Inside a Swiss Army Knife: An Assessment of AmeriCorps

This study reviews the goals and achievements of AmeriCorps, the national service program championed by President Clinton and approved by Congress in 1993. We identify five AmeriCorps goals: satisfying unmet social needs, developing corps members, enhancing the civic ethic, reinvigorating lethargic bureaucracies, and bridging race and class. The evidence of AmeriCorps\u27 effectiveness is not definitive. Self-reports from recipient programs, selective cost-benefit analyses, and some survey evidence indicate some positive results. More fine-grained survey and field research raise questions about AmeriCorps\u27 overall effects. Much more research is needed before policy makers and citizens can determine AmeriCorps\u27 productivity

The management of problems with stakeholders.

This dissertation examines predictors of responses to problems that organizations experience with stakeholders using data from interviews with 24 managers of nonprofit arts organizations and documents. I develop a framework of problem types: organizational legitimacy problems in which organizational activities or outcomes are incongruent with a stakeholder's values or norms; stakeholder legitimacy problems in which a stakeholder's activities or outcomes are incongruent with organizational values or norms; and technical clashes, in which organizational and stakeholder activities or outcomes are incongruent. I explore six responses to these problems: managers may adapt their organizations to conform to stakeholders' values, norms, activities, or outcomes; managers and stakeholders may compromise; managers may try to change stakeholders' values or norms; managers may cut or weaken organization-stakeholder ties; managers may identify their organizations with something considered legitimate by stakeholders; and managers may misrepresent their organizations to stakeholders. The study finds that when organizations are more dependent on stakeholders for resources, managers are more likely to respond to problems with the stakeholders by adapting their organizations, changing stakeholders' values or norms, and not misrepresenting their organizations to the stakeholders. When stakeholders challenge organizational missions, managers are less likely to adapt and more likely to cut or weaken organizational ties to stakeholders. Older and larger organizations are more likely to adapt than younger and smaller ones. Managers of younger organizations are more likely to try to change stakeholders' values or norms. Managers are more likely to compromise and misrepresent their organizations, the more serious the problem. Managers are most likely to cut or weaken ties for stakeholder legitimacy problems, and less likely for organizational legitimacy problems. Overall, the study helps establish that managers care about stakeholders' interpretations of the legitimacy of their organizations' activities and outcomes. The study also shows that managers' interpretations of their stakeholders' legitimacy are critical to understanding organizational actions. Although stakeholder legitimacy has been a neglected research area, this study indicates that it is a fruitful one. The study also expands the limited work on other responses besides adaptation that are used by managers as part of their stakeholder management process.Ph.D.ManagementSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129091/2/9319645.pd