Theodore H Poister
Biographic Data
| ID | 4398450 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Theodore H Poister |
| GIVEN NAMES | Theodore H |
| FAMILY NAME | Poister |
| SIGNATURE | POISTER T H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgia State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 197 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Impact of Performance Management Under Environmental Turbulence
Performance management is an established concept in the public sector, with several empirical studies supporting its beneficial impact on organizational performance. Research on performance management, however, is still in initial stages and mostly examines the impact of this practice under stable environmental conditions. This study adds to the literature by analyzing the effect of this system on performance of local transit agencies in a turbul…
How Do Legislators Assess Administrative Performance? Georgia’s Department of Transportation in the Eyes of the State’s Legislators
State legislatures and their member legislators serve as important overseers to state administrative departments, charged to function as principals relative to departmental agents. Yet, we know relatively little about how legislators assess the performance of those departments. This research is designed to improve that knowledge through an exploratory analysis of how and why legislators in one state assess the performance of a large state governm…
Mutual Relationship of Strategic Stances and Formulation Methods, and Their Impacts on Performance in Public Local Transit Agencies
This study is a continuation of previous work that emphasizes an alignment between the internal management (strategy formulation) of public organizations and their environment (strategic stance). As public organizations formulate strategy through strategic planning or logical incrementalism, they relate to their external environments through the strategy stances of prospector or defender. Current research asserts that organizations with a prospec…
The Impact of Performance-Based Grants Management on Performance
Performance-based grants management is a strategy used by public agencies to improve performance and strengthen accountability by connecting annual award amounts to performance information. This study evaluates the impacts of a performance-based grants management process implemented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to strengthen the effectiveness of its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. The study u…
Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry
Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performanc…
The Effect of Expectations and Expectancy Confirmation/Disconfirmation on Motorists' Satisfaction with State Highways
Over the past several years, scholars have asked how citizen satisfaction with public services might be affected by the expectations citizens have for service quality. Might satisfaction with public services be affected just not only by the perceived quality of those services but also by the quality citizens expect services to have? This line of questioning uses the so-called "expectancy disconfirmation" model drawn from private sector research, …
Strategic Management Research in the Public Sector
Although there is considerable literature on strategic planning and management in the public sector, there has been little effort to synthesize what has been learned concerning the extent to which these tools are used in government, how they are implemented, and the results they generate. In this article, the authors review the research on strategic planning and management in the public sector to understand what has been learned to date and what …
The Future of Strategic Planning in the Public Sector
While it has become ubiquitous in the public sector over the past 25 years, strategic planning will need to play a more critical role in 2020 than it does at present if public managers are to anticipate and manage change adroitly and effectively address new issues that are likely to emerge with increasing rapidity. This article argues that making strategy more meaningful in the future will require transitioning from strategic planning to the broa…
Customer, Partner, Principal
Public agencies increasingly perform their functions in partnership with other public, nonprofit, and private sector actors, prompting growing research interest in how these collaborations function. As yet, almost no one has thought it worth asking how collaborative partners perceive each other's performance, although these perceptions may themselves constitute important measures of agency effectiveness. Their determinants, in turn, could point t…
The Wisdom of Crowds
Public agencies use surveys to solicit feedback from citizens and targeted customer groups, but many experts question whether the results of these surveys are valuable. This paper explores how a recent innovation in citizen surveys—asking public administrators to predict how citizens will respond to survey questions—may be used to increase that value and, at the same time, provide additional data of interest on its own account. The innovation is …
Citizens, Accountability, and Service Satisfaction
Understanding how citizen-consumers form evaluations of public services is critical to understanding account ability in democratic governance. The task of using citizens’ assessments of service quality as an accountability mechanism, however, may be more complex than is commonly understood. In particular, little research has examined how citizens’ expectations about the quality of services may influence their levels of satisfaction with public se…
Elements of Strategic Planning and Management in Municipal Government
This article focuses on the use of strategic planning and management processes in municipal governments with populations over 25,000. Strategic planning has been used in municipalities for 20 years now, but little is known about how it is used and the results obtained. In particular, we explore whether municipal governments tie other components of the overall strategic management process to their strategic plans. Findings do not show a dramatic e…
Assessing the Validity, Legitimacy, and Functionality of Performance Measurement Systems in Municipal Governments
There is now great interest in the use of performance measurement and there have been a number of studies that focused on municipal governments. The findings to date tend to be descriptive. This analysis seeks to add to this discussion by comparing real world conditions with the criteria outlined in a prescriptive model. The authors look at the validity, legitimacy, and functionality of municipal performance measures. The data on the use of perfo…
Performance Measurement in Municipal Government
Performance measurement has been part of the lexicon of public administration in the United States for several decades, but rhetoric has outdistanced practice by far in this area. Currently, however, there is a renewed interest in performance measures as an essential element of the results-oriented management movement that is sweeping the field, as reflected in legislative mandates and administrative initiatives as well as considerable conference…
Large-Scale Customer Feedback on a State Highway Maintenance Program
Public works agencies are focusing increasingly on the concepts of quality and customer service in response to growing demands for accountability and improved performance. In an effort to gauge customers' satisfaction with the services they provide, state transportation departments are beginning to solicit feedback from their customers to complement more traditional performance measures. This article reports the findings of a large-scale survey o…
A Survey of Performance Measurement Systems in State Transportation Departments
State departments of transportation are investing suabstantial time and effort in developing performance measurement systems to help manage more effectively in a period of unprecedented change. Based on information obtained from a mail survey, review of documents, and follow-up telephone interviews, this article examines conventional and leading-edge approaches to performance measurement in these large public works agencies, which have often been…
The Impact of TQM on Highway Maintenance
While total quality management (TQM) has gained widespread popularity in government, little is known about its effectiveness. Surveys indicate that quality improvement programs and related customer service improvement efforts have been implemented by many state and local jurisdictions (National Governors' Association, 1992; Kravchuk and Leighton, 1993; Berman and West, 1995) as well as numerous federal agencies (U.S. General Accounting Office, 19…
Transit-Related Crime in Suburban Areas
Widespread concern that extending public transportation to suburban areas will increase crime in those areas threatens the long-term viability of the transit systems and the metropolitan areas they serve. There has been little systematic research on whether crime increases when new transit service is initiated in suburban areas. This paper presents a preliminary time series analysis of crime incidence in suburban neighborhoods surrounding two rap…
MBO in Municipal Government
Management By Objectives, or MBO, is a traditional management approach to directing the efforts of managers and the organizational units for which they are responsible. This technique has been used in government for more than 20 years, and substantial literature has accumulated affirming its utility. Yet, the history of MBO in the public sector has been uneven, and its role and importance in government are unclear. It is frequently criticized as …
Citizen Ratings of Public and Private Service Quality
Currently there is considerable interest in quality and customer service in both and government, as total quality management philosophy and practices (Deming, 1982; Scherkenback, 1986) have become widespread in the private sector and are making substantial inroads in the public sector (Krone, 1991; Milakovich, 1992; Hyde, 1992). With respect to the public sector, however, the move toward quality comes at a low point in the popular impression of t…
Assessing MPA Program Outcomes
Outcomes assessment has become a critical issue in higher education during the past few years, and graduate programs in public administration must demonstrate their effectiveness. Al though it is often assumed that schools have little experience with assessment, a substantial number of public administration schools occasionally use a variety of techniques to evaluate their outcomes. Schools use assessment for program planning or revision and for …
Strategic Planning in U.S. Cities
For this study of the use of strategic planning in American cities, data were collected by a survey of all American cities with populations between 25,000 and one million. Key issues covered were strategic planning applications, perceptions of effectiveness, strategic capacity, and methods of monitoring and evaluation. The findings show that a large number of cities use strategic planning with a high level of satisfaction; however, questions are …
Managing Public Transit
Management Tools in Municipal Government
This article reports the results of a 1987-1988 survey of 451 municipal managers regarding the use and perceived effectiveness of numerous management tools. Viewed in conjunction withfindings from two earlier surveys, the data presented in this article reflect the continuation of the boom in management and show that the public manager's tool kit has both expanded and stabilized over the past decade. Techniques such as program budgeting, managemen…
Public Administration Program Rankings
Citizens, Accountability, and Service Satisfaction
Understanding how citizen-consumers form evaluations of public services is critical to understanding account ability in democratic governance. The task of using citizens’ assessments of service quality as an accountability mechanism, however, may be more complex than is commonly understood. In particular, little research has examined how citizens’ expectations about the quality of services may influence their levels of satisfaction with public se…
The Effect of Expectations and Expectancy Confirmation/Disconfirmation on Motorists' Satisfaction with State Highways
Over the past several years, scholars have asked how citizen satisfaction with public services might be affected by the expectations citizens have for service quality. Might satisfaction with public services be affected just not only by the perceived quality of those services but also by the quality citizens expect services to have? This line of questioning uses the so-called "expectancy disconfirmation" model drawn from private sector research, …
Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry
Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performanc…
Strategic Management Research in the Public Sector
Although there is considerable literature on strategic planning and management in the public sector, there has been little effort to synthesize what has been learned concerning the extent to which these tools are used in government, how they are implemented, and the results they generate. In this article, the authors review the research on strategic planning and management in the public sector to understand what has been learned to date and what …
Victims' evaluation oof police performace
Assessing the Validity, Legitimacy, and Functionality of Performance Measurement Systems in Municipal Governments
There is now great interest in the use of performance measurement and there have been a number of studies that focused on municipal governments. The findings to date tend to be descriptive. This analysis seeks to add to this discussion by comparing real world conditions with the criteria outlined in a prescriptive model. The authors look at the validity, legitimacy, and functionality of municipal performance measures. The data on the use of perfo…
Transit-Related Crime in Suburban Areas
Widespread concern that extending public transportation to suburban areas will increase crime in those areas threatens the long-term viability of the transit systems and the metropolitan areas they serve. There has been little systematic research on whether crime increases when new transit service is initiated in suburban areas. This paper presents a preliminary time series analysis of crime incidence in suburban neighborhoods surrounding two rap…
Strategic Planning in U.S. Cities
For this study of the use of strategic planning in American cities, data were collected by a survey of all American cities with populations between 25,000 and one million. Key issues covered were strategic planning applications, perceptions of effectiveness, strategic capacity, and methods of monitoring and evaluation. The findings show that a large number of cities use strategic planning with a high level of satisfaction; however, questions are …
Mutual Relationship of Strategic Stances and Formulation Methods, and Their Impacts on Performance in Public Local Transit Agencies
This study is a continuation of previous work that emphasizes an alignment between the internal management (strategy formulation) of public organizations and their environment (strategic stance). As public organizations formulate strategy through strategic planning or logical incrementalism, they relate to their external environments through the strategy stances of prospector or defender. Current research asserts that organizations with a prospec…
The Impact of Performance Management Under Environmental Turbulence
Performance management is an established concept in the public sector, with several empirical studies supporting its beneficial impact on organizational performance. Research on performance management, however, is still in initial stages and mostly examines the impact of this practice under stable environmental conditions. This study adds to the literature by analyzing the effect of this system on performance of local transit agencies in a turbul…
The Impact of Performance-Based Grants Management on Performance
Performance-based grants management is a strategy used by public agencies to improve performance and strengthen accountability by connecting annual award amounts to performance information. This study evaluates the impacts of a performance-based grants management process implemented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to strengthen the effectiveness of its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. The study u…
Large-Scale Customer Feedback on a State Highway Maintenance Program
Public works agencies are focusing increasingly on the concepts of quality and customer service in response to growing demands for accountability and improved performance. In an effort to gauge customers' satisfaction with the services they provide, state transportation departments are beginning to solicit feedback from their customers to complement more traditional performance measures. This article reports the findings of a large-scale survey o…
Assessing MPA Program Outcomes
Outcomes assessment has become a critical issue in higher education during the past few years, and graduate programs in public administration must demonstrate their effectiveness. Al though it is often assumed that schools have little experience with assessment, a substantial number of public administration schools occasionally use a variety of techniques to evaluate their outcomes. Schools use assessment for program planning or revision and for …
Program Evaluation
Urban Transportation Planning and Policy Making
Victims' evaluation oof police performace
Local Housing Rehabilitation Programs
The evaluation of a Federally funded housing rehabilitation program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is used to illustrate the usefulness of low effort, formative program evaluation as a valuable tool for small and medium-size cities. The article sets out the analytical framework as defined by the program design and the concern for evaluating the effectiveness of the programs and alternatives for increasing its impact. The evaluation uses both primar…
Program Evaluation
Federal Transportation Policy for the Elderly and Handicapped
One of the biggest controversies regarding urban mass transportation over the past five years has revolved around the issue of federal policy for the elderly and handicapped (E&H). The general intent, to assure the provision of equal public transportation services for the E&H, is certainly appropriate as an objective of public policy and is consistent with the trend in federal legislation aimed at eliminating discrimination on the basis of handic…
The Use of Management Tools in Municipal Government
Students and practitioners of urban management have long been interested in the management capabilities of local government, stemming from the reform era and its concern with instituting businesslike administrative practices in municipal government. In more recent times, beginning roughly a decade ago, this concern reemerged in the form of a perceived imperative to implement more sophisticated management technology in city halls in order to enabl…
Linking Program Planning, Evaluation, and Management
Managing Public Transit
Management Tools in Municipal Government
This article reports the results of a 1987-1988 survey of 451 municipal managers regarding the use and perceived effectiveness of numerous management tools. Viewed in conjunction withfindings from two earlier surveys, the data presented in this article reflect the continuation of the boom in management and show that the public manager's tool kit has both expanded and stabilized over the past decade. Techniques such as program budgeting, managemen…
Public Administration Program Rankings
Strategic Planning in U.S. Cities
For this study of the use of strategic planning in American cities, data were collected by a survey of all American cities with populations between 25,000 and one million. Key issues covered were strategic planning applications, perceptions of effectiveness, strategic capacity, and methods of monitoring and evaluation. The findings show that a large number of cities use strategic planning with a high level of satisfaction; however, questions are …
Assessing MPA Program Outcomes
Outcomes assessment has become a critical issue in higher education during the past few years, and graduate programs in public administration must demonstrate their effectiveness. Al though it is often assumed that schools have little experience with assessment, a substantial number of public administration schools occasionally use a variety of techniques to evaluate their outcomes. Schools use assessment for program planning or revision and for …
Citizen Ratings of Public and Private Service Quality
Currently there is considerable interest in quality and customer service in both and government, as total quality management philosophy and practices (Deming, 1982; Scherkenback, 1986) have become widespread in the private sector and are making substantial inroads in the public sector (Krone, 1991; Milakovich, 1992; Hyde, 1992). With respect to the public sector, however, the move toward quality comes at a low point in the popular impression of t…
MBO in Municipal Government
Management By Objectives, or MBO, is a traditional management approach to directing the efforts of managers and the organizational units for which they are responsible. This technique has been used in government for more than 20 years, and substantial literature has accumulated affirming its utility. Yet, the history of MBO in the public sector has been uneven, and its role and importance in government are unclear. It is frequently criticized as …
Transit-Related Crime in Suburban Areas
Widespread concern that extending public transportation to suburban areas will increase crime in those areas threatens the long-term viability of the transit systems and the metropolitan areas they serve. There has been little systematic research on whether crime increases when new transit service is initiated in suburban areas. This paper presents a preliminary time series analysis of crime incidence in suburban neighborhoods surrounding two rap…
A Survey of Performance Measurement Systems in State Transportation Departments
State departments of transportation are investing suabstantial time and effort in developing performance measurement systems to help manage more effectively in a period of unprecedented change. Based on information obtained from a mail survey, review of documents, and follow-up telephone interviews, this article examines conventional and leading-edge approaches to performance measurement in these large public works agencies, which have often been…
The Impact of TQM on Highway Maintenance
While total quality management (TQM) has gained widespread popularity in government, little is known about its effectiveness. Surveys indicate that quality improvement programs and related customer service improvement efforts have been implemented by many state and local jurisdictions (National Governors' Association, 1992; Kravchuk and Leighton, 1993; Berman and West, 1995) as well as numerous federal agencies (U.S. General Accounting Office, 19…
Large-Scale Customer Feedback on a State Highway Maintenance Program
Public works agencies are focusing increasingly on the concepts of quality and customer service in response to growing demands for accountability and improved performance. In an effort to gauge customers' satisfaction with the services they provide, state transportation departments are beginning to solicit feedback from their customers to complement more traditional performance measures. This article reports the findings of a large-scale survey o…
Assessing the Validity, Legitimacy, and Functionality of Performance Measurement Systems in Municipal Governments
There is now great interest in the use of performance measurement and there have been a number of studies that focused on municipal governments. The findings to date tend to be descriptive. This analysis seeks to add to this discussion by comparing real world conditions with the criteria outlined in a prescriptive model. The authors look at the validity, legitimacy, and functionality of municipal performance measures. The data on the use of perfo…
Performance Measurement in Municipal Government
Performance measurement has been part of the lexicon of public administration in the United States for several decades, but rhetoric has outdistanced practice by far in this area. Currently, however, there is a renewed interest in performance measures as an essential element of the results-oriented management movement that is sweeping the field, as reflected in legislative mandates and administrative initiatives as well as considerable conference…
Elements of Strategic Planning and Management in Municipal Government
This article focuses on the use of strategic planning and management processes in municipal governments with populations over 25,000. Strategic planning has been used in municipalities for 20 years now, but little is known about how it is used and the results obtained. In particular, we explore whether municipal governments tie other components of the overall strategic management process to their strategic plans. Findings do not show a dramatic e…
Citizens, Accountability, and Service Satisfaction
Understanding how citizen-consumers form evaluations of public services is critical to understanding account ability in democratic governance. The task of using citizens’ assessments of service quality as an accountability mechanism, however, may be more complex than is commonly understood. In particular, little research has examined how citizens’ expectations about the quality of services may influence their levels of satisfaction with public se…
The Wisdom of Crowds
Public agencies use surveys to solicit feedback from citizens and targeted customer groups, but many experts question whether the results of these surveys are valuable. This paper explores how a recent innovation in citizen surveys—asking public administrators to predict how citizens will respond to survey questions—may be used to increase that value and, at the same time, provide additional data of interest on its own account. The innovation is …
Customer, Partner, Principal
Public agencies increasingly perform their functions in partnership with other public, nonprofit, and private sector actors, prompting growing research interest in how these collaborations function. As yet, almost no one has thought it worth asking how collaborative partners perceive each other's performance, although these perceptions may themselves constitute important measures of agency effectiveness. Their determinants, in turn, could point t…
Strategic Management Research in the Public Sector
Although there is considerable literature on strategic planning and management in the public sector, there has been little effort to synthesize what has been learned concerning the extent to which these tools are used in government, how they are implemented, and the results they generate. In this article, the authors review the research on strategic planning and management in the public sector to understand what has been learned to date and what …
Business (28 works) · Political science (23 works) · Marketing (18 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (16 works) · Public Administration (15 works) · Public Administration (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Engineering (9 works) · Government (linguistics (9 works)