Business Commons^™

Three Essays On Organizational Socialization From Dissimilar Employee’S Perspective, Lu Yu

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of 3 essays all of which seek to examine the socialization experiences of newcomers who perceive themselves to be dissimilar from their work colleagues before, during, and after they start their jobs. I define the perceived dissimilarity as the degree to which individuals perceived themselves to be different from most others in the organization. The first essay provides a comprehensive review of the theoretical and empirical literature on organizational socialization, identifies four dominant theoretical perspectives and their gaps, and sets the stage for the research model developed for this dissertation. At the end of the first essay, …

Reevaluating Order Fulfillment Decisions For E-Tailers Under True Simulated Operating Conditions, Amir H. Kalantari

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation makes both a methodological and an applied contribution. From a methodological standpoint, this is among the very first works in the literature to explore the concepts of true simulated operating conditions and fully embedded decision-making algorithms. We illustrate the effectiveness of these concepts by applying them to an online retailer (i.e. e-tailer) order fulfillment decision making process.

Online shopping has completely transformed retail markets in recent years. For customers, it provides convenience, visibility and choice, and for retailers it provides market expansion opportunities, operational cost reduction, and many other advantages. There are fundamental differences between the supply chain …

Strategic Organizational Sustainability Climate: Scale Development And Validation, Petra Brnova

Theses and Dissertations

The Strategic Organizational Sustainability (SOS) Climate encompasses the employee perceptions of the policies, practices, and procedures that promote long term organizational success in the era of pressing economic, social, and environmental challenges. In order to promote such workplace climate, organizations must be able to measure it. To this end, the SOS Climate scale was developed and validated using first a phenomenological approach in interviews with sustainability professionals working in organizations across economic sectors. After this, scale items were generated and judged, followed by a pilot study. Principal component analysis was conducted for preliminary dimensionality and item reduction. Lastly, confirmatory factor …

The Effects Of Organic Products On Conventional Products And Retailer Assortment Planning, Zhihao Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth in organic products has posed a major challenge to conventional retailer assortment planning. On the one hand, conventional retailers, driven by the relatively high margins of organic products, have increased organic product offerings. On the other hand, the shelf space for conventional retailers has remained the same, with newly opened stores much smaller in sizes. Therefore, retailers need to carefully manage their conventional product assortments to harvest the benefit of offering and increasing organic product assortments. In order to manage the assortment efficiently, conventional retailers need to understand how organic products would affect their existing products, consumers, …

Clarifying And Measuring The Value Of Human Capital Resources, Donald Hale, Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of value is central to the strategic human resources (SHRM) and strategic human capital resource literatures (SHCR) because of their grounding in Resource Based Theory (RBT). In order to facilitate a firm’s competitive advantage, both the SHRM and SHCR literatures argue that the practices and people in a firm must work together to generate resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable. Value is the first and primary consideration in this logic. Despite the centrality of value in both literatures, prior attempts to identify and measure human capital resource (HCR) value (e.g. utility analysis) have produced mixed results …

Essays On Shipment Consolidation Scheduling And Decision Making In The Context Of Flexible Demand, Sepideh Alavi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains three essays related to shipment consolidation scheduling and decision making in the presence of flexible demand. The first essay is presented in Section 1. This essay introduces a new mathematical model for shipment consolidation scheduling for a two-echelon supply chain. The problem addresses shipment coordination and consolidation decisions that are made by a manufacturer who provides inventory replenishments to multiple downstream distribution centers. Unlike previous studies, the consolidation activities in this problem are not restricted to specific policies such as aggregation of shipments at regular times or consolidating when a predetermined quantity has accumulated. Rather, we consider …

Navigating The Glass Ladder: A Qualitative Exploration Of The Challenges Women Leaders Experience Throughout The Process Of Promotion In The Manufacturing Industry, Jamie Birdwell

Theses and Dissertations

As the presence of women in the workplace continues to increase and significant strides have been undertaken to ensure fair and equitable treatment of women in industry, a considerable gap remains in the representation of women in leadership roles in male-dominated industries (Saraçoğlu, Memiş, Voyvoda, & Kızılırmak, 2018). Gender discrimination brought on by stereotypical gender beliefs regarding “men’s work” versus “women’s work” is pervasive in the male-dominated industry of manufacturing (Levine, 2009; Massey, 2014; Sweida & Reichard, 2013). This study explored the experiences of women as they navigated promotion in the manufacturing sector. Through the lens of role congruity theory, …

The Effects Of Firm Age And Firm Size On Strategic Agility And Performance, Jonathan Henry Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Strategic agility is a relatively new construct in the field of strategic management which describes the degree to which a firm is flexible with its business strategy. Strategically agile firms are able to change their market focus, product mix, key resources, or business models quickly in order to exploit opportunities. This study advances our understanding of strategic agility by empirically testing the Doz and Kosonen (2010) model of the construct in a cross-section of firms in multiple industries with several contingency factors including firm age, firm size, and environmental turbulence. Using CEO-level survey data, the model is validated, and nine …

Corporate Governance And Short Sales, Andres Bello

Theses and Dissertations

Chapter one in this study examines the relation among short sales activity and the CEO dismissals, its disclosure, and replacement choice. The study includes several monthly and annualized short sales metrics: short interest ratio, SIR, measured as the shares held short as of settlement date divided by outstanding shares and short cover ratio, SE, measured as the monthly shares held short as of settlement date divided by the volume traded as well as regression modeled abnormal activity from 1992 to 2018. The results suggest informed trading in the pre-announcement period, revealing SIR and abnormal short interest ratio metrics significantly increase …

Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones: Social Undermining As Social Influence, Jason Kautz

Theses and Dissertations

The current social undermining literature suggests the important role of the witness in determining the negative impact on the victim. However, the literature has yet to explicitly explore the witness’ role in social undermining. In this dissertation, I integrate theory and research on social influence and emotions to develop a framework that suggests social undermining be considered a form of social influence. This framework allows for the exploration of the witness’ sense-making process following a social undermining event along with the accumulated effects of repeated exposure to a series of social undermining events. I propose that social undermining influences witness …

Operational Drivers Of Hospital And Physician Adaptation To Industry Change, Justin Taylor Kistler

Theses and Dissertations

Hospitals and physicians are often required to adapt their operations in response to macro changes in their industry environment. This dissertation examines the operational factors which influence and incentivize changes in hospital and physician operating performance. The first essay in this dissertation investigates how legislative political support and competition in the area in which a hospital operates influences hospitals’ investments and commitment to complying with performance mandates implemented by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) legislation in the United States. Leveraging United States hospital performance data from 2007 to 2014, results indicate a differential impact of government ideology …

Serving As A Backup Plan: Accounting Reserves And Their Impact On Managerial Risk-Taking, Kun Lui

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how accounting reserves influence firms’ internal decisions. In particular, this study investigates whether and how reserves currently reported in a firm’s balance sheet affect managerial risk-taking in the making of capital investment decisions. The experimental results show that firm managers are more likely to take risks in the making of capital investment decisions when the amount of reserves is large compared with when it is small. Additionally, the amount of reserves influences managerial risk-taking through sequentially influencing managers’ perceived risks of missing relevant earnings targets and managers’ perceived risks of investing in risky capital investment options. These …

Three Essays On Optimization And Decision-Making Solutions In Grocery Retail Operations, Olga Pak

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation titled “Three Essays on Optimization and Decision-Making Solutions in Retail Operations,” we explore various techniques aimed at optimizing the operational efficiency in a grocery retail store. Specifically, the first essay examines a store manager’s decision of which stock-keeping units (SKUs) from a given category to assign to a promotional display space. We develop a decision support tool that consists of an estimation model and an optimization model. Using a grocery store sales transaction dataset, we introduce a methodology to measure the incremental lift in sales of placing a particular SKU on promotional display space. Our optimization model …

Two Essays Examining Consumer Responses To Product And Service Failures, Sotires Pagiavlas

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of two essays that examine consumer responses to product and service failures. In essay 1, I use the U.S. automobile industry as a backdrop to investigate how consumers respond when their products experience a defect-related failure identified by the manufacturer that necessitates a recall. I develop a conceptual framework to test the impact of a regulator-initiated digital marketing campaign (DMC) on consumer compliance to product recalls. The empirical context is the launch of a nationwide DMC by the U.S. automobile industry’s regulator. The analysis spans 12 quarters of recall completion data pertaining to 296 recalls falling …

Unpacking The Effects Of International Experience In Intercultural Negotiations, Chei Hwee Chua

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how international experience influences the outcomes of intercultural negotiations. Its main contributions lie in the novel and contextualized conceptualization of international experience and the development of a comprehensive theoretical model that unpacks the effects of international experience in intercultural negotiations. I propose that international experience is a multi-dimensional construct that encompasses four dimensions: breadth, depth, cultural distance, and cultural heterogeneity. I argue that experiences abroad develop and strengthen individuals’ intercultural competence, psychological capital and global identity, which in turn positively influence the outcomes of intercultural negotiations, i.e., they mediate the relationship between international experience and intercultural negotiation …

Having Newcomers In Diverse Teams: The Effects Of Subgroup Identification And Established Faultlines On Newcomer Information Seeking And Team Creativity, Xing Liu

Theses and Dissertations

The current literature has demonstrated the importance of newcomers’ information seeking on their socialization in teams and the consequences of newcomers on team outcomes such as team creativity. However, there is limited knowledge on the antecedents of newcomer information seeking and team creativity in diverse teams after the entry of a newcomer. In this dissertation, with a focus on newcomers in diverse teams, I investigated two phenomena at the individual level and team level, respectively. At the individual level, I explored the influence of newcomers’ subgroup identification on information seeking via their feelings of psychological safety and the role of …

The Effect Of Audit Procedure Extent And Precision On Auditors’ Skeptical Judgments, Sarah Alexis Judge

Theses and Dissertations

I investigate how the extent and precision of an audit procedure influence auditors’ responses to errors. The results suggest that while audit procedures with expanded extents are beneficial, this benefit is influenced by the presence of false positives. Specifically, I predict and find that as the extent of an audit procedure expands, auditors will be more likely to recommend audit adjustments. However, this effect is moderated by the presence of false positives. When false positives are absent, auditors are more likely to recommend an adjustment when they use a large extent procedure, however when false positives are present, there is …

A Comparison Of Sbir Investment Methods: Afwerx Vs Legacy, Evan A. Gist

Theses and Dissertations

The AFWERX Open Topic (AOT) program uses funding from the United States Air Force’s (USAF) Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) budget to adapt commercial technology to USAF needs. The AOT approach to small business investment is markedly different from that of legacy SBIR investment methods. This research is a comparison of processes and outcomes for AOT and legacy SBIR. The first axis of comparison is on commercialization rates. Applying a legacy definition of commercialization on a sample of AOT contracts, we found AOT’s commercialization to be 37% (compared to an 8.8% for legacy SBIR). We caveat this finding by …

Three Views For Explaining And Resolving The Recruitment And Retention Challenges Of The Explosive Ordnance Disposal (Eod) Career Field, John A. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Retention among the Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) career field has been a concern since the start of the war on terror. Now, as recruiting quotas are not being met, that concern is growing for senior leaders. In the coming years, retention and recruitment will be of the utmost importance to ensure full mission capability. This research analyzes two streams of data, 15 years of manpower information and the results of a survey administered to first-term Airmen, to identify the variables that have the greatest impact on turnover. An additional dataset, personnel data from more than 2,000 EOD candidates, …

Developing Ei: Leadership Journeys In Emotional Intelligence, Erin Bric

Theses and Dissertations

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been deemed a critical competency for leaders in today's world. However, there is little information to help OD practitioners, leaders, and organizations understand how leaders can develop these skills in ways that meaningfully and positively impact their teams and organizations. This study examined the journeys of senior leaders as they developed their emotional intelligence. The study addressed two research questions: how leaders perceive they have developed their emotional intelligence throughout their lifetimes and how leaders are continuing to develop their emotional intelligence in their lives and careers. Key themes emerged out of leader interviews and were …

An Exploration In Accountable Care Organization Structure, Contingency And Performance, 2015-2017, Siriporn P. Satjapot

Theses and Dissertations

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 enacted one of the most significant reforms seen in the United States healthcare landscape. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) led transformation efforts in regulatory reform and coverage expansion across the U.S. population. Since 2010, care delivery systems have been shifting from episodic, decentralized and fee-for-service models to value-based population health models, like accountable care organizations (ACO). ACOs have been specifically primed for local response to improve the health of their communities. ACO research has traditionally focused on performance measures like mortality, readmissions, quality outcomes and savings. ACO organizational characteristics …

Knowledge And Skill Predictors Of Voice Behavior: Voice As An Upward Influence, Zitong Sheng

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing body of research focused on improving our understanding of employee voice behavior. Yet this literature focuses mainly on factors that influence employees’ decisions regarding whether to speak up (i.e., quantity of voice behavior), rather than factors that influence whether voice behavior turns out to be effective. As a result, job attitudes and personality characteristics have been identified as the major personal factors predicting voice behavior. The current study contributes to the voice literature by viewing voice from an upward influence angle, examining the influences of the quality of content and …