Business Commons^™

“Culture Shock”: An Ethnographic Account Of A Small Business In The Face Of Change, Alexia Maggos

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This ethnography follows a small business in Indianapolis that was founded on a small business philosophy that embodied family-oriented, close-knit employee relationships. Aside from the small firm finding success in its established company culture, this small business found great financial success within a niche market. However, as part of new expansion plans, management began imposing a more traditional, hierarchical management styles. While this shift is predicted by contemporary management theory, the human effects and cultural costs of this process are worthy of study. This ethnography follows employees’ perceptions and reactions to the change in business philosophy and analyzes the instability …

A Question Of Culture: The Impact Of College Major And Personality On Pursuits Of Different Types Of Company Culture, Kathryn E. Carroll

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

What to do with one's future and career is a question with which every collegeaged student struggles. It is not simply a matter of finding a "job" that pays the bills, but rather a "career" that they will be happy with for the length of their professional life. Furthermore, this happiness in their careers consists of many attributes from appropriate pay to satisfaction with their job tasks to the culture of the company for which they choose to work. This last attribute is possibly the hardest for young adults to define and measure. The purpose of this study is to …

Communication And Effectiveness In A Us Nursing Home Quality-Improvement Collaborative, Priscilla Arling, Kathleen Abrahamson, Edward J. Miech, Thomas S. Inui, Greg Arling

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In this study, we explored the relationship between changes in resident health outcomes, practitioner communication patterns, and practitioner perceptions of group effectiveness within a quality-improvement collaborative of nursing home clinicians. Survey and interview data were collected from nursing home clinicians participating in a quality-improvement collaborative. Quality-improvement outcomes were evaluated using US Federal and State minimum dataset measures. Models were specified evaluating the relationships between resident outcomes, staff perceptions of communication patterns, and staff perceptions of collaborative effectiveness. Interview data provided deeper understanding of the quantitative findings. Reductions in fall rates were highest in facilities where respondents experienced the highest levels …

State Uses Financial Incentives To Fund Nursing Home–Initiated Quality Improvement Projects Through Competitive Bidding Process, Leading To Better Care, Valerie Cooke, Greg Arling, T. Lewis, Kathleen Abrahamson, Priscilla Arling, H. Davila, C. Mueller

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Authorized in 2006 by the State legislature, Minnesota’s Performance-Based Incentive Program funds nursing home–initiated quality improvement projects for 1 to 3 years through increases of up to 5 percent in the operating per diem rate charged to Medicaid and private-pay residents. Funding decisions are made through a competitive bidding process administered annually by the Department of Human Services, with recommendations from a review committee. Program staff provide support to nursing homes during and after the application process. Nursing homes that do not achieve project-specific performance targets can lose up to 20 percent of the incentive payments. The program has engaged …

When Do Domestic Alliances Help Ventures Abroad? Direct And Moderating Effects From A Learning Perspective, Hana Milanov, Stephanie A. Fernhaber

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

While the importance of strategic alliances for new venture internationalization is well acknowledged, the effect of domestic partners remains less understood. Building on organizational learning theory's vicarious learning arguments, we suggest that internationally experienced domestic partners positively influence new ventures' international intensity. Moreover, acknowledging that ventures may have multiple learning sources, we argue that the effect is more pronounced when substituting for the lack of new ventures' top management teams' international experience, or when complementing the insights about foreign markets received from foreign alliance partners. The analysis of 194 publicly held new ventures largely supports our hypotheses.

A State-Sponsored Approach To Quality Improvement In Nursing Homes: Insights From Providers, Kathleen Abrahamson, Priscilla Arling, Greg Arling

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In 2006, the Minnesota Performance-based Incentive Payment Program (PIPP) was launched to fund provider-initiated quality improvement (QI) projects addressing a wide range of persistent quality issues in nursing homes (eg, falls, pain, mobility, psychotropic medication reduction, care transitions). In this article, the authors describe the perceptions of nursing home providers who participated in a PIPP-funded QI project and completed a survey addressing a variety of QI-related concerns. Respondents noted the importance of support from top leadership, reported being challenged by resource constraints, and generally thought that their project positively impacted quality within their facility. These findings highlight the importance of …

Knowledge Sharing And Knowledge Management System Avoidance: The Role Of Knowledge Type And The Social Network In Bypassing An Organizational Knowledge Management System, Susan A. Brown, Alan R. Dennis, Diana Burley, Priscilla Arling

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Knowledge sharing is a difficult task for most organizations, and there are many reasons for this. In this article, we propose that the nature of the knowledge shared and an individual's social network influence employees to find more value in person-to-person knowledge sharing, which could lead them to bypass the codified knowledge provided by a knowledge management system (KMS). We surveyed employees of a workman's compensation board in Canada and used social network analysis and hierarchical linear modeling to analyze the data. The results show that knowledge complexity and knowledge teachability increased the likelihood of finding value in person-to-person knowledge …

Does Self-Efficacy Influence The Application Of Evidence-Based Practice?, Kathleen Abrahamson, Priscilla Arling, Jenna Gillette

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Background: Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) is complex and consequently, even within organizations that have made efforts to promote EBP use, EBP is often underutilized by individual clinicians.

Purpose: The aim of our study was to better understand the relationship between self-efficacy and EBP implementation in clinical environments that have undergone efforts to increase EBP utilization. We suggest that EBP is a set of behaviors that result from individuals acquiring, applying, and sharing new knowledge with others in the organization. We hypothesize, based upon a social cognitive theoretical approach, that these behaviors are influenced by clinician perception of self-efficacy.

Methods: …

The Effect Of Virtuality On Individual Network Centrality And Performance In On-Going, Distributed Teams, Priscilla Arling, Mani Subramani

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

For distributed teams to succeed, individuals must interact successfully within team social networks. To understand individual performance in distributed teams, we consider a multi-dimensional view of individual virtuality and its relationship with centrality in the team’s face-to-face network and ICT network. We leverage social network theory and hierarchically analyze data from 254 individuals in 18 teams. We find that members with higher dispersion are less central in the face-to-face network while those with higher ICT use are more central in the ICT network. Centrality in the ICT network, but not centrality in the face-to-face network, is positively related to performance. …

Boundary Work: An Interpretive Ethnographic Perspective On Negotiating And Leveraging Cross-Cultural Identity, Noriko Yagi, Jill Kleinberg

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

The complexity of global organizations highlights the importance of members’ ability to span diverse boundaries that may be defined by organization structures, national borders, and/or a variety of cultures associated with organization, nation-based societal and work cultures, industries, and/or professions. Based on ethnographic research in a Japan–US binational firm, the paper describes and analyzes the boundary role performance of the firm's Japanese members. It contributes toward theory on boundary spanning by introducing a “cultural identity negotiation” conceptual framework. We show boundary spanning as a process shaped through the interplay of the contextual issues that make a boundary problematic; an individual's …

The Impact Of Team Member Familiarity On Communication Media Use And Subsequent Project Performance, Priscilla Arling, Hongjiang Xu

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

This study explores how team member familiarity is related to the communication media used in the completion of projects and how that use impacts project performance. We surveyed 148 university undergraduate students who were enrolled in information systems courses. The students worked on projects in teams of 3 to 4 students. The results suggest that prior collaboration with current te am members, as well as a stude nt’s class year, are related to what communication media are used. The influen ce of team member familiarity and class year varies by the type of media used. We also find that higher …

Can Leaders Step Outside Of The Gender Box? An Examination Of Leadership And Gender Role Stereotypes, Margaret Y. Padgett, Craig B. Caldwell, Andrew Embry

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

This study examined gender stereotypes for leaders using a more indirect method than is typical in stereotype research. Rather than reveal the leader's gender, this study used vignettes in which the leader's gender was unknown. Consistent with their hypothesis, the authors found that participants were more likely to infer a male (female) gender identity than a female (male) gender identity when presented with a leader using a masculine (feminine) style. They also hypothesized that a leader using a gender-consistent leadership style would be viewed more positively than a leader using a gender-inconsistent style. Contrary to this hypothesis, results revealed that …

"When Are The Japanese Japanese?" Negotiating Japanese Cultural Identity In A Japan-Us Binational Organization, Noriko Yagi

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Based on a seven-month ethnographic study in a Japanese subsidiary in the US located in Southern California, this research describes when the organization members categorized as the Japanese are Japanese. One of the purposes of the research is to challenge the widely held assumption in the body of international business research that every organization member from a certain nation is under the influence of the national culture all the time in terms of its impact on their behavior, cognition and emotive expressions. This research brings the assumption that an individual could have multiple cultural identities into the analysis. Under this …

Ethnography As Research Methodology For International Business Studies : Its Complementary Role To The Methodology Based On A Positivistic Paradigm, Noriko Yagi

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

A goal of this paper is to introduce ethnography to the Japanese audience as research methodology for international business studies. Ethnography is defined as the study of describing a culture of a group of people. In the United States, ethnography has been established as one of the research methods in organizational studies. This does not apply to Japan, however. Thus, the paper aims to fill the void and inform the Japanese audience about how ethnography can contribute extending our understanding of the complexity of international cross-cultural management. The paper begins with outlining characteristics of ethnography in comparison to research methodology …

The Role Of Organizational Reality In Implementing Technology, Sakthi Mahenthiran, M. D’Itri, R. Donn

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Reports on the structurational model of technology which shows how workers who had the power to make the implementation successful affected the data that was collected and the extent to which management was able to use the technology to influence their work. Systems for recording job-related data; Analyzing organizational processes; Application of the structurational theory.

Understanding Research On Values In Business: A Level Of Analysis Framework, Bradley R. Agle, Craig B. Caldwell

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Researchers in all management specialties have discussed and investigated the important role values play in personal and organizational phenomena. However, because research on values has been performed in a wide range of social science disciplines and at different levels of analysis, much of thiswork has been uninformed by other work and is neither well integrated nor systematized, resulting in a great deal of confusion concerning the topic. This article attempts to add order and clarity to this area of research by proposing a framework of values research based on level of analysis and by cataloguing and reviewing the vast theoretical …

Where All The Children Are Above Average: A Meta Analysis Of The Performance Appraisal Purpose Affect, J. Jawahar, Chuck R. Williams

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

More than 40 years ago, Taylor and Wherry (1951) hypothesized that performance appraisal ratings obtained for administrative purposes, such as pay raises or promotions, would be more lenient than ratings obtained for research, feedback, or employee development purposes. However, research on appraisal purpose has yielded inconsistent results, with roughly half of such studies supporting this hypothesis and the other half refuting it. To account for those differences, a meta-analysis of performance appraisal purpose research was conducted with 22 studies and a total sample size of 57,775. Our results support Taylor and Wherry's hypothesis as performance evaluations obtained for administrative purposes …

Correcting Turnover Correlations: A Critique, Chuck R. Williams, L. H. Peters

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In this article, the authors argue that turnover correlations do not need to be corrected. First, they maintain that correction formulas cannot correct for poor construct validity. Second, they discuss the original purposes of turnover correction formulas. Third, the authors describe the logical fallacies of correcting turnover correlations. Finally, they show why turnover correlations are not, as is widely believed, statistically limited to a maximum of .80.

Recruiting Sources And Posthire Outcomes For Job Applicants And New Hires: A Test Of Two Hypotheses, Chuck R. Williams, Chalmer E. Labig, Thomas H. Stone

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

This study, unlike most recruitment source research, tested for and ruled out the contaminating effects of prescreening and self-selection bias by examining applicants and new hires for nursing positions (S. L. Rynes and A. E. Barber, 1990). Consistent with the predictions of A. Rees (1966) and J. C. Ullman (1966), recruitment sources reached differently qualified applicants in terms of nursing experience and education which, in turn, were valid predictors of subsequent nurse performance. In a similar manner, recruitment sources produced sharply different levels of prehire knowledge, which was inversely related to voluntary turnover after 1 yr. However, contrary to both …

Goal Importance, Self-Focus And The Goal Setting Process, Chuck R. Williams, John R. Hollenbeck

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In this study we examine the role played by perceived goal importance and self-focus in the goal-setting process. More specifically, this study tests the interactive hypotheses that (a) task performance is a function of goal level, self-focus, and perceived goal importance; (b) goal level is a function of perceptions of past performance, self-focus, and perceived goal importance; and (c) perceptions of past performance are a function of actual past performance, self-focus, and perceived goal importance. Hierarchical regression analysis, using a sample of 88 retail salespersons, revealed empirical support for the first two hypotheses. Specifically, the variables described by control theory …

Turnover Functionality Versus Turnover Frequency: A Note On Work Attitudes And Organizational Effectiveness, Chuck R. Williams, John R. Hollenbeck

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Tested whether work attitudes, widely praised as predictors of turnover frequency (i.e., the number of separations), are also useful predictors of turnover functionality (i.e., the nature of separations). Measures on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement, motivation to turnover, and turnover frequency and functionality were obtained from 112 retail salespersons. Results indicate that (a) the traditional measure of turnover frequency overstates the detrimental effects of turnover on organizational effectiveness, in that 53% of the turnover was functional and (b) turnover functionality, which emphasizes the performance levels of stayers and leavers, is unrelated to work attitudes. Findings suggest that organizations should …