Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons^™

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

An Exploration Of Barriers To Integration Of Strategic Human Resource Development In The United States Fire Service: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Chief Officers' Perceptions, Jon D. Musgrave

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

Trends in the current human resource development (HRD) literature emphasize the role that integration of strategic human resource development (SHRD) practices has on organizational effectiveness (Garavan, 1991; Garavan, 2007; Gilley & Gilley, 2003; Gilley & Maycunich, 2000; Ruona & Gilley, 2009; Wright, 2007). The United States Fire Service currently views human resource development as a management practice to be utilized by the chief officer to address vocational or technical skills (Stowell, 2004). This interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) qualitative study explored the beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions of chief officers in the United States Fire Service to further understanding of barriers to …

A Case Study Of Congregational And Search Committee Desired Leadership Qualities In A Senior Pastor, David Fowler

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study that utilized an inductive qualitative research approach was to uncover desired leadership qualities in a senior pastor. Membership numbers are dwindling for religious organizations as the landscape of the United States becomes more secular. Studies reveal that negative issues with ineffective leadership within these organizations impact congregational health and membership decline. Within the context of leadership’s futility, studies need to be conducted to identify qualifiers of effective leadership in religious organizations, as a lack of research has been conducted concerning religious organizational leaders. Specifically, churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative conglomerate of …

Innovation, Culture And The Path To Postmodernism: Finland Vs. Denmark, Jayme Harlander

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of postmodernism as it applies to the innovative process as carried out in the 21st century. In doing so, this study compares and contrasts two countries within a region of the world with differing innovative capacities and then link these differences to their different engagements with the forces that characterize what scholars have terms “postmodernism”. From this study we find that countries that are more closely engaged with these postmodernist forces thrive as 21st century innovators; those that are less engaged –i.e., have trouble transitioning from the old “modernist” ethos—falter …

Models Of Intragroup Conflict In Management: A Literature Review, Matthew W. Mccarter, Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Darcy Fudge Kamal, H. Min Bang, Steven J. Hyde, Reshma Maredia

Business Faculty Articles and Research

The study of intragroup dynamics in management studies views conflict as a contingency process that can benefit or harm a group based of characteristics of the group and context. We review five models of intragroup conflict in management studies. These models include diversity-conflict and behavioral negotiation models that focus primarily on conflict within a group of people; social exchange and transaction cost economics models that focus primarily on conflict within a group of firms; and social dilemma models that focus on conflict in collectives of people, organizations, communities, and generations. The review is constituted by summarizing the insights of each …

A Cross-Cultural Examination Of The Effect Of Employer Support On Employee Productivity, Shawn Tuman, Haley Lipton

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this creative, collaborative, capstone project is to conduct a cross-cultural examination of the effect of employer support on employee productivity by compiling, examining, and synthesizing conclusions from existing research. In a world of growing globalization and technological innovation, the speed of productivity is often the cornerstone that differentiates successful businesses from unsuccessful businesses, providing a competitive advantage to the quick while the others fall behind. Often this increased level of efficiency comes at a cost beyond the price of the product and the salary of employees, a deeper, psychological cost. By reviewing research focused in the United …

Exploring Churn And Alignment Between Retention And Occupational Culture As Perceived By Professional Truck Drivers, Catherine M. Cole

Dissertations

Despite advances in logistics software and increased driver pay, the trucking industry continues a historic wave of human capital risks in the form of driver turnover and driver shortages. Previous efforts to understand the phenomenon of driver turnover rely heavily on supply chain, transportation, and logistics based disciplines. The current study provides a human capital ontology towards understanding professional truck driver perceptions. Within the interpretive framework of pragmatism, the study applied a simultaneous ethnographic and phenomenological research design to explore the phenomenon of churn and professional truck driver perceptions of environmental alignment between trucking industry retention strategies and the occupational …

Surprisingly Open Or Openly Surprised? That Is The Question; Using Surprise Experiences To Increase Openness To Experience And Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Anneke Veenendaal-De Kort

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Using Surprise Experiences to Increase Openness to Experience and Tolerance of Ambiguity

In the fast-changing world in which we are currently living, we constantly come across situations and problems that we have not encountered before. An open mind and the ability to tolerate ambiguity are important skills in uncertain times. People who embrace the unpredictable can develop their resilience and flexibility. Surprisologists Luna and Renninger (2015) have discovered that a great way of dipping into unpredictability is through surprise. For my Master’s Project, I designed experiences that transform people’s openness and tolerance for ambiguity through surprise. This paper begins with …

The Development And Validation Of Implicit Measures Of Emotional Intelligence, Ricardo R. Brooks

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Emotional intelligence (EI) has attracted much attention in the decades since Goleman’s (1995) claim that EI is important for success in a wide range of social and professional roles. With this interest has come much debate about whether EI should be defined and measured as a set of abilities or as a set of dispositional self-perceptions. The latter is typically assessed with self-report measures that are susceptible to contamination related to inaccurate self-knowledge and impression management artifacts – problems that may be mitigated by implicit measures. This research used Implicit Association Test (IAT) procedures to develop implicit measures of EI …

A Qualitative Approach To Examining The Rules Of A Community College And Industry Partnership., Cara Dimattina-Ryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to qualitatively examine the governance structure of a successful community college and industry advisory board that collaborate to improve regional workforce development initiatives. The institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework was used as a lens to describe the partnership. The results determined that there were many informal rules that governed the relationship between the community college and industry partners, which led to successful implementation of decisions. The community college leaders created the informal rules with the purpose of encouraging involvement among industry stakeholders, sharing power among all the participants, and facilitating communication. The findings …

Cultural Disparity And The Impact On Work Life Balance, Bryan Campbell

Senior Theses

This research examines the differences in work life balances between varying countries around the world. In order to do so, a proxy index was created by investigating a portion of questions from respondents of the World Values Survey. Comparing this to Hofstede's Insights on National Culture allowed for a unique perspective as to whether the country individualism ratings could then be used to assert a relationship between these metrics.

Asia: Embracing Disruption Confidently With Farsighted Policies And Progressive Ideas, Amit Gupta

Asian Management Insights

Farsighted policies and progressive ideas will stand Asia in good stead as it embraces disruption with confi dence.

The Internal Effects Of Corporate Social Responsibility On Firm Performance, Lindsay Harris

Senior Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the internal effects of corporate social responsibility on firm performance. It also examines the definition of corporate social responsibility and two varying theories about the topic. This thesis explores the human resource, quality and financial aspects of firm performance and how those aspects of a company are affected by adopting significant corporate social responsibility programs. This research seeks to answer the claim that corporate social responsibility programs do not have a positive effect on the actual performance of an organization. It will examine the effect of CSR on employee attitudes, moral and …

China's Anti-Corruption Crackdown And The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Daniel C.K. Chow

Texas A&M Law Review

China’s highly publicized crackdown on corruption may affect the type and number of cases in China that arise under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), but it should not be assumed that the crackdown will necessarily lead to fewer FCPA prosecutions. Although there is some overlap of the goals of China’s corruption crackdown and the goals of the FCPA, China’s crackdown also serves important goals of the ruling Communist Party. The main goal of the current crackdown is to reinforce the Party’s power by targeting enemies and rivals of the current leadership. The crackdown is not aimed at prohibiting bribes …

Response Distortion On Personality Tests In Applicants: Comparing High-Stakes To Low-Stakes Medical Settings, Jeromy Anglim, Stefan Bozic, Jonathon Little, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The current study examined the degree to which applicants applying for medical internships distort their responses to personality tests and assessed whether this response distortion led to reduced predictive validity. The applicant sample (n = 530) completed the NEO Personality Inventory whilst applying for one of 60 positions as first-year post-graduate medical interns. Predictive validity was assessed using university grades, averaged over the entire medical degree. Applicant responses for the Big Five (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) and 30 facets of personality were compared to a range of normative samples where personality was measured in standard research settings …

A Confident Culture For Creativity? Creative Self-Efficacy And Innovation Behavior Moderated By Perception Of Culture: Millennials Versus Generation Xers, Karen Bartuch

College of Business Theses and Dissertations

Innovation is a strategic priority for many companies today and some are more successful at it than others. This study aims to understand what factors affect the innovation behavior of employees. Specifically, this study examined the perceptions of creative self-efficacy (CSE) in individuals and their innovation behavior. In addition, individual perceptions of culture for innovation within their organization were measured to determine how culture affects the relationship between CSE and innovation behavior. According to social cognitive theory (SCT), an individual’s behavior, cognitions and the environment influence each other in a dynamic fashion.

Given the prevalence of millennials in the workforce …

The Influence Of Cognitive Moral Development And Leader Regulatory Focus On Employee Ethical Decision Making And Behavior, Brandon Hendrix

College of Business Theses and Dissertations

Recent events in business, private, and public settings suggests that people continue to struggle with ethical issues. This study drew on theories of cognitive moral development and leader regulatory focus to increase our understanding of the forces that shape ethical perceptions, decision making, and behavior. I hypothesized that employee cognitive moral development is negatively related to the approval of questionable/unethical behavior. Results indicate employees exhibiting lower levels of cognitive moral development were more accepting of unethical or questionable moral behavior. I also hypothesized that leader regulatory focus would moderate the negative relationship between employee cognitive moral behavior and tolerance for …

Mandates Of Dishonesty: The Psychological And Social Costs Of Mandated Attitude Expression, Marko Pitesa, Zen Goh, Stefan Thau

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explains and tests empirically why people employed in product promotion are less willing to trust others. Product promotion is a prototypical setting in which employees are mandated to express attitudes that are often not fully sincere. On the basis of social projection theory, we predicted that organizational agents mandated to express insincere attitudes project their self-perceived dishonesty onto others and thus become more distrustful. An initial large-scale, multi-country field study found that individuals employed in jobs requiring product promotion were less trusting than individuals employed in other jobs—particularly jobs in which honesty is highly expected. We then conducted …

Advice Giving: A Subtle Pathway To Power, Michael Schaerer, Leigh Tost, Li Huang, Francesca Gino, Rick Larrick

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose that interpersonal behaviors can activate feelings of power, and we examine this idea in the context of advice giving. Specifically, we show a) that advice giving is an interpersonal behavior that enhances individuals’ sense of power and b) that those who seek power are motivated to engage in advice giving. Four studies, including two experiments (n=290, n=188), an organization-based field study (n=94), and a negotiation simulation (n=124) demonstrate that giving advice enhances the advisor’s sense of power because it gives the advisor perceived influence over others’ actions. Two of our studies further demonstrate that people with a high …

Infusing Inclusion, Diversity, And Social Justice Into The Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum At Boise State University, Donald Winiecki, Noah Salzman, Timothy Andersen, Amit Jain, Dianxiang Xu

Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning Faculty Publications and Presentations

That groups other than white or Asian males are not well-represented in education or professions related with computer science is well documented. Research shows that popularly-held notions accounting for this are inaccurate or simply false. Instead, persistent expression of biased social values is asserted to account for the fact that members of underrepresented groups either never choose to pursue or cease pursuit of careers in computer science.

Regardless, private and public interest in attaining equity and social justice remains strong. Often, efforts are focused on top-down initiatives to attract and retain a more diverse set of individuals. However, these have …

Identifying Factors That Impact Female Leadership Presence, Victoria Elizabeth Kendall

M.A. in Leadership Studies: Capstone Project Papers

This research aims to acknowledge and weaken various factors that deter women from taking up leadership in our current systems. Increasing one’s personal capacity for leadership is especially beneficial for women who participate in systems that lack equal gender representation. Despite differences in organizational culture, certain patterns of experience have been negatively related to female Leadership Presence, and depend on the theoretical lens of leadership for development. Examining the demand-side and supply-side factors that inhibit female career progression is significant to understanding the environmental and individual impositions impacting leadership development. Specific strategies to strengthen Leadership Presence, as well as the …

Creativity And Performance: The Effects Of Working In Groups Versus Working Individually, John Beckius

Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day (2018-)

I-O Psychologists are interested in factors that can affect work productivity and performance among an organization’s employees. Some professionals argue that two heads are better than one when it comes to being innovative and coming up with creative solutions, however, others state the opposite given that group settings tend to result in many hindering factors such as conformity and production blocking. In the present study, we attempted to determine whether or not there is a differential impact of working groups and working individuals on creativity and performance. This was measured through a divergent thinking task based on Guilford’s Alternative Uses …

Positive Organizational Leadership: Some Recent Findings In Positive Organizational Scholarship, Lawrence Chan

M.A. in Leadership Studies: Capstone Project Papers

The study of positivity is multifaceted, with roots across psychology, philosophy, and more recently organizational behavior (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; 2014). This review article highlights the framework from which the study of positivity originates, and then explores positive behaviors in the workplace that have correlated to increases in fulfillment, productivity, engagement, and leadership capacity (Cameron & Dutton, 2003). This essay reveals core components of positive organizational scholarship (POS), notably the interaction of positivity within job demands and job resources, positive employee engagement, and positive deviance, and uncovers some recent findings of these POS components in empirical research and application within human resource …

Implications Of Social Media Use On Instruction And Student Learning: An Exploratory Study, Mayur Desai, Lucy Ojode

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Despite being a norm in contemporary organizations including in academia, there is limited understanding how multimedia technology use might impact learning. We have also seen a rise in the use of social media applications such as Facebook, tweeter, Instagram, skype, flickr, and blogging among students, but it is unclear the extent to which the academe embraces these applications. In this study, we examine the potential role of multimedia technology and social media use in the learning process. We explore the potential implications for instruction and on student learning of the marriage between multimedia technology and social media use. Focusing on …

Leveraging Decision Making In Cyber Security Analysis Through Data Cleaning, Chen Zhong, Hong Liu, Awny Alnusair

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Security Operations Centers (SOCs) have been built in many institutions for intrusion detection and incident response. A SOC employs various cyber defense technologies to continually monitor and control network traffic. Given the voluminous monitoring data, cyber security analysts need to identify suspicious network activities to detect potential attacks. As the network monitoring data are generated at a rapid speed and contain a lot of noise, analysts are so bounded by tedious and repetitive data triage tasks that they can hardly concentrate on in-depth analysis for further decision making. Therefore, it is critical to employ data cleaning methods in cyber situational …

An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Leadership Style And Lean Expressed Through Respect, Proactivity, And Innovative Work Behavior, Reiner Martens

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

This dissertation is based on the idea that a leadership style is necessary to implement a lean culture within an organization. This research study employed a systematic literature review, from which a lean leadership model was developed. Based on the two principles of a lean organizational culture, 1. respect for people and 2. continuous improvement, three measurable variables were identified, respect, proactivity, and innovative work behavior. These three variables were connected to the lean leadership model. Leadership styles based on the full range model of leadership were used as independent variable(s). The overarching results of this study were: (1) transformational …

Workplace Bullying, Emotional Abuse, And Harassment In Fire Departments, John C. Griffith, Donna Roberts

Publications

Firefighters are heroes who save lives and protect property. They are highly revered in societies all around the world and perform under the most stressful of conditions. Drawing on literature from the United States (USA), this chapter reviews the culture, demographics and changing mission of the fire service as a backdrop to workplace harassment and bullying issues. The fire service has unique organizational dynamics that can lead to harassment and bullying and, at the same time, are the critical reasons for working to eliminate intentional and unintentional unfair treatment of women and minorities. Recent literature and studies show that the …

Middle Managers Working Beyond Senior Management’S Expectations: A Phenomenological Study Of The Managed Healthcare Industry In Southern California, Gerald Dugas

Dissertations

Purpose. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how middle managers and senior managers working in the managed healthcare industry in southern California perceive what factors motivated middle managers to work beyond senior management’s expectations.

Methodology. A qualitative phenomenology study was chosen because it allowed the researcher to acquire a firm understanding of the nature of everyday lived experiences. This methodology was used to capture the meaning of experiences that motivated middle managers to work beyond expectations. The researcher conducted semi-structured, face-to-face interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experience of the participants. Participants …

Case Study Of A Collaborative Approach To Evaluation Within A School District Central Office, Oriana Eversole

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) provides an in-depth examination of a collaborative approach to evaluation within a school district’s central office. This study analyzes the implementation of collaborative approaches to evaluation (CAE) within a school district’s central office with an emphasis on evaluation use from the evaluators’ perspectives. It also explores the role and evolution of the evaluators throughout the evaluation process. Furthermore, this study adds to educational research on how to support the implementation and use of improvement processes in school district central offices. The analysis focuses on the evaluation activities that my colleagues and I led as …

Pay Openness Movement: Is It Merited? Does It Influence More Desirable Employee Outcomes Than Pay Secrecy?, Shelly Marasi, Alison Wall, Rebecca J. Bennett

Organization Management Journal

Organizations are currently moving toward increased pay openness in the workplace; thus, it is important to determine the influence pay communication practices (pay secrecy and pay openness) have on employee outcomes and whether the increase in pay openness is merited and more beneficial for organizations. The purpose of this article is to analyze pay communication’s influence on workplace deviance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Specifically, pay secrecy practices are hypothesized to influence employees to engage in less OCBs and more workplace deviance. Informational justice and distributive justice perceptions are included as mediators. Pay secrecy leads to greater workplace deviance as …