(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-11-18)
Hutto, Tamara E.
In order to understand how policies are made, analysts need to be able to explain and describe the policy making process. This is a complex task due to the variety and complexity of policy making environments. The difficulty lies in accounting for the multiple actors who come and go, differing preferences, and impending problems and solutions sets which vary by policy environment.
Therefore, there is a need to approach the understanding of policy processes from several different theoretical perspectives to aid in evaluating the multifaceted variations which ultimately affect policy making. An improved description of processes can lead to more accurate predictions of possible future policies, improved advocacy efforts, and enhanced problem solving.
Two policy process frameworks, the Multiple Stream Framework (MSF) and the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, were applied to a recent significant change in science policy. An understanding is developed to explain how federal science funding survived within the highly controversial and costly American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
The volatile and unpredictable nature of science policy lends itself well to the MSF, while the more static IAD is less useful to explain how and why the funds stayed in the bill. This is telling about the scope and adaptability of the two frameworks, where each may be better suited for different policy environments. The MSF being more appropriate for unstable and capricious policy issues and the IAD better matched for policy issues which have a somewhat more stable environment.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-07-09)
Kim, Hyung Hoon
This study is to investigate the influence of entrepreneurial activities on teaching at universities. Specifically, the study focuses on entrepreneurial activities' effect on professors' time allocation. The dataset analyzed was constructed from the survey conducted by University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998. The sample was drawn from American academic professional associations' members of the four fields: experimental biology, physics, mathematics, and sociology.
Based on the data of 133 professors, the study shows that professors with paid consulting work tend to spend less time in teaching when research activities are controlled. Insignificant are the other variables about entrepreneurial activities: patent application, industry funding, and research collaboration with industry. Also, more research time is likely to result in less teaching time. Insignificant are the other research-related variables: research funding at large and collaborative research in general.
In terms of personal and institutional conditions, assistant professors tend to invest more time in teaching than senior professors, but they are likely to reduce more time on teaching than their senior counterparts for increasing research time. Finally, biology and sociology professors tend to allocate less time to teaching than physics and mathematics professors. In a word, entrepreneurial activities and research tend to conflict with teaching at the level of individual professors' time allocation.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-07-10)
Lamos, Erin Elisabeth
This paper analyzes the founding rate of bioengineering departments in the United States. It takes the density dependence model from organizational ecology literature as the starting point of the analysis. This model predicts that founding rates of organizational populations are driven by population density, which represents processes of legitimation and competition, and by external environmental factors. The analysis finds support for density dependence predictions about the effect of population density on the founding rate of bioengineering departments. Further, this analysis finds that funding from the Whitaker Foundation has a significant positive impact on the founding rate of departments. The density dependence model is based on assumptions that individual actors are limited in their ability to act strategically and that competition is diffuse. In light of these assumptions and the threat to validity that would be posed if they were incorrect, the paper presents a discussion of strategic interaction and direct competition. I use an acceleration analysis comparison to conduct an initial study of the existence of endogenous interaction within the population of bioengineering departments. I find evidence of endogenous interaction through a process of cumulative social learning.