Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

The Impact Of Irrational Beliefs On Dysfunctional Decision-Making In B2b Salespeople, Barron W. Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

The complexity of the contemporary business-to-business (B2B) sales landscape requires salespeople to respond faster, be more knowledgeable, and add more value to buyer interactions than ever before. As such, B2B salespeople must carefully consider the impact of their decisions since they have the potential to directly impact organizational revenue and bottom-line outcomes. The present research utilizes rational-emotive behavior theory to examine judgment and decision-making in B2B salespeople. Research questions are presented and tested with a sample of 306 B2B salespeople using structural equation modeling. The results of the analysis reveal that irrational beliefs lead to dysfunctional emotions, and in turn, …

Demands At Work: The Moderating Influence Of Motivation On The Relationship Between Challenge Demands And Employee Work Engagement, Lauren R. Dinnat

Doctoral Dissertations

Work engagement is a popular topic due to the positive outcomes linked to it. For example, engaged workers are shown to be more productive workers and better organizational citizens. The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory has been the most widely accepted explanatory model for work engagement due to its flexibility to be applied to all work environments. While the JD-R does not argue that motivation is fixed, it does not account for moment-to-moment changes in motivation. A state theory of motivation that examines how motivation may impact the relationships between demands and work engagement has yet to be examined. This study …

How Tempered Radicals Pursue Ideological Change Within Their Organization, Saleh M. Bajaba

Doctoral Dissertations

Organizations that are adaptive, diverse, and socially responsible are often built by employees who are able to implement change “under the radar” of those in the organization who would ordinarily fight significant change. These “tempered radicals” are insider activists who serve as the catalyst for incremental constructive changes which, over time, build better organizations. Unfortunately, little is known about what motivates tempered radicals to enact changes within their organizations. In order to better understand the motives of these internal change agents, I develop a measure of tempered radical motives (TRM). In Study 1, I develop a measure of TRM by …

Understanding The Effects Of Regulatory Focus On Proactive Behavior, Brian P. Waterwall

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past decade, motivation research has focused on what motivates employees to engage in behaviors that fall outside of ones' job/task requirements and bring about meaningful change in the organization's environment, proactive behaviors (Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000). Recently, regulatory focus theory has received considerable research attention because of its potential to explain additional variance in behavior beyond other motivational constructs. Regulatory focus theory suggests that during goal striving, people will display behaviors associated with their current motivational state. Drawing from prior research examining motivation and behavior, I propose and test a model that examines the effects of …

The Effect Of Corporate Social Performance On Acquisition Performance, Sammy G. Muriithi

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I investigate the impact that corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement may have on post-acquisition performance outcomes. I argue that prospective targets are among the audiences that observe the firm's corporate social activities and make judgments out of the signals portrayed by such activity. With prospective targets being largely more successful than their counterparts, it stands to reason that they would prefer to be acquired by successful firms that would likely assure benefits in the long term. The socially responsible acquirer would likely be viewed as the more attractive suitor since the established moral and reputational capital present …

The Design And Evaluation Of An Anonymous, Two-Way, Ethics Management Reporting System, Jacob A. Young

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite a recognized need for whistleblowing systems in academic research, little to no attention has been given to the necessary requirements for and specific design of effective whistleblowing systems. In order to increase the rate of reporting, it is critical for reporting systems to be designed with the intent to reduce employee fears and inhibitions by reducing the potential for retaliation. Therefore, the goal of this three-essay dissertation was to enhance a firm's ability to solicit and investigate concerns by proposing and evaluating a system aimed at fostering anonymous, two-way communication between employees and investigators of wrongdoing.

In essay one, …

An Empirical Investigation Of Technology Usage, Virtual Status, Organizational Justice, Need For Affiliation, Organizational Identification And Their Influence On Work Success, Julia Crider Graham

Doctoral Dissertations

Advancements in information communication technology have led to a growth in the telecommuting work force and increased interest in telecommuting research. Antecedents of work success are re-examined. This study attempts to disclose the relationships among communication technology usage, need for affiliation, organizational justice, employee's virtual status and organizational identification and how these factors affect work success.

Four main questions drove this research: "Do organizational justice and employee's virtual status moderate the relationship between communication technology usage and organizational identification?" ; Do organizational justice and employee's virtual status moderate the relationship between need for affiliation and organizational identification?"; Do organizational identification, …

Arbitrage Risk, Investor Sentiment And Maximum Daily Returns, Kenneth A. Tah

Doctoral Dissertations

We test the cross-sectional relation between daily maximum return (MAX) and return in the following month for stocks with high and low idiosyncratic volatility. We use portfolio level analysis and firm-level cross-sectional regression to find that the negative and significant relation between MAX and expected stock return (known as the "MAX effect") is a non-January phenomenon observed predominantly on a sample of stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility. We find that the effect of investor sentiment on the MAX effect depends on arbitrage risk. Our findings suggest that arbitrageurs find it difficult to correct the mispricing of stocks with extreme positive …

Anchoring Bias, Idiosyncratic Volatility And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Cedric Tresor Luma Mbanga

Doctoral Dissertations

Ang, Hodrick, Xing and Zhang (2006) document an anomaly in the cross-section of stock returns. They show that high idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) firms earn lower returns in the following month. Specifically, they find after sorting stocks in quintile portfolios based on the previous month's IVOL that a zero-investment portfolio long the most volatile quintile of stocks and short the least yields about -1% during the subsequent month. The evidence reported in Ang, Hodrick, Xing and Zhang (2006) is primarily puzzling because traditional asset pricing theories suggest that (i) only systematic risk should be priced, (ii) to the extent that markets …

Creating And Fostering Singerian Inquiring Organizations Through Psychological Empowerment In The Context Of Information Assurance, Kristen Lee Brewer King

Doctoral Dissertations

Singerian Inquiring Organizations (SIO) (Courtney, et al., 1998; Courtney, 2001) are knowledge-based enterprises based on Churchman's theory of Singerian inquiring systems (Courtney, 2001). For Singerian organizations to thrive, employees must feel unfettered to quest for knowledge, share what knowledge has been found, and express opinions about the findings of others. In short, employees must feel empowered to act in order to foster the well-being and development of the organization and its stakeholders. Both the psychology and organizational behavior literature have examined psychological empowerment as a way to challenge individuals and/or employees to take control of and interest in organizational situations; …

The Impact Of Organizational Insiders' Psychological Capital On Information Security, A. J. Burns Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research seeks to examine the role of organizational insiders' psychological capital (PsyCap) on the performance of protection motivated behaviors (PMBs). The dissertation examines the role of PsyCap through three studies which were conducted for this research. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the responses from four distinct samples were analyzed. The results largely support the significant role of PsyCap in information security. The first study takes an expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964) approach and found that PsyCap was a significant consequence of insiders' security-related expectancy dimensions. Additionally, expectancy theory was found to be an appropriate frame-work for promoting PMBs.

The …

The Impacts Of Founding Teams' Characteristics, Types Of Opportunities, And Types Of Strategies On Firm Performance In New Business Ventures, Kyung-Moon Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the impact of the characteristics of founding team on firm performance in new business ventures. In addition, this study investigates the moderating effects of the types of opportunities and the types of strategies on the relationships between founding teams' knowledge and firm performance. Although considerable research has examined the effects of founding teams' education and experience on firm performance, findings are inconclusive and disintegrated. Few studies have attempted to investigate the combined effects of these important factors on new ventures' performance and survival. As a result, this study investigates the impact of founding team knowledge …