University of Georgia SPIA Professor Tima Moldogaziev’s article was just published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART) yesterday, February 17.

Dr. Moldogaziev wrote the article with Assistant Professor, Dr. Tyler Scott, from UC Davis Department of Environmental Science & Policy and with Assistant Professor, Dr. Robert Greer, from Texas A&M University, Bush School of Government & Public Service. The article is titled, “Organizational Dissolutions in the Public Sector: An Empirical Analysis of Municipal Utility Water Districts.”

The article investigates the extent to which both internal and external factors are at play in municipal utility district dissolutions. Here is the abstract for the article:

“The proliferation of special-purpose districts and the increasing complexity of local governance systems has been well documented. However, even as new special districts are created, others are being dissolved. This article investigates the extent to which both internal and external factors are at play in municipal utility district dissolutions. Decades of existing empirical studies on private, nonprofit, and interest organizations show that factors internal to organizations, such as institutional structure and resources are significant covariates of organizational mortality. Equally important are external factors, where density dependence and resource partitioning pressures influence organizational survival. Public sector organizations, such as special-purpose water districts, operate in relatively well monitored and statutorily constrained environments, however. Drawing upon the organizational mortality literature, we examine when and why municipal utility water districts that operate in fragmented service delivery systems dissolve. The results show that the relationship between internal and external organizational variables and special-purpose organizational dissolutions is more nuanced than existing research suggests.”

You can read the entire JPART article here.

Dr. Moldogaziev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy. He is a coauthor of State and Local Financial Instruments: Policy Changes and Management (2014). His other recent work is published in Public Budgeting & Finance, Public Administration, Public Administration Review, Public Finance Review, National Tax Journal, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. He teaches graduate courses in public financial administration, seminars in budgeting and debt finance, and applied statistics.