Business Commons^™

Competing For Innovation: A Case Study Of Knoxville And Similar Metropolitan Areas, Lucille G. Marret

Baker Scholar Projects

Knoxville competes with other mid-sized metropolitan areas for economic development and business attraction at the national level. Cities such as Greenville, SC, Huntsville, AL, and Ann Arbor, MI have similar resources and attributes to Knoxville, yet they are consistently surpassing Knoxville in business attraction and expansion. It is necessary for policy makers to understand what factors are contributing to underperformance in order to better support Knoxville’s efforts to create an innovation fund. Comparing available assets and access to funding for each MSA reveals that Knoxville has the necessary resources through the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to …

Three Essays Of Negative Social Evaluations And Impression Management In The Social Media Era, Xinran Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Strategic management researchers are increasingly interested in the influence of social media communication on negative social evaluations and firms’ impression management to reduce negative evaluations. Drawing on communication, psychology, and sociology literature, this dissertation develops three essays to theoretically and empirically investigates negative social evaluations on firms, their antecedents, and firm strategies to manage them in the social media era. In Essay 1, I theorize how social media characteristics—greater access, velocity, emotionality, and communality—lead to a greater likelihood that social disapproval will generate, as well as spread faster, be more intense, and connect more constituents. Further, Essay 1 develops a …

International Expansion In The Retail Industry: A Multi-Case Study On Strategic Expansionary Variables, Patrick Conaty

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Competition And Cooperation: An Assessment And Integration Of Seemingly Paradoxical Actions, Kyle Dean Turner

Doctoral Dissertations

Competition and cooperation represent two foundational elements within the strategic management research domain. While substantial research examining competition or cooperation exists, research assessing these two paradoxical actions simultaneously has been limited. This study leverages the attention based view of the firm and insights from literature examining organizational ambidexterity to further understand if, and how, these two seemingly contradictory actions are managed and leveraged by firms. First, this research identifies and assesses the extent to which attention within the firm shapes competitive and cooperative action. Further, this research conceptually defines and empirically tests curvilinear relationships between competitive and cooperative action and …

A Theoretical And Experimental Investigation Of Efficiency, Equity, And Uncertainty In Tournaments, Nicholas Busko

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays centered around labor incentives that arise in relative compensation contracts. Chapter 1 poses the question: if devotion to a core competence were truly optimal, why would firms do otherwise? We argue that the behavior of drifting from the core may be motivated by the competitive incentives faced by managers who seek to rise within a firm. We find competition creates an incentive for a manager to look for less correlated opportunities that pull the firm in a new direction. In a symmetric equilibrium all managers behave this way, leading to lower expected output for …

Key Factors And Trends In Transportation Mode And Carrier Selection, Keith Roberts

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Companies across the country must deal with the daily question of determining the best way to get their product in the hands of their customers. Weighing all of the various factors that play into this decision can prove to be very difficult at times, and these factors are ever changing as the market fluctuates with varying consumer demand which, in turn, affects the demand for transportation. This paper will look into these factors and relevant market trends to determine what factors play the largest role in a company’s decision of how to deliver its products, focusing specifically on the modal …

Organizational Ambidexterity And Not-For-Profit Financial Performance, Timothy Michael Madden

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to extend the concept of organizational ambidexterity (OA) into the domain of not-for-profit (NFP) organizations. These organizations are subject to many of the same demands as their for-profit counterparts, yet research has not been conducted on how NFPs manage the competing pressures of refining existing routines for efficiency with the need to grow and innovate. This dissertation includes two portions: a quantitative analysis of a large NFP-rating agency dataset and qualitative interviews with executive directors and managers from within the food banking industry to identify the processes in use at a sample of ambidextrous …

The Impact Of Cultural Distances On The Country Selection Process, Alan Blizzard

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Development Of An Organizational Hardiness Construct: Examining Configurations Of Sensemaking, Organizational Identity, And Enactment., Joshua Lloyd Ray

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to develop the construct of organizational hardiness which is thought to distinguish organizations that thrive under conditions of turbulence and uncertainty from organizations that whither under these same conditions. This new construct is based on individual hardiness which is a constellation of personality dispositions that a large body of empirical work has suggested supports individual performance under conditions of turbulence and uncertainty. Paralleling the individual hardiness dispositions of challenge, commitment, and control, organizational hardiness is posited to consist of the organizational level constructs of sensemaking, organizational identification, and enactment. The development of organizational hardiness …

Exploring The Effectiveness Of Environmentally Sustainable Practices In Municipal Government: A Case Study Of The City Of Knoxville’S Department Of Parks And Recreation, Anthony Michael Brown

Masters Theses

Sustainability practices produce programs and services that meet current needs while preserving the environment and natural resources for the future. City parks and recreation departments are facing budget shortfalls and increasing expectations from customers. Governments are now embracing sustainability practices to create financial savings while also fostering relations with customers.

The purpose of this single case study was twofold: (1) to examine the effectiveness of one city department’s strategies in outsourcing its environmental sustainability program through a performance contract with Ameresco; and (2) to examine the perceptions of key department employees about the effectiveness of the sustainability initiative. A …

Generational Perceptions Of Productive/Unproductive Information Received From Management Through Different Communication Channels, Eva Lynn Cowell

Doctoral Dissertations

This exploratory study identified generational preferences for receiving information from management through different communication channels and determined if age predicted productivity for productive and unproductive information received through different communication channels. This is the first study to empirically examine the relationship between age cohorts, communication channel preferences, information categories, and productivity. Sample participants worked as Extension agents at a major land-grant university. The four generations represented in the sample utilized multiple communication channels and were geographically dispersed throughout the state. The survey was administered electronically and completed by 204 (74%) of the eligible 275 employees in the organization. Independent Samples …

Decision Making Of Chief Executives In Relation To Strategic Issues: An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Industry Stability And Industry Complexity Upon The Complexity Of Decision Making Behavior Of Chief Executives Of Manufacturing Firms In The Southeastern United States, Charles Steven Arendall

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent studies on the organizational level of strategy have concluded that environmental factors have a significant impact on the strategic decision processes of organizations, and that the contingent nature of this relationship has implications for the performance of firms operating under various industry conditions. In addition, studies on individual decision making have shown that characteristics of the decision task affect the type of decision making behavior utilized by the individual. This study integrates these two bodies of literature in examining the decision making behavior of chief executives in relation to the strategic issues which face their organizations.

The sample used …