In this dissertation, I theorize on how gaslighting manifests in managerial and organizational settings. I discuss the process of gaslighting and how the use of various manipulation tactics manifests between people in organizations over time. I take three distinctive approaches to study this complex phenomenon. First, using a rich case study, I develop new theory to explain how one notorious child molester was able to sustain a career for decades while assaulting hundreds of children and young women. In doing so, I introduce the concept of gaslighting which previously has only been rigorously applied to intimate interpersonal relationships in domestic (e.g., at home) settings. In essay 2, I expand on the individual level theory developed in essay 1 to develop a more generalized theory of gaslighting in organizations. I situate gaslighting within a nomological net of related constructs and illustrate how gaslighting is a unique construct with different antecedents and consequences that occurs in organizations more often than it should. In my final essay, I build on one of the propositions developed in essay 2 and empirically test what antecedents are likely to influence whether or not a firm is accused of gaslighting on Twitter. Through doing so, I find …

Previous research on workplace bullying primarily focuses on two main actors – the bully and the victim – while neglecting a third actor: the bystander of the bullying. The prevalence of workplace bullying is increasing across organizations, resulting in more employees becoming subjected to the effects of workplace bullying. Furthermore, witnessing coworker-on-coworker bullying is likely to influence the relationships that the bystander has with the two coworkers involved in the bullying episode. Two areas are proposed to investigate their effect on the coworker bystander: coworker interpersonal justice and personal identification with coworkers. Coworker interpersonal justice involves the perceived fairness between coworkers, while personal identification refers to how these bystanders identify with the specific actors of the bullying event. In addition to work-related outcomes, bystanders are affected at a personal level. That is, being exposed to bullying situations causes these bystanders to alter their anxiety levels and their core affect, with core affect being a precursor to moods and emotions. In addition to the aforementioned outcomes of witnessing a coworker bullying incident, there are also contextual aspects which may influence these relationships. Personal-level factors, such as a bystander's empathy and sense of coherence (i.e., coping mechanisms), may influence the effect of …

Major changes in organizational structural paradigms have been occurring. Recent journal articles propose that the older philosophies of expanding organizations and increasing internal specialization are no longer viable means to enhance competitiveness as espoused in earlier journal articles. Downsizing, rightsizing, and business process reengineering have all been used as methods of accomplishing organizational work force reduction (OWFR) and enhancing organizational posture. It has been established that as organizations grow, specialization increases. Causes for OWFR have not been established nor have effects upon structure been studied. Previous structural factor studies have focused upon organizations engaged in end-game strategies done during periods of internal and economic growth. This study evaluates the impacts of OWFR and its relationship to the structural factor of specialization during a non-munificent economic period. Three independent variables, dis-integration, change in the number of employees, and change in technology, were used as measures to determine whether specialization decreased when organizations downsized. The dependent variable, specialization, was obtained through a pre-tested questionnaire. The three independent variables were obtained using the Compustat data base as a secondary source of information. The Compustat data was verified using data from Compact Disclosure. Questionnaires were mailed to fifty-one fully integrated oil companies. Forty were …

Due to changes in workforce structure, household structure and the nature of jobs, today's working adults face the challenge of balancing their work and life. However, employees do not only passively react to the incompatible demands from work and life - they are active agents who make decisions about their own total life. For example, individuals make decisions about the amount of energy that they spend on work/life (WL) activities. Thus, I write three essays to understand the antecedents and consequences of employees' personal resource allocation decisions. In the first essay, I study the decision itself. That is, I identify and examine four profiles of employees' WL behavioral involvement. The studied behaviors include job behavioral involvement, organizational citizenship behavior, and life involvement. In Essay 2, I examine the antecedent of the behavioral involvement decisions – WL value, which is expressed as centrality, importance, and priority. Although an individual's behavior is argued to be directed by value, it cannot be fully understood without considering the context. Thus, I examine the influences of three external factors, including financial pressure, job demands, and perceived organizational supportive culture, on the value-behavioral involvement relationship. In Essay 3, I focus on the consequences of individuals being …

While some individuals experience their work as meaningful, others, with the same job, do not. The purpose of this dissertation is to answer the following question: Why do different individuals, with the same job, view the meaningfulness of their work in conflicting ways? I draw on terror management theory and generativity theory to answer this question by testing the relationship between death awareness and meaningful work. The bulk of academic work concerning meaningful work focuses on its outcomes and few scholars have explained the antecedents of meaningful work. This study aims to extend empirical work of the relationship between death awareness and meaningful.

The purpose of this study was to test for a relationship between locus of control and participation in strategic decision making. The research model included the variables of gender, locus of control, job-work involvement and preference for participative environment as possible influences on team member participation in strategic decision making. Another feature of the model was the proposed three-way interaction effect on member participation. This interaction included member job-work involvement, member preference for participation and leader locus of control.

There is currently an increasing trend among the American working population to voluntarily join the gig economy. New terms like the gig economy, sharing economy, internet freelancing, and eLancing have been created to understand this emerging trend among today's workforce. There is a small, yet highly relevant, body of scholarly literature in human resource management that is focused specifically on the eLancing economy as a subset of the gig economy. The purpose of this research is to acknowledge and contribute to this timely literature, which has adequately recognized the enormous potential of this new trend of working. Grounded in the psychology of working theory, a theoretical typology of eLancers is proposed based on the workers' level of volition to be able to choose eLancing as their employment. Further, various predictors such as demographics and personality characteristics were explored on the basis of which eLancers can be classified into types. The study also proposes that different types of eLancers differ in their attitudinal and behavioral work and life outcomes. Prior research has shown that career decisions made by individuals with high work volition relate to higher levels of overall well-being. Hence, classifying eLancers on the basis of their varying levels of …

Overall my dissertation work tries to capture a holistic view of the various complex interactions that occur in technology development, implementation, adoption and diffusion, in the context of three industries by examining issues that arise due to regulation of technology. Essay 1 focuses on the social media industry, which is in the early stage of the industrial life cycle, and is the foci of government attention for its ill effect on society. Results from the study (N= 647 employed adults in the US) supported hypotheses related to the antecedents and outcomes of platform utilization in the context of the three regulation dimensions. Essay 2 focuses on the automotive industry, which is in the growth stage of the industrial life cycle. Here the focus is on electric vehicles (EV) transitioning from the niches to the main market. Results from the longitudinal study (N = 429) support the moderating role of political activism on innovation capability of manufacturers and presence of ancillary services in the diffusion of different types of electric vehicles in the US market. Essay 3 focuses on the US healthcare industry, reflecting mature stage of industrial life cycle, yet also characterized with high cost and fragmentation of service. The …

Individuals with different personal demographics and job-based factors have different attitudes and behaviors, which can influence their levels of commitment to their organizations. These differences in organizational commitment increase as their cultural backgrounds differ significantly. Personal demographics and job-related factors are reliable predictors of employees' commitment to their employing organizations. The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate if there is a difference in the level of employees' commitment to Saudi petrochemical companies on the basis of differences in their personal demographics and job-related factors.

Insufficient literature exists in the area of incremental and revolutionary change to explain and predict the convergence and reorientation phenomena happening in organizations. The process of strategic reorientation involves the internal organizational complexities of fast-paced (within two years) changes in competitive strategy as a necessary condition coupled with changes in at least two of organization structure, power distribution, and control systems. Antecedent forces believed to influence the discontinuous change process include industry sales turbulence, structural inertia/firm size, firm past financial performance, CEO turnover, top management team turnover, management team heterogeneity, management environmental awareness, and external attributions for negative financial performance. Punctuated equilibrium was the foundational theory for this study in which a strategic reorientation model published in Strategic Management Journal was reconstructed. The research question was: What seem to be the significant time-based antecedent forces or conditions that lead to strategic reorientation? The study used two hierarchical logit regression models to analyze data gathered from COMPUSTAT PC Industrial Data Base and Compact Disclosure (CD-ROM) over the years 1987-1993 from the turbulent computer software and stable furniture industries. Qualitative data were found in 10-K reports and President's Letters in Annual Reports filed with the SEC and available on Laserdisclosure. The sample, …

U.S. companies have implemented just-in-time purchasing (JITP) and total quality management (TQM) techniques to improve their global competitive position. The lack of empirical research on these techniques with firm's performance is the reason to explain further their strategic values as management innovations in different types and sizes of organizations. From a theoretical foundation on the relations between innovation, strategy and performance, the following research questions were generated: (1) Are JITP and TQM positively related to the firm's performance?, (2) Do the combination/sequence of implementing JITP and TQM have a relation with the firm's performance?, and (3) Is the relationship between JITP and TQM to the firm's performance moderated by any of industry type, firm size,firm type and/or duration of JITP and TQM techniques? A model is developed and hypotheses are proposed. A survey is mailed to firms operating in the U.S. that have implemented one or both techniques. Questionnaire items measuring JITP, TQM, performance, and moderating variables - industry type, firm size,firm type, and duration of JIT purchasing and TQM techniques— are either developed or borrowed from other studies. From rosters of the American Society for Quality Control and the National Association of Purchasing Management, 1884 target respondents result in …

Job performance has historically been divided into two subsets, that which is prescribed and that which is discretionary. Further, discretionary workplace behavior has typically been described as either helpful or ethical (i.e. organizational citizenship behavior) or harmful and unethical (i.e. workplace deviance behavior) with behavior that is both helpful and unethical rarely discussed. I term this lesser discussed type of discretionary workplace behavior unethical prosocial behavior and define it as discretionary actions that are intended to benefit a specific referent outside the self, either an individual or a group, that are illegal and/or morally inappropriate to larger society. In addition to defining unethical prosocial behavior, this paper places the behavior in an organizing framework of discretionary workplace behaviors and tests several hypotheses regarding unethical prosocial behavior. The hypotheses address three primary research questions. First, are there contextual conditions that make it more likely that a person will engage in unethical prosocial behavior? Second, does the nature of the relationship between the actor and the beneficiary make unethical prosocial behavior more or less likely? And third, are there individual characteristics that serve to either constrain or enhance the likelihood that and individual will engage in unethical prosocial behavior? A 2 x …

This study attempted to determine if the theories of reasoned action (TRA) and planned behavior (TPB), as well as a relatively new construct called offender empathy, could help to predict the intentions of small business executives (SBEs) to comply with the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.

Corporate entrepreneurship, its correlates, and its impact on the global presence of firms were examined through 439 United States companies, represented in all geographic realms of the world. Executives responded to a lengthy survey of organizational characteristics which enabled corporate entrepreneurship and its dimensions--innovation, proactiveness, and risk taking--to be examined in firms with varying global presence. Risk factors were assigned to countries and realms from the averaged rankings of three published risk-forecasting services. Maximum risk country, maximum risk geographic realm, average risk of countries, average risk of geographic realms, number of countries, and number of geographic realms, were differentially weighted to equalize scales and combined into a composite global presence scale. Strategy-related variables--competitive aggressiveness and adaptiveness--dominated other organizational attributes in explaining corporate entrepreneurship, and corporate entrepreneurship dominated other variables in explaining global presence, according to correlation and multiple regression analysis. Although no variables correlated strongly with measures of global presence, corporate entrepreneurship consistently had significant positive correlations across all six measures of global presence and the composite global presence scale. In forward stepwise multiple regressions, corporate entrepreneurship was the first variable entered into the prediction equation for five of the six measures of global presence; only when the dependent variable …

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationships between stress and outcomes including organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), job satisfaction, and burnout in high-risk occupations. Moreover, how personality, emotions, coping, and leadership influence this relationship is investigated. Data were collected from 379 officers in 9 police organizations located in the Southern and Southwest United States. The primary research question addressed within this dissertation is: What is the relationship between stress and behavioral and affective outcomes in high-risk occupations as governed by coping, leadership, and crisis? The majority of the hypothesized relationships were supported, and inconsistencies center on methodological and theoretical factors. Findings indicate that occupational stressors negatively influence individuals in high-risk occupations. Moreover, crisis events exacerbate these influences. The use of adaptive coping strategies is most effective under conditions of low stress, but less so under highly stressful circumstances. Similarly, transformational leader behaviors most effectively influence how individuals in high-risk occupations are affected by lower, but not higher levels of stress. Profiles of personality characteristics and levels of emotional dissonance also influence the chosen coping strategies of those working in high-risk occupations. Prescriptively, it is important to understand the influences among the variables assessed in this study, because negative …