College of Education

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Subject: search.filters.subject.resource allocation

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    The Certainty of Navigating the Uncertain: Resource Allocation Decisions of Business School Deans at Public and Private Research Universities
    (2024) LaRiviere, Kristin; O'Meara, KerryAnn; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Business school deans at public and private research universities today face particular fiscal challenges due to declining MBA enrollment, shifting student enrollment choices and changing international student enrollment trends. Social and political forces such as the COVID-19 pandemic and recent social justice movements also impacted college campuses as a whole. As a result, business school deans are pivotal decision makers who must make difficult choices, such as initiating layoff or eliminating programs. Given this milieu of factors, understanding how business school deans make resource allocation decisions provides value to understanding college-level leadership. This study examined how organizational factors impact business school deans’ resource allocation decisions. Decisions are also impacted by personal perspectives, which were explored in this study. Framed by Hackman’s Theory of Resource Allocation (1984) and Bolman and Deal’s (2017) Four Frames of Leadership, the findings from written artifacts and oral interviews with 13 business school deans indicated that business deans’ resource allocation decisions were motivated by a desire to increase revenue and generating prestige for their college. Resource allocation choices were also focused on mitigating conflict, managing their personal and college’s relationship with central university leadership, and adjusting their college’s structure to efficiently meet the college’s goals. As such, business school deans most often relied on Hackman’s (1985) environmental power and Bolman and Deal’s (2017) political and structural frames. Implications for preparation and professional development of business school deans emerged, as well as propositions for future research regarding college-level resource allocation decisions.
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    Science resource inequalities viewed as less wrong when girls are disadvantaged
    (Wiley, 2022-08-08) Sims, Riley N.; Burkholder, Amanda R.; Killen, Melanie
    In response to some resource inequalities, children give priority to moral concerns. Yet, in others, children show ingroup preferences in their evaluations and resource allocations. The present study built upon this knowledge by investigating children's and young adults’ (N = 144; 5–6-year-olds, Mage = 5.83, SDage = .97; 9–11-year-olds, Mage = 10.74, SDage = .68; and young adults, Mage = 19.92, SDage = 1.10) evaluations and allocation decisions in a science inequality context. Participants viewed vignettes in which male and female groups received unequal amounts of science supplies, then evaluated the acceptability of the resource inequalities, allocated new boxes of science supplies between the groups, and provided justifications for their choices. Results revealed both children and young adults evaluated inequalities of science resources less negatively when girls were disadvantaged than when boys were disadvantaged. Further, 5- to 6-year-old participants and male participants rectified science resource inequalities to a greater extent when the inequality disadvantaged boys compared to when it disadvantaged girls. Generally, participants who used moral reasoning to justify their responses negatively evaluated and rectified the resource inequalities, whereas participants who used group-focused reasoning positively evaluated and perpetuated the inequalities, though some age and participant gender findings emerged. Together, these findings reveal subtle gender biases that may contribute to perpetuating gender-based science inequalities both in childhood and adulthood.
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    CHILDREN’S UNDERSTANDING OF MERIT IN FAIR RESOURCE ALLOCATION
    (2017) Noh, Jee Young; Killen, Melanie; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    While previous studies have documented children’s consideration of merit in fairness decisions, less is known about specifically how merit has been conceptualized by children, as effort and outcome were confounded in merit (Baumard et al., 2012; Kienbaum & Wilkening, 2009). Thus, the current study aimed to disentangle these two components of merit in understanding children’s conceptions of fairness. One hundred children (3 to 6 year-olds and 7 to 10 year-olds) participated in this study. Children’s understanding of merit was documented in four contexts: a) when effort and outcome were confounded (baseline), b) when outcome was controlled (i.e., when the level of effort was varied), c) when effort was controlled (i.e., when the level of outcome was varied), and d) when given the opportunity to prioritize either effort or outcome. Novel findings were that with increasing age, children prioritized effort over outcome and thus found it to be fair when more resources were allocated to the hardworking peer than to the productive peer. That is, older children were more likely to focus on the positive intentions of an act rather than positive consequences compared to younger children. In addition, when merit was examined when effort and outcome was controlled, children were still able to take into consideration for merit, thereby allocating more resources to a peer who was hardworking over a peer who was lazy (when outcome was the same) and to a peer who was productive over a peer who was unproductive (when effort was the same). Interesting findings were revealed when authority figures’ messages were present: all-aged children rejected a teacher’s allocation decision that was against merit; however, older children rejected a teacher’s equal allocation decision while younger children found a teacher’s equal allocation to be okay. The current study made a significant contribution to the current literature by examining the process in which children integrate two different aspects of merit in their fairness decisions.