Works of Scholarship
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Browsing Works of Scholarship by Issue Date
Now showing 1 - 20 of 45
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access MANAGERIAL HUMAN CAPITAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE(Cornell University, 2010) Robinson, GuytonThis dissertation focuses on the relationship between the human capital qualities of frontline managers and organizational performance. I draw upon human capital concepts developed in the fields of economics, management, and human resource management to clarify the relationships between human capital and organizational performance for public organizations. I develop a theoretical framework to facilitate a more effective use of human capital concepts for public administration scholars and empirically evaluate several aspects of this framework by assessing the influence of frontline manager human capital on organizational performance. The organizational setting I use to examine this relationship is New York City (NYC) public schools in grades 3-8 (elementary-middle schools) and grades 9-12 (high schools). I focus on principals as the frontline managers in these organizations and examine the influence of a principal’s human capital on organizational performance using structural equation modeling and random effects regression. The most significant results of the model, both statistically and substantively, are a positive association between a principal’s tenure and internal management skills and school performance. The relationship between tenure and school performance is quadratic, however, with the positive effects of tenure diminishing more quickly for high school principals than elementary/middle school principals. The effects of six principal human capital skills in the model differ by contextual factors such as the type of school, the characteristics of the student body, and the interactive effects of these skills.Item Open Access Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding Modern State-Building (and Counterinsurgency)(Stanford University, 2010) Handler, Scott PaulSince the end of the Cold War, the international community has become intimately involved in trying to strengthen weak and failed states. External actors, both multilaterally and unilaterally, have intervened in Europe, Asia, and Africa to bring internally conflicted parties together and to change the domestic authority structures of these countries. This dissertation explains how external actors can successfully contribute to the development of domestic authority structures in conflict-torn or post-conflict countries. Conventional state-building theories follow the Weberian conception of the modern state as an entity that maintains a monopoly over the legitimate use of violent coercion. Further, standard approaches to ending civil conflict recommend the use of population-centric strategies to achieve stability. These prevailing assumptions are problematic as they ignore a credible commitment problem that exists in conflict-torn societies: elites within the government and opposition have no incentive to disarm due to the rational fear that once they do so they will be taken advantage of by the opposing elites. This dissertation proposes a theory of self-enforcing stability to explain, from a rational-choice perspective, how it is possible to overcome this credible commitment problem. The theory contains four testable hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that an elite-centric, rather than population-centric, strategy will lead to greater success in establishing stability in conflict-torn states. Second, external actors contribute to the establishment of stability more successfully when they help nations establish limited access orders created by elite pacts rather than encouraging the creation of liberal democracies, or open access orders. Third, external actors must help internal actors overcome their underlying credible commitment problems by guaranteeing elite pacts. The final hypothesis is that the decentralization, or oligopolization, of violent means and rent-seeking opportunities balances power amongst elites, ensuring that competing elite groups can protect themselves from one another without threatening each other with overwhelming force. This dissertation finds support for the proposed theory’s hypotheses in its examination of two cases: the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960, and the stabilization effort in Iraq between 2006-2008, which includes the “Awakening Movement” and the “Surge. Both cases demonstrate how an external actor can contribute to developing enduring stability in conflict-torn societies by breaking from the standard Weberian conception of the state and population-centric focus. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of policy implications, based on the dissertation’s findings, for current state-building efforts in Afghanistan.Item Metadata only Controlling Agency Choke Points: Presidents and Turnover in the Senior Executive Service(SSRN, 2017) Doherty, Kathleen; Lewis, David E.; Limbocker, ScottIf presidents wish to see their policy priorities implemented, they need control over career executives occupying key decision-making positions. This paper examines the extent to which new presidential administrations marginalize high level career executives and whether political conflict with a new administration drives executives from their positions. Once in office, presidents are more likely to target individuals with whom they conflict and those in important policymaking positions. Turnover is also affected by the choices of career executives. Some anticipate conflict and strategically exit before a new president takes office. To assess our theory, we use unique new data that combines individual survey responses with personnel records to analyze the probability that an agency executive departs her position from March 2015 to July 2017. Given our findings that turnover is driven both by presidential marginalization and strategic exit by bureaucrats, we conclude with implications for presidential efforts to control the bureaucracy.Item Metadata only Prisoners and Politics: Western Hostage Taking by Militant Groups(Taylor & Francis, 2017) Loertscher, Seth; Milton, DanielHostage taking of Westerners by militant groups has increased since 9/11. Despite this rising problem, there has been little academic research on how a hostage’s individual characteristics influence the outcome of the incident. Using a newly collected dataset of over 1,000 individuals taken hostage in incidents involving terrorist groups since 2001, this article evaluates how individual, national, and group characteristics influence the likelihood that hostage incidents end with the release or execution of the hostage. The findings show that a hostage’s nationality and occupation are significant individual-level drivers of outcomes, while the nature of the militant group itself also matters.Item Open Access DANGER CLOSE: MILITARY POLITICIZATION AND ELITE CREDIBILITY(Stanford University, 2018) Robinson, MichaelThis dissertation analyzes the relationship between the American public and the military institution as a source of political information. As much of the study of international relations and domestic institutions suggests, leaders considering policy options are sensitive to public opinion regarding those policies; as such, it is of considerable import to under-stand how the public forms those attitudes. Though traditional study has focused on the influence of partisan leaders and media elites in shaping the public’s base of information, comparatively little has been devoted to understanding the role of military elites in this process. As the value and veracity of political information is subject to increased public skepticism based on its source, the military is by contrast a highly trusted institution whose representative figures – both active and retired – continue to play a public role in politics. In this project, I examine not only the potential influence that such figures can have on public political attitudes, but how the credibility of the military and its elites as a source of information operates in an environment of partisan polarization, selective media exposure, rising acceptance of illiberal norms, and falling confidence in government and traditional expert communities. The dissertation that follows comprises three papers that incorporate original survey experimentation, observational time-series and social media data, text-as-data, and qualitative case studies in order to contribute to our general understanding of how politicization of the military affects – and is affected by – the credibility of military elites in the political information space. The first paper measures the potential political influence of military elites on public attitudes towards proposed military interventions. Using original survey experimentation, I build on previous knowledge of elite cuing and public attitudes for war by placing the political preferences of the military and the president in opposition, providing the military source a variety of mechanisms by which to challenge the stated preferences of the executive. Not only do I find that the military voice is a potentially influential one, but that this effect is tied considerably to impressions of the military elite as a credible source of information. Military elites – both active and retired – possess not just an independently powerful voice, but one that remains significant even when conditioning on the partisan identities of the president and the individual. The second paper envisions this concept of elite credibility not as a moderator, but as a dependent variable in its own right, seizing on the empirical puzzle presented by the partisan “gap” in expressed confidence for the military. Using time-series data and text-as-data on media reporting I find that partisans are likely to be exposed to widely different media environments when acquiring information on military institutional quality. Furthermore, using original survey experimentation, I find that even conditional on being presented with negative information on the military, partisans exhibit different pathologies in using it to update their impressions in a rational (Democrats, Independents) or biased (Republicans) fashion. The second paper envisions this concept of elite credibility not as a moderator, but as a dependent variable in its own right, seizing on the empirical puzzle presented by the partisan “gap” in expressed confidence for the military. Using time-series data and text-as-data on media reporting I find that partisans are likely to be exposed to widely different media environments when acquiring information on military institutional quality. Furthermore, using original survey experimentation, I find that even conditional on being presented with negative information on the military, partisans exhibit different pathologies in using it to update their impressions in a rational (Democrats, Independents) or biased (Republicans) fashion.Item Metadata only Why Do Bureaucrats Make Campaign Contributions to Presidential Candidates?: Evidence from 2004 to 2012(Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2018) Limbocker, ScottLike other citizens, federal employees commit time and money to presidential candidates seeking federal office. However, unlike other citizens, federal employees work in an executive establishment governed by a person to whom they may donate. Are the contributions the collective will of the agency or an incorrect aggregation of individual action? By merging two original surveys of federal employees with all Federal Election Commission records of individual donations, this study examines the contribution behavior of federal employees to presidential candidates in 2004, 2008, and 2012. I find that the rate at which federal employees contribute to presidential candidates varies depending on the bureaucrat’s political beliefs, characteristics about the job the individual performs, and career values of the individual federal employee. I find little evidence that contributions vary systematically from agency-wide characteristics.Item Open Access Play to Win: Sticking to a Playbook in the Competition with Russia(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeRussia docks a warship in Havana knowing it will provoke a response from the United States. How dare they. The US Navy dispatched a destroyer to shadow the vessel; after all, the United States has the Monroe doctrine to enforce. A few weeks prior, Russia sent around a hundred troops to Venezuela. This also provoked a response, albeit rhetorical. Despite these US reactions, Russia continues to play strategic games.Item Open Access What Every Boss Wants: Forecasting(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeIt was the first day at my new unit. As a staff officer I wasn’t surprised when the Battalion Executive Officer (XO), my new boss, motioned me into his office for a chat. What he said next left me speechless. I anticipated the normal “welcome to the unit” speech, but instead he offered one sentence worth of guidance and sent me on my way: “forecast my needs and that of the unit and you will succeed here.” What exactly did he mean by this? How does one forecast without additional information? Where should I start? What should the priority be? How far out should I forecast? My new boss clearly didn’t have the time to answer these questions, so I would have to figure it.Item Open Access Why Doctrine Matters(Small Wars Journal, 2019) Fust, GeorgeAnyone who has ever purchased furniture from Ikea knows the value of well written instructions. Entire sub-markets have developed to help people put Ikea furniture together. These experts have figured out the patterns and nuances of the company’s model. They have experience and knowledge of their respective task and can therefore perform it efficiently. Even when faced with a chair or table they haven’t assembled before, they under the principles and style of manufacturing and can leverage those skills to accomplish their objective. Military doctrine serves a similar function. It is critical for junior officers to have a solid foundation in doctrine. They must read it and apply it during training. They must commit to memory the most critical components. They must return to it if time permits to guide and shape courses of action (COA).Item Open Access Good for the Military - Bad for the Nation?(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeThe purpose of this article is to consider the possibility that we are moving toward a world of "garrison states"-a world in which the specialists on violence are the most powerful group in society. From this point of view the trend of our time is away from the dominance of the specialist on bargaining, who is the businessman, and toward the supremacy of the soldier. We may distinguish transitional forms, such as the party propaganda state, where the dominant figure is the propagandist, and the party bureaucratic state, in which the organization men of the party make the vital decisions. There are mixed forms in which predominance is shared by the monopolists of party and market power.Item Open Access Civ-mil in Danger? Blame the pundits, not the academies(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeI teach civil-military relations at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. While searching for readings for an elective course taught in the spring semester, I came across a 2010 article written in the L.A. Times, “An increasingly politicized military.” One passage stood out: “By all accounts, the curricula of the service academies and the war colleges give remarkably little attention to the central importance of civilian control. They do not systematically expose up-and-coming officers to intensive case studies and simulations designed to give them a sense of the principle’s real-world implications.”Item Open Access Deriving a Solution to Venezuela: Civil-Military Relations Can Help(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeHow does one define “healthy” civil-military relations? The simplest definition would suggest a nation’s military is subordinate to its ruling body. In other words, the guys with all the guns listen to those without any. So how then would we evaluate this relationship in a country like Venezuela? The military has remained loyal and subordinate to the ruling body, so does it meet the criteria? It is providing the only real stability for the country despite the questionable legitimacy of this government. Our starting definition is thus far too simple. And yet, when you add layers of complexity or depth to the discussion, it becomes difficult to grade the health of a particular nation’s civil-military relations. Comparative analysis is difficult if not impossible in the field of civil-military relations.Item Open Access Current Military Academy Service Obligation: Good for Civil-Military Relations(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeImagine receiving a free undergraduate education at one of the best colleges in the United States. The military academies provide this. Any economist, however, will tell you that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The American tax payer foots the bill for all those who are admitted to attend one of the military’s academies. In exchange, these citizens will commission as officers and serve an obligation of five years on active duty. The most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes a section directing the Secretary of Defense to assess if this five-year service obligation should be extended. Congress is now questioning if the increase in the cost of educating and training should equate to an increase in time served for graduates. In short, is the nation getting “an adequate return on investment for a service academy graduate?”Item Open Access YOU CAN’T SURGE TRUST: LESSONS ON WORKING WITH ALLIES AND PARTNERS(USMA, 2019) Fust, George“My hands are freezing,” I thought as I cradled my cold rifle while trudging along toward the objective. It was also too dark and foggy to see beyond a few feet and the calf-deep mud I kept slipping in only reinforced the debate I was having in my head over my poor life choices. “Could this get any worse?” My experience in the Army proved time and again that it could. My empty stomach was only interrupted by the drowsiness that missing two nights of sleep could produce. I had to stay alert, however. My soldiers were relying on me. I was also wearing a US flag on my right sleeve and the Romanian soldiers attached to us were watching and judging.Item Open Access An Alternative Perspective of Veteran Disapproval of Recent Wars: he Civil-Military Health of the Nation is Strong(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeA Pew Research Center report published on July 10 suggests that most veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan believe these wars are “not worth fighting.” What are the implications of these findings? What can they reveal about the health of U.S. civil-military relations? Is it dangerous for the guardians to be opposed to the mission they are directed to accomplish? At first glance, the data is troubling. Those who oppose America’s longest wars will tout this report as the crown jewel. If the veterans are against the war, then it must truly be a poor decision. What these critics fail to see is how this report reveals the health of America’s civil-military relations in a positive way...Item Metadata only Iraq, 2003–2011: succeeding to fail(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Godfroy, Jeanne; Collins, LiamThis study examines the US experience during the Iraq war, from the planning phase that began in 2001 to the withdrawal of US forces in 2011. It reveals a dearth of planning and intelligence leading up to the invasion; reluctance by conventional coalition military forces to conduct reconstruction, political and security capacity-building; and, later, full spectrum counterinsurgency operations. These forces took on some missions traditionally reserved for special operations forces, and they increasingly assumed diplomatic roles as they interfaced with the Iraqi leadership and local kingpins. Although these efforts yielded some impressive organizational learning and limited operational successes, they were hampered by lack of adequate preparation, a poor understanding of the human terrain, shortsighted strategies, and ultimately a dearth of political will to stay the course. The outcome was far from the model Middle East democracy envisioned by the invasion’s architects, and the American experience in Iraq instead became a cautionary tale for military intervention.Item Metadata only Russian Society and Foreign Policy: Mass and Elite Orientations After Crimea(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Sherlock, ThomasMost Russians applaud the official narrative that Russia has reemerged as a great power. Yet they increasingly disagree with the assertion of the Kremlin that the United States is a looming external danger and a subversive force in Russian domestic politics. In line with these opinions, many Russians balk at the costs of confrontation with the West, demonstrating the initially limited and now waning political significance of the “Crimea euphoria” (or “Crimea effect”) and “rally ‘round the flag” phenomena. Russian elites often differ from the general public in their stronger backing for a more assertive foreign posture. Nevertheless, such preferences are frequently moderated by the apprehension that Russia will neglect domestic modernization indefinitely if its foreign policy is confrontational.Item Open Access Deriving a Solution to Venezuela: Civil-Military Relations Can Help(Small Wars Journal, 2019) Fust, GeorgeHow does one define “healthy” civil-military relations? The simplest definition would suggest a nation’s military is subordinate to its ruling body. In other words, the guys with all the guns listens to those without any. So how then would we evaluate this relationship in a country like Venezuela? The military has remained loyal and subordinate to the ruling body, so does it meet the criteria? It is providing the only real stability for the country despite the questionable legitimacy of this government. Our starting definition is thus far too simple. And yet, when you add layers of complexity or depth to the discussion, it becomes difficult to grade the health of a particular nation’s civil-military relations. Comparative analysis is difficult if not impossible in the field of civil-military relations.Item Open Access Multi-Domain Operations, bad for civil-military relations?(USMA, 2019) Fust, GeorgeIs it possible that the U.S. military’s newest warfighting concept is bad for civil-military relations? The current lexicon for this new concept is multi-domain operations, or simply MDO. For an in-depth discussion of this concept refer to a recent War On The Rocks article, “A Sailor’s Take on Multi-Domain Operations” or The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028...Item Open Access ESTIMATING VARIABILITY IN THE IMPLEMENTATION COST GROWTH OF MILITARY BASE REALIGNMENTS AND CLOSURES USING HISTORIC DATA(Naval Postgraduate School, 2019) Martin, Sarah A.; Dell, Robert F.The Department of Defense (DoD) periodically conducts a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round to improve the stationing of its force structure, eliminate excess infrastructure, and attain cost savings. The most recent BRAC round in 2005 far exceeded its estimated cost to implement; in a 2012 report, the Government Accountability Office reported that the 2005 BRAC implementation cost grew from the original estimate by 67%. The DoD requires an improved cost estimate and understanding of inherent uncertainty. Using data from 58 observations of BRAC 2005 recommendations, this thesis examines trends in cost growth. The thesis does not find any statistically significant differences in cost increases among subsets of data analyzed by type of DoD recommending agency, presence of Commission amendments, BRAC action complexity, or size of estimate. Variation in implementation cost growth is mildly narrower for BRAC actions that were amended by the Commission and for actions that were more complex. The analysis detects a bias in estimating large BRAC actions, which indicates a systematic hesitancy or inability to fully estimate the most expensive BRAC actions. The distribution of BRAC 2005 actions’ cost increases is used to inform an improved, three-point estimate for future BRAC rounds. Under conditions comparable to BRAC 2005, this thesis shows that the true mean of future BRAC actions’ cost increases may be expected to be 93% with a 95% confidence interval of [57%, 129%].
- «
- 1 (current)
- 2
- 3
- »