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Over the past few decades, villages have faced significant challenges, such as depopulation, that have hindered their development. To address these issues, the concept of a Smart Village has emerged as a potential solution for rural development. The present article aims to investigate the essential categories of elements that comprise this concept by conducting an international literature review in multiple languages, including Polish, English, Spanish, Italian, French, and German. The article begins with an introduction that discusses the current challenges facing rural development, followed by a detailed analysis of various aspects of the Smart Village concept. Additionally, the article presents case studies from different countries to illustrate how the concept has been implemented in practice. Finally, the article employs inductive reasoning based on the previous literature review to identify four fundamental categories of elements that underpin the Smart Village concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitalization is a macro-trend affecting every sector, albeit in different ways. We study the process of digitalization of the public mental care system, by analyzing the case of the introduction of a new digital technology, Braive, within two Norwegian mental care clinics. Despite positive initial attitudes among the employees, we find that, absent effective managerial and organizational support, professional care providers will effectively resist the adoption of new technologies. Managers need to ensure that professional concerns are heard and integrated within the adoption process, if they intend to reap the potential rewards that digitalization offers for the medical care field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we examine the phenomenon of employee-driven digital innovation in a public-sector context. Using a qualitative research design, we aim to identify institutional, organizational and individual drivers and barriers to employee-driven digital innovation, with a Norwegian municipality as our focal point of study. The research was conducted by interviewing eleven employees with different connections to four digital innovation projects in the municipality. The aim of this research is to establish the innovation drivers and barriers that exist in the public sector in relation to employee-driven digital innovation, in order to increase insight into these innovation processes for both academics and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors consider the phenomenon of social networks in terms of a tool for disseminating information flows. The study is aimed at assessing the possibilities and advantages of social networks in the innovative economy. The goal of the authors is to prove the hypothesis that social networks inevitably become an object of government management because of their dialectical essence, which creates not only unique opportunities for socioeconomic development, but also critical risks for the society sustainability. The subject of this scientific work is social networks as a natural tool for disseminating information flows. The result of the study is conclusion that this is the public authorities which are capable to mitigate the significant complex risks arising in the digital social environment and thus to protect the citizens from uncontrolled, unverified, and dangerous flows of information disseminated through social media. The results of the work can be used in the field of public governance, in forming and implementing of digital state systems at various levels and for various functional purposes. The novelty consists in the systematic perception of digital social media through the prism of interests of public administration, which differs from the works of other authors considered in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper outlines regional and local self-government bodies represent special management system of public administration, which consists of many interconnected elements, among which one of the most important elements is public-political communication. In this management system such subsystems are functional that are responsible for adaptation of elements of the management system at the time of changes of conditions. These subsystems which get information from outside initiate communication management methods in regional and local management structures and make update of forms. This certainly contributes to the implementation of effective governance based on effective, transparent and democratic principles at regional and local levels. Regional and local bodies of public governance have an organizational system of public-political communication. Accordingly, it is an important element of the state management system, which is responsible for implementing state policy at regional and local level. Eventually they are integrated into the country's political system, which is generally perceived as an external factor. As far as any system object is characterized by adaptation to changes in environmental factors, the transformation of public-political communication in the regional and local bodies of public governance at the modern stage can be seen as a reaction to changes in the country's political system in the context of the government's democratization which serves to strengthening of citizens’ engagement in transparency, accountability and decision making process of governance using new technologies and innovative procedures and trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of public authorities in managing public administration is to improve the quality of public administration subjects and public service activities to support socioeconomic growth and increase the quality of citizens’ life. For this reason, public authorities must make efficient use of available funds. Effective management of public finances will ensure optimal functioning of all socially important public sector functions related to the peoples’ life and whole society, such as education, health care, social care and security system. One of the key areas that currently affects the quality of citizens’ life is security. The process of globalization, as well as technical and technological progress, has brought about the emergence of new security threats in addition to raising the standard of living of the population. That is why protection of life, health, property and the environment is becoming one of the priorities of the public administration of each state. The aim of the paper is to analyse the use of public finances by public authorities with a focus on increasing the level of citizens' security. Contribution results can be used by state authorities and other public authorities in the budgetary process with an emphasis on the protection of persons and property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the national context, public management cannot be treated as private management due to their critical differences in the performance measurement, the management discretion and the sources of legitimacy. One of the sources of legitimacy in public management is the citizen to serve, so it is the purpose of this document to present the science of design as an approach that allows taking the sociological factor as a starting point for public management in a country as socially diverse as Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the applicability of learning forums (Moynihan 2005) as a method for improving organizational learning in Finnish local government. The approach aims to overcome the reported challenges in the use of performance information in public management. Practical observations and the performance management literature demonstrate that public organizations gather information with an overwhelming number of performance measures and indicators but lack the ability to utilize this information in decision-making and to engage in goal-based learning. The paper describes the case of the city of Tampere, Finland, and analyzes the evolution of the city's performance management practices between 2010 and 2015. The results suggest that the future of public performance management should increasingly rely on continuous and iterative performance dialogue. The paper recognizes three components or mechanisms critical for organizational learning in public organizations: 1) the important role of information analysts as referees of the information game, 2) organizational culture that drives the move from managing daily performance to managing the longer-term ability to perform, and 3) performance dialogue itself, which depicts an innovative management approach to managing public performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management has been from its inception integrally connected with information technology. Information technology utilized knowledge management changed as well as the development of information technologies themselves. Use the appropriate organizational structure and modern information technology knowledge can be used to solve problems regardless of time and place. The basic prerequisite for meaningful use of knowledge management in the way of success of the organization is the possibility of exchanging knowledge between its members and continuously expand the knowledge base. A typical characteristic of knowledge management is to store data and information. Case studies will deal with comparison of personal management within the four Czech national parks. The introduction of knowledge and quality of personal management has a positive impact in various areas of development of each institution. One of the most important factors in any comfortable working environment is the satisfaction of all employees is that management has a clear vision of the future direction of the company or institution. They are produced by teams of experts from many different industries; their view of the information was the most diverse. The fact that users are involved in the creation of an information system, to acquire its content some significant degree of confidence. Knowledge management is indeed inseparably linked with information technology, but the key word here is always man as such, because without it there would be no transfer of knowledge to avoid. It is up to management companies and various institutions that may use knowledge management to streamline their results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The programming period 2007-2013 provides a lot of opportunities to build the framework for future intervention in order to address the topics relevant for Europe 2020. The lack of the ICT skills and digital literacy are the main problems faced by different people looking for a job or for a better connection. The local administrative units form Romania are implementing projects financed both by European Social Fund (ESF) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in 2007-2013 programming period aiming both the improvement of the local educational infrastructure and quality of the educational process. In 2008, growth poles were established in Romania as cores for urban development in compliance with European and national policies and they include an urban nucleus and its rural surroundings. The ERDF financed project in these units could play an essential role in increasing ICT skills for local people and digital literacy as a premise for a better quality of life. The growth pole Brasov has an important project portfolio that could be a starting point to overcome the lack of digital skills. Brasov growth pole study case will present the main projects which are implemented by the local authorities as members of the association managing the growth pole and the future perspective for eLearning activities as well as e-business and e-Government activities. The real challenge for local public authorities will be how to assure an effective management of the these centers in order to provide relevant content for the consumers taking into account the specific assignments of local public authorities. In addition to educational infrastructure and local objectives in line with EU Digital Agenda, an effective management is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study is to present an ongoing e-health research project in Lithuania. Healthcare in the meantime is becoming more and more dependent on information and communication technologies (hereafter - ICTs), that are critical for the development of high quality healthcare services. Globalization, the need for cooperation between countries and their healthcare institutions, fast development of science and innovations in various fields, the spread of ICTs and the need for more and better quality healthcare services were among the main reasons for the interest of the researchers in the development of various e-health projects. Management of the electronic provision of health services ensures wider accessibility and continuity of healthcare services through common access to information data bases of the public sector, such as electronic healthcare records, registers and classifiers. The following scientific and practical questions will be researched in the presented research what makes the process of e-health development more effective; what role do the stakeholders play in relation to the development and implementation of the e-health system; what are the main conditions and obstacles for innovations and sustainability in the delivery of healthcare services; what are the main challenges for e- health development within the short and long term perspectives? As a result, the research project will develop and test an integrated e-health implementation platform, which will enable the inclusion of all stakeholder groups necessary to be involved in the process of e-health development and implementation and contributing to the innovation and sustainability in the healthcare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, information, goods, people circulate and brew. The evolution of science and technology, market and capital dynamics, the generalization of models of development and living, these changes affect the relationship with the biosphere and threaten its balance at the same time the one becomes aware of the complexity and probably their fragility. Governance, from local to global, is at the heart of those quantitative but also qualitative changes. Governance is the complex regulator system of the human society which manages both the internal and relations with the outside world, which at the same time guarantees the stability and allows adaptation. Governance is an architecture, a set of practices born of practical challenges that societies face, forming a system that allows to formulate general principles. Stating general principles of good governance will help to build a stable and sustainable society, the common frame of reference against which one can lie and act within and outside the public service. Thus, the governance is based on a territorial approach and the principle of active subsidiarity. Governance been based on a universal ethic of responsibility, it puts the economy in its place and defines what is the market and what does not belong, defines the cycle of development, implementation and monitoring of public policies, organizes cooperation and synergies between actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for effective and efficient management in public sector has led to increased role of internal audit and control. Performance budgeting, accrual accounting and accountability for results require different type of audit and control than in the past. Internal audit and control in modern conditions demand more than reconciliation with the normative framework. Therefore, it is necessary to move towars controlling and auditing for results. Thereby, improvement of internal audit and internal control systems is crucial to help public managers in achieving results and make government management more efficient and effective. In order to achieve noted goals, it is necessary to implement Public Internal Financial Control (PIFC) in government entities. PIFC is set of principles internal financial controls system established for the purpose of controlling, auditing, supervising of the use of national budget and European Union budget and funds, but the goals and purpose of PIFC can be set up broader. General goals include performing business activities in a correct, ethic, economic, efficient and effective way; conformity of business with legislative framework; protection of assets and other resources from losses caused by bad governance, unjustified using and discontinuity and fraud; strengthening accountability for the successful realization of the tasks; and timeliness financial reporting and monitoring operating results. PIFC must be understood as completed and consolidated system of internal supervision that includes both internal audit and internal control. This paper aims to examine current practice and trends in developing internal audit and control in the public sector of selected transition countries: Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Precisely, we will give comparison of main characteristics of internal audit and internal control in selected countries. The primary focus will be on the following parameters: types of internal audit and internal control, human resources, legislative framework and systems of funding. The main result of this paper will be to highlight the current situation in developing internal audit and internal control in selected countries and distinguishing certain similarities and differences that are significant for further development of internal supervision in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on public and nonprofit management which include a process model of public sector innovation, organizations' use of value-related information in job advertisements, and the study of venture philanthropy in a nonprofit and philanthropic context.

Widely used mathematical models begin to penetrate in public management system. Several decades ago methods of operational calculus, decision-making under condition of uncertainty and other static theories were used. Nowadays, more and more attention is paid to dynamic systems, used as basic for various forecasting approaches. In governmental planning significant roles belong to aims and targets expressed through slogans and proclamations without numerical backing. At the same time statistical services regularly collect huge amounts of different indices. Then these indices are somehow combined into aggregates. Thus there pyramids appear consisting of aggregates, expressing public management aims and targets. However the problem of target ‘digitization’ has more than one solution. On solving this problem some experts are involved, who are subjective, and also priorities on which aggregates are based on transform if political, economical or social situation changes. Thereby the indices pyramids are time-dependent, which makes comparison and other analysis rather complicated. Suggested in this paper method allows to choose a ‘natural’ index instead of aggregate, but to choose with preserving the experts priorities. This method is based on defining a collation metric for time series with ‘natural’ and aggregate indices (gained with experts' participation). A comparison of different metrics for real numerical data is made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents several conference paper abstracts on public and nonprofit organization management. "Community Foundation, Organizational Strategy, and Public Policy," about the strategic plan of California community foundations. "The Influence of Top Executive Functional Experience on Nonprofit Organization Financial Performance," discusses the relationship between a chief executive officer and the organization. "Innovation and Organizational Performance: A Critical Review of the Evidence and a Research Agenda," focuses on how innovation helps performance in public agencies.

This study examines the context and variation in which government manages its contracting relationships with nonprofit organizations using agency and stewardship theory. Interviews were conducted with public and nonprofit managers involved in social services contract relationships at the state and county level in New York State. The use of trust, reputation, information, and monitoring as well as other factors influence the manner in which contract relationships are managed. The findings suggest that nonprofits engaged in contracts with government are managed largely as stewards, but there is much less variance in the management practices applied than either theory would suggest. This results in part from the nature of the service, the lack of market competitiveness, and administrative capacity constraints. The intergovernmental environment in which social services are implemented and delivered poses complex challenges for public managers responsible for managing contract relationships. The findings from this study document those challenges and the corresponding management practices used with nonprofit contractors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents abstracts of papers related to business policy and strategy, including "Competition, Learning, or Legitimacy: Understanding the Adoption of Websites by Consumer Magazines," about corporate earnings restatements; "A Road to Directorship: How Corporate Executives Secure Positions on Other Firm's Boards," about the role of outside directors; and "A Selection that Cannot Stand the Test: Succession Context and New CEO Dismissal," about executive succession.

This section presents symposia abstracts of several business policy and strategy conferences held in the U.S. as of August 2003. The symposium Network Markets and Bandwagons: Economic and Sociological Approaches to Increasing Returns presents a spectrum of research that investigates increasing returns that range from the importance of social pressure to economic incentives. Marketing and the Strategic Behaviour of Public and Nonprofit Organizations aimed to explore how the introduction of marketing techniques has changed the practice of public and non-profit management, to consider the extent to which marketing theory can be used to understand key issues in public and non-profit management and to evaluate if, and how, the practice of marketing within the public and non-profit sector has impacted upon the development of marketing theory. Organizational Agency and Institutional Change presents research on organizational agency, with particular emphasis placed on the strategic interplay and conflict between different organizations as they strive to shape their institutional environment.

This section presents abstracts of several studies related to critical management. Celia R. Taylor considered various facets of corporate social responsibility. Linda McGuire and colleagues focused on the transference and adoption or adaptation of marketing approaches into public and non-profit management. Joao Vieira Cunha and colleagues broadened the reflection on paradox by examining it from a theoretical and practical viewpoint and by addressing the necessity to build new theoretical frameworks for exploring it; the relevance of dialectics as an integrative approach for the study and analysis of paradox; and paradox in science. Anne-Elizabeth Ross-Smith examined liberal and radical feminist approaches in the field of organization studies as well as their practical implications. Ann L. Cunliffe explored the relationship between democracy and knowledge. Philip H. Mirvis developed a number of propositions about negative and positive individual actions and organizational practices based on the assumption that emotional pain occurs and is inevitable in organizations. Naomi R. Olson and colleagues provided a forum for stepping back from the imperative to find solutions to reflect on some of the origins, influences, and effects of efforts to define and enact sustainability.

This section presents abstracts of articles on the strategic behavior of several public and nonprofit organizations. In May 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin merged the Russian State Committee for the Protection of the Natural Environment into the Russian Ministry for Natural Resources. In the absence of an independent state ministry for environmental protection, the Russian Environmental Movement will be looked upon to fill the void left by a retreating state. The ability of the environmental movement to fill such gap and its contribution to the development of Russian civil society through the lens of social capital. The relationship between managerial quality and citizens' trust in government and in public administration systems is a promising field of study. It is necessary to explore some interrelationships among these variables and empirically test causality between performance and trust. Public pension plans in the U.S., the pension plans of public sector state, county and municipal employees, play a large role in capital markets and corporate governance debates. The public pension plans are institutions of great socio-economic significance, which provide a largely unintentional linkage between the public and private sectors.

This section presents abstracts of articles about marketing and the strategic behavior of public and nonprofit organizations. Over the past two decades, public management has become increasingly influenced by management techniques which have derived from experience in the private sector, under the broad heading of the new public management. This has involved a cluster of processes, one of which has been the introduction of both negotiated and competitive markets into the procurement and delivery of public services. This transference process presents a crucial challenge both to the theory and practice of public and non-profit management and to the origins of such managerial techniques. One of the hallmarks of the present era will undoubtedly be the widespread failures of integrity across important institutions in U.S. society. Few institutions are unscarred by scandals or power abuses. From corporate crimes to the secrecy surrounding sexual misconduct of priests in the Catholic Church, from failures of public trust to calls for reform of management education.

The present work in progress paper is based on the project entitled: Establishment of R&D programmes in the field of new public management between economic faculties of higher education in Hajdu-Bihar and Bihor counties - HURO/0901/277/2.2.2, financed by the European Regional Development Fund as part of Hungary-Romania Cross Border Co-operation Programme 2007-2013. The general objective of the project is the cooperation between Hungarian and Romanian academics in the R&D field related to organizational development in public administration in order to contribute to knowledge sharing for the public sector. This initiative comes for meeting the demands addressed to the educational and research institutions by the Romanian and Hungarian local public administrations, for getting involved in: analyzing issues regarding knowledge sharing for the public sector, recommending and developing methods to increase effectiveness, training specialists for implementing reforms in public institutions, and also preparation of specialists who know the characteristics of Hungarian and Romanian public administration and the main characteristics of its functioning, capable of developing and maintaining cross-border partnerships. The target groups (direct beneficiaries) of this project will include 60 institutions of public administration - 30 Hungarian and 30 Romanian. Joint research team activities and programmed results are: analyzing successful models and methods in KM, as well as the EU best practices; defining the organizational structures, functions and organizational problems of Hungarian and Romanian local governments; comparing their threats and opportunities in order to discover real problems and find solutions; transferring results to public administration in order to increase their effectiveness; publishing a multilingual manual and website with research results; development of common educational themes, special courses, internships, inter-university trainings etc. in public sector KM. The most valuable future result of the project is developing cross-border communication networks in the fields of research, education/instruction that will work as a source of innovation and knowledge sharing for the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Global-local partnerships', involving public and nonprofit organizations from developing countries and from industrialized regions, are increasingly established to address social issues. As participating organizations are often financed using public funds, calls for an enhanced accountability have been made. We draw on social exchange and dependency theories to derive a framework that helps to explain performance in a global-local context. A systematic review of the literature in public, nonprofit, and development studies brings together insights on global-local partnership performance, in particular with regard to motives of aid and the involvement of local organizations. With this study, we improve our understanding of global-local partnerships and their performance. Directions for future research in the field are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium explores the antecedents and consequences of negative workplace activities for a diverse range of employees working in varied public sector/non-profit contexts in different OECD countries including USA, UK, Australia and Italy. Negative workplace activities range from non-physical activities such as gossiping, continual criticism, innuendo, scapegoating, intimidation, work harassment and withholding information required to do the job; to physical acts involved in bullying. All negative workplace activities share a common characteristic of being repetitive and not one-off and all are similar in causing a defining outcome - they all cause varying degrees of negative impact on their victims. The following five papers deal with different facets of negative workplace activities. The first and last papers have a similar theme in identifying the incidence of negative workplace activities in the UK and Australia and in the case of the first paper, it identifies that the incidence of negative workplace activities is greater in public sector workplaces in the UK than private, or not-for-profit sectors. As such paper one and five identify the significant depth and breadth of negative workplace activities in the public sector across the UK and Australia. Paper two, three and four share a common theme in identifying the extent to which poor management/supervision is an antecedent of negative workplace activities for UK, USA, Australian and Italian employees. The second paper examine the types of negative workplace activities evident in non-for-profit settings in Ireland, whereas paper three and four examine consequences of negative workplace activities, with paper three focusing on the impact on nurse's commitment and turnover intentions and paper four focusing on the impact on nurse's wellbeing. Both the third and fifth papers identify a strategy for addressing negative workplace activities, with the third paper identifying the need for supervisors to be upskilled in forming and maintaining effective workplace relationships with their subordinates and the fifth paper suggesting that a starting point of addressing negative workplace activities is to change the perspectives of senior management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of application of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is limited to the corporations as the very acronym CSR indicates (i.e.: corporate). This symposium discusses the systemic need and the timely opportunity to extend CSR to public administration (that is, to include all non-profit governmental organizations) as CSR is about responsible management, private as well as public. We argue that public administration needs to open its governance to social responsibility, transparency and accountability. A major pillar of social responsibility for public administration is economic responsibility as it manages -mandatorily collected- tax-payers money and, consequently, has a relatively higher moral obligation of being economically responsible than private business which manage -voluntarily collected- private money. This emphasis on efficiency and economic responsibility is related to the core business activities of all organizations and implies a revival of the economic bottom line in CSR. A key aspect of the discussion is competition and the fact that public administration is often shielded from competition. The panelists will demonstrate the need for opening public administration to CSR, present ways of doing so and discuss the ramifications of opening public administration to CSR for research and teaching (such as including public management in the area of Principles of Responsible Management Education) as well as for academics and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is put forth a theory of bureaucratic errors that is encompassing enough to correctly identify the major variables that contribute to bureaucrat errors in government programs, but that is also succinct enough to allow for the creation of hypotheses that with empirical testing could provide useful insights into how to better design, implement, and manage new government programs and improve upon the performance of current programs. This theory has defined errors as any deviation from an intended outcome that is mandated by either law or organizational rules. These errors are then further categorized into errors that may be purposeful or accidental, favorable or punitive, and directed at clients, other bureaucrats, the program mission, or some political power. This categorization provides a classification of errors, which allows for a prediction of how interactions and decisions made at the four levels might lead to specific types of errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "The Proverbs of Administration" Herbert Simon lodged two criticisms of existing scholarship in public administration - the theories of administration are inconsistent and often contradictory and our body of empirical knowledge is completely lacking. Simon then proposes a preliminary roadmap to a solution with four parts: creating clear concepts, establishing efficiency as the guiding principle for public administration research, focusing on decisionmaking as the essential element of public administration, and weighting how various criteria might lead to efficiency. His essay is more in the tone of nailing 95 theses to the door of a church rather than a systematic empirical critique of the literature; it is as much an invitation to debate as it is the final word on the status of public administration at that time. This essay revisits the Simon criticism in light of the evolution of public administration. It asks what progress we have made in terms of the Simon roadmap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas the organizational concept of self-managed teams has received abundant attention by public management scholars as a post-bureaucratic answer to the increasing demands faced by public organizations, research on what teamwork in public organizations actually looks like is lacking. This paper fills this gap by investigating to what extent characteristics of teamwork commonly found in research on private sector organizations - goal dependency, task dependency and external cooperation - affect the degree of self-management of teams in public sector organizations. Furthermore, we examine how self-managed teams are affected by their attachment to public values by analyzing publicness as a moderator of the relationships of goal dependency, task dependency and external cooperation with self-management. Analyses of supervisor and team member data from a sample of 68 teams in Dutch public sector organizations show that goal dependency and external cooperation positively affect the degree of self-management, while task dependency does not. Moderated multiple regression analysis also shows that publicness bounds the positive association between goal dependency and self-management, but does not significantly affect the relationship of external cooperation with self-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partnerships between schools and other organizations are important because these relationships are sources of school social capital. A persistent finding of social capital research is that actors have unequal access to the resources of social capital due to the structure or pattern of relationships between actors in a network. The results from the current study of partnership formation among 211 public high schools and 1,098 partner organizations in New York City from 1999 to 2005 suggest that schools do not have equal access to the resources of school social capital. Schools with greater resource needs, such as having a greater proportion of low SES students, are less likely to have partnerships. Schools with fewer resource needs, such as having a larger proportion of more experienced teachers, are more likely to have partnerships. However, the greatest advantage in forming partnerships results from schools having strong external ties and being more central in the school-partner network. The greatest disadvantage results from schools being structurally equivalent to other schools in the network and thus having to compete for partnerships . These findings suggest schools that are already well-endowed in terms of partnership opportunities are most likely to have partnerships, and schools that are already disadvantaged are least likely to have partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the underlying processes that support change implementation in public and nonprofit organizations. It examines the role of dynamic capabilities in public organizations undergoing planned transformative service changes. We extend existing research on dynamic capabilities in public and nonprofit organizations by suggesting four capabilities important for social service delivery organizations undergoing change. Based on two waves of data collection that included 56 interviews in four states, we found the capability to integrate new organizational practices, the capability to analyze and use data to inform decision-making, the capability to generate stakeholder commitment, and the capability to collaborate with other organizations to be critical to an organization's perceived ability to carry out its mission and its change agenda. Analysis of findings indicates the importance of both development and deployment of dynamic capabilities. Future research areas are suggested as a way to further develop the concept of dynamic capabilities and its application to public and nonprofit contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency preparedness and response is moving from a specialized circle of emergency management professionals and select nonprofit organizations (such as the Red Cross and other national relief organizations) to include a broader variety of organizations not traditionally fulfilling emergency management roles, including schools. It is not clear who among these new potential members of emergency preparedness networks collaborates with whom. We present the results of a survey of Texas public schools and test how structural characteristics are related to collaboration with nonprofits and relief organizations following a local, visible disaster, that of the 2005 Gulf Coast Hurricanes. Our results show that the propensity to collaborate is related to the size of the districts and its degree of centralization, even while controlling for a district's general collaborative tendency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]