PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2025, Arts and Sciences: Classics

My thesis addresses a fundamental question about the governmentality of centralized state, namely how does a state create effective centralized institutions, what trade offs are inherent in such a transition, and how does this new apparatus affect society at large. My dissertation examines the central administrative bureaus of the Roman state in the fourth and fifth centuries AD in order to understand both the structures and effects of Rome's developing administrative capacity. Following Michael Mann's model of state infrastructural power, I demonstrate that during this period that Rome developed a standardized bureaucracy, increasing state control over its territory and inhabitants at the cost of the emperor's despotic power. Put differently, the imperial government delegated a number of its functions to career bureaucrats in order to gather information about the empire's territory and to police its inhabitants. These bureaucrats carried imperial authority wherever they went and were able to better police the empire in a far more ubiquitous manner. The result was a radical reshaping of Roman government and society as the new central administration expanded the effective reach of state power while simultaneously coopting and superseding existing administrative system with profound effects on everything from social hierarchies to literary production and identity. Rome's new bureaucratic apparatus created and empowered a new class in Roman society: central bureaucrats. Emperors ensured that this class was in a state of perpetual conflict with the other civil institutions of the empire. This conflict took three major forms, each of which helped to expand the reach of the central government while simultaneously building connections between the new administration and traditional elites. First, all levels of local government were forced to interface regularly with the central bureaucracy. Second, bureaucrats were made equal in honorific status to urban elites and p (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marion Kruse Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Peter van Minnen Ph.D. (Committee Member); M. Shane Bjornlie B.A. M.A. Ph.D. (Committee Member); Matthijs Wibier Ph.D. (Committee Member); Daniel Markovic Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Ancient History

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2008, College of Education and Human Services

The domestic auto industry in the United States is struggling for survival. A steady loss of market share to foreign competitors resulted in the industry reevaluating their business and labor practices that have proven so successful over the years. The problem is that little research has been conducted regarding the impact that the interrelationship between separate management, union, and work force subcultures are having on the reorganization of the domestic auto industry. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact the past and present business and labor practices have had on the domestic automobile industry from the perspective of three existing subcultures: managers, union representatives, and hourly workers. This critical qualitative study will augment the awareness of others interested in how the interrelationship between business and labor practices can lead to an entrenched bureaucratic system that impacts not only the total industry culture but also its existing subcultures. To fulfill the purpose of the research ethnographic interviews of managers, union representatives, and line workers were conducted. An emic approach of the author was incorporated into the process in an attempt to further the thick descriptions of the participants as they tell their stories.

Committee: Catherine Hansman (Committee Chair); John Babel (Committee Member); Carl Rak (Other); Mittie Davis Jones (Committee Member); Catherine Monaghan (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Education; Labor Relations

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2025, Educational Leadership

Campus police officers serve a complex role within higher education. Caught between students and the university, they must navigate intricate bureaucratic systems, involving laws, and uphold university policies. The following study employed narrative inquiry methodology with 21 sworn campus police officers from universities across the United States exploring their lived experiences and perspectives. Findings revealed officers deviated from traditional police methods and perceive themselves as guardians and educators within the larger university. They prioritize community-oriented policing and relationship-building over traditional law enforcement. They find purpose in contributing to student development and campus safety by collecting non-traditional methods in which officers engage with their campus community to support learning and belonging. From these experiences, they develop a strong sense of belonging stemming from positively engaging in student lives. Narratives illuminate the potential for universities to acknowledge and amplify the diverse roles of campus police. Identifying recognition and student investment opportunities can enhance campus safety and build trust within the campus community. The study challenges traditional law enforcement paradigms by highlighting the importance of relationship-building, student engagement, and collaborative educational opportunities.

Committee: Matthew Witenstein (Committee Chair); Thomas Falk (Committee Member); Bill Fischer (Committee Member); Mary Ziskin (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Education; Education Policy; Educational Leadership; Higher Education Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Sociology

Weberian theory offers hypotheses surrounding the administration of justice in legal systems, and the impacts of bureaucratic organizations on firms and public agencies. However, little research has sought to integrate Weber's predictions on rationality, modernity, and legal systems with his expectations surrounding bureaucratic organizations in the legal system. Similarly, while studies of sentencing have incorporated structural aspects of courtroom contexts, prosecutorial literature has less often examined office structure. In this dissertation, I explore how the bureaucratic organization of prosecutors' offices impacts adjudication at two crucial points: case dismissal and a case being deferred or diverted out of criminal court. I combine data from the National Survey of Prosecutors (NSP), the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS), and the U.S. Census Bureau to investigate the influence of district attorney office bureaucratic organization on adjudication and leniency. Chapter 1 introduces literature on prosecution and prosecutors' offices, and on why we might expect office structure to impact adjudication. Chapter 2 builds theoretical connections between research in the sociology of organizations and institutions, bureaucracy and bureaucratic organizations, criminology and punishment, and racialized organizations theory. These two chapters illustrate connections between prosecutors' offices and organizations, including the Weberian bureaucratic organization and the theory of racialized organizations. Chapter 3 draws on the NSP 2001 census of state prosecutors to operationalize novel measures of bureaucratic organization of district attorneys' offices and uses Census data to ask what contextual and office factors predict greater bureaucratic organization. I present six indicators of bureaucratic organization in prosecutors' offices and show that greater affluence is positively associated with individual indicators of bureaucratic organization, while size (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mike Vuolo (Committee Co-Chair); Ryan King (Committee Co-Chair); Eric Schoon (Committee Member); Townsand Price-Spratlen (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Legal Studies; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2022, History

The long sixteenth century marked a period of profound religious changes throughout Western Europe and Scotland was no exception. The situation there, however, was very different from her southern neighbor, England. To begin with, Scotland never dissolved her monasteries in the way that England had, even though Henry VIII encouraged his nephew James V to do so. In many cases, the monasteries collected rents, leased lands, and housed monks and nuns until the end of the century, well past the Reformation Parliament of 1560 which officially severed ties with the papacy; lasting until James VI/I erected many of them into temporal lordships in the early seventeenth century. In the centuries since, two related arguments have developed when describing the Auld Kirk in general and its monasteries in particular. Historians have depicted them as being in an overall state of decline steeped in corruption as well as in a concomitant process of secularization. The teleological approach has provided a framework that has helped explain the Scottish Reformation in 1560 and the monasteries reaching their inevitable end. It has also held considerable sway until the late twentieth century when historians reassessed the progress of religious change showing that 1560 marked the beginning of religious changes in the kingdom rather than standing as the result of them. However, the question of why Scotland's monasteries survived while the country experienced religious transformations has remained unanswered, an important question especially if the church and the different houses were supposedly in such a dreadful state. This project examines how the relationship between the crown and the monasteries changed over the course of the sixteenth century by analyzing the records of the privy seal. It concludes first that the royal bureaucracy increased in both scope and scale during that time. It also asserts that the crown remained relatively uninvolved in the monasteries until after the break w (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael Graham (Committee Chair); Constance Bouchard (Committee Member); Elizabeth Lehfeldt (Committee Member); Hillary Nunn (Committee Member); Michael Levin (Committee Member) Subjects: European History

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2020, Urban Studies and Public Affairs

There has been a long-standing perception by the American public that bureaucrats are incompetent. Public administration scholars have studied the negative perceptions of bureaucrats and the work of these scholars has brought about a dichotomous characterization of bureaucrats. On one end, scholars characterized bureaucrats as incompetent individuals with truncated personalities who add to the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy (Hummel, 2008). At the other end scholars find bureaucrats to be ordinary individuals with a remarkable sense of purpose, competence, and dedication (Goodsell, 2015). The characterization of bureaucrats serves as the backdrop to the study's purpose which was to develop communicator profiles of government bureaucrats. Developing a taxonomy of profiles of their communicator styles and predispositions allowed us to gain an understanding of the competency levels, as it pertains to communication, that exist in current modern bureaucracies which supported and opposed the negative long-standing perception of the general American public toward bureaucrats. The taxonomy of communicator profiles may provide bureaucrats with self-awareness, and concrete understanding of their communication predispositions and styles when performing their jobs. This concrete knowledge may enable bureaucrats and their managers to seek ways in which to enhance communication styles and predispositions during service delivery as well as provide opportunities to mitigate their predispositions so that they may interact with the public in manner that is more in-line with that of responsible public service characterized by kindness, charity, and benevolence (French, 1983). A public sector workforce that interacts with the public with higher levels of communication competency creates an environment of perceived effectiveness, and citizens who come face-to-face with bureaucrats will experience a higher-level quality of service which in turn will ameliorate the perceptions h (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Raymond Cox III PhD (Committee Chair); Julia Beckett PhD (Committee Member); Namkyung Oh PhD (Committee Member); Andrew Rancer PhD (Committee Member); Heather Walter PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Public Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2017, Political Science

The purpose of this sequential mixed methods study is to provide policymakers with a more-complete understanding of the varying effectiveness of leadership decapitation as a counterterrorism technique. To this end, my central research question asks, “why do certain terrorist groups endure despite experiencing leadership decapitation?”. Drawing on previous studies of terrorism and theories of organizational behavior, I suggest that a high degree of bureaucratization and the provision of social services reduce the destabilizing effects of leadership decapitation by decreasing a group's functional dependence on any single individual to secure the resources necessary to survive. The first phase of this study is a qualitative exploration of two existing explanations of organizational endurance, bureaucracy and incentive-based organizational maintenance, that should, prima facie, explain leadership decapitation's varying outcomes. I use a deviant case study of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest and most important politically-violent groups in history, to illustrate existing explanations' weaknesses and to find evidence linking my proposed characteristics to the outcome of survival. Based on my qualitative findings, I generate a set of hypotheses about the relationship between select organization-level factors and the effectiveness of leadership decapitation. I then test these hypotheses on a unique dataset of 138 terrorist organizations using both descriptive and binary logistic regression statistical analyses to determine their applicability to a wider class of cases. The quantitative results indicate that my hypotheses are partially supported by the data: While providing social services is by far the strongest predictor of an organization's likelihood of surviving leadership decapitation, the relationship between bureaucracy and survival was found to be non-significant. After discussing the implications of these findings, I present a preliminary set of c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Rothgeb (Committee Chair); Venelin Ganev (Committee Member); Warren Mason (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Public Policy and Management

For many years, a growing concern in public administration, political science and economics has been the question of why public agencies pursue their goals through different means. Many studies compare agency operations across nations, states or provinces and largely focus on factors external to agency operations including the political climate in which the agency operates, the economic conditions and available resources in the jurisdiction, and diffusion from agencies in other jurisdictions. Other studies focus on factors internal to agencies operations like rules-in-use, policymaking tools, managerial behavior and the various organizational, administrative and institutional arrangements that characterize public agency operations. However, seldom does an analysis of agency performance perform a robust analysis of factors both internal and external to public agencies. By exploring the operations of single-family lending programs operated by state Housing Finance Agencies, the present dissertation attempts to do exactly that. Housing finance agencies (HFAs) are quasi-independent or independent state agencies that operate single-family lending programs to provide affordable mortgages to low and moderate-income first-time homebuyers. These agencies are similar or identical in many key areas of policymaking structure making them ideal for exploring both the internal and external factors that influence implementation. As such, this dissertation explores whether and how these internal and external factors are associated with differing service-delivery processes undertaken by these agencies. Then, this dissertation pivots to explore how those service-delivery processes, in turn, impact or fail to impact desired agency goals. Specifically, this analysis explores four service-delivery processes: make or buy decisions pertaining to direct servicing of loans in the HFA portfolio and HFA direct lending to potential borrowers as well as value-added services including homebuyer (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephanie Moulton (Committee Chair); Jill Clark (Committee Member); Rachel Kleit (Committee Member) Subjects: Public Administration; Public Policy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1987, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Economics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1983, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1979, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1975, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1961, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, EDU Policy and Leadership

Extending leadership opportunities to teachers may be a way to expand leadership capacity in schools. This study focused on the intersection of two discrete bodies of literature, school structure and teacher leadership, and whether there is a correlation between enabling structure and teacher leadership. The study also examined differences in teachers' perceptions of teacher leadership and enabling school structure by school grade level and formal staff position. This study employed mixed methods to examine teacher leadership in 23 Midwestern public school districts. Teachers, formal teacher leaders such as instructional coaches, nonteaching staff such as counselors, and administrators participated in the study. A teacher survey was administered (N = 405), which included items from existing teacher leadership and enabling school structure scales. Results from statistical analysis of teachers' survey responses were used to select participants for follow-up observations and interviews (n = 7) to further examine the relationship between teacher leadership and school structure. Findings show a moderate correlation between enabling school structure and the extent of teacher leadership as well as differences in responses based on participants' school level and position or role. In addition, three overarching themes characterized interview responses: teachers' lack of time, the importance of the role of the principal, and the hierarchical structure of the schools and districts.

Committee: Anika Anthony Ph. D (Advisor); Belinda Gimbert Ph. D. (Committee Member); Scott Sweetland Ph. D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Education Policy; Educational Leadership

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2008, Applied Behavioral Science: Criminal Justice and Social Problems

This study of police discretion contrasts realworld application to academia and has found that an understanding of police discretion is fundamentally different between the two. From focus group methodology with six special agents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a group dynamic emerged where five of the six participants associated police discretion with the peeling of an apple. The use of this analogy and metaphor in association to the discussion of police discretion uniquely frames the processes of professionalization and bureaucratization, thus alluding to Weber's theory of bureaucracy. It appears that professionalism within law enforcement structure(s) is flawed through a linkage to bureaucracy which only works to increase supervisory control. Participants of this study stress the importance of discretion, but suggest that professionalism creates an atmostphere that allows administration, through politics, to wrongly restrict essential discretionary abilities.

Committee: Karen Lahm PhD (Committee Co-Chair); David Orenstein PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Tracey Steele PhD (Committee Member); Joseph F. Thomas, Jr. PhD (Other) Subjects: Behaviorial Sciences; Criminology; Organizational Behavior; Political Science; Public Administration; Sociology

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2008, History

This thesis provides an analysis of the lives of mid- to late-eighteenth century Royal Navy officers'wives and widows, including how they coped with the challenges of being separated from their husbands for extended periods of time. This separation forced them to accept additional financial and management responsibilities. By successfully managing these tasks, they proved that women were capable of managing money, purchasing property, rearing and educating children, working the patronage system, being political activists, dealing with bureaucracy, and networking. Shore wives performed these duties with the very real fear that their husbands might never come home alive. By taking up these burdens, the shore wives allowed their husbands to have successful careers and proved that women, seen by some as ‘the weaker sex,' were more than capable.

Committee: Carol Engelhardt-Herringer PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Paul Lockhart PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Noeleen McIlvenna PhD (Committee Member); Edward Haas PhD (Other) Subjects: Armed Forces; Economic History; English literature; European History; Gender; History; Military History; Personal Relationships; Welfare; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, ED Physical Activities and Educational Services

The theoretical argument of the current research is that athletic departments have been effective in attaining their conflicting goals mainly because they have become highly effective in managing institutional rules. Neo-institutionalism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991), loose coupling (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), and patterns of bureaucracy (Gouldner, 1954) form the theoretical cornerstone of the current research. Sport management investigations about goals and processes of intercollegiate athletics (Trail & Chelladurai, 2000) offer an unique opportunity to investigate these sociological theories of management in sport contexts. The initial endeavor of the current research was to explore and describe relationships between intercollegiate athletics goals and processes and coaches‘ perceptions about how institutional rules have been negotiated inside athletic departments (patterns of bureaucracy). To attain this aim, first, I proposed a scale to measure different patterns of bureaucracy in athletic departments and tested its psychometric properties. Then, I investigated the structural relationships among intercollegiate athletics goals, processes, and patterns of bureaucracy. I received back 382 questionnaires from Division I coaches (response rate of 38.2%), 326 from Division II (32.6%), and 359 from Division III (35.9%). From these questionnaires some had to be eliminated due to either the irresponsible nature of the responses. A final sample of 907 (ndivI = 322; ndivII = 277; ndivIII = 308) was used to test the hypotheses. For controlling for non-response error, late respondents were compared to early respondents. Late respondents did not differ from early respondent in any variable for all three divisions. Initial confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) showed acceptable fit indexes, but some items did not load sufficiently high in their constructs. After some refining, the new proposed bureaucracy scale presented good psychometric properties, as did the goals and processes scales (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Packianathan Chelladurai (Advisor); Sarah Fields (Committee Member); Brian Turner (Committee Member) Subjects: Management; Physical Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Political Science

This study identifies that after 1997 financial crisis Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore experienced different shifts in their structure of provision of social security benefits. The shifts vary on two important dimensions of social security provisions: the benefit level and the political control of the state over the private sector. In Indonesia there was a shift that eroded benefit level and strengthened the state's political control over the private sector. In the Philippines there was a shift that improved benefit level and weakened state control over the private sector. Meanwhile in Singapore the shift improved benefit level yet at the expense of deeper penetration of state control over the private sector. What explains the variation in the shifts in the dimensions of social security provisions in Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore after crisis? Such variation cannot be explained with the usual explanatory variables: fiscal constraints at the national level, the ranking of economies in the global competition, or the intervention of international financial institutions. This economic context after financial crisis only affect the degree of dramaticness of change proposed for the social security reform. Once the reform proposal is advanced, however, it was domestic politics that matter more. The output is influenced by a compromise-building among employers, workers, state leaders and bureaucrats. More specifically, the reform outputs differ by the variation of the expectations of employers and workers on the conduciveness of the overall economy and the degree of relative intensity of symbiosis between bureaucrats of social security agencies and state leaders (low or relatively less political in leadership and management and high or relatively highly political in leadership and management). This study demonstrates the critical importance of social security reform to market governance. Beyond earlier study of market governance, which identifies the pre (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Liddle (Advisor) Subjects: Political Science, General

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Educational Policy and Leadership

Collective teacher efficacy, faculty trust in students and parents, and academic emphasis are school characteristics that have been found to be associated with academic achievement, even when controlling for socioeconomic status. In this study of forty elementary schools, factor analysis of survey results supported the theory that these three characteristics are dimensions of a single latent trait of schools, called academic optimism. The construct of enabling bureaucracy describes the extent to which the structures and processes of a school support teachers' work. Enabling bureaucracy was correlated with academic optimism. The study found no relationship between academic optimism and school value added gain scores, which report the extent to which students have achieved the annual test score gains they would be expected to make, based on the actual testing history of similar students. There was a relationship between academic optimism and percentages of students proficient on state mathematics and reading tests, even when controlling for socioeconomic status.

Committee: Wayne Hoy (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2012, Political Science

Modern presidents have increasingly engaged in public governing to reinforce their leadership role. They have also developed various administrative strategies designed to centralize bureaucratic decision making under White House authority. These actions have been prompted by changes such as a growing bureaucracy, increased partisanship, and inflated public expectations (Nathan 1983; Waterman 1989; Light 1995; Moe and Howell 1999; Rudalevige 2002; Howell 2003). One of the ways the president can juggle his role as the nation's central political figure, exhibit leadership, and administratively communicate to the federal bureaucracy is through signing statements. Presidential signing statements are unilateral devices delivered in written or verbal form that are attached to a bill when the president signs it into law (Cooper 2002; Kelley 2003). Presidential signing statements do not have legal authority but they do become part of a bill's legislative history and can be used as a reference during implementation (Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2010). At times, they can serve to satisfy the public relations aspect of the presidency when delivered during public signing ceremonies (Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2010; Korzi 2011). Previous research has shown that signing statements are designed to help the president manage the executive branch (Kelley 2007; Magill 2007; Kelley and Marshall 2008, 2010; Evans 2011). This dissertation examines the administrative rhetoric of presidential signing statements through empirical analysis and illustrative examples. The dissertation adds to the presidency literature by providing insight into how bill signing statements are used as an administrative communication tool.

Committee: Bryan W. Marshall Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Ryan J. Barilleaux Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christopher S. Kelley Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrew R.L. Cayton Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science