About

Gordon Kingsley is a Professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. His office is located in DM Smith 224C, and he can be reached by phone at 404-894-0454. The page does not provide specific details about his research focus, background, or key contributions.

Research topics

• Business
• Public relations
• Computer science
• Process management
• Political science

Selected publications

• Blending the two communities: concurrent evidence use in state-level policy processes

  Public Management Review · 2025-01-07 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Steering the future: expert knowledge and stakeholder voices in autonomous vehicle policy reports

  Policy and Society · 2025-01-11 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The anticipated arrival of autonomous vehicles has created considerable uncertainty for US states because they govern roads. In response, states activated their policy advisory systems. While policy advising at the national level has been studied, less is known about the sub-national level. Similarly, more is known about the use of scientific knowledge by policymakers than about the full range of knowledge deployed in policy advising. This study analyzes reports written for states to help them make sense of an emerging technology in preparation for governance. Committees, university researchers, staff at Department of Transportation, and legislative staff produced different types of reports, for example, more and less academic, focused more or less on topics associated with governance or engineering. Our analysis reveals that state policy advisory systems used two types of processes—convening and expert—and employed three types of expertise—academic, practical, and political—to help prepare to govern this emerging technology. The study provides insight into how states mobilized expertise to address uncertainty around an emerging technology, showing how different actors balanced the need for credible technical knowledge with legitimate stakeholder engagement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Common Challenges and Comprehensive Strategies for Utility Risk Management in Alternative Delivery Infrastructure Contexts

  Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction · 2024-07-24 · 1 citations

  article

  In recent decades, state transportation authorities (STAs) have increasingly relied upon alternative contracting methods (ACMs) to deliver large surface transportation infrastructure projects. ACM delivery allocates higher levels of responsibility—and associated risks—to the private sector for the completion of engineering design and other elements. To this end, this study highlights attitudes and strategies related to utilities risks, a topic agreed by public and private industry to be highly material to ACM project success. The study utilizes a mixed-methods approach featuring (1) content analysis of contractual and programmatic STA documentation and (2) semistructured interviews with subject matter experts across a broad cross section of the national project delivery network. Synthesizing these results, the study presents commonly identified challenges related to the identification, allocation, mitigation and management of utilities risks in ACM contexts. It furthermore identifies the best practices and strategies utilized across STAs and ACM project networks to address those challenges. The study thereby contributes a highly contextualized integration of contractual analysis supplemented with practitioner perspective. The results offer guidance to STAs seeking to effectively manage utilities and geotechnical risks while fostering a competitive procurement environment.

  PublisherDOI

• Tracking academic contributions to policymaking for autonomous vehicles

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-09-07 · 1 citations

  paratextOpen access

  In this preliminary analysis, we see support for the theoretical framework delineating two approaches to using knowledge in policy making – expert and convening. In addition, we confirm expectations that academic knowledge is more influential in the expert approach to learning. However, academic knowledge is still drawn upon in the convening approach. This preliminary analysis will be extended and elaborated in the full conference presentation.

  PublisherDOI

• When cities take control: Explaining the diversity of complex local climate actions

  Review of Policy Research · 2022-12-08 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Cities face substantial risks of economic and physical losses from repeated exposure to climate hazards exacerbated by climate change. Drawing from the climate action and policy mix literatures, this study conceptualizes “climate action mix” defined as the diverse policy actions adopted by city governments to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate hazards. This study makes a key contribution by analyzing the relation between the variety of hazards and the diversity of cities' climate action mixes. Deploying a modified Shannon diversity index, we develop a new measure of climate action mix by considering the breadth across different actions, and the depth of these efforts as measured by the progress along the policy cycle. We study an expansive range of mitigation and adaptation actions without imposing any domain or jurisdictional limitations in 162 cities across the United States. The analysis reveals a bifurcation in approaches where some cities have not adopted any policies, while others have a diverse mix of adaptation and mitigation actions in various stages of policy progression. We find that climate hazards drive local action—cities that experience multiple threats react by taking a diverse mix of climate actions. Cities broadly utilize global climate networks that offer policy learning opportunities and local networks that might promote a shared understanding of environmental threats leading to diverse climate action mixes. Finally, a city's capacity to develop climate adaptation and mitigation plans is positively related to a diverse portfolio of climate actions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Green rules and green tape: Streamlining the environmental review for transportation projects

  Transportation Research Part D Transport and Environment · 2021-06-18 · 3 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Stem Partnerships That Spill Over

  2020-09-03 · 1 citations

  article

  Abstract NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract STEM Partnerships that Spill Over Marion Usselman1, Gordon Kingsley2, Donna Llewellyn3, Brecca Berman2 1 Center for Education Integrating Science, Math, and Computing (CEISMC) 2 School of Public Policy 3 Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) Georgia Institute of Technology Introduction In recent years the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education (DoE) have emphasized that universities have an inherent responsibility to assist the K-12 community in improving student academic achievement, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). After a number of years of involving higher education in various ways in targeted and systemic K-12 reform, NSF and the DoE began to promote university-K-12 “partnerships” as the means to most effectively involve higher education in the process. However what this exactly meant in the STEM educational world, or how effective partnerships should be created and evaluated, was mostly left undefined, generating confusion among both educators and evaluators. As part of an NSF-sponsored Research, Evaluation, and Technological Assistance project designed to help clarify the evaluative issues involved with partnerships, we are currently examining how the characteristics and operations of partnerships influence STEM educational outcomes.* Part of this project addresses the vexing issue of how to evaluate both the outcomes of a partnership, and the partnership itself. For, although a partnership is often viewed primarily as a vehicle or framework for conducting other planned STEM activities or interventions, it often becomes much more than that, leading to a multitude of unanticipated activities and outcomes. Evaluations that don’t directly address the partnership, and the unanticipated outcomes that result, may suffer from a weak formative assessment regarding the health of the partnership, and also may miss some of the most important results of that partnership. The unintended consequences of the partnership, defined here as “spillover”, can become so crucial that they eclipse the original project objectives, becoming themselves a driving force in the program. Traditional evaluations, which generally seek to measure the numerical success of the original project objectives, often do not control for the impacts and influences of the partnership itself, and may miss both the project spillovers, and also possible alternative explanations for observed events or impacts. In this paper we will discuss the knowledge about partnership gained from the field of public policy, apply this understanding to the field of STEM * NSF Award Number 0231904. For more details on this research, “Alternative Approaches to Evaluating STEM Education Partnerships: A Review of Evaluation Methods and Application of an Interorganizational Model,” please visit the project website at http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gk18/STEM Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

  PublisherDOI

• Role of Inputs, Processes, and Relations in Transportation System Performance Management: Case Study of Regional Transportation Collaborations

  Journal of Management in Engineering · 2020-09-30 · 10 citations

  articleSenior author

  This study aims to expand understanding of how regional transportation collaboration operates and examines the relationships between collaboration and performance. To do so, nine regional safety coalitions that use collaboration as a strategic approach to achieve transportation performance are examined. A conceptual framework connecting regional transportation collaboration and performance is developed from a review of the literature. A survey was used to collect data about coalition-member perceptions of regional transportation collaboration and performance, and a cross-case comparison was used to evaluate relationships. Methods adopted include a relative importance index, exploratory factor analysis, and multiple linear regression. Findings show that the structure plus governance of a regional transportation collaboration is the strongest predictor of performance. Significant differences were found between high-performing and low-performing collaborations in terms of resources available and access to tools. Regional coordinator stability was found to create significant differences in effectiveness, and performance efficiency was identified as an area for improvement for low-performing collaborations. Overall contributions to engineering management literature are achieved by highlighting approaches to organize and operate regional transportation collaborations explicitly for the purpose of improved performance management.

  PublisherDOI

• Partnering Across Cultures: Bridging The Divide Between Universities And Minority High Schools

  2020-09-03 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  The historical mission of most engineering-dominated Research-1 universities is to create new knowledge and to train students in technological fields. In the absence of a College of Education, and given an institutional culture prioritizing scholarly research, institutions such as Georgia Tech often do not have a long history of systemic faculty involvement in the K-12 educational community. However the current national focus, initiated by public funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, encourages academic scientists and engineers to shoulder some of the responsibilities for the quality of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at the K-12 level, and to do this by developing university-K-12 "partnerships." Unfortunately, given the vast cultural differences that exist between universities and K-12 schools, these partnerships too often flounder, never managing to bridge the divide to the point of mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual benefit.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evaluation of Georgia Department of Transportation Office of Program Delivery Project Management Organizational Structure in Comparison to Other States’ DOT Practices Tier 1: Best Management Practices (BMPs) of Design-Bid-Build Transportation Program

  2020-02-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Baabak Ashuri

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  9 shared

• Evan Mistur

  The University of Texas at Arlington

  7 shared

• Daniel C. Matisoff

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  6 shared

• Yehyun An

  Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements

  6 shared

• Juan D. Rogers

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  6 shared

• Barry Bozeman

  Arizona State University

  6 shared

• Branco Ponomariov

  The University of Texas at San Antonio

  5 shared

• Marion Usselman

  University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras

  4 shared

Education

• PhD, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

  Syracuse University

  1994

• Masters of International Relations, School of International and Public Affairs

  Columbia University

  1981

• B.A. in International Service and Economics, School of International Service

  American University

  1979