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Published in: Public Organization Review 3/2014

01-09-2014

The Consequences of Conflict: An Evaluation of Racial Disparity and Organizational Performance

Author: Erin K. Melton

Published in: Public Organization Review | Issue 3/2014

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Abstract

The study of public administration is based primarily on two schools of thought; some theorists espousing political control with others supporting the inner check. Heretofore, studies have failed to examine the effects of goal conflict on relationships between political principals and bureaucratic agents. Using Texas school districts, this analysis demonstrates that goal conflict has significant effects on student performance. Goal conflict also influences relationships among school boards, teachers, and school district populations. Overall, this study advances the discipline in that it determines the ramifications of goal conflict for political principals, bureaucracies, and the public being served utilizing the most common form of bureaucracy, school districts. The arguments and implications embedded in this analysis speak to the age-old public administration question of how to reconcile bureaucracy with democracy.

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Footnotes
1
Beginning in spring of 2003, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) replaced the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). The data in this analysis include 1995–2002 and therefore include scores from the TAAS examination method only.
 
2
In mathematics, the Euclidean distance or Euclidean metric is the ordinary distance between two points that one would measure with a ruler, which can be proven by repeated application of the Pythagorean theorem. By using this formula as distance, Euclidean space becomes a metric space of either one, two, or three dimensions.
 
3
The variance inflation factors (VIF) for these measures do not indicate “harmful collinearity”, defined by Kennedy (1998) as any VIF greater than 10. The variation inflation factors are 2.38, 2.03, and 1.84, for goal conflict among the teachers and district population, school board and district population, and school board and teachers, respectively.
 
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Metadata
Title
The Consequences of Conflict: An Evaluation of Racial Disparity and Organizational Performance
Author
Erin K. Melton
Publication date
01-09-2014
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Public Organization Review / Issue 3/2014
Print ISSN: 1566-7170
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7098
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-013-0219-x

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