Suchergebnisse

Much of what is known about volunteering to public agencies emanates from surveys of city and county governments. Little research has addressed the magnitude and other characteristics of volunteering to state government organizations. This study presents and analyzes the results of the first systematic national survey of volunteering to state government agencies. The study investigates two models, the first to explain volunteer use by state agencies, and the second to explain the realization of benefits from volunteer involvement. Empirical analysis shows that the rate of volunteer involvement in state government is substantial, reaching 36% of the agencies sampled. However, according to the personnel managers surveyed, simply having volunteers is not sufficient. The authors demonstrate that to achieve the full benefits of the approach as perceived by personnel managers, agencies must engage in effective management of their volunteer programs.

On the 10th anniversary of the recommendations published by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) on information system instruction in schools and departments of public administration, sweeping information management reforms were instituted throughout the federal sector by the passage of the Clinger-Cohen Act (CCA) of 1996. This research examines the extent to which these programs prepare students for the issues they will face in managing information resources in government. Based on a survey of 106 schools and departments of public administration, few programs are covering the topics recently mandated by the CCA or recommended a decade ago by NASPAA. If governments are to achieve the benefits of contemporary technological advances, schools and departments of public administration must reexamine their current approach to instruction in information resource management.

The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) has been heralded as the most comprehensive piece of federal legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To date, research on the ADA has been largely speculative and anecdotal. The present research helps to fill this gap by analyzing and reporting results from a survey of municipal governments encompassing all cities in the United States with a population of 50,000 or greater. The study assesses the state of implementation of the ADA across these larger municipal governments, with an emphasis on the personnel-related provisions of the act.

Most research on the adoption of computer technology centers on municipalities with populations exceeding 50,000. This article explores the degree to which findings from these large local governments apply to the adoption of computers in smaller municipalities. Based on a panel study of local governments at two points in time, the analysis provides support for hypothesized relationships derived from studies of larger cities linking environmental and organizational factors to computer technology adoption. Adopting innovation has inspired voluminous research aimed at explaining why one organization is more likely than another to adopt an innovation.

This article reports on a content analysis of the articles published in Non profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly and in its predecessor, the journal of Voluntary Action Research, in their first twenty years of existence. The investigation identifies the substantive areas that have been covered, the institutional affiliations of the authors, the methodological styles of the articles, and the disciplines that have provided the research. Thirty-five percent of the authors have been women, about 1 7 percent of the authors have nonacademic affiliations, and sociology is the discipline represented most heavily, although thirty-five disciplines have provided articles. Social work, political science, public affairs, urban affairs, management, and economics have also been heavily represented.

Based on a survey of the professed needs of a large sample of volunteer administrators for research and a comprehensive analysis of the topics addressed over an extended period in a leading journal on voluntarism, this article examines the correspondence between the preferences of one group of practitioners and the interests of researchers in voluntarism. The analysis shows that the relationship between the needs of these practitioners and the publication interests of the researchers is neither as tenuous as some would fear nor as strong as others would like. If increas ing the relevance of the research literature for volunteer administrators is a priority, several means lie well within reach to forge firmer ties to the practitioner community.