Business Commons^™

An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Board Chairperson Activism, Board Gender Diversity, Board Gender Inclusion, And Firm Performance, Phyu Phyu Aung Myint

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation empirically examined the effect of board chairperson activism and board chairperson power on board gender diversity, board gender inclusion, and firm performance using a sample of boards of Fortune 500 firms. Board chairperson activism, in this dissertation context, refers to board chairpersons taking actions such as speaking out on, advocating for, or actively supporting gender equality or women leadership in business. Board gender diversity refers to the gender heterogeneity of directors in the boards whereas board gender inclusion refers to the extent to which women directors are given opportunity to participate and contribute to …

Competencies Of Modern Musician Entrepreneurs: The Role Of Digitalization In The Music Industry, Richard A. Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

The culture creation industries are undergoing a period of accelerated digitization, globalization, and democratization. The 21st century music industry is bustling with lowered barriers to entry, increased knowledge sharing, and direct to consumer models which have resulted in a gold rush of entrepreneurial opportunities for musicians and increased competition to music firms and superstars. The music industry has been subject to innovative disruption providing valuable insight on the nuances of this paradigm shift for music entrepreneurs and scholars alike. Specifically, I explore competency factors in artist’s journey from musicians to entrepreneurs with successful self-managed careers. Employing Lazear’s Theory of Balanced …

The Role Of The Similarity Between Suppliers' And Buyers' Sustainability Practices In Improving Suppliers' Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Kwanheui Cheon

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainability has become an essential component of corporate survival and prosperity. As a result, companies are eager to introduce sustainability to every part of their businesses. In addition, because stakeholders' interest has spread from companies to their entire supply chain, companies must manage their relationships with other supply chain members regarding sustainability. Consequently, there has been an interest in investigating the implementation and management of sustainability along supply chains. However, there are still voids in sustainable supply chain management research. For example, scholars have pointed out the need for research on sustainability from a supplier perspective as opposed to the …

Towards Structured Planning And Learning At The State Fisheries Agency Scale, Caleb A. Aldridge

Theses and Dissertations

Inland recreational fisheries has grown philosophically and scientifically to consider economic and sociopolitical aspects (non-biological) in addition to the biological. However, integrating biological and non-biological aspects of inland fisheries has been challenging. Thus, an opportunity exists to develop approaches and tools which operationalize planning and decision-making processes which include biological and non-biological aspects of a fishery. This dissertation expands the idea that a core set of goals and objectives is shared among and within inland fisheries agencies; that many routine operations of inland fisheries managers can be regimented or standardized; and the novel concept that current information and operations can …

Before Turning Into Ashes: A Study Of Entrepreneurial Cognition, Learning, And Exit, Azadeh Zamanian

Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurial practices such as discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities, decision-making, and problem solving are influenced by mental processes and cognitive mechanisms. Decision-making studies in the field of entrepreneurship confirm that entrepreneurs have strong tendency to use cognitive mechanisms such as biases and heuristics to simplify their decision-making processes. Compared to non-entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs show higher levels of cognitive bias.

By focusing on cognitive mechanisms of entrepreneurs, this study answers the question of why some individuals insist on continuing their entrepreneurial journey while failure-related phenomena such as critical setbacks and counterfactual thoughts exist.

Unlike the prior research that have focused on …

The Impact Of An Executive High Performance Work System On Business Model Innovation, Ravi Bala

Theses and Dissertations

Business model innovation is a phenomenon that has been gaining traction since the 1990s. Recently, a global survey of more than 4,000 senior managers by the Economic Intelligence Unit found that business model innovation was overwhelmingly preferred versus new products and new services (Amit & Zott, 2012). Both executives as well as practitioners suggest that business model innovation is ideal for future competitive advantage (Amit & Zott, 2012; Foss & Saebi, 2017). Increasing competition, globalization, and rapid changes in technology have all provided the impetus for organizations to reconsider the approaches they use to manage their numerous resources and capabilities, …

Hawkish Or Dovish: The Effect Of Female Ceo Leadership On Strategic Conformity, Organizational Innovation And Strategic Change, Hazel Husne Dadanlar

Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. female labor market participation rate has significantly improved in the last 50 years (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007). Along with the broader female labor participation rate, the level of female representation at the executive and director-level positions has shown some improvement in the last 24 years, albeit at a much slower pace than it has been in recent years (Pew Research Center Report, 2018). For example, while the number of female Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) leading Fortune 500 companies was zero in 1995, it rose by 7.4% by 2020. Despite some improvement, a mere 7.4% increase …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Ambidextrous Orientation Among Social Entrepreneurs, Sarah N. Kimakwa

Theses and Dissertations

Social entrepreneurship refers to the “the process of identifying, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities aimed at social value creation by means of commercial market-based activities and the use of a wide range of resources” (Bacq & Janssen, 2011, p. 388). Social entrepreneurs use market-based strategies and innovative approaches to address various social, economic, and environmental challenges. motivated by compassion, empathy, and a commitment for alleviating others suffering (Miller, Grimes, et al., 2012), they establish social ventures with a dual mission of social and economic value creation.

To meet the challenges of addressing pressing social, economic and environmental issues not tackled by …

The Role Of Sense Of Community On Knowledge Sharing Behavior In Makerspaces, Eduardo Jose Millet

Theses and Dissertations

Using the Sense of Community Theory and the Knowledge Sharing Behavior this study explores the motivation of members of makerspaces to share technical and non-technical knowledge in this type of creative spaces. In makerspaces, individuals are expected to share what they know with others to solve design and fabrication problems. Most of the sharing occurs when experienced makers transfer knowledge to the novice makers. This behavior is what motivates this dissertation. Unlike traditional knowledge sharing that happens in formal organizations, makerspace participants engage in the knowledge sharing behavior differently; they share in an informal manner creating value for makerspaces and …

The Elicitation And Functionality Of Contempt In The Workplace: A Values-Based Perspective, Gerardo A. Miranda

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational behavior research on the “moral emotions” has rapidly increased in the past few years (Greenbaum, Bonner, Gray & Mawritz, 2020). However, specific emotions have been researched to different extents. In particular, contempt has received relatively less attention than other emotions, perhaps, due to the confusion surrounding its distinction from related emotions such as disgust and anger (Greenbaum et al., 2020). At the same time, there is evidence of contempt being experienced since antiquity (Pakaluk, 2018), across cultures (Ekman & Friesen, 1986), and more recently in organizations (Pelzer, 2005). I argue that it is important to understand the role of …

Innovation And Extended Producer Responsibility In Supply Chain Management, Yuqi Peng

Theses and Dissertations

Supply chain management is an important field in operations management. In recent decades, innovation and sustainability have drawn increasing attention in supply chain management research, while empirical research is still scarce due to data limitations. In this dissertation, we collect unique data and explore the propagation of innovation and sustainability across the supply chain networks.

In the first part of my dissertation, we study research and development (R&D) productivity transmission across supply chain network. Using a two-sided econometric model, we find that having R&D-productive partners plays a significant role in transforming an agent’s R&D into revenues.

In the second part …

A Darker Shade Of Gray: An Empirical Examination Of Gray Swans In The Supply Chain, Tony N.K. Lynch

Theses and Dissertations

The complexity and interconnectedness of markets creates risks in the global supply chain and may lead to various types of disruptions. Prior research in the supply chain management literature has focused on some aspect of disruption and firm performance. However, the effect of Gray Swans on various aspects of firms’ operational or financial performance is an under-research area. Understanding why managers often underestimate and overlook Gray Swans contributes to ongoing conversation of risk in the global supply chain. Gray Swans are defined as low probability risk events that if/when they occur can have a severe or catastrophic impact on a …

Three Essays On Ceo Activism, Strategic Choices And Firm Performance, Keshab Acharya

Theses and Dissertations

There is a longstanding societal expectation that business leaders refrain from involving in social and political issues and primarily focus on managing their firms. In recent years, however, there is a growing trend of CEOs taking a stance on controversial sociopolitical issues that are not directly related to their company’s core business. This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on this phenomenon of CEO activism.

In my first essay, given that CEO activism represents a nascent phenomenon, I explore the conceptualization of CEO activism. Additionally, I propose three main motives behind CEO activism: intrinsic, instrumental, and stakeholder-focused. In my second …

Two Sides Of The Same Coin: Essays Investigating The Founder And Backer Dynamics Of Crowdfunding, Ruben Ceballos

Theses and Dissertations

Crowdfunding provides the opportunity for entrepreneurs to acquire capital for their projects by utilizing a platform that allows the masses to provide funds towards the completion of the project. Thus, it can be looked at as two sides of the same coin. On one side you have the entrepreneurs seeking the funds otherwise known as founders, and on the other are those that provide the funds also known as backers. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors lead to founders successfully attaining their funding, what motivates backers to support the projects, and whether the founders can deliver …

Seeking A Perfect Match: The Effect Of Spousal Capital On Performance Of Family Firms, Xi Yang

Theses and Dissertations

The research about family business has received increasing attention. However, the research that focuses on the effect of owner-managers marriage on family firm performance is scarce. In this study, I argue that the family business manager's spouse can affect firm performance through firm-level and individual-level channels. First, I propose that a family business's firm performance is influenced by owner-managers marriage in terms of spousal human, social, and financial capital based on a family capital topology—a firm-level lens. I build a conceptual model of spousal capital in a family business and develop hypotheses. Further, by integrating the complementary needs theory of …

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 …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Leaders’ Security Orientation, Joseph J. Simpson

Theses and Dissertations

Organizations’ leaders are responsible for ensuring that firms’ proprietary assets are protected from expropriation. Firms are increasingly targets of large-scale proprietary assets breaches that jeopardize their ability to financially benefit from their innovation activities. Some firms have proactively built capabilities that allow them to protect their proprietary assets, while leaders are more security oriented and therefore do more to protect their organizations from proprietary assets breaches? Current research on leaders’ role in the protection of proprietary assets is lacking at the strategic level because most studies on organizational security have emphasized employee-level behaviors (e.g., da Veiga & Eloff, 2010, Lee, …

A Quasi-Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Experience Staging Techniques On Engagement, Emerson Ferrell Watanabe

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of experience staging techniques (personalization through co-creation and multisensory stimuli) on engagement level. This study also explores the possible contribution of experience staging techniques as practical tools that recreation professionals can use to better engage participants in recreation activities and events. A 2-way univariate ANOVA revealed no significant relationship between the use of co-creative and multisensory stimulating techniques and engagement levels in participants (F (3,200) = .263, p = .826, partial η2 = .004). Practical applications for recreation professionals and further research opportunities are discussed.

The Moderating Effect Of Media Naturalness On Motivating Language, James Cox

Theses and Dissertations

For decades, the research in communication in organizational behavior has focused on the reduction of uncertainty and consequently so has the research of leadership and computer mediated communication (CMC) (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1977; Sullivan, 1988). Because of this, many of the controversial issues and competing theories of CMC that have in good part centered around the topic of media choice in the context of task performance, which is a reflection of this narrow focus of CMC on uncertainty reduction. Therefore in order to study the more whole form of communication in motivation proposed by Sullivan (1988), a CMC theory is …

The Interplay Between Change And Project Management For Business Results, Taiwo O.O. Abraham

Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigates the potential interplay between change management and project management. The research aims to determine the causal effect between the two concepts. Data is collected from a focus group comprised of various managers. The study concludes that managers readily apply the concepts of both change management and PM when making decisions. Also, there is significant appreciation of the value of both PM and change management in the contemporary business environment. Future studies need to investigate the relevance of the change management models on PM strategies.

Forecast Combination With Multiple Models And Expert Correlations, David P. Soule

Theses and Dissertations

Combining multiple forecasts in order to generate a single, more accurate one is a well-known approach. A simple average of forecasts has been found to be robust despite theoretically better approaches, increasing availability in the number of expert forecasts, and improved computational capabilities. The dominance of a simple average is related to the small sample sizes and to the estimation errors associated with more complex methods. We study the role that expert correlation, multiple experts, and their relative forecasting accuracy have on the weight estimation error distribution. The distributions we find are used to identify the conditions when a decision …

Exploring Factors Related To Customer Service Representatives’ (Csrs) Performance In Call Centers., Ruth R. Jayson-Polk

Theses and Dissertations

This study provides critical research on individual change and its impact on individual performance using the ADKAR change management model. This applied dissertation was designed to research improvement in call monitoring performance scores between two groups of customer service representatives’ (CSRs): the experimental group receiving the ADKAR change management intervention, and the control group, who did not receive the ADKAR change management intervention. The ADKAR change management model (Hiatt, 2006) provided the theoretical framework for the study.

The literature review revealed that change management is a critical component of organizational change but is driven by individual change. The literature informs …

Group Decision-Making, Edward Cook

Theses and Dissertations

The present work explores improvements in group decision-making. It begins with a practical example using state-of-the-art techniques for a complex, high-risk decision. We show how these techniques can reveal a better alternative. Although we created an improved decision process, decision-makers were apt to protect their own organizations instead of the project. This tendency was reduced over the course of the decision-making process but inspired the first conceptual component of this work.

The first concept describes the “Cost of Conflict” that can arise in a group decision, using game theory to represent the non-cooperative approach and comparing the outcome to the …

Methods To Support The Project Selection Problem With Non-Linear Portfolio Objectives, Time Sensitive Objectives, Time Sensitive Resource Constraints, And Modeling Inadequacies, Neil C. Ranly

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force relies upon information production activities to gain insight regarding uncertainties affecting important system configuration and in-mission task execution decisions. Constrained resources that prevent the fulfillment of every information production request, multiple information requestors holding different temporal-sensitive objectives, non-constant marginal value preferences, and information-product aging factors that affect the value-of-information complicate the management of these activities. This dissertation reviews project selection research related to these issues and presents novel methods to address these complications. Quantitative experimentation results demonstrate these methods’ significance.

Symbiotic Relationships Among Innovations And Sustainable Practices: A Supply Chain Management Perspective, Muratcan Erkul

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainability as a business phenomenon has occupied the attention of academicians, practitioners, and consumers for more than three decades. While some firms emphasize on their own internal sustainability initiatives, there is a growing trend to implement sustainability across the supply chain. This increasing interest makes implementation of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices very important for focal firm's sustainability; however, the ability to create innovative products, processes, and ways of operating is crucial if an organization is to be sustainable. Although there have been studies that investigate innovation in the context of sustainability, their scopes are limited to a single …

Evaluating Process Improvement Courses Of Action Through Modeling And Simulation, Joseph R. Owens

Theses and Dissertations

Quantifying an expected improvement when considering moderate-complexity changes to a process is time consuming and has potential to overlook stochastic effects. By modeling a process as a Numerical Design Structure Matrix (NDSM), simulating the proposed changes, and evaluating performance, quantification can be rapidly accomplished to understand stochastic effects. This thesis explores a method to evaluate complex process changes within Six Sigma DMAIC process improvement to identify the most desirable outcome amongst several improvement options. A tool to perform the modeling and evaluation is developed. This process evaluation tool is verified for functionality, then is demonstrated against generic processes, a case …

A Sensitivity Analysis For Relative Importance Weights In The Meta-Analytic Context: A Step Towards Narrowing The Theory-Empiricism Gap In Turnover, James G. Field

Theses and Dissertations

Turnover is one of the most important phenomena for management scholars and practitioners. Yet, researchers and practitioners are often frustrated by their inability to accurately predict why individuals leave their jobs. This should be worrisome given that total replacement costs can exceed 100% of an employee’s salary (Cascio, 2006) and can represent up to 40% of a firm’s pre-tax income (Allen, 2008). Motivated by these concerns, the purpose of this study was to assess the predictive validity of commonly-investigated correlates and, by extension, conceptualizations of employee turnover using a large-scale database of scientific findings. Results indicate that job satisfaction, organizational …

Conquerors Or Cost-Cutters? The Influence Of Ceo Power On Corporate Restructuring And Aggressive Strategic Behavior, Ana M. Sariol

Theses and Dissertations

How do dominant (powerful) Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) influence corporate strategic behavior? Do they disproportionately focus on restructuring (cost-cutting or efficiency-enhancing) strategies in an attempt to run an efficient business? Alternatively, do they instead pursue aggressive (domain-creating) corporate strategies (i.e. engage in "empire-building") that not only expand the scope of the firm but also their personal influence? Current research evidence in the corporate governance literature is ambiguous when it comes to the relationship between CEO power and the choice of conservative vs. aggressive corporate strategies. Most studies in the literature use a piece meal approach and examine the influence of …

Predicting Citizen Satisfaction With Government Services In Belize, Samuel W. Logan

Theses and Dissertations

Assessing the effectiveness of humanitarian assistance and foreign aid has presented a challenge to personnel tasked with these operations. Answering the question "are we winning hearts and minds" has similarly eluded military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. This research presents a review of humanitarian assistance and foreign aid conducted by the U.S. government and literature on U.S. military doctrine regarding humanitarian assistance and infrastructure investment. The research builds upon expectancy disconfirmation theory to determine the strongest predictors of citizen satisfaction with government services. Case study data was collected in Belize before and after a U.S. military humanitarian and civil assistance …

Modeling And Simulation Of Evacuation Plan For Hancock Stadium, Nirmal Neranjan Weerasekara

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to use Modeling and Simulation of Evacuation Plan (MSEP) to support management to execute proper evacuation plan in case of emergency at Hancock Stadium in Illinois State University. Analyses of the research literature and evacuation scenarios are used to build a simulation system that will connect a description of emergency and evacuation situation with its context. It shows how an evacuation plan actually functions. The results of the study will help safety managers to understand the current situations of evacuation according to the specific simulation scenarios. The evacuation simulation is categorized according to the …