Digital Commons Network^™

Optimizing Marketing Activities For Different Levels Of Customer Relationships, Karl G. Hellman

Business Administration Dissertations

The discipline of marketing is evolving from a product centric paradigm where all value is invested in the product by the supplier and it is exchanged for a market determined price by means of an arm’s length transaction, to a service centric paradigm where value is co-created by customer and supplier through complex relationships in which the rewards are determined through negotiation. This study recognizes that in practice a supplier will and ought to continue to have some customer relationships that are transactional and others that involve higher levels of value co-creation. A five point continuum of relationships from transactional …

Managing Merger Risk During The Post-Selection Phase, Robert W. Heller

Business Administration Dissertations

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are an important part of many companies’ strategic plans, yet they often fail to meet expectations. Part of this failure may be due to a lack of understanding of the risks present during the important period after the initial agreement to merge has been struck and the failure to apply a practical framework for managing these risks. The literature outlines many of the risks managers face and explains risk resolution techniques that can be used to mitigate these risks. Risk management techniques or frameworks have been developed for use in projects involving mergers and acquisitions (M&A), …

In Their Own Words: How Does The Succession Experience Of Second Generation Family Business Owners Influence Future Approaches To Succession?, Gaynor G. Cheokas

Business Administration Dissertations

Family owned businesses strive to not only be successful as measured by profit, market position, and other determinants used to gauge businesses success, but they also strive in the continuity of transitioning management and ownership from one generation to the next. This study explores the experiences of second generation successors with the succession process and how those experiences may influence their approach to planning the next generation succession. A qualitative case study approach was followed, using data collected from twelve second generation family business owners. This research examined the succession experiences of these owners in the areas of succession planning, …

The Impact And Implementation Of Learning Intervention On Management And Organizational Practice In A Non-Profit Setting, Keisha Liggett-Nichols

Business Administration Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The Impact and Implementation of Learning Intervention on Management and Organizational Practice in a Non-Profit Setting

BY

Keisha Liggett - Nichols

2013

Committee Chair: Ram Sriram, PhD

Major Academic Unit: Business Administration

The intent of this research is to explore the concepts of organizational learning as it relates to “double loop” learning. Specifically, this research will test the concepts of double loop theory proposed by Argyris, (1976) in a seminal piece, and the paradigm of Evidence-based management (EBM) in the context of a non-profit organization. The paper will review the transition from a single loop learning organization to a …

The Role Of Empowerment In Crowdsourced Customer Service, Stephen K. Ichatha

Business Administration Dissertations

For decades, researchers have seen employee empowerment as the means to achieving a more committed workforce that would deliver better outcomes. The prior conceptual and descriptive research focused on structural empowerment, or workplace mechanisms for generating empowerment, and psychological empowerment, the felt empowerment. Responding to calls for intervention studies, this research experimentally tests the effects of structural empowerment changes, through different degrees of decision-making authority and access to customer-relationship information, on psychological empowerment and subsequent work-related outcomes. Using a virtual contact center simulation, crowdsourced workers responded to customer requests. Greater decision authority and access to customer-relationship information resulted in higher …

The Role Of Frontline Leadership In Organizational Learning: Evidence From Incremental Business Process Improvement, Isabelle Nathalie Monlouis

Business Administration Dissertations

What is the role of frontline project leadership in organizational learning in incremental business process improvement (iBPI)? Current literature is sparse on the topic of contributions to organizational learning made by frontline employees leading iBPI projects. To bridge this gap, we use an embedded longitudinal multiple case to study the process of leadership of four frontline iBPI projects. The 4I model (intuiting, interpreting, integrating, and institutionalizing) of organizational learning serves as a theoretical lens to study how the insights originating from frontline employees unfold through group-level integration and organization-level institutionalization.

Mapping the flow of key project events to the relevant …

Sensemaking In Enterprise Resource Planning Project Deescalation: An Empirical Study, Douglas A. Battleson

Business Administration Dissertations

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects, a type of complex information technology project, are very challenging and expensive to implement. Past research recognizes that escalation, defined as the commitment to a failing course of action, is common in such projects. While the factors that contribute to escalation (e.g., project conditions, psychological, organizational, and social factors) have been extensively examined, the literature on deescalation of projects is very limited. Motivated by this gap in the literature, this research examines deescalation, that is, on breaking the commitment to the failing course of action with a particular focus on ERP projects. This study is …

Attribution Bias And Overconfidence In Escalation Of Commitment: The Role Of Desire To Rectify Past Outcomes, Delilah Castillo Tine

Business Administration Dissertations

Escalation of commitment is the voluntary continuation of investing resources into what appears to be a failing course of action whose outcome is uncertain. Investigation into the escalation of commitment phenomenon is important to organizations because such behavior could result in grave economic loss. This research investigates two cognitive biases that we posit lead to IT escalation of commitment, namely, attribution bias and overconfidence in an escalation decision, as well as desire to rectify past outcomes (DRPO) for its potential role as a mediator. To test our research model, 160 IT managers participated in a web-based role-playing experiment. Attribution was …

Toward A New Understanding Of The Project Manager As A Mixing Value Of Organizational Knowledge: A Case Study Approach, Ted Bibbes

Business Administration Dissertations

In the areas of Project Management and Knowledge Management, past and current literature have included studies on the project and project team levels, but a specific focus on the role of the Project Manager in managing knowledge within the team has not yet been explored. In order to add to the discussion and close the gap, this research illustrates how knowledge is created within the project team environment, and the specific role the Project Manager plays in the process. By combining a modified model of Nonaka’s SECI Knowledge Creation Theory and the role of the Project Manager, this research shows …

Employee Engagement Construct And Instrument Validation, Hazen A. Witemeyer

Business Administration Dissertations

Employee engagement is a relatively new construct in academic literature and an increasingly popular idea in practice. Proponents of employee engagement claim a strong positive relationship between engagement and business success, both at the firm and individual levels, and outcomes including retention, productivity, profitability, and customer loyalty and satisfaction. Despite numerous academic and practitioner publications on employee engagement, no consistently-accepted conceptualization of the construct or its sub-dimensions exists, and there is an ongoing debate regarding whether the employee engagement construct is a new idea or a re-hashing of old ideas. Similarly, no consistently-accepted tool to measure employee engagement exists. In …

The Investment Process Used By Private Equity Firms: Does The Affect Heuristic Impact Decision-Making?, David B. Sinyard

Business Administration Dissertations

Individuals utilize heuristics in order to simplify problems, which may lead to biases in decision-making. The research question of this study is: “How does the affect heuristic impact the investment process of private equity decision-makers reviewing proposals?” Through an exploratory multi-case analysis, insight is provided into complex private equity decisions by studying biases in the investment process. This is a study of private equity groups’ (PEG) decision-making process when they consider businesses for investment. Qualitative data was generated from semi-structured interviews with twenty private equity decision-makers. The deliberative heuristics applied in the teaser review are learned from process experience and …

Diagnosing Social Support And Performance Management: A Case Study Of Contextual Ambidexterity In A Manufacturing Company, Darren K. Allen

Business Administration Dissertations

This study diagnoses performance in a mature manufacturing company based on an inquiry into contextual ambidexterity. Previous research has shown that creating a high performance context is founded upon the constructs of performance management and social support; however, this research has been conducted in fast evolving, relatively young companies such as software design firms. To date, no research has shown if a well established manufacturing firm can create a context with high levels of performance management and social support establishing a high performance environment and therefore be contextually ambidextrous. The presented contextual ambidexterity inquiry considers social support based upon four …

The Impact Of Legislation On The Organization: Evaluating The Impact Of Corporate Governance Regulation On The Internal Audit Function, Kevin K. Jones

Business Administration Dissertations

The intent of this research is to inform companies that the internal audit function has greater utility than just corporate governance. The internal audit function represents a resource to the business that can be used in a number of ways to help it survive, compete and establish new growth opportunities in the marketplace for the firm. The proposed project will demonstrate through an interpretive process study using case study research how the internal audit function can be a strategic business partner by highlighting its contribution ability in a dynamic, ever-changing, regulatory laden environment. This paper uses Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to …

Resource Dependency Theory And The Inclusion Of Foreign Nationals On The Board Of Directors Of Publicly Traded Chilean Companies: A Multi-Case Study, Steven E. Droll

Business Administration Dissertations

European and US companies, who desire to expand from a domestic-oriented focus to a more international mind-set, must undergo significant organizational transformation. Whether the transformation results in the company becoming internationally oriented, a complete transnational organization or anywhere in-between, one of the key components in the transformation process is developing a strategy that is outwardly focused from its natural domestic markets. To develop and execute said strategy, the utilization of human capital resources might be required that the company itself may not possess. Literature review has supported the concept that when European or US companies incorporate foreign nationals on the …

Senior Executive Learning Agility Development Based On Self-Discovery: An Action Research Study In Executive Coaching, Suzanne Goebel

Business Administration Dissertations

While there is an abundance of empirically based information on the broad subject of executive leadership and executive leader development, opportunity for further research is driven by complexity of the executive’s world and the related need to function at high levels of learning agility. In fact, learning agility has been identified by Korn/ Ferry (Korn/Ferry, 2011) as the single most important predictor of executive success.

This study seeks to explore non-traditional forms of executive leader development based on an integrated theoretical lens, including learning and executive development theories as they relate to learning agility. Executive Coaching is of …

Decision-Making Amplification Under Uncertainty: An Exploratory Study Of Behavioral Similarity And Intelligent Decision Support Systems, Merle Campbell

Business Administration Dissertations

Intelligent decision systems have the potential to support and greatly amplify human decision-making across a number of industries and domains. However, despite the rapid improvement in the underlying capabilities of these “intelligent” systems, increasing their acceptance as decision aids in industry has remained a formidable challenge. If intelligent systems are to be successful, and their full impact on decision-making performance realized, a greater understanding of the factors that influence recommendation acceptance from intelligent machines is needed.

Through an empirical experiment in the financial services industry, this study investigated the effects of perceived behavioral similarity (similarity state) on the dependent variables …

The Effects Of Adopting Ifrs: The Canadian Experience, Theresa Hilliard

Business Administration Dissertations

This dissertation examines the financial statement effects of firm attributes on the components of equity, the market reaction effects on key events in the adoption of IFRS, and the cumulative earnings response coefficient effect in the context of IFRS adoption in Canada. Firm attributes were tested for association with the adjustment to retained earnings at the transition date when first adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS.) Evidence from the analyses of the adjustment to retained earnings model revealed a statistically significant association between the adjustment to retained earnings and the firm attributes of volatility of income, internationality, and firm industry. …