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Multistate networks are arguably the purest expression of the charter sector's original promise as an engine of innovation within the public school system. On its face, this contention may appear somewhat counterintuitive; the proliferation of schools affiliated with charter management organizations (CMOs) that have siphoned market share away from standalone, community-based operators is often faulted for bringing homogeneity to a corner of the education landscape that once valorized pluralism. Replicating networks that expand their proven models into more than one state, however, are subject to divergent policy landscapes, operational conditions, and community expectations. Accordingly, in order to comport with the dictates of discrete sets of external demands, the leaders of multistate networks necessarily preside over a rolling set of limited experiments through which they are able to assess the relative efficacy of varying approaches to educating students. With the public policy and private philanthropic incentive structures continuing to tilt in favor of replication, and with multistate operators generally struggling to match the success of their more geographically compact peers, it is imperative that leaders of these unique organizations understand how to meet the needs of their communities while simultaneously cultivating the sense of collective mission that promotes effective operation. This collective case study explores how the leaders of five multistate networks attempt to create coherence within their organizations notwithstanding these materially different environmental conditions. Data from interviews, observations, and artifacts were triangulated, and the resulting analysis revealed commonalities, distinctions, and trends that illuminate how these leaders navigate the barriers that imperil the creation of coherence within the multistate construct. This study assesses the leadership moves that the chief executives of multistate networks make when attempting to create coherence and proposes a novel categorization scheme that classifies these strategies as either ideological, structural, or interpersonal in nature. This study also provides a composite picture of the successful multistate charter leader by synthesizing the key attributes possessed by the study participants, explaining how they exercise humility and finesse while using the serial experimentation compelled by the multistate framework to seek out opportunities to drive continuous improvement throughout their networks. Examined through a conceptual framework that ties together the literature on coherence in educational organizations and charter school replication, these findings demonstrate how multistate leaders engage stakeholders based in their satellite regions in a dynamic process of calibrating the appropriate fit between network model and local conditions. Implications from this study are relevant to the policymakers and funders who have continued to provide regulatory and financial support to operators undertaking interstate expansion efforts, to the current and prospective leaders of multistate CMOs who are being entrusted to create high-quality learning environments for students in far-flung communities, and to the superintendents of traditional public school districts who can draw lessons from the manner in which this study's participants are consistently experimenting, evaluating, and adapting. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The proliferation of artificial water points (AWP) to enhance livestock production has fundamentally changed the ecology of dryland ecosystems. By providing a constant source of surface water, AWP can affect the density, distribution and activity of water-dependent native and invasive species. Thus, AWP have the potential to facilitate trophic and competitive interactions, thereby amplifying their impact on the structure and composition of resident animal and plant communities. Recent studies suggest that a strategic manipulation of surface water availability in dryland biomes could be a useful management approach to reduce the negative impacts of native herbivores on vegetation and to mitigate the spread and impact of water-dependent invasive species. However, there is only limited empirical evidence that water exclusion could provide benefits for the ecology and community structure of dryland ecosystems by returning them to their natural water-limited state. Especially for invasive species where the effectiveness of a large scale water exclusion strategy has not been sufficiently evaluated. This is particularly important for high-impact invasive species such as the cane toad Rhinella marina, an anuran that is currently invading northern and arid regions of Australia. Due to their potent chemical defences cane toads put a wide range of native predators at risk of toxic ingestion. During periods of prolonged hot and dry conditions which typically prevail in arid regions, cane toads need regular access to water to survive. In rangeland areas of the Tanami Desert in Australia’s Northern Territory, the existence of AWP fitted with two types of reservoirs provided an opportunity to examine whether exclusion from access to surface water at AWP could limit the abundance and ecological impacts of cane toads. Cane toads could readily access surface water at AWP fitted with earthen dams as reservoirs but cane toads could not access surface water at AWP fitted with water tanks. This study has implications for the management of cane toads in Australia’s arid and semi-arid rangelands. The findings demonstrate that excluding water-dependent species from access to surface water at AWP by changing the water reservoir system from traditionally used earthen dams to water tanks results in a reduction of both their population densities and ecological impacts.