Public Administration Quarterly

We examine U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data (2002–2014) to assess the representation of women at different occupational levels in U.S. public school districts. As of 2014, we find women (a) approach representational parity in administrative and principal positions, (b) are underrepresented in assistant principal positions, and (c) are overrepresented among classroom teachers. We expand the analysis to include district size and find underrepresentation of women in small districts and overrepresentation in large districts across leadership positions (administrators, principals, and assistant principals). While progress has occurred, limitations persist, including: (1) a prevalence of districts with no women in leadership roles; (2) a continuing imbalance of women in leadership positions across districts; and (3) on average, large gender-based leadership inequities in smaller districts. Gender-related barriers to career entry and advancement persist. We discuss why gender gaps continue to exist in leadership positions and provide suggestions for employment policy reform.

When deciding to support nonprofits, donors value evidence of financial sustainability, including direct evidence in the form of financial audits and endowment reserves (ER). Using a signaling theory framework, we explore the relationships between ER and audits, on the one hand, and organizational and board attributes—specifically, organization age, organization size, board size, percentage of board-contributed operating funds, and average board volunteer hours—that might serve as indirect signals of financial accountability and sustainability. We tested our predictions using a sample of 458 small arts-oriented U.S. nonprofits from three sub-sectors—Support/Advocacy/Community (SAC), Arts Education (AE), and Museums. We found that ER and audits are correlated but independent measures of financial sustainability, and that the association between these indicators of financial health and organizational and board attribute signals varies across the three sub-sectors. More specifically, board size was associated with both audits and ER for the SAC segment and with audits for the AE segment. For museums, the segment within our system with more mature and slightly larger (but still small) organizations, organizational age was associated with both ER and audits, and the percentage of board members’ contributing to funding was associated with ER. These findings provide practical insight for funders and nonprofit leaders about the organizational and board attributes that signal financial sustainability and suggest several avenues for additional research into the contingency, evolution, and interactivity of signals of nonprofit financial health.

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) are one of several programs supporting federal investment in technological innovation. To date, CRADAs have been studied primarily through the lens of a market-oriented ideology focusing primarily on associated mechanisms and outcomes. That ideology, expressed most clearly in the New Public Management (NPM) movement, has become the predominant governance theory of the period. Other governance theories, including Public Value Governance (PVG), emerged in response and as alternatives to NPM’s perceived contextual and normative limitations. This article reexamines the structure and function of CRADAs through the lens of PVG, in combination with analysis of qualitative data on the perceptions and experiences of organizations that have been parties to CRADAs with the United States Air Force. Our examination suggests that CRADAs have the potential to respond more effectively to the emergent complexity of the current political-economy and to be more normatively inclusive in relation to growing socio-cultural diversity described by PVG, and potentially exceeding the narrower perspective of an economically focused NPM orientation.

Although public budgeting is considered one of governments’ most crucial policy statements for economic development outcomes, scholarly works that explain the linkages between the two are scant. Drawing on the budgeting system for theoretical context, this article examines the perception of local administrators on the effects of three budgeting practices—planning, budgeting, and evaluation —on economic development outcomes. It utilizes survey data from the ICMA’s 2014 Economic Development Survey and U.S. Census Bureau and logistic regressions to examine the determinants of four economic development outcomes—tax base, job creation, quality of life, and environmental sustainability. The results show that planning impacts sustainability, budgeting influences tax base, environmental sustainability, and job creation. Lastly, evaluation has consequences for the quality of life, tax base, and job creation. The study emphasizes how differing perceptions of budgetary practices shape economic development outcomes, highlighting the necessity of a system approach. It identifies critical leverage points within the budgeting system, where targeted actions can significantly influence multiple economic development outcomes. The study contributes to the Government Finance Officers Association’s (GFOA) Best Practices for economic development.

The study examines how higher educational institutions navigate from the inertia of tradition to organizational absorption of strategy practices. The grounded theory approach was adopted for data collection and data analysis. The thematic analysis method was adopted to condense the raw data into a few meaningful themes. There were four reasons for the continuity of inertia of tradition: groupthink inertia, fear-inducing inertia, skepticism, and the endowment effect. The study found seven orientations of organizational absorption: cognitive-oriented absorption, intractability-oriented absorption, exigency and adaption-oriented absorption, endurance-oriented absorption, “tradition-hazard”-oriented absorption, transposition-oriented absorption, and employee agility-oriented absorption. There were three dimensions of organizational absorption: Structural, processual, and procedural. The study found four themes for leadership manipulations as stimuli for cultural transitions for absorption: leadership decisiveness, embracing change-seeking culture, openness and benchmarking, and dynamic decision-making.