Business Commons^™

How Should Bosses Lead? New Revelations From Frontline Managers, Bonnie A. Curtis

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Strategic business change in the 21st century has been fraught with issues, resulting in failure for more than half of all attempted efforts to transform companies. Frontline managers (FLMs) are key to successful corporate change, transforming a company’s direction into action and results and the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique business challenge for every Consumer Products Group (CPG) company and FLM by interrupting supply chains. The aim of this grounded theory study was to create theory by conducting open-ended interviews with 20 frontline managers to determine how they viewed themselves and their roles, teams, and bosses during change. Results …

The Relationships Between Dimensions Of Inclusive Leadership And Aspects Of Employee Engagement: Crucial Connections For Organizational Success, Rosalind F. Cohen

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

In light of the current economic conditions in the United States brought about by the COVID pandemic, the war for talent is at a high point, and the acquisition and retention of qualified employees are highly competitive. Because employees want to feel challenged by their work and need to feel a sense of belonging, organizations that create engaging and inclusive cultures are at an advantage and need to understand how leadership behaviors can impact these cultures. This three-phased exploratory concurrent mixed-methods research study posed two questions to bring light to the relationship between Inclusive Leadership, Employee Engagement, and individual or …

Love And Learn: Creating Space For Authentic Caring In Family Child Care, Katherine Kelly Hart Meehan

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Children benefit from engagement in early education and care (ECE) programs that support their learning and development while also providing a point of connection to critical resources for their families. For children from economically disadvantaged families, the lack of access to high-quality ECE results in a persistent achievement and opportunity gap (García & Weiss, 2015). A significant portion of ECE occurs in home-based early learning environments, also known as family child care (FCC) programs, which play a critical role in supporting children from low-income and immigrant families (Layzer et al., 2007; Porter et al., 2010). Unfortunately, this sector of ECE …

Locating Uncertainty In Hospital Leader Sensemaking And Sensegiving Of Organizational Change: A Single Case Study, Sara E. Barry

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Leaders planning strategic change face significant ambiguity and uncertainty due to the complex, fast-paced, and volatile nature of organizational life. What one leader sees as an opportunity, another may view as a threat depending on their past experiences, their existing mental models, and their perceptions of uncertainty. Sensemaking and sensegiving theories provide a framework for how leaders retrospectively make sense of new and disorienting information through recursive cycles of interpretation, action, and learning, and seek to influence the meaning-making of others towards a shared vision of the strategic change. Despite decades of research using these theories, studies have yet to …

The Hidden Side Of Work-Family Boundary Management: Uncovering The Role Of Cognitive Boundary Work And Boundary Context, Victoria Daniel

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Work-family life is becoming increasingly complex for the modern-day working parent, making boundaries that define the physical, temporal, and psychological aspects of work and family domains evermore important in how people choose to structure and manage the interface. However, the literature on boundary management has predominantly studied the enactment of certain boundaries and treated these boundary constructs as stable (e.g., general preferences and tendencies to behaviourally integrate or segment work and family). This research has also largely been conducted in contexts where the environment naturally created a way to organize the interface without the employees having to do as much …

Text Contention Behind Sharia Supervisory Board Reports: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Ari Ermawati, M Nur A Birton, Irfan Tarmizi, Muhammad Muttaqin

Jurnal Akuntansi dan Keuangan Indonesia

Sharia Supervisory Board Reports (SSBRs) have an interest in convincing the public that entities supervised by a Sharia Supervisory Board (SSB) are sharia-compliant and reflective of Good Corporate Governance (GCG) practices. Failure in public convincing will be detrimental to Islamic banks’ reputation as well as the SSB’s image and credibility. This study aimed to critically assess how the SSB produces reports as texts to persuade the public using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). We analyzed four SSBRs from two Islamic Commercial Banks (ICBs) and two Islamic Business Units (IBUs) owned by other ICBs as well as interviews for data triangulation. We …

Gender-Based Characteristics Of Micro, Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises In An Emerging Country: Is This A Man’S World?, Angelica Maria Sanchez-Riofrio, Nathaniel C. Lupton, Segundo Camino-Mogro, Álvaro Acosta-Ávila

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Purpose: Worldwide, Ecuador is one of the countries with the most entrepreneurial activity from micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). However, the effect of adopting the US dollar (dollarization), over which the central bank has no control, combined with being mainly an exporter of primary products, as well as strategic currency devaluation by neighboring economies, has created a difficult situation, especially for Ecuadorian women’s MSMEs. This paper aims to study the relationship between female ownership and Ecuadorian MSMEs’ financial, economic and social outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors compile a near-population panel of 617,804 firm-year observations representing an unbalanced panel of 112,917 …

Improving Networking Supports For Women In The Workplace, Karen E. Pennesi, Javier Alvarez Vandeputte, Zsofia Agoston, Rawand Amsdr

Anthropology Publications

This report describes findings from research on networking activities and strategies among women in executive and leadership positions in Canadian organizations. The project was carried out by graduate student researchers in collaboration with the Women's Executive Network. Networking is defined as the creation and maintenance of a community of diverse interests, through in-person and online engagements, that can be mobilized for the benefit of oneself or other members of one’s network. We found that the shift to primarily online networking activities due to COVID-19 removed some existing barriers related to age, gender and location, while introducing others related to family …

Experiencing The Pull And Push: Influences On Independent Contractor Motivation And Job Satisfaction, Andrew D. Miller

Dissertations, 2020-current

Over the past few decades, the number of individuals engaging in non-standard employment has been increasing. Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines the motivation and job satisfaction of independent contractors, the largest form of these alternative work arrangements. Specifically, I examine how the rationale for workers entering contracting work arrangements affect in-role contractor motivation and job satisfaction. Based on a sample of N = 241 adjunct instructors from two universities, I find that the positive relationship between those entering contracting because the work offers autonomy, flexibility and the ability to pursue personally interesting work (pull factors) and their …

Servant Leadership Impact: Practical Insights For The Nonprofit Sector, Michael Ohaneson

Master's Projects and Capstones

In an environment often focused on sustainability and doing more with less, this project examines the effectiveness of servant leadership on organizations and individuals in the nonprofit sector. This capstone focuses on a comparative analysis of information collected via literature review and incorporates responses from interviews conducted with experts in the field of servant leadership. The project includes practical implications for the nonprofit sector.

Creating Positive Impact: The Power Of Greater Purpose And Consciousness Of Connectedness, Joseph Leah, Chris Laszlo

Engaged Management ReView

As the idea of business as a positive force in society continues to grow, we ask: Under what conditions do business leaders transform their companies into organizations that create positive value for all stakeholders, generate above-average economic returns, and serve personal well-being, community health, a fair and inclusive society, and a thriving natural environment?

This study aims to explore the underlying factors and motivations of business as a force for good, and to identify practical guidance for business leaders wishing to create a positive impact through their organizations. Our prior research led us to hypothesize that a leader’s mindset—or consciousness—is …

Personal Development Planning And Vertical Leadership Development In A Vuca World, Kevin Coopersmith

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

To explore how personal development can be utilized as a tool for leaders to adapt to our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world, a qualitative study was conducted on the narrative experiences of eight leaders who had successfully completed personal development plans. The emerging field of vertical leadership development, recognized as a unique developmental approach towards overcoming complexity and uncertainty, was connected to the key themes of personal development planning. Vertical leadership development and personal development planning were united across five conceptual themes: development and application of skills, self-awareness, self-efficacy, self-exploration, and continuous improvement. The experiences of the participants …

Excelling In Telework: A Delphi Study, Ashley Carlin Smith

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this Delphi study was to determine the factors IT management experts identify as necessary for healthcare employees to reach positive decision outcomes in virtual workplaces, to rate the importance of the identified factors, and to determine the practices IT management experts recommend for implementation for the five most important factors. Methodology: This study used a Delphi method that consisted of three rounds to collect data from 15 IT management professionals who are experts in leading virtual teams at Southern California hospitals. In Round 1, participants were asked to identify the factors healthcare employees need to reach …

A Case Of Shifting Focus Friction: Extension Directors And State 4-H Program Leaders’ Perspectives On 4-H Lgbtq+ Inclusion, Jeremy Elliott-Engel, Donna Westfall-Rudd, Eric Kaufman, Megan Seibel, Rama Radhakrishna

Journal of Extension

Contemporary Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) youth are identifying and communicating their identities earlier in childhood than generations before as a result of more awareness and more acceptance of gender identity and sexual minorities by society. A qualitative study of U.S. 4-H program leaders and Extension directors generated an emergent theme around the importance of serving LGBT youth and the resulting implementation challenges. The administrators of 4-H, the largest youth serving organization in the country, recognize the presence of LGBTQ+ youth in 4-H and believe the organization must be inclusive. But challenges remain in ensuring youth experience inclusion at …

The Relationship Between The Protean Career Attitude And Feedback After The Employee Promotion Process, Marcie Overstreet

Dissertations

The deterioration of the traditional organizational career model progressively challenges employees to manage their careers (Briscoe et al., 2006). Increasingly, individuals self-manage their careers, focusing on both professional and personal circumstances throughout a career (Li et al., 2019). Employees continue to pursue career advancement by developing their knowledge, skills, and competencies. While individuals seek career development pursuing more challenging and higher paying jobs, organizations also show interest in career development.

Organizations take an interest in the career growth of employees because career advancement leads to increased morale and productivity and reduced costs associated with employee turnover (Bowness, 2019). Increased morale …

How Leader And Follower Mindfulness Relate To Performance And Ocb Through Conversation Quality And Empathy: A Moderated Mediation Model, Arianna White-Levatich

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Interest within the organizational research community regarding mindfulness has recently surged. Little research, however, has examined how employees’ mindfulness may influence interactions between leaders and followers. This study examined how followers’ trait mindfulness related to two specific aspects of dyadic interactions: leader – member conversational quality (LMCQ) and follower empathy toward a leader. Further, the study examined how this influence extended (via LMCQ and leader-oriented empathy) to task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), two important workplace outcomes for followers. Leader mindfulness was also expected to have a significant influence on the relationships, in that it was expected to strengthen …

A Focused Evaluation Of Sales Employees' Ethics Training And Its Effect On The Diffusion Of Ethics In A Financial Organization, Justin Luebker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ethical scandals have continued to batter corporate America into the twenty-first century. Companies such as Enron and MCI WorldCom became household names overnight because of ethical issues that shuttered the organizations’ operations and stunned shareholders. Training has served as a primary mechanism for companies to impart ethical values in employees and leadership teams. However, despite the ongoing focus and resources dedicated to education and associate development in this area, historically there appears to be no diffusion of ethical standards within organizations. There is a lack of consensus in current research regarding the effectiveness of organizational ethics training and its ability …

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Compassion Organizing And The University Advancement Workplace, Christina Marie Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Compassion organizing has been described within positive organizational scholarship as an organization’s response to pain and suffering in organizational behavior and also the ability for organizations to flourish and promote joy and fulfillment in the workplace. Compassion organizing has been examined in organizational life through the four areas of noticing, feeling, acting, and sense-making. Previous research has focused on business and healthcare workplaces and has shown that compassion organizing is both an organizational and interpersonal social process. Because of the limited existing research on compassion organizing in the higher education workplace (and none with respect to the university advancement workplace), …

Project-Based Pedagogy: The Client's Perspective, Wayne Aho, Wendy Cagle, Jon Marvel, Michael Smith, Edward Wright

International Journal for Business Education

Project-based experiential business education seeks to provide students with lessons that are meaningful, practical, and enduring. While previous research has sought to understand how students and faculty members react to such educational experiences, it is also important to understand the perceptions of the business clients who engage with programs employing project-based education. The aim of this study was to better understand the experiences of business clients with whom students engaged as part of an undergraduate business capstone course. Two hundred fifty-three previous clients were surveyed with a 22.4% response rate. Responses were subjected to content analysis to cluster replies into …

Signature Pedagogy For Entrepreneurship Education: An Emerging Perspective, Ashley Gess, Eleonora Brivio, Gianluca De Leo

International Journal for Business Education

Entrepreneurial ways of thinking and doing intersect with the knowledge and skills that a global citizen needs to thrive. There is a robust body of scholarship that identifies core entrepreneurial skills however there is a dearth of evidence addressing how to successfully teach entrepreneurship. Using the lens of experiential learning, this qualitative study examines the surface, deep, and implicit structures of professional entrepreneurial culture toward revealing a meaningful, authentic pedagogical approach for entrepreneurship education. In order to achieve this outcome, researchers utilized a semi-structured comparable multiple-case study design to engage 19 incubated entrepreneurs in focus group interviews. A replication strategy …

How Bad Do You Want It?: The Personal Motivation Of Joining A Sorority, Garry Butler

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

College campuses provide students with endless opportunities to become members of various student organizations that provide leadership, accountability, a sense of belonging, personal growth, and development. Many colleges have provided students with the opportunities to join social Greek fraternity and sorority organizations. The foundation of social fraternity and sorority organizations are built on principles such as sisterhood, brotherhood, scholarship, service, philanthropy, and leadership. Many traditional college-age women who desire to become members of a social sorority organization all participate in a formal recruitment process. There are various motivations that traditional college-age women have for joining social sororities on college campuses …

Cultivating Financial Literacy Through Secondary School Economics Education: Access To Powerful Knowledge, Emanuel Mizzi

International Journal for Business Education

‘Powerful knowledge’ is disciplinary knowledge that when learned, empowers students to make decisions in a way that will influence their lives in a positive way (Young, 2008). In this paper, the researcher employs this construct to explore the financial literacy education arising from studying secondary school economics. It emerges from the author’s research aimed at exploring teaching and learning in secondary school Maltese economics classrooms. The underlying conceptual framework for this study is critical realism. The study design consisted of interviewing and observing 14 economics teachers, together with four focus groups interviews with students. Data were analyzed by employing thematic …

Remixed, Remastered: Investigating Organizational Adaptation In Higher Music Education, Jacob Bruce Hertzog

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Higher music education presents a unique opportunity to examine change within higher education due to the digital revolution in the music industry over the past two decades. The purpose for conducting this study was to describe, map, and explain the strategies that higher music education programs are using to adapt to the digital revolution in the music industry. This study was grounded in organizational adaptation theory, drawing upon nine well-established theories: population ecology, life cycles, strategic choice, isomorphism, symbolic action, resource dependence, cybernetics, and network theory. Critical concepts of the turbulent environment, environmental perception, and organizational adaptation strategy emerged from …

Toward A Model Of Hardiness Development: The Effect Of Hope On Hardiness, Chin Heng Low, Paul Heng Leong Lim, Kevin Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hardiness has been proven to help with the management of psychological stress. It is an important state-like personality dimension that individuals can develop to cope with stressors. However, there is currently insufficient understanding on why hardiness develops in people. Through an exploratory study based on 55 undergraduate university students who worked on an international consulting project in return for grades, this research examines the relationship between individuals’ hardiness components of commitment, control and challenge and hope components of willpower and waypower. It is found that individuals’ hope components may be positively related to specific hardiness components. This bears considerable theoretical …

Promoting Employer Desired Competencies Through A Multiphased "Workgroup" Project, Ashly Smith

International Journal for Business Education

Employers and business leaders have long been advocating for the importance of career readiness skills like critical thinking/problem solving, information literacy, teamwork/collaboration, professionalism/work ethic, and oral/written communication (NACE, 2019; Partnership, 2008). While faculty and students see value in projects that develop these skills, such projects can be some of the most challenging to incorporate effectively into business courses (Chapman et al., 2010; Detmering & Johnson, 2012; Lee et al., 2016; Marks & O’Connor, 2013). This article reports on a multi-phase group project that aims to strengthen a selection of these employer-desired skills while ameliorating student concerns about the research process …

Practice Enterprises In Times Of Distance Learning: The Impact And Consequences Of The Covid-19 Pandemic To The Collaboration Of Practice Enterprises, Theresa Feuchter, Gernot Dreisiebner, Elisabeth Riebenbauer, Ph.D., Michaela Stock

International Journal for Business Education

The aim of this paper is to outline the consequences which arise from the digital transformation of the multidimensional teaching and learning setting of practice enterprises and to discuss how digital collaboration of students can be supported during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an evolutionary moment also in the field of education, one can consider the experiences of COVID-19 as a catalyst for digital transformation and distance learning in education. How digital collaboration can be fostered in times of distance learning is shown by using the example of business simulations such as practice enterprises (PE). While previously this multidimensional teaching and …

Internships As Clinical Rotations In Business: Enhancing Access And Options, Faye W. Gilbert, Jason Harkins, Pankaj Agrrawal, Taylor Ashley

International Journal for Business Education

Internships are high impact practices that offer work experiences and provide advantages for participating undergraduate students and for the talent acquisition efforts of firms. While research consistently documents the benefits of internships as a transformative experience, access and outcomes may vary for students and for underserved populations. Limitations of internships can include lack of access to enough positions as well as inadequate interactions between undergraduate students, firms, and faculty members in business programs. The purpose of this article is to describe an approach to enhancing access to internships on a larger scale with greater variety. Protocols found in clinical rotations …

Stimulating Intrapreneurial Intentions With Digital Business Training In The Vet Sector: The Potential Of Massive Open Online Courses, Christian Friedl

International Journal for Business Education

It has become imperative to stimulate and support employees to behave entrepreneurially within organizations (intrapreneurship). However, little is known about how digital, massive, and scalable business education and training formats such as massive open online course (MOOCs) can contribute to vocational and educational training (VET) in general, and to nurture intrapreneurial behavior and corresponding intentions in specific. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the potential effect of a MOOC on intrapreneurial intentions of learners.
Data were acquired from 412 employees taking a MOOC on intrapreneurship for constructs embedded in the theory of planned behavior, tailored to the …

Enabling Sustainable Organizational Change: A Case Of Cognitive Diversity In The Automotive Industry, Tonja Blom, Yvonne Du Plessis, Hamid H. Kazeroony

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

In diverse societies such as South Africa, organizations continue to face inclusion challenges when implementing change. This study proposes a different method and new dimension of diversity management within the cognitive diversity construct, namely human niche theory, to tackle the diversity dilemma of exclusivity. The research question asked whether human niche theory, as a defined concept within cognitive diversity, could be utilized by managers to enable inclusion and promote sustainable organizational change implementation. Conceptually, this paper relates human niche theory to seven themes in the change process, namely, communication, training, motivation, resources, control, monitoring, and feedback. An exploratory single case …

Capabilities Information Technology And Knowledge Sharing : A Bibliometric Perspective, Ilham I. M, Anis Eliyana, Tri Siwi Agustina

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study was conducted with the aim of determining various bibliometric characteristics of documents published in the Scopus database. The information starts from the type of access, year, author, subject area, document type, publication stage, source title, keyword, affiliation, funding sponsor, country, source type, and language. Capabilities Information Technology and Knowledge Sharing are defined as the use of information technology capabilities and information technology management processes between business units by using the capabilities of resources together. Research on Information Technology Capabilities and Knowledge Sharing by providing a big picture that is visualized from year to year. This study aims to …