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Decreasing revenues among local governments across the country have placed an increased focus on governmental financial practices. For states with local government financial oversight organizations, the ratios and other benchmarks used to assess fiscal stability face increased scrutiny. This study examines financial reports sent to North Carolina’s financial oversight body, the Local Government Commission (LGC), to determine the types of operational and policy practices that can lead to fiscal stress based on guidelines established by the LGC. Findings indicate that lowering levels of fund balance, increased salaries, increased debt service levels, and the presence of a countywide water system all increased the probability of a county government receiving notice of potential financing problems requiring immediate action.

Substantial research has been conducted examining policy diffusion among both the American states and the nations of the developed world and to a somewhat lesser extent, developing worlds. Little research, especially at the nation-state level, has focused upon budget systems, however. We use case studies of 18 diverse countries (Menifield, 2011) to conceptualize national budget systems and, based upon this conceptualization, to identify clusters of nations with similar systems. We found evidence suggesting that policy diffusion may be occurring in the realm of national budget systems. Our analysis shows that budgetary institutions and behaviors can and do form clusters that are useful in analyzing national budget systems. Our ability to describe clusters of nations with similar budget systems could prove to be a helpful tool for analyzing international policy diffusion.

Statistical evidence shows that medication errors are a major cause of injuries that concerns all health care oganizations. Despite all the efforts to improve the quality of care, the lack of understanding and inability of management to design a robust system that will strategically target those factors is a major cause of distress. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Achieving optimum organizational performance requires two key variables; work process factors and human performance factors. The approach is that healthcare administrators must take in account both variables in designing a strategy to reduce medication errors. However, strategies that will combat such phenomena require that managers and administrators understand the key factors that are causing medication delivery errors.

The authors recommend that healthcare organizations implement the Toyota Production System (TPS) combined with human performance improvement (HPI) methodologies to eliminate medication delivery errors in hospitals.

Despite all the efforts to improve the quality of care, there continues to be a lack of understanding and the ability of management to design a robust system that will strategically target those factors associated with medication errors. This paper proposes a solution to an ambiguous workflow process using the TPS combined with the HPI system.

The purpose of this paper is to explore crisis history further. The paper also examines the possible impact of information source on publics’ perceptions. The study seeks to expound on the tenets of the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), particularly the underutilized crisis history component.

The study used a 3 × 3 between-subjects experiment design to examine the effects of crisis history and information source on publics’ crisis emotions, perception of crisis responsibility, control, and organizational reputation. Participants were 174 undergraduate students from a large Southeastern university.

The study’s findings suggest that an organization’s crisis history by the media can increase publics’ perceived organizational control (referred to as personal control) in a crisis situation. However, negative crisis history told by the media can evoke more severe public anger in a crisis. A positive crisis history still could lead to negative perceptions.

The study uses a fictional crisis scenario that may not evoke the same emotions or perceptions as an actual crisis.

Crisis communicators concerned with angry publics should focus less on traditional media relations and more on new media to reach other gatekeepers; or focus more heavily on media strategy since the media is more likely to elicit more anger among publics. Furthermore, a positive crisis history does not give organizations a pass in current crises.

Although the SCCT identifies crisis history as an intensifier of attribution of responsibility, few studies have examined crisis history.