This dissertation addresses the problem of informational and legal restrictions on employment screening processes such as educational requirements and standardized testing. For the past two decades, the legal system in the U.S. has struggled with this issue and has labeled certain information or...

The proportion of a unit of government's budget devoted to labor costs determines whether cost reductions at the metropolitan level are achieved through fragmentation or consolidation. Consolidating capital intense functions at higher levels of government is the optimal cost-reducing strategy....

Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, People's Republic of China, I offer a reading of Reform and Opening (Gaige Kaifang) in terms of how individuals recognized, manipulated, avoided, and responded to the Chinese state apparatus during the Deng...

Abramson and Inglehart find a significant trend toward postmaterialist values in Western Europe, which they argue is largely driven by the gradual processes of generational replacement. Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin argue that this trend is a methodological artifact of the wording of Inglehart's...

The transfer of government services to the private sector, or privatization as it is generally called, has received considerable attention in recent years. However, few attempts have been made to investigate the issue from a labor relations perspective. This dissertation attempts to alleviate...

The three essays cover the economic, political and institutional aspects of the impact drug smuggling activities have had on the Colombian economy. In the first essay, I examine drug smuggling activities as factors of institutional change forcing Colombia to adopt an export-led growth model of...

Since the 2010s, all levels of governments in Canada have gradually initiated social procurement as a policy tool to further their social values and political agendas. Social enterprises of various shapes and sizes across the country have served as partners in the execution of those agendas....

Past research has clearly demonstrated that a high level of interorganizational coordination among human services agencies is extremely difficult to achieve and maintain and that the dynamics of interorganizational coordination and conflict are poorly understood. In the interest of better...

The study had three objectives: (a) to determine the causes of turnover among particular career service employees in the Departments of Corrections (DC), Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV), Health and Rehabilitative Services (DHRS), and Agriculture and Consumer Services (DA & CS); (b) to...