Aligning public and private interests: studies in environment, healthcare, and education

The interdependence between private and public sectors has drawn increasing attention of management scholars and decision makers in public and private organizations. From healthcare and education to environment and clean energy, academic research and industrial reports have tended to emphasize, first, how public policies shape context-specific operational choices in private organizations, and second, how operating decisions, and individual and firm preferences shape public policies. This thesis speaks to the connections among private and public institutions, behavior and performance. More specifically, this thesis focuses on the areas of environment, healthcare and education, which are among the top public priorities and concerns in recent years, and presents empirical efforts to provide new insights on 1) how public and private organizations align their interests, 2) how public and private behavior is shaped by the interaction between them, and 3) how decision makers maintain sustainable public-private partnerships. A synopsis of the three parts of the thesis follows. The first part of the thesis considers firms' economic benefits from the adoption of environmental sustainability practices. It demonstrates that firms providing employee incentives achieve better financial performance, while firms that merely focus on complying with environmental regulations do not economically benefit from compliance. The second part of the thesis examines the association between the frequent inspections taken by the government agency and generic drug quality improvement. The empirical evidence does not support the link between more frequent inspections and fewer recall events. It also proposes two explanations for the evidence -- the organizational culture and the inherent quality levels. The third part discovers an unintended effect of education policy announcements on private philanthropy through an online crowdfunding platform. The empirical analysis shows a decline in donations and a redistribution of donations towards local public schools.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Business Administration

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Angie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Subramanyam, Ramanath
• Anand, Gopesh
• Wang, Yixin
• Garimella, Aravinda

• Public Sector
• Empirical Analysis

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Angie Wu

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115539

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115539