Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons^™

The Impact Of Organizational Culture On Corporate Performance, Tewodros Bayeh Tedla

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Lack of effective organizational culture and poor cultural integration in the corporate group affect organizational performance and decrease shareholders return. The purpose of this exploratory case study was to explore successful strategies that one corporate group used to establish an effective organizational culture to improve performance. The Denison organizational culture model served as the conceptual framework for the study. A purposive sample of 20 senior managers from a corporate group in Ethiopia participated in semistructured face-to-face interviews. The selected participant met the criteria of a minimum 5 years of experience with successful strategies in establishing an effective organizational culture in …

The Effects Of Participative Leadership Practices On Job Satisfaction For Highly Skilled Virtual Teams, Funda Sinani

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Virtual-team professionals have reported experiencing low job satisfaction due to lack of face-to-face interaction leading to stress, miscommunication, and role-confusion. Dissatisfaction among virtual teams has increased turnover and management costs for organizations. Despite these known associations, there was a gap in the literature investigating efficient leadership practices to improve job satisfaction for highly skilled virtual teams. Participative leadership offers an effective approach to increase job satisfaction among face-to-face teams and innovative teams. This study explored the relationship between participative leadership and job satisfaction among highly skilled virtual teams within the global software industry. A quantitative study with a correlational design …

An Exploration Of Leadership Styles And Motivation In Egyptian Business Organizations, Nady Ahmed El-Zayaty

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Leadership styles can have a profound impact on employee motivation and performance. The changing global business landscape has drawn much attention to transformational leadership as an approach that addresses the demands of organizations in this complex environment. The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory study was to understand the nature of employee motivation with regard to leadership styles and the role of transformational leadership in Egyptian business organizations. Seventeen Egyptian professionals were recruited through a combination of e-mail and telephone procedures and were interviewed regarding their experiences with organizational leaders; their perception of the ideal organizational leader; their feelings about …

Predictive Ability Of Emotional Intelligence Scores On Employee Self-Reported Perception Of Comprehensive Organizational Credibility Inventory, Leif Allen Ford

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research has shown that emotional intelligence (EQ) is positively related to beneficial outcomes in organizations. Research has also found that negative perceptions of organizational credibility (OC) can result in adverse economic and social costs for organizations and communities. To date, the existing research has failed to examine whether employee EQ might affect employee perceptions of OC. A quantitative, non-experimental study was conducted using a sample of employees in large health and medical organizations throughout the United States. The variables in the study were measured using the Assessing Emotions Scale and the Comprehensive Organizational Credibility Inventory. Multiple regression analyses and Pearson …

Developing Generation-Based Volunteer Management Practices, Tonya Renee' Howard

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many nonprofits seek a volunteer base that includes the experience and maturity of the Silent and Baby Boomer Generations as well as the creativity and advanced technological knowledge of Generations X, Y, and Z. Published literature recommends implementing multigenerational volunteer programs to increase the representation of multiple generations. However, there is no literature providing guidance to create volunteer management practices that simultaneously recruit and retain those generations. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the lived experiences of 5 generations of volunteers. The research questions for this phenomenological study addressed perspectives that may contribute to developing generation-based volunteer …

Validation Of Parsons' Structural Functionalism Theory Within A Multicultural Human, Sandra Simone Minott

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Shared values and norms are at the core for unifying different cultures socializing or working to fulfill the goals and mission of organizations. Researchers have not examined how employees representing different cultures socialize via shared norms and values in human service companies. The purpose of this ethnography study was to explore the process of 8 culturally different employees working together at a human service organization. Using purposeful sampling, multicultural employees were selected from 4 departments within the human service company. Face-to-face interviews, field notes, questionnaire, and participant observation were the tools for collecting the data. Descriptive coding, value coding, and …

Examining How Supervisor/Employee Communication Affects Employee Intentions To Leave An Organization, Courtney R. Malengo

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Americans who are full-time employees spend more hours at work than they do with family and loved ones. Management articles and research lament organizational communication woes, specifically amongst employees and their supervisors. This study explores supervisor/employee communication and the affect it has on employees’ decisions to stay or leave an organization. Specifically, the study examines how satisfied employees are with their respective supervisor and their organization, correlating findings to Deetz’s organizational communication theory and Graen & Uhl-Bien’s leader-member exchange theory. Respondents included 132 adults, 18 years and older, 58.4% were female and 41.6% were male, largely spanning the nonprofit/association and …

Extroversion And Media Richness: An Analysis Of Media Preferences Of High Extroverts Within Sales Organizations, Donna M. Dudek

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Personality traits and vocational acumen have been the source of research in recent years. Using personality measures such as the Five Factor model, researchers have sought to find common traits which may predict success in critical organizational roles. Communication needs and desires, including media richness choices, have also been the subject of past research. The purpose of this thesis is to tie these two themes together. Using a survey instrument containing both a personality inventory and a questionnaire examining media preferences in different scenarios, the author gathered data from sales professionals, client service professionals, and managers to evaluate similarities and …

Upward Communication In Organizations: The Connection To Company Culture And Employee Engagement, Janet K. Clancy-Feliciano

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

In today’s American society, effective upward and downward communication between supervisors and subordinates is lacking now more than ever before. The importance of effective downward communication from organizational leaders receives ongoing attention, but more attention needs to be given to the importance of open reception to upward communication. It is critical that leaders in organizations build trust and encourage upward communication from employees in order to maintain organizational wellbeing and to avoid employee dissatisfaction. To help close the gap in this area of communication, this study focused on and collected data utilizing on-line surveys and employee interviews in order to …

The Relationship Between Organizational Culture, Intrinsic Motivation, And Employee Performance: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Patricia S. Radakovich

Wayne State University Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between specific organizational cultural factors (autonomy and meaningful work), intrinsic motivation, and employee performance through a systematic review and meta-analysis. Three separate studies were performed, one for each predictor variable: autonomy, meaningful work, and organizational culture/climate. The meta-analyses included only studies that contained correlations for all three variables and were set in a business environment. The first study concluded that autonomy is a predictor of performance; this relationship is partially mediated through intrinsic motivation. The second study concluded that meaningful work is a predictor of performance. The third study was …

The Transformational Leadership Communication Of Socially Close And Distant Leaders On Vision Integration, Bethany Weaver

Wayne State University Dissertations

Applying the theories of transformational leadership and distributive leadership and drawing from diffusion of innovations, this work posits that transformational leaders are successful in transferring vision and subsequently transforming the organization by enacting their communication both systematically and interpersonally. From a system level perspective, transformational leaders in executive leadership roles direct their communicative attention to the key influencers in the organization. They expend their time and effort on an interpersonal level ensuring these individuals are infused with the vision of the organization, understand it, develop the skills necessary to contribute to its achievement, and are equipped and motivated to transfer …

It Centralization And The Innovation Value Chain In Higher Education: A Study For Promoting Key Innovations Through Innovation Management And Organizational Design, Edmund Udaya Clark

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of organizational centralization in higher education technology support units on institutional innovativeness. The centralization tools used for the present study included measures developed by Hage & Aiken (1971), Kaluzny, et al. (1974), and Ferrell & Skinner (1988). The innovativeness measures were established by Hansen & Birkinshaw's (2007) tool for evaluating innovation value chain activities in organizations. Data were gathered from a nation-wide sample (n = 303) of IT workers at 38 research one institutions in the United States. The results indicated that innovation value chain activities (idea generation, conversion, …

Leadership Styles And Learning For Performance Within Commercial Banks In Kenya, Teckie Michelle Karoki

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The literature indicates that leaders influence the establishment of organizational learning culture (OLC) by the application of transformational (TFO), transactional (TAC), and passive-avoidant (PAV) styles. Further, the literature links OLC to the financial performance of organizations by leadership involvement in establishing learning organizations. However, the manner in which the practice of OLC occurs and the relationship of OLC with TFO, TAC, and PAV is unclear, as is the link between OLC and financial performance (ROA); especially for growing economies outside North America. The purpose of this study was to address this gap in the literature through a quantitative study of …

Understanding Host Community Distrust And Violence Against Oil Companies In Nigeria, Abby Kalio Amabipi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The violence of the Niger Delta host communities against the international oil companies (IOCs) is rampant and dogged. The extent of violence that occurs is harmful to communities, individuals, and oil companies that provide a certain degree of economic stability to the region. The Nigerian government faces a major challenge of resolving community violence in Nigeria. This case study used social exchange theory to better understand the causes and consequences of the lack of community trust against the oil companies that is pervasive in the region. Purposeful sampling was used in the selection of 10 community members, 8 representatives of …

Evaluating Key Predictors Of Employee Response To Change In The Pharmaceutical Industry, Otis S. Johnson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study addressed the factors that predict employee response to large-scale change in the United States pharmaceutical industry. When poorly executed, major organizational changes such as mergers and acquisitions are often disruptive and costly to organizations and demoralizing to employees. Although employee responses to change have been studied in several industries, employee responses during change execution in the pharmaceutical industry have not been subject to study. The purpose of this correlational study was to reduce the knowledge gap related to organizational change in the pharmaceutical industry by evaluating key predictors of employee response to large-scale change. The theoretical framework consisted …

Psychological Capital As A Mediator Between Team Cohesion And Productivity, Robert John Cesaro

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Organizations attempting to optimize productivity are seeking new ways to develop psychological capital in teams. The researcher conducted a quantitative study to determine whether team cohesion, as assessed by the Revised Group Environment Questionnaire (RGEQ), impacts team productivity, as assessed by the Performance Measurement Team (PMT) Manufacturing Resource System (MRS); whether this relationship can be attributed to a team's level of psychological capital, as assessed by the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12); and whether psychological capital mediates the relationship between team cohesion and team productivity. Forty-five PMTs in a large U.S. defense manufacturing organization were surveyed using the PCQ-12 and the …

A Phenomenological Study Of The Experience Of Humanist, Spiritual, And Transpersonal Films On Positive Organizational Behaviors In The Workplace, Frederick Henry Keeve

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A solution is needed to counteract violent news, Internet, and other negative media images and management behaviors in the workplace, in order to boost engagement and prosocial behaviors at work. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the attitudes of working professionals toward prosocial behaviors and employee engagement in the workplace as affected by transpersonal Hollywood films. An organization's ability to survive is directly related to empowerment and innovation. Classic films provide a gateway for transpersonal experiences that could change behavior and thoughts. Peterson and Seligman's transformational typology involving 6 character virtues and 24 strengths was the basis …

Differences Between Multimedia And Text-Based Assessments Of Emotion Management: An Exploration With The Multimedia Emotion Management Assessment (Mema), Carolyn Maccann, Filip Lievens, Nele Libbrecht, Richard D. Roberts

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

People process emotional information using visual, vocal, and verbal cues. However, emotion management is typically assessed with text based rather than multimedia stimuli. This study (N=427) presents the new multimedia emotion management assessment (MEMA) and compares it to the text-based assessment of emotion management used in the MSCEIT. The text-based and multimedia assessment showed similar levels of cognitive saturation and similar prediction of relevant criteria. Results demonstrate that the MEMA scores have equivalent evidence of validity to the text-based MSCEIT test scores, demonstrating that multimedia assessment of emotion management is viable. Furthermore, our results inform the debate as to whether …

Perceived Emotional Demands-Abilities Fit, James M. Diefendorff, Gary J. Greguras, John Fleenor

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The purposes of this paper are to introduce the concept of perceived emotional demands-abilities (ED-A) fit and develop theory about how it relates to other fit perceptions as well as employee well-being and performance outcomes. ED-A fit is defined as the perceived congruence or match between the emotional demands of the job and one's abilities to meet those demands. In two studies using occupationally diverse samples from Western and Eastern cultures, we empirically distinguished perceived ED-A fit from other fit perceptions (i.e. person-organisation, demands-abilities, needs-supplies, person-group, person-supervisor). In addition, across the two studies, we found that perceived ED-A fit accounted …

Provision Of Hospital-Based Palliative Care And The Impact On Organizational And Patient Outcomes, Marisa L. Roczen

Theses and Dissertations

Hospital-based palliative care services aim to streamline medical care for patients with chronic and potentially life-limiting illnesses by focusing on individual patient needs, efficient use of hospital resources, and providing guidance for patients, patients’ families and clinical providers toward making optimal decisions concerning a patient’s care. This study examined the nature of palliative care provision in U.S. hospitals and its impact on selected organizational and patient outcomes, including hospital costs, length of stay, in-hospital mortality, and transfer to hospice. Hospital costs and length of stay are viewed as important economic indicators. Specifically, lower hospital costs may increase a hospital’s profit …

What Are The Key Qualities And Skills Of Effective Team Coaches?, William Jacox

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and understand the key qualities and skills of effective team coaches. The results serve to educate and inform those aspiring to be organizational team coaches, those presently serving as team coaches, those developing curriculum to train team coaches, and those responsible for choosing and hiring team coaches for their organizations. Study participants were all experienced professional team coaches representing several states and a few different countries. The Delphi method was used, resulting in the emergence of consensus judgements of 15 qualities and 15 skills based on anonymous responses during multiple iterations. While …

Influencing Behavior During Planned Culture Change: A Participatory Action Research Case Study, Michael Valentine

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The study was conducted in a global, for-profit, advertising firm, which initiated a culture change effort focused culture change.The objective of the effort was to manage the negative impact of implicit bias (IB) in the workplace.This type of bias is known to influence behaviors and judgements (Amodio & Mendoza, 2010).It is hypothesized that if employees shift behavior to better understand and manage these biases in the basic work activities that are typical in any organization—like working on a team, making decisions related hiring, developing and promoting talent, and the numerous creative decisions that are typical of designing advertising campaigns—more inclusive …

A Method To My Quietness: A Grounded Theory Study Of Living And Leading With Introversion, Leatrice Oram

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Leadership scholar-practitioners must create a more sustainable, diverse, and equitable future, fostering emergence and development of resilient, competent leaders, including those who may have been previously overlooked.Leadership studies, particularly those situated in early trait and behavior paradigms, have long privileged extraverted leaders as ideal.The scholarly conversation is limited on introverted leaders; moreover, most of that literature depicts introversion as either a pathological construct associated with shyness and social anxiety, or includes introversion only by omission, as a state of deficit-of-extraversion.This study instead began with positive inquiry, framing introversion as a positive individual difference, and explored the lived experiences of introverted …

"Intonations Of Their Own Language": An Analysis Of Leadership And Resonance In Two Progressive Young-Adult-Filled Congregations In The Pacific Northwest., D. Bethan Theunissen

Dissertations

Christendom in Canada and the United States is in decline, and young adults are leaving the church in considerable numbers. This exodus is especially noticeable in mainstream religious denominations, although evangelical groups are beginning to experience a similar waning. The fastest-growing “religious” group consists of those who identify with no religion.

Simultaneously, young adults are experiencing a far longer entry process into adulthood after adolescence than those who went before them. They also experience the world as unstable and impermanent. Their needs and the church’s needs could converge but instead seem to be antithetical to each other in ways that …

Clients As Voting Board Members: A Mixed Methods Examination Of San Diego County Nonprofit Human Services Organizations, Elaine Marie Lewis

Dissertations

The literature suggests that thoughtful board composition generates more strategic and thoughtful policymaking. This study examined one aspect of board composition that is frequently cited as a source of more strategic and thoughtful policymaking: clients as voting members.

This study used descriptive and inferential statistics to examine the prevalence of, and the factors associated with clients participating as board members of human services nonprofit organizations in San Diego County. Through a review of the most recent 12 months of board meeting notes, this study also explored the level of participation of two clients on the board of directors of one …

Understanding Women Leaders In A Male-Dominated Profession: A Study Of The United States Marine Corps' Women Generals, Marianne S. Waldrop

Dissertations

Contemporary organizations are increasingly realizing that future success requires a significant shift in leadership due to globalization, flattened organizational command and control structures, rapid technology growth, and the shift from manufacturing to service industries. Specifically, current leaders and scholars have begun to recognize the importance of employee diversity within organizations, and in particular the critical need to tap into the underutilized half of the population—women. Yet, the efforts to recruit, develop or retain women has been minimal, leading to metaphors such as glass ceiling and labyrinth, which characterize the institutional, social and personal barriers women encounter when seeking high-level leadership …

Ethnic Diversity Of Boards Of U.S. Companies: Business Sustainability And Group Dynamics, Saajan Sappal

UROP Posters

Ethnic minorities are significantly underrepresented on the Board of Directors of large US firms. White males comprise nearly twice the proportion of directorships of Fortune 1000 companies as they do the total US population. Ethnic diversity in corporate governance is valued as an asset per two prominent theories: Resource Dependence theory and Agency theory. However, Ethnic diversity on the Board of Directors can also impair the group process per Status theory and constraints such as tokenism and marginalization. This paper is aimed at developing both a theoretical and empirical understanding of the value of ethnic minorities on the Board of …

An Exploration Of The Use Of Photovoice-Inspired Techniques To Facilitate Narrative Leadership In A Small Group Of Middle-Aged Women, Michelle M. Zive

Dissertations

Leadership often is defined as a persuasive relationship. Over the last two decades, narrative leadership has been viewed in the Leadership Studies literature as a source of persuasion. Narrative leaders use stories to impact others in both large-scale political and social movements, as well as in large-scale organizations. Even as this has been happening, the field also has begun to re-conceptualize leadership as a group rather than an individual process, a view of leadership sometimes characterized as shared leadership. There is limited understanding of whether narrative leadership operates in shared leadership situations and a dearth of literature about specific techniques …

A Dynamic Perspective On Diverse Teams: Moving From The Dual-Process Model To A Dynamic Coordination-Based Model Of Diverse Team Performance, Kannan Srikanth, Sarah Harvey, Randall Peterson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The existing literature on diverse teams suggests that diversity is both helpful to teams in making more information available and encouraging creativity and damaging to teams in reducing cohesion and information sharing. Thus the extant literature suggests that diversity within teams is a double-edged sword that leads to both positive and negative effects simultaneously. This literature has not, however, fully embraced the increasing calls in the broader groups literature to take account of time in understanding how groups function [e.g. Cronin, M. A., Weingart, L. R., & Todorova, G. (2011). Dynamics in groups: Are we there yet? The Academy of …

A Social Capital Perspective On Projects: Measuring The Unobservable Using Structural Equation Modeling, Sandra Sjoberg

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Project leadership requires a diverse blend of technical and behavioral skills. Researchers have focused on the technical aspects of project management, leaving a void in understanding the behavioral skills of project leadership. The purpose of this correlational study was to gain insights into the behavioral aspects of projects by understanding the social capital and knowledge integration abilities of project leaders. Nahapiet and Ghoshal's social capital definition and its structural, relational, and cognitive attributes form the basis for the social capital theory constructs used in this study. The focus of the research questions was on the relationship of social capital to …