Business Commons^™

Consequences Of Destructive Leadership Through The Experiences Of Millennial Followers, Rhonda M. Martin

Theses & Dissertations

Destructive leadership has serious detrimental effects on organizations and their employees. Today U.S. companies are spending an estimated $23 billion annually on healthcare costs (e.g. chronic absenteeism, high turnover, and dissatisfaction) resulting from the negative impacts of destructive leaders (Tepper, Duffy, Henle, & Lambert, 2006). This emerging theory was worthy of additional research because of the adverse effects it has on the personal and professional lives of followers. According to Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser (2007), the success of a destructive leader depends on susceptible followers (Millennials) and a conducive environment, which creates a toxic triangle. In 2009, Trickey & Hyde …

Competitive Market Research And Product Design, Haixiu Wang

Theses & Dissertations

To learn the uncertainty of customer preference on the attribute of new product, usually a firm needs to do market research. Developing a product on an attribute which is less preferred by customer may lead to a failure. In addition, a firm used to take efforts to design the product. In recent years, we observed a new business model in which the firm does not take effort to design new product, nor does she do market research by herself. She provides rewards to attract outside designers to design new product. Some designers may take effort and design products based on …

Buyer Beware : Consumer Response To Manipulations Of Online Product Reviews, Mengzhou Zhuang

Theses & Dissertations

Online product reviews have become an important and influential source of information for consumers. Firms often manipulate online product reviews to influence consumer perceptions about the product, making it a research topic of urgent need for theory development and empirical investigation. In this thesis, we examine how consumers perceive and respond to the three commonly used manipulation tactics. Firstly, an exploratory pre-study via in-depth interviews with online shoppers indicates that consumers commonly have the knowledge for online review manipulations as well as for detecting them. In the first study, a survey was used to investigate the three popular manipulation tactics …

Open-Minded Discussion In Interdepartmental Collaboration : Contribution Of Goal Interdependence And Social Motives, Jiewei, Antonia Lu

Theses & Dissertations

Combining theories of social motives, goal interdependence, and conflict management, this study theorized a model in which interdepartmental goal interdependence affects conflict outcomes between different departments through open-minded discussion dynamics adopted by employees from different departments in the organization. This study also proposes that social motives moderate the link between inter-departmental goal interdependence and open-minded discussion.

A sample of 133 employees from different business organizations in China were interviewed to recall a critical incident when they had a conflict with their coworker from different departments. SEM results and other analysis results support the hypotheses that cooperative interdepartmental goal interdependence and …