Business Commons^™

Meaning-Centered Leadership: How Exemplary Technology Leaders Create Organizational Meaning, Ed Jackson

Dissertations

ABSTRACT Meaning-Centered Leadership: How Exemplary Technology Leaders Create Organizational Meaning by Ed Jackson Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to identify and describe the behaviors that exemplary technology leaders use to create personal and organizational meaning for themselves and their followers through character, vision, relationships, wisdom, and inspiration. It was also the purpose of this research to identify how followers perceive that the behaviors related to character, vision, relationships, wisdom, and inspiration help to create personal and organizational meaning. Methodology: This research looked at leadership through the lens of meaning making. Current leadership trends, which are driven …

Exemplary Leadership: A Mixed-Methods Case Study Discovering How Female Chief Executive Officers Create Meaning, Stephanie A. Herrera

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this thematic, mixed-methods case study was to identify and describe the behaviors that exemplary female chief executive officers (CEOs) use to create personal and organizational meaning for themselves and their followers through meaning-making domains: character, vision, relationships, wisdom, and inspiration. Additionally, it was the purpose of this study to determine the degree of importance to which followers perceived behaviors within the meaning-making domains.

Methodology: The exploratory mixed-methods case study was selected to gather insight into the behaviors of four female chief executive officers through interviews. Twelve of their employees were asked to complete an online survey. …

Meaning Makers: A Mixed-Methods Case Study Of Exemplary Chief Executive Officers Of Engineering Technology Organizations And The Behaviors They Use To Create Personal And Organizational Meaning, Sandra Kay Hodge

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this thematic, mixed-methods case study was to identify and describe the behaviors used by exemplary chief executive officers of engineering technology organizations to create personal and organizational meaning for themselves and their followers through the five variables of character, inspiration, relationships, vision, and wisdom. Additionally, followers were surveyed to determine the degree to which they perceive the behaviors related to character, inspiration, relationships, vision, and wisdom help to create personal and organizational meaning.

Methodology: Exemplary chief executive officers of engineering technology organizations were interviewed to determine their perception of which behaviors they utilize to employ character, …

Viewability Prediction For Display Advertising, Chong Wang

Dissertations

As a massive industry, display advertising delivers advertisers’ marketing messages to attract customers through graphic banners on webpages. Display advertising is also the most essential revenue source of online publishers. Currently, advertisers are charged by user response or ad serving. However, recent studies show that users barely click or convert display ads. Moreover, about half of the ads are actually never seen by users. In this case, advertisers cannot enhance their brand awareness and increase return on investment. Publishers also lose much revenue. Therefore, the ad pricing standards are shifting to a new model: ad impressions are paid if they …

Factors That Influence Physicians To Assume Leadership Roles: A Focus On Clinical Integration, Jennifer Lynne Jackson

Dissertations

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) drastically altered the healthcare industry in the United States. Along with multiple other directives, the PPACA mandated that physicians and hospitals work together in strategies known as clinical integration. For effective clinical integration to be achieved, interdependence among physicians and hospitals is required to provide the highest quality outcomes for patients at the best possible value. To this end, healthcare leaders have identified that the key to establishing successful clinical integration is the presence and commitment of physician leaders (Penlington & Marshall, 2016).

This study explores factors that influenced a …

A Corporate Model: Aligning National Nonprofit Expectations With Regional/Local Efforts To Serve The Mission, Emma A. Powell

Dissertations

This study seeks to provide a body of knowledge and application of research to the national nonprofit audience. The focus is to study conditions that could lead to better alignment between regional staff understanding and implementation of the national expectations, by identifying alignment behaviors in five indicator areas. These indicators are fundraising, mission delivery, volunteer engagement, HR/operations, and PR/external communications.

Research in the areas of nonprofit structure design, motivation, and mission alignment continue to be significant to the sectors maturity and distinction. Corporate model nonprofit organizations structure is unique to other nonprofits within a local community. Understanding the corporate model …

Meaning Makers: A Mixed-Method Case Study Of Exemplary University Presidents And The Behaviors They Use To Create Personal And Organizational Meaning, Barbara E. Bartels

Dissertations

The purpose of this thematic, mixed method case study was to identify and describe the behaviors that exemplary university presidents use to create personal and organizational meaning for themselves and their followers through character, vision, relationships, wisdom, and inspiration. Further, this study surveyed followers to assess the degree of importance followers believe a leader uses character, vision, relationships, wisdom, and inspiration to create personal and organizational meaning. This study was accomplished by interviewing exemplary university presidents regarding their perceptions of utilizing the strategies and behaviors associated with character, vision, relationships, wisdom, and inspiration. While there has been much research on …

Exploring The Impostor Phenomenon's Behavioral Characteristics: How Do Gay Male Leaders And Impostors Cope?, Donald B. Scott

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to explore and describe the coping skills used to overcome 9 behavioral characteristics by gay men serving in civic or nonprofit leadership roles who are identified as experiencing the impostor phenomenon (IP) by the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS; Clance, 1985).

Methodology: This study used a mixed-methods, descriptive case study approach to collect both quantitative and qualitative data about 14 study participants. Each completed the 20-question CIPS that represented the quantitative strand of the study prior to an interview that included 10 semistructured interview questions designed to collect rich, descriptive data. …

Pancho's Racket And The Long Road To Professional Tennis, Gregory I. Ruth

Dissertations

Historians have written little on sports in the United States compared to other topics. They have had even less to say about tennis than other popular sports in large part because the original research necessary to complete a full treatment of the history of the game appeared too daunting to undertake. By contrast, this study has made use of over a dozen arcHIVal collections around the country, many of which researchers have never used before, to tell the story of how tennis went from an amateur sport closely guarded by economic elitists and cultural purists to a professional sport thoroughly …

Managers' Responses To Formal And Informal Talent Management Practices: An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study, Adriano Manuel Cabral Ferreira Polonia

Dissertations

Management of talent ranks high among today’s organizational issues. Accordingly, organizations are seeking relevant approaches to markedly interpret and improve employees’ talents. Despite these efforts, inconsistent definitions of talent and talent management (TM), along with insufficient empirical research, make it difficult to identify and comprehend the impact of TM practices or its absence on managers and their responses.

A convergent parallel mixed methods design using the Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect (EVLN) framework was used to identify (a) how managers respond to formal and informal talent management practices in organizations and (b) which variables – such as the level of …

Locked Up: Parallel Correctional Officer, Deputy, And Inmate Decision-Making Experiences In County Jails, Mariko Catherine Peshon

Dissertations

Recidivism is a complex phenomenon. Greater than 65 percent of incarcerated adults return to jail within three years. While numerous empirical studies focus on factors that contribute to recidivism, there is limited existing research that examines decision-making as one of these factors. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature and develop an understanding of the influence of decision-making processes on inmates and correctional officers and deputies in the California criminal justice system. An exploratory 2014 pilot study at three California county jails found correctional officers and inmates faced similar challenges related to decision-making as …

Examining Hybrid-Gift Philanthropy In Division I Intercollegiate Athletics: A Mixed Methods Study, John Thomas O'Sullivan

Dissertations

Over the past few decades, the money and attention associated with Intercollegiate Athletics (ICA) has exploded. At the same time, however, many ICA departments claim to be at a financial crossroads with coaching salaries and operational costs soaring upwards. Not surprisingly, ICA departments are responding by focusing on increasing their fundraising in innovative ways. Perhaps the most interesting of these is in the area of hybrid—or blended—giving, which combines cash with a deferred gift. While these gifts have the potential to help generate substantially more revenue for ICA, unfortunately there is limited empirical research surrounding them.

In an effort to …

Multi-Period Stochastic Resource Planning: Models, Algorithms And Applications, Stanislaus Simon Solomon

Dissertations

This research addresses the problem of sequential decision making in the presence of uncertainty in the professional service industry. Specifically, it considers the problem of dynamically assigning resources to tasks in a stochastic environment with both the uncertainty of resource availability due to attrition, and the uncertainty of job availability due to unknown project bid outcome. This problem is motivated by the resource planning application at the Hewlett Packard (HP) Enterprises. The challenge is to provide resource planning support over a time horizon under the influence of internal resource attrition and demand uncertainty. To ensure demand is satisfied, the external …

Synthesis Of Optimization And Simulation For Multi-Period Supply Chain Planning With Consideration Of Risks, Liang Xu

Dissertations

Solutions to deterministic optimizing models for supply chains can be very sensitive to the formulation of the objective function and the choice of planning horizon. We illustrate how multi-period optimizing models may be counterproductive if traditional accounting of revenue and costs is performed and planning occurs with too short a planning horizon. We propose a “value added” complement to traditional financial accounting that allows planning to occur with shorter horizons than previously thought necessary. This dissertation presents a simulation model with an embedded optimizer that can help organizations develop strategies that minimize expected costs or maximize expected contributions to profit …

A Qualitative Exploration Of The Workplace Culture Of Women In Information Technology Careers, Andrea Hemphill-Merrills

Dissertations

The information technology (IT) industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. According to the U.S, Department of Labor and Statistics (2015), employment opportunities are it is projected to grow by 12 percent from 2014 to 2024. While the number of employed women have increased, this has not been the case in the IT industry where the number of women has been in consistent decline since 1991. In order for the U.S. to be able to fill the demand for IT professionals, it must have access to a talent pool that includes women. There are many …

Cultural Moderation Of The Relationship Between Anticipated Life Role Salience And Career Decision-Making Difficulties, Emily Anne Schmidtman

Dissertations

The perceived importance of, and commitment to, work and family roles has significant implications for the career decision-making difficulty (CDMD) of undergraduate college students. Additionally, cultural variables have been shown to influence undergraduate students’ anticipated life role salience (LRS) as well as the amount of difficulty experienced in making a career decision. Given this information, the current study assessed the relationship between LRS and CDMD specifically in terms of differences that may occur within this relationship for different cultural groups. Using a sample of college students (total N = 246), an online survey was used to gather information about their …

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee

Dissertations

This study measures the impact that electrical outages have on manufacturing production in 135 less developed countries using stochastic frontier analysis and data from World Bank’s Investment Climate surveys. Outages of electricity, for firms with and without backup power sources, are the most frequently cited constraint on manufacturing growth in these surveys.

Outages are shown to reduce output below the production frontier by almost five percent in Africa and by a lower percentage in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Production response to outages is quadratic in form. Outages also increase labor cost, reduce exports …

Birth Of A Powerhouse: How One University Reimagined, Restructured, And Revived Outreach, Slone H. Cansler

Dissertations

Today’s modern higher education landscape presents myriad challenges to higher education leaders and administrators. Among those challenges is how universities respond to demands for accountability, growth of alternative models of postsecondary education delivery, the need to serve and increasingly diverse society, and reduced state and federal appropriations. Research suggests that the biggest changes for American higher education are imminent and will necessitate new business models, new forms of collaboration and partnerships, and innovative about the enterprise of higher education. This study sought to gain understanding about the development process and structural framework that allows a university’s outreach unit to be …

The Relationship Of Communication Styles Of Millennial Employees With The Communication Satisfaction And Perceptions Of Communicator Competence Of Their Supervisors, Edward R. De La Torre

Dissertations

Each generation in the workplace shares characteristics that distinguish them from the generations before them. These differences in personality, behavior, and attitudes can result in intergenerational conflict, and these dynamics were identified by researchers when describing the interaction between young Millennial workers and their supervisors of the older generations. However, research did not explicitly test if these differences extend to the different communication styles that people exhibited in their verbal interactions. One such communication style paradigm, the Mok’s Communication Styles Survey (MCSS), describes the actual communication style of an individual, and was used to see if Millennials communicated differently than …

Collaborative Development Of A Small Business Emergency Planning Model, Arthur Henry Hendela

Dissertations

Small businesses, which are defined by the US Small Business Administration as entities with less than 500 employees, suffer interruptions from diverse risks such as financial events, legal situations, or severe storms exemplified by Hurricane Sandy. Proper preparations can help lessen the length of the interruption and put employees and owners back to work. Large corporations generally have large budgets available for planning, business continuity, and disaster recovery. Small businesses must decide which risks are the most important and how best to mitigate those risks using minimal resources.

This research uses a series of surveys followed by mathematical modeling to …

Mediating Chance Encounters Through Opportunistic Social Matching, Julia M. Mayer

Dissertations

Chance encounters, the unintended meeting between people unfamiliar with each other, serve as an important social lubricant helping people to create new social ties, such as making new friends or finding an activity, study or collaboration partner. Unfortunately, social barriers often prevent chance encounters in environments where people do not know each other and people have to rely on serendipity to meet or be introduced to interesting people around them. Little is known about the underlying dynamics of chance encounters and how systems could utilize contextual data to mediate chance encounters. This dissertation addresses this gap in research literature by …

A Case Study Of Latino Immigrant Employment In The California Central Valley, Alfredo Saldivar

Dissertations

This purpose of this case study was to examine the employment experiences of Latino immigrants in the California Central Valley. The case study was conducted to determine why Latino immigrants in this location leave or stay in places of employment and whether federal and state immigration and employment laws and policies affected their employment status. The study included the obstacles Latino immigrants encountered during their search for employment. A qualitative case study research design was used gather detailed data from participants about their employment experiences in the California Cantal Valley. Four focus groups were conducted for this research to gain …

Optimizing Inventory For Profitability And Order Fulfillment Improvement, Liu Yang

Dissertations

Despite the extensive research on inventory management, few studies have investigated the optimization of inventory classification and control policies for maximizing the net present value of profit and order fulfillment performance. This dissertation aims to fill the gaps, and consists of two main essays. Essay One (Chapter 1) presents a new multi-period optimization model to explicitly address nonstationary demand, arbitrary review periods, and SKU-specific lead times, with the objective of maximizing the net present value of profit. A real-world application and computational experiments show that the optimal dynamic inventory classification and control decisions obtained from the model significantly reduce both …

Optimizing Workforce Performance: Perceived Differences Of Army Officer Critical Thinking Talent Across Level Of Education, Richard B. Ayers

Dissertations

The U.S. Army’s operating environment continues to become increasingly complex and unpredictable, where U.S. technological advantage continues to erode. The complexities stem from the Army’s doctrinal assumption that the future operating environment is unknown and constantly changing (Department of the Army [DA], 2014a). Diminishing technological advantage results in more reliance on soldiers’ cognitive capability, and less on high technology weapons systems (McMaster, 2015).

A review of military literature shows extensive research on the importance of Army leaders to be talented critical thinkers (Fischer, Spiker, & Riedel, 2008, 2009; Gerras, 2008; Thomas & Gentzler, 2013). Human capital literature reveals many college …

An Investigation Of Work Environment Characteristics And Work Engagement Of Limited- And Full-Service Hotel Property Front-Line Employees, Robert Jerald Thompson

Dissertations

Today, employee work engagement is viewed as one of the most important issues for corporations, given its influence on individual and organizational productivity and performance (Attridge, 2009; Czarnowsky, 2008). As a result, all organizations desire employees who are engaged, in particular the hospitality industry. As a service-providing sector of the hospitality industry, hotels are reliant on front-line employees to conduct strong customer-employee interactions and provide efficient service delivery while exceeding customer expectations (Kusluvan, 2003). The hospitality industry needs employees who are committed to the organization and one who is passionate, striving to go the extra mile, and offering discretionary effort …

Emotional Intelligence: A Leader's Impact On Productivity In A Distribution Environment, Herbert Callahan

Dissertations

ABSTRACT Emotional Intelligence: A Leader’s Impact on Productivity in a Distribution Environment by Herbert Callahan Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and describe the impact of a supervisor’s Emotional Intelligence on the performance of the associates that work for them within a distribution environment. The research design will include assessing a supervisor’s levels of emotional intelligence through the administration of the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal®–Me Edition and will include the gathering of data through semi-structured interviews from identified associates that work with them. Methodology: Convenience purposeful sampling was used to identify supervisors within a distribution environment. A …

Going From Breakdown To Breakthrough: Human Resource Professional's Perspective Of Conflict In K-12 Public Education, Denise E. Larue

Dissertations

This study was conducted independently, but in collaboration with a team of peer-researchers who came together to study the lived experience of exemplar leaders in diverse organizations as they transformed conflict to reach common ground. This study contributed to the collective work by looking at K-12 Human Resource Officers (HROs) as the population of interest. HROs are often at the center of resolving conflict, yet only a few emerge as exemplar leaders. These exemplar leaders were the target population situated in the phenomena under investigations. The team selected a qualitative phenomenological approach, in an attempt to uncover what strategies exemplar …

Christian Nonprofit Ceos:Ethical Idealism, Relativism, And Motivation, Sharlene Garces Baragona

Dissertations

Strong ethical character and the ability to inspire others form crucial areas for leadership effectiveness, particularly in nonprofits. This study explored the relationship between ethical ideologies (idealism and relativism) and inspirational motivation of Christian nonprofit CEOs affiliated with the Christian Child and Family Services Association. The Ethics Position Questionnaire of Forsyth (1980), the Bass and Avolio (2004) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Leader Form (5X Short) – Inspirational Motivation, and a demographic questionnaire comprised the 30-item survey for this study. The participants’ responses were collected either online or on paper and were analyzed using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. The response rate was …

The Roles Of The Project Management Office In The Execution Of The Organizations Strategic Plan, Tareq Zeyad Awad Al Ameri

Dissertations

Many organizations in both public and private sectors are striving to discover new tools and strategies to streamline their project implementation. Among these was the project management office (PMO), which has been developed from the womb of the advanced project management methodology. This work is both exploratory and causal study,which concentrates on investigating the effectiveness of seven proposed PMO roles (as independent variables) in carrying out the strategic plan (as the dependent variable) of the public sector organizations in the UAE. The study aims also to derive some insights into coordinating pattern established between PMO entity and other departments involved …

Crowd Sourced Product Reviews: A Study Of Evaluation Standards Used, Alexander W. Manga

Dissertations

People are using online product reviews and evaluations more and more (Chandler et al., 2013). As the usage of online reviews persists and more smart phone applications are created, the demand for online product review continues to increase; yet, there is no indication of the quality of these reviews. In fact, some online reviews have been found to be fraudulent and misleading. Many online product reviews come from Internet-based crowdsource organizations. Few studies have explored evaluation practices among these organizations, and as a result, it is unclear what, if any, evaluation standards are used by crowdsource reviewers, particularly those found …