of TELs imposed on lo… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Jaikampan, Kraiwuth
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Study of Network Governance in Continuum of Care (CoC), Homeless Service Networks in the US: Institutional Collective Action Framework

Description: 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 coll… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Jeong, Jihoon
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Housing Recovery, Reinvestment Decisions, and Neighborhood Institutions

Description: This research investigates the association between neighborhood institutions and the reinvestment decision of households after a disaster. The research employs GIS techniques and data containing appraised housing values, the neighborhood coalition boundaries, the HOA boundaries, building damage data, and building permit data from August 2017 to August 2018. This dissertation performed various methods of analysis. For the first, a literature review was conducted. Possible predictors of instituti… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Jeon, Younghwan
Partner: UNT Libraries

The Impact of the Introduction of Value-Added Tax on Saudi Arabia's Economy, Budget, and Governance

Description: Saudi Arabia introduced the VAT in 2018 in response to the nation's structural budget deficit caused, in large measure, by its dependence on revenue from oil and natural gas production. Initially the tax rate was 5 percent, but in July 2020 the rate was tripled to 15 percent. This dissertation examine the effect of the introduction of a value-added tax (VAT) on governance in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, we explore how the VAT's introduction has altered the Saudi bureaucracy, both its responsive… more
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Date: December 2022
Creator: Bamanie, Mohamad Mahmoud
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Flexibility in Emergency Management: Exploring the Roles of Spontaneous Planning and Improvisation in Disaster Response

Description: One of the long-standing debates in disaster science and practice is the tension between planning and structure on the one hand and flexibility and adaptation on the other in maximizing the effectiveness of response operations. This research aims to reconcile the divide that currently exists among scholars and practitioners and present a continuum that bridges the above models and ties planning, improvisation, and spontaneous planning together. The main questions that were examined with this r… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Gutierrez, Miguel
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Perceptions of Public Health Professionals and Emergency Managers: Using the Institutional Collective Action Framework to Better Understand Coordination during Health Crisis

Description: The objective of this dissertation is to test the Institutional Collective Action framework and examine the governance arrangements during health emergency. Basically, the dissertation argues that due to collaborative risks, transaction costs, barriers to collective action, governance arrangement provides avenues for action and a force for driving coordination across jurisdictional boundaries. The dissertation adopts two studies to investigate the governance arrangements represented by lead age… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Soujaa, Ismail
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Study of Homeless Emergency Discharge Coordination: Understanding Challenges and Success Factors to Collaboration Maturity

Description: Successful service coordination for the homeless depends on the ability of diverse organizations to effectively collaborate. This study utilizes a life-cycle framework to expand on the collaborative governance theory by highlighting the different stages of collaboration that homeless service networks encounter. Activation, collectivity, and institutionalization are three stages used to uncover the unique nature of emergency discharge planning processes. Since collaboration is not a static proce… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Washington, Federickia L
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Effects of Disasters on Local Climate Actions: Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Actions

Description: This dissertation investigates the effects of natural disasters and political institutions on municipalities' climate change policies. Although most theoretical frameworks on policy adoption highlight the roles of extreme events as exogenous factors influencing policy change, most studies tend to focus on the effects of extreme events on policy change at the national level. Additionally, the existing theoretical frameworks explaining local policy adoption and public service provision do not pay… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Kim, Kyungwoo
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Return-Entry Risk Communication Following 2012 Hurricane Sandy

Description: Within risk communication, much is understood about pre-event warning related to evacuation and sheltering; however risk communication during the return-entry phase when ending evacuations has been largely under-studied in the disaster literature. Understanding of the return-entry risk communication process is important because returning early or prior to issuance of the all-clear message can make returnees susceptible to post-disaster risks, and also hamper post-disaster activities such as deb… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Manandhar, Rejina
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Economic Resilience, Disasters, and Green Jobs: An Institutional Collective Action Framework

Description: This dissertation is about economic resilience of local governments to natural disasters. Specifically, the dissertation investigates resilience on regional level. Moreover, the dissertation also investigates growth in the green job sector in local governments. The findings indicate that local governments working with each other helps green job creation. In addition, the dissertation finds that green jobs, following disasters, experience three percent growth. This dissertation is important beca… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Ismayilov, Orkhan M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Demand and Supply Explanation: Nonprofit Size in Homeless Service Area

Description: This study explores the demand and supply oriented factors that may contribute to the size of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. communities. This research tests demand theory, which indicated that nonprofit organizations grow more in communities where large service demand exists and when there is a service gap between community demand and government service supply. On the other hand, supply theories contend that nonprofit organizations are prevalent where a community carries the supply of hum… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Kilic Gorunmek, Hediye
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Analyzing the Joint Effects of Network and Community Attributes on Network Performance: Evidence from Local Continuum of Care Homeless Service Networks

Description: This dissertation examines the factors and combinations of factors that affect the performance of continuum of care homeless service networks, applying the configurational approach of contingency theory to data sets drawn from federal sources. The study accepts the two key assumptions from the theory: (1) that there are multiple paths to high performance and (2) key conditions have a joint influence on network performance. The data analysis in this study has two parts. The first employs OLS reg… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Kim, Jintak
Partner: UNT Libraries
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