The hospitals and their healthcare providers need to optimize simultaneously three outcomes: healthcare costs, healthcare options offered to customers, and information utilization efficiency. The adoption of electronic healthcare record (EHR) technologies is a potential managerial mechanism for balancing these outcomes. EHR offers patient management and decision support capabilities that can ameliorate health delivery outcomes for patients, doctors, and hospitals through better-informed business and care decisions. The analysis of data collected in an EHR system may lower costs and improve health care delivery (or both). In sum, it could be argued that EHR is a source of competitive advantage. Despite this prima facie appeal, many hospitals remain reluctant to adopt and implement EHR due to lack of insights into return on investment, unavailability of tested systems and data entry obstacles. To address this gap between the potential of EHR system and lack of its adoption, the purpose of this research is to investigate the role of EHR as a resource of competitive advantage for hospital. Essay 1, titled "Implementation and Adoption of EHR: A Conceptual Model based on Resource Advantage Theory", describes the antecedents and consequences of EHR adoption and implementation. Essay 2, titled "Exploring the Relationship Between Electronic Healthcare Record …

The technology for storing and using big data is evolving rapidly and those that can keep pace are likely to garner additional competitive advantages. One approach to uncovering existing practice in a manner that provides insights for building theory is the use of grounded theory. The current research employs qualitative research following a grounded theory approach to explore gap in understanding the relationship between big data (BD) and the supply chain (SC). In this study eight constructs emerged: Organizational and environmental factors, big data and supply chain analytics, alignment, data governance, big data capabilities, cost of quality, risk analysis and supply chain performance. The contribution of this research resulted in a new theoretical framework that provides researchers and practitioners with an ability to visualize the relationship between collection and use of BD and the SC. This framework provides a model for future researchers to test the relationships posited and continue to extend understanding about how BD can benefit SC practice. While it is anticipated that the proposed theoretical framework will evolve as a result of future examination and enhanced understating of the relationships shown the framework presented represents a critical first step for moving the literature and practice forward.

My aim is to design a research program that emphasizes inclusivity through empiricism rather than anecdotes and benevolent sexism. To accomplish this goal, I review and build on the work assessing the influence of fertility in the female consumer experience (FCE). Fertility, especially menstruation, has been used anecdotally for too long. This research was designed to address the gap in knowledge around the way in which women perceive advertisements. More specifically, the role fertility plays in the process women go through when assessing advertisements and offerings. Does a woman's desire to seek variety become reduced when she sees a rival endorsing the offering? If this is the case, then there is a need to find a mediating variable that can overcome this effect. Internal locus of control, the level a person feels they are in control of the outcomes in their lives, was selected as a starting point. Having a high internal LOC should buffer a person's perceptions of another as a threat. A cross-sectional design from a convenience sample of university students was used to address a series of five research questions: 1) Does fertility status influence locus of control, 2) Does fertility status influence rival assessment, 3) Does …

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine how managers' judgments from an internal auditor's recommendation are influenced by some aspects of newer data sources and the related visualizations. This study specifically examined how managers' judgments from an internal auditor's recommendation are influenced by the (1) supportiveness of non-financial data with the internal auditor's recommendation and (2) evaluability of visual representations for non-financial data used to communicate the recommendation. This was investigated in a setting where financial data does not support the internal auditor's recommendation. To test my hypotheses, I conducted an experiment that uses an inventory write-down task to examine the likelihood that a manager agrees with an internal auditor's inventory write-down recommendation. This task was selected as it requires making a prediction and both financial and newer non-financial data sources are relevant to inform this judgment. The study was conducted with MBA students who proxy for managers in organizations. Evaluability of visual representations was operationalized as the (1) proximity of financial and non-financial graphs, and (2) type of non-financial graph as requiring a length judgment or not. This dissertation contributes to accounting literature and the internal auditing profession. First, I contribute to recent experimental literature on data analytics …

Individuals vary in the level of their mental presence during interactions; some individuals are mentally present with others, while others are mired in their thoughts and emotions. Scholarly work on this area is limited, and we know very little about why some individuals display mental presence better than others. In this dissertation, I explore the concept through a series of three essays. In the first essay, I define relational mindfulness as the ability to be mentally present with others. Further, I propose that relational mindfulness has three essential features: others' focus, thought-switching, and emotional acceptance. I operationalize the scale to measure relational mindfulness and investigate its nomological network by correlating it with different constructs. Data from four different samples provide support for the three-factor structure of relational mindfulness and provide support for the relationship of relational mindfulness with related constructs. In the second essay, I explore the relevance of relational mindfulness for front-line employees by investigating the two pathways through which relational mindfulness can reduce fatigue of front-line employees. In the first pathway, I posited that relational mindfulness would decrease the intensity of surface acting of employees when their customers mistreat them, and thus reduce fatigue of employees. In the …

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 …