Schar School of Policy and Government
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This collection contains ETD documents from the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs.
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Browsing Schar School of Policy and Government by Author "Acs, Zoltan J."
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Item An Organizational Approach to Entrepreneurship in the Federal Sector(2014-05) Arnold, Aaron M.; Arnold, Aaron M.; Acs, Zoltan J.Public administration research rarely takes an organizational approach to better understanding the boundaries of entrepreneurship within the Federal sector, despite the increasing role that career bureaucrats play in both the implementation and formulation of public policy. This dissertation explores the effects of organizational mission, involvement, consistency, and adaptability--scales reflective of culture, environment, and structure--on Federal employees' perceptions of innovativeness and proactiveness. A multivariate statistical analysis of Federal employee survey data finds that the role of organizational culture, environment, and structure within Federal agencies is mostly consistent with private sector research on organizational entrepreneurship. The results imply that organizational traits are important when considering management reform efforts that rely on entrepreneurial activity among career civil servants.Item Campus as Frontier: High Growth Student Startups at US Colleges and Universities(2015) Miller, David Joshua; Miller, David Joshua; Acs, Zoltan J.This dissertation explores the complex social phenomena of students at US colleges and universities creating high growth firms and investigates the role, if any, played by the campus during the firm formation process. This dissertation employs mixed methods to better understand student entrepreneurs, their firms and the institutions where opportunity identification and firm formation processes began. Given the gap in the literature surrounding high growth firms created by students, no hypothesis is proposed or tested.Item Development Assistance and Counterinsurgency: Understanding Philanthropy and Charity Within a Clear-Hold-Build Strategy(2014-05) Boardman, Mary C.; Boardman, Mary C.; Acs, Zoltan J.This dissertation explores the ineffectiveness of development assistance as an intervention into a complex system, and makes a contribution in explaining how and why this is so. Specifically, this issue is explored within a charity-philanthropy context. As the build component of counterinsurgency (COIN) in Afghanistan is currently the most high-stakes, policy relevant example of US development assistance, this dissertation explores these issues within a COIN context.