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Cullen C. Merritt
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Browsing Cullen C. Merritt by Author "Kennedy, Sheila Suess"
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Item The Civic Dimension of School Voucher Programs(Public Integrity, 2018-10) Merritt, Cullen C.; Kennedy, Sheila Suess; Farnworth, Morgan D.America’s public schools have not been exempt from the movement to privatization and contracting out that has characterized government innovations over at least the past quarter century. A number of the issues raised by school voucher programs mirror the management and efficacy questions raised by privatization generally; however, because public education is often said to be “constitutive of the public,” using tax dollars to send the nation’s children to private schools implicates the distinctive role of public education in a democratic society in ways that more traditional contracting arrangements do not. Using a content analysis, the authors explore the extent to which school choice voucher programs are mandated by state statutes to integrate civics education into their curriculum. Findings reveal that across the fourteen states (and the District of Columbia) that have enacted school choice voucher programs, statutes exempt these programs from curriculum oversight, including civics requirements, and grant them considerable autonomy in designing their curricula. This study concludes by discussing the implications for ethical and accountable governance when primary and secondary schools fail to cultivate civic competence and civic literacy.Item The Cost of Saving Money: Public Service Motivation, Private Security Contracting, and the Salience of Employment Status(Public Performance & Management Review, 2018) Merritt, Cullen C.; Kennedy, Sheila Suess; Kienapple, Matt R.The growth of government outsourcing has triggered significant legal and social science research. That research has focused primarily on issues of cost, accountability, and management. A thus far understudied question concerns the relevance and importance of public service motivations (PSM), especially when a government agency is proposing to outsource services that are considered inherently governmental. This exploratory study centers on the use of private security guards to augment government-provided public safety, and investigates the public service motivations of part-time and full-time employees of private security firms that regularly partner with—or seek to protect the public independent of—local police. Findings reveal that the presence or absence of motivations consistent with PSM was not attributable to private sector employment, but to whether informants were part-time or full-time employees.Item Representation through Lived Experience: Expanding Representative Bureaucracy Theory(Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 2020) Merritt, Cullen C.; Farnworth, Morgan D.; Kennedy, Sheila Suess; Abner, Gordon; Wright II, James E.; Merritt, BreancaThis study draws on the insights of managers in the behavioral health treatment system to explore the value of persons who bring lived experience to their organizational positions. Within these organizations, persons with relevant lived experience occupy various nonclinical and clinical positions. When facilities incorporate workers with lived experience, managers observe increased levels of trust between clients and service providers, an enhanced client-centered perspective among service providers, and higher quality in the services provided. This study may guide managers in considering how (or whether) human service organizations might institutionalize lived experience as a mechanism to help create a representative bureaucracy.