Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons^™

Commentary: Survey Finds Singapore Workers Disengaged - But We Shouldn’T Resign Ourselves To This, Nick Chiam

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

If narratives of unhappy and disengaged Singapore workers solidify, there will be less reason to strive for a better workplace, says SMU’s Nick Chiam.

How Leaders And Followers Make Meaning: Perceptions Of Spiritual Leadership And Organizational Culture, Joshua J. Yancey

PhD in Organizational Leadership

This dissertation was grounded in the premise that spiritual leadership behaviors significantly influence organizational culture within faith-based nonprofit organizations yet remain insufficiently understood as lived experiences across organizational levels. While prior scholarship has established theoretical links between spirituality, leadership, and organizational outcomes, fewer studies have examined how such leadership is perceived by both leaders and followers within real organizational contexts. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how spiritual leadership behaviors were experienced and interpreted in relation to organizational culture, mission alignment, morale, and work meaning within a faith-based nonprofit setting. Data were collected from fifteen participants …

Why We Stayed, Why We Left: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study Of Hispanic/Latino Child Welfare Professionals’ Experiences Of Organizational And Safety Culture, Cynthia Franco

Theses and Dissertations

This hermeneutic phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of Hispanic/Latino child welfare professionals who were formerly employed at a large urban public child welfare agency. Despite the growing representation of Hispanic/Latino children and families in child welfare systems and the strong vocational commitment of Hispanic/Latino professionals, this group remains underrepresented in the workforce and experiences notable patterns of early attrition. Grounded in safety science and psychological safety frameworks, this study explores how organizational culture, leadership practices, and identity-related dynamics shape professional meaning-making, well-being, and decisions to remain in or leave the field.

Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and …

The Journey To Generative Conflict: An Action Research Study In A Community Action Agency, Maya Townsend

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Countries around the world face unprecedented levels of polarization and discontent, creating conditions that encourage organizational conflict as employees replicate patterns present within the environment. Organizational conflict can be a source of anxiety, a distraction from work, and an impediment to innovation, sound decision making, and quality outcomes. However, conflict need not be destructive. With that background, this dissertation is guided by the following primary research question: How can an organization develop a generative conflict culture that strengthens relationships and contributes to positive outcomes? The single-case study follows one community action agency as it seeks to develop and implement more …

Understanding The Workplace Belonging Puzzle: An Ecosystem Approach To A Better Future Of Work, Surabhi Lal

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The need to belong is deeply human. Today’s workplaces advertise “cultures of belonging,” but what is workplace belonging? Could remote and hybrid workplaces provide an opportunity for connection and belonging? How are employees experiencing belonging at work, and what are the people around them doing to contribute to their experience of workplace belonging? Weaving together concepts from humanistic management, positive organizational scholarship, and critical theory, this phenomenological study examines how middle managers at B Corp organizations who are working in hybrid and remote arrangements experience belonging, and the actions and behaviors that contribute to workplace belonging. Belonging has been studied …

Beyond The Brotherhood: Exploring Communal Leadership In Masculinity Contest Cultures, Scott A. Metzler

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of formal and informal leaders who exercise communal leadership, characterized by collaboration, inclusion, and relational focus, within the masculinity contest cultures of law enforcement and the fire service, where strength, competition, and hierarchical leadership often rule the day. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with 19 participants across the United States, this research investigates how and why leaders choose to challenge organizational norms, how they perceive the effects of their decisions on themselves and others, and how they navigate the tensions and contradictions between communal leadership and hypermasculine cultural expectations. The findings reveal that leaders …

Like Footprints In The Sand: How Founders Imprint Organizational Culture Through Nonverbal Cue Signaling, Dirk M. Roskam

All Dissertations

Despite growing recognition of the significance of founders’ behaviors in shaping organizational culture, limited research has explored how founders’ non-verbal cues (NVCs) imprint culture during a venture’s formative stages. This qualitative case study examines how a founder’s NVCs, ranging from physical environment design to gestures and demeanor, are interpreted by employees and contribute to the imprinting of organizational culture. Drawing on imprinting theory, signaling theory, and the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP), the study triangulates data from semi-structured interviews, a focus group, and a literature review. Findings reveal that employees interpret 24 salient NVCs, grouped into themes of environmental values, people-centric …

Impactful Programs And Initiatives For Employee Resource Groups That Promote And Sustain Positive Social Determinants Of Health, Lisa Kangas, Maureen Hall, Julie James, Gladys Peters

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

Organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leaders’ lack of interest in employee resource groups (ERGs) and related programs can negatively impact an organization’s culture, operational excellence, and employee retention and have detrimental implications for social determinants of health (SDOH). Prioritizing ERG programs and initiatives is essential for organizational success and can positively affect SDOH. This qualitative pragmatic inquiry study identified and explored ERG programs and initiatives that support organizational culture, operational excellence, and employee retention.The research question for this study was: What ERG programs and initiatives support organizational culture, operational excellence, and employee retention? The study included eight DEI leaders …

The Role Of Organizational Culture And Pastoral Leadership In Sustainable Church Outreach: A Multisite Mini-Ethnographic Case Study, Althea P. Gordon-Scott

PhD in Organizational Leadership

This study examined the role of organizational culture and pastoral leadership in sustainable church outreach programs. Two churches were chosen for this multisite mini-ethnographic case study because, for multiple years, they have participated in multiple outreaches each week to their non-Christian neighbors. These two churches differed in terms of geographical location, size, demographics, and budget. Data collection included field observations, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and document analysis. The themes that surfaced from the data were altruistic foundations, relational equity, organizational agility, organizational challenges, exemplary pastoral leadership, and the centrality of God. This research contributes to the theoretical and practical understanding …

Collaborating For Inclusion: Awareness And Understanding In Action At Six-String Biotech, Danny Lackey, Richard Jonsen

Rohrer College of Business Departmental Research

It was early summer 2020. The Breonna Taylor and George Floyd murders were front of mind across the United States. People were flooding the streets of cities large and small, demanding an end to racist policies and actions embedded in the United States’ social fabric. At Six-String Biotech, ten employees of color went to company executives with their concerns about inclusion and equity inside their organization and the need for change. This case tells how Six-String Biotech responded to these employees, engaged in difficult internal conversations, and began a change process to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable organizational …

The Influence Of Generative Artificial Intelligence On Leadership: An Exploration Of Technology Professionals' Perceptions Regarding Leadership, Adaptation, And Organizational Culture In The Digital Age, Paul Thomas Herdman

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has introduced new complexities for organizational leadership, requiring technology professionals to adapt in real time to evolving digital tools, strategic demands, and cultural dynamics. Although prior research has examined AI’s broad influence on business processes, few studies have explored how technology leaders experience and interpret the leadership challenges and opportunities arising from GenAI. This qualitative dissertation addressed that gap by investigating the perceptions of senior technology professionals regarding GenAI’s influence on leadership roles, competencies, decision making, and organizational culture. Using Lanigan’s (1977) phenomenological method of human science, this study explored the lived experiences …

The Anatomy Of Physician Fulfillment: Strategies Beyond Burnout, Brook Hale

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The persistent tension and power struggle between healthcare executives and physicians is a prevalent issue in healthcare organizations, often leading to a culture of organizational mistrust. This dynamic stems from perceived conflicting goals: executives are frequently seen as primarily focused on financial outcomes, while physicians are viewed as resistant to change. This study explored how physician fulfillment is experienced at work, with the ultimate goal of identifying potential interventions to bridge the gap between these groups. There is vast research and literature available regarding burnout in healthcare; this research focused on understanding what physicians find fulfilling in their work and …

Boeing Co: Ethical Failures And Business Scandals, Bahia Benabbad Touirs

Journal of Global Awareness

Recent advances in technology have completely changed people’s outlook on the world. Instant access to limitless information has revamped consumer behavior and expectations from the companies they interact with; therefore, social responsibility has become a crucial talking point in the business world as customers increasingly monitor their actions. A recent study showed that 70% of consumers want to know how brands are addressing social and environmental issues, and 46% of consumers believe it plays a decisive factor in their purchasing decision process (Duan, Hofer, & Aloysius, 2021). Even though this has its effects in every industry, this paper will focus …

Leadership Behaviors, Practices, And Sytles In Mergers And Acquisitions In The U.S. Technology-Based Organizations: A Qualitative Study, Susan E. Glover

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

Leaders guide and shape the success of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to meet an organization’s goals and objectives. In this study, I explored the role of leadership during M&A and the effect of different leadership behaviors, practices, and styles (BPS) on different organizational cultures during M&A. This study explored the contribution of leadership BPS on M&A outcomes within an organization with a robust and innovative culture. I focused on the human capital investment strategies of M&A integration concerning different leadership BPS utilized to improve the success rate of M&A goals and objectives. I concentrated on technology-based organizations because they are …

The Culture & Practice Convergence: Looking For Ways Towards Sustainability, Miguel Paolo Paredes

Center for Business Research and Development

Thirty years ago, the Earth Summit gathering in Rio de Janeiro held host to world leaders, setting a blueprint for a more secure future by balancing economic growth and ecological necessity. Created for member states to cooperate in response to worldwide development issues, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) sought to address these challenges and achieved a global consensus on the priorities for a new development agenda (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Earth Summit, n.d.) As sustainability issues encompassed the whole of the planet, the summit provided a platform for member states to collaborate …

The Interactive Effects Of Societal And Organizational Cultural Tightness On Employee Work Related Outcomes, Na Zhao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Individuals are shaped by both their organizational and societal cultures, yet existing research often approaches these cultural dimensions in isolation, ignoring their combined impact on individual behaviors. In response to this research gap, I developed a novel theoretical framework by combining cultural tightness literature with social information processing theory. This framework highlights the interactive impacts of societal and organizational cultures on employees’ outcomes, including job performance, work attitudes, and mental health. Moreover, I proposed several mechanisms, including motivational, cognitive, and emotional mechanisms, through which these forms of cultural tightness could shape these specified work-related outcomes. To validate this framework, I …

Safeguarding From Scrutiny: Toward A Critical Consciousness Of Organizational Culture In Humanitarian Ngos, Andrew Henck

Dissertations

Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (HNGOs) face a moment of reckoning brought on by decades of operational complexity and conceptual tensions between self-espoused values and external pressures as social change movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter demand organizational accountability. Humanitarian aid is being questioned systematically as most HNGOs continue reconciling with their colonialist origin stories from the Global North. Alongside a shrinking British foreign aid budget, and mounting pressures for proving value for money, HNGOs face a record number of natural disasters, energy crises, armed conflicts, and other major emergencies to respond to across the globe.

As the British aid sector …

Times Of Uncertainties Require Embracing Leadership And Feedback, Alexander Lapshun, Gene E. Fusch

The Qualitative Report

Mid-level managers of multinational corporations often struggle to find a leadership style that helps build a high-performance organizational culture. This paper discusses the research question of what strategies some mid-level managers in a multinational corporation in Asia employ to create a high-performance organizational culture. The authors chose six mid-level managers of a multinational Fortune 500 IT corporation in Singapore to participate in this case study research blended with techniques of miniethnography. The authors looked for qualities and approaches required for leaders to build and lead their teams to high-performance standards in times of uncertainty. The study concluded that successful leaders …

Theoretical Modeling For Curious Leadership And Instrument Development And Validation For Measuring Curious Leader Capacity, Lisa M. Gick

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

When curious, we admit we do not know. With the contemporary workplace emerging through increased complexity, leaders are compelled to shift mindsets and practices from more traditional methods to those more in service to the uncertainty of the day. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to generate an integrated theoretical framework for curious leadership, a validated scale for its measurement, and practical methods for engaging differently in the context and practice of leading. Drawing from the literature review of relational leadership, adaptive leadership, complexity leadership, growth mindsets, and curious behavior, and from my practice, 12 sub-constructs were identified as …

Millennial Employees In Contact Centers: Leadership Style Preferences Contribution To Job Satisfaction, Dana C. Martin Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Millennials account for the largest generational cohort in the workforce. Their propensity for turnover is costly to organizations, not just monetary impact, but skill development and sustainability as well. This study attempted to understand if leadership and the preferred leadership style of Millennial employees contribute to job satisfaction. This mixed-methods sequential explanatory study examined how leadership and the preferred leadership style of Millennial employees, from the perspectives of Millennial employees and those who manage them, contribute to job satisfaction. The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) was used as the survey tool for the qualitative study (see Appendix A). A questionnaire was …

Frequent Top Leadership Transitions And Their Effect On Followers: The Moderating Roles Of Followership Characteristics And Organizational Culture, William Butler

Dissertations

Modern for-profit, large businesses are often organized as a collection of business units, with each unit having a top leader responsible for the unit’s results. While there is much literature about CEO transitions, there is scant literature about leadership transitions at an individual business unit level. Moreover, there is no literature concerning frequent leadership transitions at this level. This study developed and validated a new measure to assess employee perceptions of top leadership transition frequency. To measure employee reactions to perceived top leadership transition frequency, the EVLN scale was utilized. This study identified that employee Exit or Neglect are likely …

Thriving In A Vuca World: A Case Study Exploring Geopolitically- Focused Intelligence Teams In The Private Sector Through A Systems Theory Lens, Angela Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

For several decades, business executives have been faced with increasing complexity in the global environment, including disruptions, rapid changes, and heightened global pressures. In an effort to maintain a strategic advantage, business leaders are increasingly leveraging geopolitically-focused strategic intelligence teams to accurately and concisely synthesize large quantities of data to support high-level business decision making. However, limited research has been conducted on the organizational development of these teams, the context in which they exist, and how they can most effectively support differing and evolving decision-maker needs. As these teams have the potential to have an outsized impact on global business …

Testing The Congruence Of Espousals And Enactments Predicting Team Innovation, Rylan M. Charlton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study employs a social identity perspective (Hogg, 2008) to test whether perceptions of both espoused and enacted values drive team innovation, and tests whether both their level and congruence determine their impact on innovation. This relationship is tested in a multilevel latent polynomial regression model (MLPM) framework (Zyphur, Zammuto, & Zhang, 2016). The study also leverages block variable procedures (e.g., Edwards & Cable, 2009) to model the combined effects of espoused and enacted values, and tests whether these combined effects mediate between leader behavior and team innovation. This represents the first test of Zohar and Hofmann’s (2012) proposition that …

The Effects Of Organizational Culture On Information Sharing Attitude, Mohammadi L. Nasrin, Cicek Isik

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

The effect of technology on businesses and organizations has made it even more important to use the information, which is used as an input in business processes, to achieve the desired organizational goals. Especially in the service sector, organizational culture becomes important as an institutional variation in the use of information in accordance with organizational purposes. With the increasing importance of teamwork, individuals' attitudes towards information sharing in working groups play a critical role in the emergence of group synergy in the IT sector. The increase in the level of task interdependency in the business processes, the increase in the …

How Leaders And Employees Experience, Make Sense Of, And Find Meaning In Humility, David Perryman

Theses & Dissertations

By just about any measure, organizations today are more dynamic, diverse, and interdependent than at any other time in history. This environment puts unprecedented pressure on the human capacity to lead. And still, we demand more from our leaders—even as employees experience rising stress levels, declining loyalty, and deteriorating trust in their employers, and organizations face historically high rates of employee turnover along with the resulting financial and emotional costs. Clinging to romanticized notions of the larger-than-life leader blinds us to the paradoxical promise of humility; namely, that a leader’s greatest strength may lie, ironically, in the ability …

The “Right” Recipes For Security Culture: A Competing Values Model Perspective, Hwee-Joo Kam, Thoma Mattson, Dan J. Kim

Management Faculty Publications

This study argues that the effect of perceived organizational culture on the formation of security-related subjective norms and the level of compliance pressure will vary based on how the employees perceive their organization’s cultural values. These perceptions reflect on the assumptions and principles that organizations use to guide their security-related behaviors. To make these arguments, we adopt the competing values model (CVM), which is a model used to understand the range of organizational values and resulting cultural archetypes.

The Relationship Between Organizational Culture And Profitability Of Small, Nonprofit, Private, Higher Education Institutions In Georgia, Walter V. Murray

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small, nonprofit, private, higher education institutions (SNPHEIs) are facing economic challenges that threaten their existence. This threat represents a public policy problem because 28% of all higher education in America is delivered by SNPHEIs. The purpose of this study was to investigate any correlational relationships that may exist between the organizational culture (OC) in SNPHEIs and their financial sustainability. Based on the competing values framework, a causal relationship between OC and organizational profitability within the SNPHEI was posited. In this study, both descriptive and comparative research questions were used; they focused on the OC types identified in the competing values …

Special Operations Forces Culture And Implications For Interagency Collaboration, Bradley Rhinelander

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Horn of Africa exemplifies maritime instability due to regional climate, environmental, economic, food, and security issues. Future global challenges require collaborative approaches between U.S. government and military organizations to span organizational boundaries and leverage the strengths and insights of diverse organizations. The purpose of this research was to examine organizational culture and identity, as manifested in organizational literature, to identify opportunities and challenges to interagency networks and collaboration in the realm of confronting wicked problems around the globe. The research questions focus on the cultural and normative elements of organizational identity as manifest in the context of organizational literature. …

“They F*Cking Own This Sh*T. They're Running It”: Are Music Fandoms Organizations?, Jacqueline Haughton

Scripps Senior Theses

Organizational Studies as a field typically focuses on organizations such as workplaces, large businesses, corporations, or governments. While organizational theorists often recognize in their definitions of organization that other forms of human groups and communities can be considered organizations, they don’t often include non-traditional organizations as examples in literature. In this thesis, I argue that music fandoms are a form of organization by examining multiple definitions, power relations, culture, influence on identity, and lasting impacts of fandom.

Understanding The Context And Social Processes That Shape Person- And Family-Centered Culture In Long-Term Care: The Pivotal Role Of Personal Support Workers, Ellen Helena Melis

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This single, exemplar case study explored the context and social processes that shape person-and family-centered culture in a long-term care (LTC) home, using grounded theory and situational analysis for the data collection and analysis. Findings revealed one core dimension: needing to be heard, valued, and understood, and five key roles: personal support workers (PSWs), executive director (ED), senior leadership, nurse managers, and residents and families, which informed five dimensions, each focused on enhancing care for residents: (a) attending to residents’ daily care needs (PSWs), (b) advocating strategically (ED), (c) translating vision into programs and policies (senior leadership), (d) ensuring quality …