Browsing by Subject "Governance"

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Accountability mechanisms in public multi-campus systems of higher education.
(2011-03) Rothchild, Mary Todd
Since the 1990s, higher education has been faced with a significantly different context for performance expectations. Public policy makers and governing boards of state systems entrusted by the public to serve them have faced increasing scrutiny for outcomes related to student access and success, tuition affordability and efficiency in operations. During this time, policy reform largely focused on the structural design of higher education but with less attention paid to governance methods and the effectiveness of accountability tools to meet performance expectations. This study is guided by the theory that public multi-campus systems of higher education, as loosely-coupled organizations, could enhance performance when utilizing governance practices and accountability mechanisms that encourage high levels of autonomy and accountability. Using a two-part, quantitative and qualitative research methodology, this study was designed to define and measure accountability mechanisms used in the transactional environment between state higher education leadership (board members and system leaders) and institutional leaders. Using a subset of ten state systems of public higher education, each state was determined to be either high-performing or low-performing. In the quantitative study, institutional leaders were asked in an Internet survey to rate or rank 18 accountability mechanisms on five characteristics: importance, discretion, "high stakes," and whether they reflected professional norms of higher education or were political or market-based. In the qualitative study, interviews of system leaders examined their views on the balance between accountability and autonomy in multi-campus systems. The results from the survey indicated that four mechanisms were considered high in importance and high stakes by institutional leaders in both low- and high-performing states: strategic planning, state funding, institutional accreditation and system policies. While these mechanisms each play different roles in system governance and accountability, system leaders can utilize these accountability mechanisms as tools to develop flexible system policies and funding mechanisms, coordinate planning between system and institutional goals, and use data systems for assessment and accreditation. Governing leaders of public multi-campus systems of higher education could use the study results as they design normative values for accountability and autonomy by considering them as mutually supportive constructs. Evidence from the study illustrated the importance of building shared commitment through connections between campuses and the system/state. In addition, system leaders should be attentive to governance policies and practices that encompass aspects of campus self-determination and provide effective incentives for responding to the system's organizational priorities.
Are School Boards Equipped to Govern Effectively in the Era of Equity (2015 to Present)?
(2022-09) Link, Holly
School boards diligently strive to demonstrate their accountability amidst continual criticism, currently at a heightened level following the COVID-19 pandemic, with ensuing drops in student achievement. The responsibilities of a school board are often misunderstood by their community, and school boards themselves are struggling in this era of equity (2015 to present) to define effective school board governance, and to equip their board members to govern effectively. This quantitative exploratory research documented current school board member socialization experiences and found that school board socialization programs are narrow in scope, not comprehensive, and inconsistently implemented, creating risk for inefficient and ineffective governance. The study revealed that current school board governance effectiveness is inconsistently evaluated. School board socialization programs are rarely, if ever, monitored through school board policy monitoring nor periodically evaluated using a valid instrument. This research used a broadened aperture to view school board member socialization, from the time period prior to a member’s board service through their exit from the board. The research found statistically significant and substantively meaningful relationships between school board socialization practices with board member reported readiness to govern, and with perceived exhibited school board effectiveness characteristics. Implications of the study results for theory, research and practice are offered, and a preliminary model for a research-based, comprehensive school board member socialization program is proposed.
Community Forest Enterprise Governance In The Maya Biosphere Reserve
(2020-05) Butler, Megan
This dissertation focuses on the governance of community forest enterprises (CFEs) in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) of Northern Guatemala. CFEs in the MBR receive access to the forest through 25-year concession contracts with the Guatemalan government. The community forest concessions included in this research were established between 1994 and 2000. Research for this dissertation was conducted in 2017 and 2018 in the MBR. This was an important period of time for CFEs in the MBR as their concession contracts were up for renewal. Each chapter of this dissertation builds upon the literature and provides a unique contribution to understanding factors that facilitate or impede effective and equitable CFE governance in the MBR. The first chapter introduces a framework for understanding and evaluating the local context CFEs face working to manage local resources. The chapter then applies the framework to six CFEs in the MBR. The analysis provides insights into how CFE capitals differ between enterprises over time. The chapter shows how CFEs started out with different advantages and disadvantages related to their capitals and how they have invested in their capitals over time. The second chapter identifies how and why governance structures differ between CFEs. Membership policy, decision-making and oversight roles, strategies for investing in business operations, and strategies for providing social benefits all differ between CFEs in the MBR. This chapter discusses how differences in governance structures facilitate or impede community forest management. Chapter three focuses on the evolution of good governance characteristics within CFEs over time and what factors have facilitated or impeded this evolution. Chapter four summarizes the relationship between CFE capitals and governance from the perspective of local actors operating in the MBR. In aggregate, the four essays aim to contribute to theory on factors that facilitate or impede successful community forest management. Some key take-aways from this dissertation related to governance and capitals include: the confirmation that legal access to forests and markets may be necessary but not sufficient conditions for CFE success. In addition, CFEs were able to overcome initial lack of infrastructure, funding, and knowledge and increasingly emphasized the importance of developing social and human capital over time. This study aims to contribute several unique contributions to the literature on community-based resource management. First, this dissertation introduces the CFE capital’s framework. Second, this dissertation focuses on understanding governance at the CFE scale. Finally, this analysis aims to contribute insights, from the perspective of local actors, into factors that enable or constrain individual community members’ ability to participate in organizing and developing communal forest enterprises.
Crusade, Crisis, and Statecraft in Latin Christendom: The Case of Fulk V of Anjou (1090-1143)
(2017-06) Qureshi, Basit Hammad
Traditionally, scholars approached early crusading as a hermetically sealed phenomenon, whose Eastern Mediterranean locus of activity had no enduring impact on the political culture of western Europe. Recent studies have demonstrated this assumption to be untenable. However, in assuming cross-regional and/or diachronic approaches, these studies could not fully consider how crusading realities shaped and, in turn, were shaped by the historically contingent concerns of individual rulers embedded within specific contexts. This dissertation is a case study that illuminates how crusading informed the rulership and ruling identity of a prince who was prominent in twelfth-century landscapes of change: Fulk V, count of the western French principality of Anjou (r. 1109-1129) and monarch of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1131-1143). Treating his reign as count, this project demonstrates that, for Fulk, the crusading phenomenon was neither a substrate nor an overlay, but rather, a central determinant of his rulership in Anjou, transforming his performance of just governance. To rule effectively within the political-social environment of crusading, Count Fulk V of Anjou had to engage in a process of reformulating and systematizing administrative, material, and discursive strategies of governance that had previously been used only inconsistently. Drawing upon a wide array of archival and published Latin sources, I demonstrate that these crusade-inspired reforms of rulership included: the creation of an apparatus of bureaucratic functionaries who enforced justice at the local level as living extensions of the prince’s office; the routinization of charter production as a means of affirming re-centralized public authority; the collaborative exercise of power by male and female actors in elite kin-groups; and, selective building campaigns to articulate power through material representation. The resulting body of formalized practices yielded an administrative praxis of governance that helped establish the conceptual and logistical groundwork for the subsequent emergence of the medieval European state under Fulk’s continental successors. Fulk's comital reign offers, thus, a unique but neglected opportunity to illuminate how crusading revolutionized rulership in the western tradition. This dissertation concludes with a comprehensive cataloging and diplomatic analysis of Fulk’s 124 surviving pre-royal acta/acts, many of which have hitherto been unknown to scholars.
Factors Influencing Policy and Political Leadership in Improving Roadway Safety
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2018-03) Center for Transportation Studies
This study built on recent work to examine further the factors influencing policy and political leadership in adopting evidence-based policy countermeasures and integrated performance-based approaches such as Toward Zero Death (TZD) to reduce road fatalities and serious injuries. Specifically, this study sought to increase understanding of the policy context for safety and how special interest group influence at the state and local level plays a part in roadway safety policy promotion and adoption. The study focused on six states in the Midwest – Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin – and engaged legislators, state agency officials, and special interest stakeholders to better understand the challenges and opportunities for improving roadway safety through public policy. The study expanded on an assessment tool applied to quantifying policy countermeasure adoption in each of the six study states and created a similar tool for gauging special interest group activity.
Governance of academic planning in public higher education systems
(2013-03) Harmening, Todd R.
The recent interest in harnessing the collective capacity of public institutions of higher education is challenging long-held beliefs about system coordination. Constricted state resources, globalization, market forces, and new technologies suggest that new governance structures are not only a necessity but an opportunity to better connect system institutions. To build such collective capacity, public systems will be well-served to adopt new forms of governance and challenge historic or misaligned policies and activities. The purpose of this study was to examine the primary means by which system office staff coordinate institutional activities within academic planning. The study was constructed around identification of bureaucratic, market, and network practices in selected governing board systems to better understand the existing system policies and staff activities, as well as the shifts and associated challenges being experienced in the system governance of academic planning. The population for this study included six state systems of higher education consisting of 2- and 4-year institutions. An initial document analysis of state statutes, system policies, and recent system reports provided a base understanding of the policies and other factors driving each system’s academic planning activities. A subsequent survey of system chief academic officers and their staff identified the importance of the policy elements, associated activities, and critical stakeholders for system academic initiatives, and program approval and review. The subsequent interviews of survey respondents explored the context and meanings associated with the survey responses, as well as challenges and future shifts in the approaches to system academic planning. The findings and conclusions from the study suggest that system policies for program approval and associated system office staff activities are predominantly, if not exclusively, focused on system expectations of individual institutions with some limited but notable examples of interinstitutional program collaboration. Similarly, system office staff face significant challenges in simultaneously building collaborative capacity and balancing the policy interests of state policymakers, national organizations, and industry with the academic culture and local autonomy of system institutions. The state systems in the study noted recent and substantial shifts in system governance of academic planning resulting from enactment of state or system initiatives for degree completion, removal of bureaucratic elements that slow system processes, and/or delegation of more authority to system institutions. In addition, system office academic affairs staff noted their substantial interest and role in facilitating academic collaboration across institutions. Most of the state systems in the study are in the early stages of or stated interest in elevating support for interinstitutional collaboration, including changes to system policies, merging of administrative structures, and development of collaborative agreements to support interinstitutional activity. The study also indicates that system office staff are facing significant challenges in engaging faculty in collaborative activity across multiple and loosely coupled levels of administration. Significant shifts in system policies and staff activities are necessary to remove or better align the predominance of bureaucratic and market mechanisms with system efforts at academic collaboration. System leaders would be well served in engaging their institutional faculty and administration in casting a vision and clearing the way for network capacity to emerge.
The governance of denominational colleges and universities in an era of declining denominational identity among students
(2014-12) Dorner, Michael H.
Higher education in the United States, in comparison to the rest of the world, has a unique group of colleges and universities linked with Christian denominations, some of which have an active role in their governance. The governing boards consist of lay volunteers who accept the fiduciary responsibility of setting the mission and vision of the institutions with the goal of acquiring the assets needed so that the institutions will last well into the future. Denominationally-related institutions are now feeling the impact of the social change of people identifying less with organized religion and more with spirituality that has little relationship to the values and beliefs systems of denominations. This research examined how trustees at denominational colleges and universities lead their institutions in an era of declining denominational identity. The framework guiding the study was agency theory with the view that the administration works as agents on behalf of the principal, the denomination. Quantitative and qualitative research methodology were included to collect data on the experiences of a group of trustees with the denomination, administrators and students. The denomination for this research was The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and its ten colleges and universities which are members of the Concordia University System. In the quantitative study, board members responded to an Internet survey regarding their preparation for serving as board members, their views of the denomination and their understanding of the roles and responsibilities of being a board member. Of the 134 board members who could have responded, 102 did so for a response rate of 76.1%. In the qualitative study, limited to the board chairs of each institution, nine respondents expressed their views about current board structure, expectations about the future of their denomination and interpretations of the current religious climate and its impact on higher education. The results from both the survey and interview indicated that while the board members are aware of the changing religious climate and its impact on denominations, they remain focused on leading their institutions in ways that remain connected to their denomination. Some concern was expressed about the declining numbers of students from the denomination in comparison to the other students enrolling, but 86.3% of the board members place greater importance on the denominational identity of the faculty as being critical to maintaining a Lutheran identity. Results also indicated concern about the structure of governance and the process of selecting board members. Agency theory worked well as a framework for analyzing the board members and their relationships with their institutions and with the Synod.Leaders from other denominations that have active involvement in the governance of their colleges and universities could use this study as they review their mission if they are experiencing falling enrollment of students from their denomination and determine how to react to it. The quantitative data of experiences could be beneficial as a point of comparison to university presidents and board chairs as they review their processes for selecting trustees. Board members and administrators could use the qualitative data as they seek to guide their institution at a time when fewer students have an interest in the denomination that brought the institution into existence.
Governing Dockless Bike Share: Early Lessons for Nice Ride Minnesota
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2018-11) Douma, Frank; Hauf, Austin
Dockless bike share systems present an opportunity for cities to expand access to bike share by lowering costs and geographic barriers, but also create additional challenges in the areas of maintenance, parking, and right-of- way management. Most dockless providers are also private, venture-capital funded entities, representing a significant departure from current public and non-profit approaches. Other cities have encountered challenges in securing cooperation from these operators in areas such as data transparency. This raises a key question: To what extent can cities use contracts and governance to exchange use of the public right-of-way for operating requirements that advance equity, accessibility, innovation, and other goals? Using case studies from other U.S. cities and drawing insights from the wider “smart mobility” literature, this research presents recommendations for regulating dockless bike share in cities and ties these approaches to the implementation of Nice Ride Minnesota’s dockless pilot. It will also examine prominent challenges in coordination and implementation and highlight novel approaches with an eye towards the future of bike share in the Twin Cities.
Health Sciences Mission Statement and Proposed Structure and Governance
(University of Minnesota, 1970-07-10) University of Minnesota. Health Sciences Center
Investigation into the development and sustaining of Minnesota Charter Schools
(2008-12) Horn, Sandra Lyn
The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the growth and evolution of eight established charter schools in the St. Paul/Minneapolis (MN) area. Prior to data collection and based on a synthesis of literature, a model was created that attempted to capture the evolutionary stages of charter schools from initial idea to maturity. The model proposed that a charter school moves through three life stages, with the factors of leadership, governance and resources forming the core of the charter school organization at each stage. There were also interpersonal dynamics and organizational processes continually at work within each school that affected the relationships among those three factors. As a school moved through the stages of development, the relationships changed over time. The results of the study confirmed three definable developmental stages, Start Up, Growth, and Maturity, as well as transitional phases between the first and second stages, and between the second and third stages. Also, there were certain processes and tasks identified that served as characteristics of each stage/phase. Data from this study also showed the importance of beginning a school with multi-skilled leaders who were collaborative, fiscally cautious and selflessly committed to the mission. A well-developed mission rallied a dedicated group of people who worked cooperatively to acquire the necessary resources and created the operational, organizational and academic systems of school. Many of these people remained at the school for a length of time, building trusting relationships, committed to doing the work necessary to deliver the education promised by their mission.
Making Marijuana Medical: Governing Bodies in Minnesota's Medical Cannabis Program
(2022-06) Steel, Ryan
For over a century, the defining, distribution, regulation, and punitive control of so-called ‘dangerous drugs’ has been a central feature of State policies and institutional practices in the US (and across the globe). The War on Drugs—which refers to the various punitive drug control-related policies and practices enacted over the last century—has assembled together a vast array of institutions, resources, and practices to authoritatively govern the use of ‘drugs’ (as defined by the State) and drug using bodies. Virtually no social institutions have been untouched by the Drug War, including medicine, criminal justice, the State, corporate manufacturing, the family, labor/employment, and culture, among others. Not only have they all been affected by the Drug War, but I argue they have been deeply shaped by it—that these institutions’ development has emerged in historically specific ways by their constitutive relationships to the Drug War. In that sense, the Drug War can be thought of as a machine made up of a variety of institutions (and the bodies that comprise them) that fit together and are configured in specific ways and, thereby, reconfigure and constitute each of these parts in the process. From this machinery, specific forms of governance are produced, affecting all that comes into contact with it and its apparatuses. This dissertation examines the ways in which the Drug War continues to operate in an era of medicalized drug reform through an in-depth case study of Minnesota’s medical cannabis program, which is one of the most restrictive in the US. By examining legislative hearings, professional position statements, in-depth interviews with medical cannabis patients, institutional and policy analysis, survey data from healthcare professionals, analysis of state-collected program data, and four years of ethnographic observation, this study provides insights into the institutional configurations of the program, the forms of governance it produces, and the consequences for patient bodies in their everyday lives.
A Tale of the Digital: Governing China with Data Infrastructure
(2023-06) Liu, Kevin
This dissertation is about how data technologies become an “infrastructure of governing” in contemporary China’s pursuit of socialist modernity. The research is situated in China’s current endeavor of utilizing “New Infrastructure” for national governance, and of achieving an enhancement of the state’s governing capacity through digital technologies. It describes the “structure of feeling” of digital governance, which I argue is emerging as a new Chinese governmentality. The research critically contextualizes today’s digital endeavor within China’s modernization history, and with detailed case studies focusing on one of China’s eight National Data Hubs—Guizhou Hub, it reveals how data technology has become and is still becoming an infrastructure for the Chinese state’s governance of its people and the Chinese people’s understanding of their everyday lives. I argue that through what I call “state-commercial complexes” and “infrastructure of feeling,” data technologies become the undergirding networks of power that sustain a mode of digital governance. The research combines theoretical interventions of infrastructure studies, governmentality, and media studies. It provides “thick descriptions” of the political-economic arrangements, local institutional formations, and complex interactions among the central/local government, stateowned-enterprises, as well as domestic and international corporations in the process of Guizhou Hub’s emergence; It also unearths how these formations involve particularities of local, ordinary people as they live through the landscape cultural-scape transformation of Guizhou’s development of data centers and data technologies, and how these, in turn, produce contingent outcomes that shape and re-configure how data technologies are localized. With an interdisciplinary approach that combines historical, political economy, cultural and ethnographic analysis, this research showcases how national strategy and digital technologies are institutionalized and normalized on regional and local levels and thus become a symbiotic part of the local power network. It argues that we are witnessing the emergence of a new Chinese governmentality that—with datafication and dataismrevitalizes the socialist rationality of seeking full access to its governing subject. However, the localization of digital governance rationality is challenged by the very processes of its own implementation, as the infrastructurizing of data technologies inevitably involves contingent processes of localization where anti-hegemonic forces emerge.
Why does the graduation rate productivity of U.S. public universities vary? Looking outside their boundaries for answers.
(2010-09) Asmussen, John G.
The importance of college completion has risen high on the U.S. policy agenda in recent years. An obvious strategy for increasing college completion is improving graduation rates, which for public universities have hovered around 50% for decades. Higher education scholars previously have revealed many student and institutional characteristics which help explain differences in graduation rates. This study treated the variation which could not be explained by student and institutional differences as an indicator of the level of productivity associated with an institution's graduation rate. It used punctuated equilibrium theory, which suggested that productivity would be aligned with expectations from the external environment, as a conceptual framework. Using multivariate analysis of covariance statistical techniques, the study identified several elements from the external environments of 398 public universities which had statistically significant relationships with differences in the productivity levels of their graduation rates. Statistically significant environmental elements included the type of state-level higher education plan in place, use of performance budgeting programs, existence of local governing boards, and choice of regional accrediting agency. The study found no evidence of a statistically significant effect associated with other environmental elements, notably the use of performance reporting or performance funding programs. The results suggest that public universities which have collegial relationships with their external environments have the most productive graduation rates. Public universities on the governmental agenda in their states had more productive graduation rates than universities which were absent from the governmental agenda. Productivity, though, was not further enhanced for universities subject to the most aggressive accountability mechanisms. The public universities subject to the most aggressive accountability levels, e.g., state-level plans with targeted completion rates combined with performance budgeting programs, showed the lowest productivity levels. Perhaps the inertia of low productivity was resistant to external accountability efforts. Ironically, the public universities which enjoyed the most autonomy only showed mediocre productivity in their graduation rates. State policymakers and higher education officials could use the study results as they reconsider the nature of their relationships and the design of accountability mechanisms in pursuit of improved college graduation rates.

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