Business Commons^™

Compelled To Be Connected: An Ethnographic Exploration Of Organizational Culture, Work-Life Balance, And The Use Of Mobile Workplace Technologies, Kristopher J. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

This study is an ethnographic exploration of organizational culture, work-life balance, and the use of information and communication technology ("ICT") in the work and home settings. The researcher was embedded for nine weeks within the Information Technology ("IT") department at the corporate headquarters of a mid-sized manufacturing firm in the upper Midwest. The espoused values of the organization proved contradictory, one favoring work-life balance and the other requiring that employees be available to work anytime and from anywhere. The behaviors observed provided insight as to why employee actually used ICT after hours--because it was required of their role and/or because …

A Study Of Transformational Initiatives And Social Capital, Craig Dean Plain

Theses and Dissertations

A STUDY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL INITIATIVES AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Organizations seek to improve themselves. They do so to become more efficient, to increase sales...indeed, to survive. Many have implemented various initiatives to transform themselves. For some, these efforts have paid off. Companies such as General Electric, Motorola, Allied Signal, and others have claimed billions of dollars in cost reductions and increases in revenue (Altinkemer, Ozcelik, & Ozdemir, 2011; Lucier & Seshadri, 2001). Such successes have driven many others to implement these transformational initiatives. Yet the failure rate hovers around 70% (Kotter J. P., 1995).

This study sought to expand the body …

A Review And Analysis Of The Effects Of Financial Slack On Firm Innovation, Tony Croix Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

I analyze the effect of financial slack on firm innovation by reviewing prior research and conducting an empirical analysis. The goal of this paper is to describe, refine and expand research on the relationship between financial slack and innovation. I describe how past scholars' conceptualizations and operationalizations of financial slack vary across studies and are often inconsistent with theoretical definitions suggesting that financial slack is a resource that exists in excess of some foreseeable need. My theoretical analysis suggests that one solution to this problem may be to operationalize financial slack as a proportion of total R&D spending (what I …

Essays On Dispersion, Fairness Perception And Partitioning Of Online Prices, Yiyuan Liu

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is primarily on online pricing, by empirically investigating how formats and structures of prices influence consumer responses and subsequent purchasing behavior, brand choice, etc. Currently, three essays of my dissertation explore topics on price fairness perception, price dispersion, as well as price partitioning.

First, although previous researchers have tested effects of price changes on consumer's perceptions on price (e.g., Maxwell 1999, Campbell 2007), little work has focused on the effects of prices/costs levels on online price judgments and virtually none has examined it jointly with both internal/external reference prices from multiple comparison parties. Less work has applied price …

Economic Perspective On Cloud Computing: Three Essays, Abhijit Dutt

Theses and Dissertations

Improvements in Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and standardization of interoperability standards among heterogeneous Information System (IS) applications have brought a paradigm shift in the way an IS application could be used and delivered. Not only an IS application can be built using standardized component but also parts of it can be hosted by different organizations in different locations provided it can be accessed using the Internet. This dissertation is an attempt to uncover unique aspects of this phenomenon known as Software as a Service (SaaS).

The first essay examines design decision making by SaaS providers by analyzing effects of two …

Virtual Team Citizenship Behaviors: Scale Development And Validation, Joline Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are the extra-role, voluntary behaviors performed by organization members for the benefit of the organization. These behaviors have been widely studied and several dimensions have been defined. However, the majority of the work on OCBs focuses on traditional organizations where all employees are collocated and can interact on a regular basis. With the changing workplace, employees can now work remotely or across different locations and still be expected to work together. Those employees who are not collocated may not feel the need to benefit the organization, but may feel connected to the team and therefore participate …