Business Commons^™

Understanding The Role Of Chief Financial Officers In The Strategic Planning And Decision-Making Process Of Defense Contractors In The Washington, D.C. Region, Carolynn Eileen Stiffler

Theses and Dissertations

The strategic planning and decision-making process of a firm is what drives the future of a firm, but what are all the correct stakeholders involved in that process? Historically, the Chief Executive Officer of the firm has been in charge of the firm’s strategic plan, guiding the firm based on his/her past experiences, and the Chief Financial Officer of the firm has been in charge of the back-office financial records and reporting. This study utilized the case study approach to explore the level of involvement a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) has in firms' strategic planning and decision-making processes that contract …

Corporate Venturing In The Media & Entertainment Industry: Contextual Factors That Influence Corporate Venture Decision Making, Graylind R. Wherry

Theses and Dissertations

This research study focuses on Corporate Venturing (CV) within the Media and Entertainment(M&E) industry and investigates factors that influence CV decision-making. CV provides a viable strategy to facilitate innovation and organizational change within companies; however, this area is understudied within the M&E industry. Companies that make up the entertainment industry may not have specific insight into how best to exploit this opportunity. Specifically, this study looks at the influence of firm characteristics, industry characteristics, and other outside factors using the PESTLE strategy model characteristics impacting the parent or venture unit's CV decision-making within the M&E industry. In terms of this …

Organizational Dissonance In The Context Of Organizational Decline And Turnaround Of A Security Printer: A Quantitative Case Study, Tina Marie Ramirez-Dominguez

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this non-experimental, quantitative study was to examine organizational identity dissonance experienced by an organization's social actors in the context of organizational decline and turnaround utilizing factor structures from five years of pre-existing, employee surveys to determine whether differences in factor scores occurred over the 5-year time frame. Organizational identity dissonance is the psychological stress or discomfort experienced by an organization's social actors from holding two or more contradictory attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors (McLead, 2008) in relation to the organization's identity. A social actor is an individual participating in a communal environment (Whetten & Mackey, 2002). A communal …

The Effects Of Firm Age And Firm Size On Strategic Agility And Performance, Jonathan Henry Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Strategic agility is a relatively new construct in the field of strategic management which describes the degree to which a firm is flexible with its business strategy. Strategically agile firms are able to change their market focus, product mix, key resources, or business models quickly in order to exploit opportunities. This study advances our understanding of strategic agility by empirically testing the Doz and Kosonen (2010) model of the construct in a cross-section of firms in multiple industries with several contingency factors including firm age, firm size, and environmental turbulence. Using CEO-level survey data, the model is validated, and nine …

Divestment Of Strategic Resources In A Hypercompetitive, Capital Intensive, Knowledge Based Industry, Steven Robert Rivet

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation creates a model explaining the factors that drive the decision by a semiconductor firm to divest a specific strategic resource. The dissertation is based on a case study of a medium size semiconductor firm that divested a competitively performing manufacturing facility in a low labor cost Asian country, and replaced the services it performed with contracted services. The study draws on competitive advantage, resource based view, transaction cost, divestment, international business, and asset-light model literature. The existing literature either fails to explain (or to explain completely) the reasons driving these type of divestiture decisions (resource based view, transaction …

Strategic Flexibility In Not-For-Profit Acute Care Hospitals, Donna Fe Jamieson

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

STRATEGIC FLEXIBILITY IN NOT-FOR-PROFIT ACUTE CARE HOSPITALS

by

Donna F. M. Jamieson

Despite multiple industry cycles of rapid and complex changes in the last three decades, the body of research in health care services strategy has not addressed the idea of strategic flexibility, that is, when and how should strategy evolve under conditions of environmental turbulence. Strategic flexibility has been defined in the literature as the ability to adapt to rapidly changing conditions by leveraging internal resources and competencies to effectively compete. With increasing scope of responsibility in both nursing and non-nursing functional areas, nurse executives have not only …