Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Leadership (5)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (5)
- Business and Corporate Communications (4)
- Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations (4)
- Human Resources Management (4)
-
- Organizational Behavior and Theory (4)
- Finance and Financial Management (3)
- Communication (2)
- Corporate Finance (2)
- Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2)
- International Business (2)
- Management Information Systems (2)
- Marketing (2)
- Organizational Communication (2)
- Psychology (2)
- Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration (2)
- Advertising and Promotion Management (1)
- Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics (1)
- Constitutional Law (1)
- Curriculum and Instruction (1)
- Education (1)
- Infrastructure (1)
- Interpersonal and Small Group Communication (1)
- Labor Relations (1)
- Law (1)
- Law and Economics (1)
- Medicine and Health Sciences (1)
- Nonprofit Administration and Management (1)
- Keyword
-
- Operations research (644)
- Mathematical optimization (144)
- Algorithms (106)
- Weatherhead School of Management (75)
- Stochastic processes (73)
-
- Decision making--Mathematical models (71)
- Linear programming (71)
- Integer programming (42)
- Leadership (41)
- Queuing theory (38)
- Research and development projects (37)
- Markov processes (34)
- Dynamic programming (33)
- Management (30)
- Production scheduling (30)
- Mathematical models (28)
- Resource allocation (28)
- Decision making (27)
- Industrial management (23)
- Nonlinear programming (23)
- Branch and bound algorithms (22)
- Computational complexity (22)
- Flexible manufacturing systems (22)
- Inventory control (22)
- Organizational behavior (22)
- Simulation methods (22)
- Computer simulation (21)
- Entrepreneurship (19)
- Manpower planning (19)
- Programming (Mathematics) (19)
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 211 - 240 of 1196
Full-Text Articles in Business Administration, Management, and Operations
The Payoffs Of Championing 'Tough Issues' In The Executive Suite; Why Corporations Need To Nurture Quixotic Champions, Nancy E. Mcinerney-Lacombe
The Payoffs Of Championing 'Tough Issues' In The Executive Suite; Why Corporations Need To Nurture Quixotic Champions, Nancy E. Mcinerney-Lacombe
Student Scholarship
When tough issues, defined as those issues that remain uncomfortably unspoken, are “championed” in the executive suite, who does it and with what results? More than 400 senior corporate executives ─ roughly half of them women ─ were surveyed to shed light on this phenomenon – where one person in a group is prepared to break the silence on a compelling –albeit uncomfortable – issue to engage their peers who would prefer to avoid both them and the issue. Our work builds on – but is distinguished from – limited and narrowly scoped previous studies on championing. We studied the …
Impact Of Microfinance On Socioeconomic Status Of The Poor: The Case Of Malawi, William J. Oliver
Impact Of Microfinance On Socioeconomic Status Of The Poor: The Case Of Malawi, William J. Oliver
Student Scholarship
Over the past 30 years, microfinance (MF) has grown to a $30 billion industry involving over 3,000 organizations. Half of these microfinance institutions, however, have nothing more than anecdotal stories about the impact of MF on poverty. The connection between MF and poverty eradication is far from resolved. This paper addresses an ongoing debate by drawing upon two bodies of literature: poverty eradication and microfinance measurement. It articulates a causal model of the effects of MF on poverty that is unique in three regards. First, it measures the effect on socioeconomic status (SES) using for the first time a reflective …
Boundary Crossings: Professional And Situational Influences On Nonprofit Leaders And Their Organizations, Antoinette E. La Belle
Boundary Crossings: Professional And Situational Influences On Nonprofit Leaders And Their Organizations, Antoinette E. La Belle
Student Scholarship
A leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector looms. "Crossovers" from the corporate sector present an alternative source of CEO talent but a dearth of empirical research about boundary crossing has limited our understanding about the effects of leader origin on organizational performance. We surveyed 631 leaders who had crossed one to three boundaries--sector, organization and/or position--into top U.S. nonprofit jobs. Analysis of 18 combinations of leader experience including sector path, recent origin and role shift revealed--regardless of boundary--striking similarities rather than stark differences in how nonprofit CEOs lead. The effects of leaders' sector experience and diversity of experience on behavioral …
Boundary Crossings: Professional And Situational Influences On Nonprofit Leaders And Their Organizations, Antoinette E. La Belle
Boundary Crossings: Professional And Situational Influences On Nonprofit Leaders And Their Organizations, Antoinette E. La Belle
Student Scholarship
A leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector looms. "Crossovers" from the corporate sector present an alternative source of CEO talent but a dearth of empirical research about boundary crossing has limited our understanding about the effects of leader origin on organizational performance. We surveyed 631 leaders who had crossed one to three boundaries--sector, organization and/or position--into top U.S. nonprofit jobs. Analysis of 18 combinations of leader experience including sector path, recent origin and role shift revealed--regardless of boundary--striking similarities rather than stark differences in how nonprofit CEOs lead. The effects of leaders' sector experience and diversity of experience on behavioral …
Causal Ambiguity And Its Impacts On Firm Performance, Richard I. Araya
Causal Ambiguity And Its Impacts On Firm Performance, Richard I. Araya
Student Scholarship
Dynamic capabilities and associated shifts in learning make firm's capabilities hard to imitate, and are critical in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Consequently, strategic management literature has recognized that the presence of causal ambiguity plays a pivotal role in generating inter-firm differences in obtained rents. At the same time, causal ambiguity may hamper internal diffusion of capabilities within the firm negatively affecting its performance (Szulanki, 1996). Overall, the relationship between dynamic capabilities, causal ambiguity and firm performance has remained poorly understood. In this study, we seek to address this gap by developing a causal model that depicts how management perceptions of …
Causal Ambiguity And Its Impacts On Firm Performance, Richard I. Araya
Causal Ambiguity And Its Impacts On Firm Performance, Richard I. Araya
Student Scholarship
Dynamic capabilities and associated shifts in learning make firm's capabilities hard to imitate, and are critical in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Consequently, strategic management literature has recognized that the presence of causal ambiguity plays a pivotal role in generating inter-firm differences in obtained rents. At the same time, causal ambiguity may hamper internal diffusion of capabilities within the firm negatively affecting its performance (Szulanki, 1996). Overall, the relationship between dynamic capabilities, causal ambiguity and firm performance has remained poorly understood. In this study, we seek to address this gap by developing a causal model that depicts how management perceptions of …
Winning Consumer Trust And Loyalty In Distrust-Dominated Environments: A Consumer Perspective, Rachel Y. Talton
Winning Consumer Trust And Loyalty In Distrust-Dominated Environments: A Consumer Perspective, Rachel Y. Talton
Student Scholarship
Driven in part by recent corporate failures, consumers are increasingly distrustful of motivations and behaviors of corporate leaders, firms, and entire sectors of the economy. How do firms win consumer loyalty in distrust-dominated environments? We use two competing theoretical lenses to investigate the most salient strategic path to firm loyalty in trust- and distrust-dominated environments, from the consumer perspective. We find that consumer distrust in a firm is a grave threat to loyalty across industries. Additionally, we show that distrust-dominated environments present unique opportunity for some firms with high consumer trust to gain loyalty, while trust-dominated environments present fewer opportunities.
The 'Where' And 'How' Of Exploration And Exploitation: Balancing Leadership Styles To Drive Innovation And Performance, Ann Kowal Smith
The 'Where' And 'How' Of Exploration And Exploitation: Balancing Leadership Styles To Drive Innovation And Performance, Ann Kowal Smith
Student Scholarship
Using a global sample of public companies, we explored the relationships among transformational and transactional leadership, exploration and exploitation and performance. First, balanced leadership styles drive more innovative learning outcomes than either single style. Second, elements of an expanded framework of innovative learning, including “where” ideas are sourced and “how” they are shared, fully mediate the relationship between leadership and performance. Specifically, “how” drives earnings growth and “where” drives revenue growth. We propose a nuanced ambidexterity, whereby leaders balance not only exploration and exploitation, but also idea sourcing and idea sharing to unleash their organization’s collective wisdom and drive performance.
Board Level Strategic Decision-Making: Process Characteristics And Context, Bernard C. Bailey
Board Level Strategic Decision-Making: Process Characteristics And Context, Bernard C. Bailey
Student Scholarship
How do boards make strategic decisions? Semi-structured interviews with twenty eight directors of small to medium size publicly traded U.S. companies in the high technology sector were conducted in order to gain insights into strategic decision-making at the board level. We identified six characteristics that distinguish two divergent views about strategic decision-making. These characteristics include the role of the board chair, the boardroom climate, the board's shared vision and goals, the board's agency primacy, the board's process for decision closure and the board's level of involvement in the strategic planning process.
Managing The Mission Through Times Of Adversity: What Leads To Reliable Nonprofit Performance?, Kathleen Roche
Managing The Mission Through Times Of Adversity: What Leads To Reliable Nonprofit Performance?, Kathleen Roche
Student Scholarship
During times of severe economic adversity, nonprofit organizations must carry out their charitable missions to ever-growing and needier constituencies despite endowment erosion, dwindling contributions, reduced staff, and severe funding cuts. The literature tells us little about what nonprofit organizations and managers actually do to survive economic crises. In depth interviews with leaders of a wide range of U.S. nonprofit organizations compared and contrasted crisis management experiences, revealing that, regardless of size and operation tenure, those best situated to emerge from severe and sudden revenue loss had energized, outwardly focused leaders and actively engaged boards, many volunteers, greatly extended hours of …
Post-Decision Surprise: How Bankers Manage The Unexpected, Ronald W. Eastburn
Post-Decision Surprise: How Bankers Manage The Unexpected, Ronald W. Eastburn
Student Scholarship
The literature is silent about the occurrence and impact of unexpected results of managerial decisions in the financial services industry – a sector whose executives’ decisions have nonetheless “surprised” us unrelentingly in recent years. Building on prior work on High Reliability Organizations and the collective mindfulness that guides them, we sought to generate a grounded theory about why surprise outcomes of bankers’ decisions occur and how executives make sense of them. Semi-structured interviews with 23 high ranking U.S. banking executives yielding over 50 narrative accounts of decisions gone awry revealed that bankers are not skilled in detecting and managing the …
Stakeholder Influence Strategies: Mobilizing For Collaboration, David Graham Hyatt
Stakeholder Influence Strategies: Mobilizing For Collaboration, David Graham Hyatt
Student Scholarship
Environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) increasingly use cross- sector collaborative relationships to influence the behavior of business organizations in support of their mission and interests. Whereas existing stakeholder literature tends to portray ENGO–business relationships as adversarial, with an emphasis on the extent to which an ENGO can influence a firm through power relations or behavioral characteristics, these parties actually rely on collaboration to achieve their mutual goals. From a stakeholder perspective, how do ENGOs that seek collaborative engagement achieve legitimacy with their potential firm partners? Qualitative research involving 14 ENGOs reveals at least three mechanisms: creating corporate engagement units, networks, or …
Board Level Strategic Decision-Making: Process Characteristics And Context, Bernard C. Bailey
Board Level Strategic Decision-Making: Process Characteristics And Context, Bernard C. Bailey
Student Scholarship
How do boards make strategic decisions? Semi-structured interviews with twenty eight directors of small to medium size publicly traded U.S. companies in the high technology sector were conducted in order to gain insights into strategic decision-making at the board level. We identified six characteristics that distinguish two divergent views about strategic decision-making. These characteristics include the role of the board chair, the boardroom climate, the board's shared vision and goals, the board's agency primacy, the board's process for decision closure and the board's level of involvement in the strategic planning process.
An Economic Development Paradox: The Impact Of Linkages And Synergies Among Local Agents In The Development Of An Emergent Bioscience Cluster And Associated Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Francisco Montalvo
Student Scholarship
Although bioscience industrial clusters have been widely researched in the last decade, the role of knowledge creation, management, and transfer as driving forces for industrial cluster competitiveness remains unclear. A better appreciation of knowledge creation and retention as determinants of industrial cluster success, and the role of foreign direct investment may be of value to industry decision makers, policy makers, and researchers worldwide. Our research revealed a paradox regarding the intensity of foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational companies (MNCs) and the limited development of a local entrepreneurial ecosystem in an emergent bioscience cluster. While cluster development seems a logical …
Why They Stay: The Ideal Selves Of Persistent Women Engineers, Kathleen R. Buse
Why They Stay: The Ideal Selves Of Persistent Women Engineers, Kathleen R. Buse
Student Scholarship
Women remain dramatically underrepresented in the engineering profession – and far fewer women than men persist in the field. In the first study of women who stay (vs. stray) from corporate engineering careers, we interviewed 21 long tenured female engineers and a control group of ten women who opted out of the profession after an average decade of employment to generate a grounded theory about their personal and professional “lived lives.” Women constitute only 11% of the U.S. corporate engineering workforce and remain as engineers for shorter periods of time than men. Several studies have described why women leave engineering …
Creating Sustained Collaborations: Do Rule-Breaking, Rule-Making, And Appreciative Behaviors Foster Member Ownership?, Nonie Brennan
Creating Sustained Collaborations: Do Rule-Breaking, Rule-Making, And Appreciative Behaviors Foster Member Ownership?, Nonie Brennan
Student Scholarship
Non profit collaboration has long been identified as an effective approach to meeting community needs. It is particularly recognized as a solution to the challenges encountered by non profits during periods of economic duress. This study examines the relationship between the sense of ownership felt by non profit collaborative partners and their intent to sustain collaboration. We posit that three particular behaviors: rule breaking, rule making, and appreciative behavior encourage participants to develop a sense of ownership leading to collaborative sustainability. Our findings indicate that rule breaking and rule making behavior reinforces a sense of collaboration ownership which contributes to …
Driving Reform And Innovation Diffusion In Government: It Takes Guerilla Tactics To Slay A Gorilla, George K. Makiya
Driving Reform And Innovation Diffusion In Government: It Takes Guerilla Tactics To Slay A Gorilla, George K. Makiya
Student Scholarship
Key IT and business executives at all twenty six US Federal government departments and agencies were interviewed to assess constraints to Enterprise Architecture Programs congressionally mandated in 1996 to transform bureaucratic political institutions into efficient business enterprises. Results demonstrate the vital role of the individual in reform and innovation diffusion. Past empirical and longitudinal studies in reform and innovation diffusion have been conducted separately. This study synthesizes the twin diffusion phenomena. Our data show that "guerilla" tactics can overcome the "gorilla" forces of dominant culture and rigid institutional frameworks.
Factors Influencing Collaboration Of Western Business Practitioners And Ngos Who Assist Small To Medium Sized Enterprises In Developing Countries: A Qualitative Analysis, William J. Oliver
Factors Influencing Collaboration Of Western Business Practitioners And Ngos Who Assist Small To Medium Sized Enterprises In Developing Countries: A Qualitative Analysis, William J. Oliver
Student Scholarship
We examined how Western Business Practitioners (WBPs) and Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) interact to assist Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. Interviews with North American WBPs, and NGOs in ten developing countries provided the data for the study. Findings suggest that partnership form (on a continuum from transactional to collaborative) has a direct and positive relationship with the extent of complementarity achieved by the actors. Complementarity, recommended as best ensured by management intervention, overcomes partners' geographical, cultural and socio/political differences, reduces power differentials, mitigates distrust and promotes communication. Three elements of complementarity--learning, communication and process--are discussed.
Government Leadership-Business Voice: An Interaction And Mediation Analysis Of Business Environment Reform In Indonesia, Jaime Chua
Student Scholarship
Moving beyond the competing theories on public leadership and citizen voice, the study investigates whether local public executives' influence on reform depends on business voice; and whether leadership or voice is mediated by public-private sector dialogue before either can influence reform. Extending Hirschman's Exit-Voice-Loyalty theory, the conditional effects of leadership and voice are tested to assess if quasi-exit (collusion), association membership, or dissatisfaction with government services moderate reform. Multi-group invariance tests are conducted for each moderating condition to assess if key findings are robust across business firms. Based on structural equation analysis of survey data from over 12,000 small, medium-sized, …
Smaller College Endowments: Exploring The Links Between Personality Characteristics, Risk Perceptions, And Investment Performance, Mimi Lord
Student Scholarship
Research on college and university endowments frequently refers to the inability of smaller endowments to achieve the strong investment results of much larger endowments. Reasons cited are their lack of a professional investment staff and their lack of access to superior money managers. Yet there are many smaller endowments with long-term performance records that rival those of much larger endowments. This qualitative study explores factors that differentiate top-quartile and bottom-quartile endowments in the $100 million to $200 million size over a 10-year period. Findings reveal a number of personality and risk-related factors that distinguish top and bottom performers. They suggest …
Beyond Financial Structures And Operational Standards: Measuring Negotiated Accountability, Michael N. Wolfe
Beyond Financial Structures And Operational Standards: Measuring Negotiated Accountability, Michael N. Wolfe
Student Scholarship
Historically, accountability research has focused on operational methodologies and financial structures and disclosures designed to advantageously position, legitimate and heighten the esteem in which the nonprofit organization is held by various stakeholders. Society, however, has become increasingly interested in transparency beyond structural and financial boundaries and is more concerned with emergent forms of accountability. Grounded in recent qualitative research, the present study develops and tests a measurable form of negotiated accountability and the role this type of accountability plays in linking organizational commitment and performance in a nonprofit context. A new second-order negotiated accountability construct consisting of six dimensions is …
Feeling Comfortable With Pluralistic Diversity: Using Common Organizational Strategies To Get Uncommon Results In Higher Education Voluntary Service Organizations, Ruth Sessler Bernstein
Feeling Comfortable With Pluralistic Diversity: Using Common Organizational Strategies To Get Uncommon Results In Higher Education Voluntary Service Organizations, Ruth Sessler Bernstein
Student Scholarship
Diversity is a goal of the majority of America's institutions of higher learning. These colleges and universities have made great strides in achieving representational diversity through aggressive recruiting and retention efforts. However, on campus, students infrequently engage in pluralistic diversity. This paper examines a national voluntary service organization at two pluralistically diverse universities. Semi-structured interviews with members and alumni of the association provided insight into the characteristics of the interactions they have had with those who are different from them. These insights enabled us to examine the specific organizational strategies this nonprofit adopted that promoted enriching intercultural interactions.
From Esteem To Stigma: The Effect Of The Financial Crisis On Banker Engagement, Glen Weaver
From Esteem To Stigma: The Effect Of The Financial Crisis On Banker Engagement, Glen Weaver
Student Scholarship
Absent from a quickly accumulating literature on job engagement is a focus on professionals in the financial industry. There is, in particular, little research on the organization or industry identity of bankers as a discrete group. Nor has the literature explored the relationship of these identities with job engagement or environmental duress. We seized an opportunity to study the effects of the 2007-2009 financial crisis on bankers' identities and passion for their jobs. Semi-structured interviews with 28 mid-level bankers at five prominent US banks that accepted Toxic Asset Relief Program funding (TARP) captured insights about "normal state" (pre-crisis) versus mid-crisis …
The Effects Of Strategic Outsourcing Management On Absorptive Capacity: A Practioner-Scholar Perspective, Beth Fitz Gibbon
The Effects Of Strategic Outsourcing Management On Absorptive Capacity: A Practioner-Scholar Perspective, Beth Fitz Gibbon
Student Scholarship
Common sense would say, if you are going to outsource innovation, find the most competent supplier and acquire the most codified technology. This research hypothesizes a more counter-intuitive approach by empirically measuring how a firm's outsourcing strategy affects its Absorptive Capacity, which serves here as a proxy for firm sustainability. It is proposed that a complementary buyer-supplier relationship will have a significant positive effect on a firm's absorptive capacity, thereby enhancing its long-term effectiveness, as well as its short-term efficiency. On the other hand, the more competent the supplier relative to the buyer, the less knowledge the outsourcing buyer will …
The Paradox Of Evidenced-Based Management In Higher Education, Alice J. Walker
The Paradox Of Evidenced-Based Management In Higher Education, Alice J. Walker
Student Scholarship
The potential role for evidence-based management approaches to transform systems of higher learning and meet the growing needs of our knowledge economy is widely proposed. Most of the empirical work on evidence-based practice and management has concentrated on dynamics directly related to the use of evidence. This study takes a broader view of the management process of inquiry in which evidence is collected, interpreted or ignored. Semi-structured interviews with 31 faculty, staff and administrative members of college quality improvement committees were conducted in a grounded approach to qualitative research. What emerged was an intriguing tale of passion, power, and paradox …
The Role Of School Leadership In Student Achievement In Kenya, Renson Muchiri Mwangi
The Role Of School Leadership In Student Achievement In Kenya, Renson Muchiri Mwangi
Student Scholarship
Despite ample documentation that mathematics mastery can affect national development and notwithstanding long instituted formal government initiatives to improve it, student mathematics performance at the secondary school level in Kenya has deteriorated. Studies on mathematics achievement in Kenya have primarily focused on teachers’ classroom practices neglecting the potential influence of school leadership. We conducted a qualitative study involving Kenyan school principles and other administrative and instructional staff to construct an account of how school leadership is enacted and experienced in the day-to-day practices and how it affects student mathematics mastery. Our findings suggest that principals’ leadership and engagement, demonstrated commitment, …
Enterprise Information Systems And Organizational Agility: Erp As A Dynamic Source Of Change, Complexity, And Risk, Amol Kharabe
Enterprise Information Systems And Organizational Agility: Erp As A Dynamic Source Of Change, Complexity, And Risk, Amol Kharabe
Student Scholarship
The literature is silent about how organizations that have implemented Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions reconcile the use of these rigid platforms in turbulent competitive environments. We studied three diverse organizations- a $9 billion US retailer, a $3 billion consumer products firm and a $2 billion logistics company- all with ERP solutions in the sustainment phase, to shed light on the impact of changing business needs on overall ERP performance. Semi structured interviews with 24 business and technical professionals revealed that in addition to economic and competitive forces for change to the ERP system, the system itself is paradoxically a …
Do Fies Adopt Pro-Environmental Strategies In Developing Countries?, David D. Klossner
Do Fies Adopt Pro-Environmental Strategies In Developing Countries?, David D. Klossner
Student Scholarship
This study explores how US manufacturing firms with operations in India construe their roles and responsibilities relative to host country environmental concerns and how they develop environment-related strategies. In particular, we hope to advance understanding of the relative influence of internal versus external factors that influence decision processes and ultimate corporate behaviors. How do managers of FIEs understand the factors that influence the adoption of pro-environmental strategies in developing countries? To what extent are FIE environmental strategies motivated by internal factors versus external factors? How and to what extent do FIE management initiatives involving firm-specific resources and organizational capabilities affect …
Team Health: What Are Technical Project Teams Saying Or Not Saying?, Judith Sanders
Team Health: What Are Technical Project Teams Saying Or Not Saying?, Judith Sanders
Student Scholarship
There is a critical need for highly effective teams, but Marchetti (1997) notes teams, while in considerable demand, fail often. Despite a great deal of practitioner and academic literature that has addressed a variety of factors regarding teams and their inability to achieve intended objectives (Hackman, 1990; Robbins & Finley, 1995), teams are still not sufficiently understood (Sahay & Sarker, 2002). Researchers and practitioners alike have asked why it is so difficult to develop and maintain teams that meet performance expectations. Although team research came to the forefront in the 1950s, only in recent years have researchers begun to study …
Why They Stay: Career Longetivity Of Women In U.S. Corporate Engineering, Kathleen R. Buse
Why They Stay: Career Longetivity Of Women In U.S. Corporate Engineering, Kathleen R. Buse
Student Scholarship
Women have a low representation in engineering as well as other science, technology, and math (STEM) fields as compared to other professions – and retention rates for males in engineering significantly exceed those for women. While previous research has identified numerous reasons why women exit STEM careers at a higher rate than men, the literature is silent about those women who stay. To better understand why women remain in corporate engineering professions despite well-researched and well-documented organizational and occupational obstacles that make it difficult for them to succeed, a qualitative study is proposed based on semi-structured interviews with both women …