There is a dual accountability accepted by top executives of large multi-business firms (MBFs) to both consistently deliver performance in the short term and cultivate scalable opportunities for future growth, which requires that they be able to implement both evolutionary and revolutionary change. Researchers have defined this capability as organizational ambidexterity (OA) and deemed it a crucial requirement for every organization. Literature in the field of organizational ambidexterity (OA) describes the need to simultaneously orchestrate attention and activities along two dimensions of ambidexterity: exploitation and exploration. This dissertation peels back the layers in MBFs to generate a deeper understanding of OA in the MBF, by answering three research questions, using a mixed method approach-qualitative study followed by quantitative study: (1) What is an appropriate specification of OA in an MBF? (2) Are there differences in exploration and exploitation across the three levels within the MBF? and (3) Is there a relationship between exploration and exploitation and MBF performance at each of the three levels within the MBF? Qualitative Study 1 was conducted in December 2017, to investigate and confirm the appropriateness of the three-level operationalization of OA in MBFs. The data comprised eleven semi-structured interviews with senior executives that serve …

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 …

This study examines the recovery process of businesses in Homestead, Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The goal of this study was to determine which organizational characteristics were useful in predicting the level of physical damage and the length of time to reopen for affected businesses. The organizational characteristics examined were age, size, pre-disaster gross sales, ownership of the business location, membership in the Chamber of Commerce, and property insurance. Three-hundred and fifty businesses in the area were surveyed. Because of the complexity of the recovery process, the disaster experiences of businesses were examined using three paradigms, organizational ecology, contingency theory, and configuration theory. Models were developed and tested for each paradigm. The models used the contextual variables to explain the outcome variables; level of physical damage and length of time to reopen. The SIC was modified so that it could form the framework for a taxonomic examination of the businesses. The organizations were examined at the level of division, class, subclass, and order. While the taxa and consistent levels of physical damage, the length of time needed to reopen varied greatly. The homogeneous level of damage within the groups is linked to similarity in assets and transformation processes. When …

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) evolved as alternative governance structures for firms seeking to combine resources with other firms, access larger markets, or acquire strategic assets. In spite of managers’ enthusiasm about the practice, studies show mixed results regarding post-acquisition performance of acquiring firms. The impact of acquisitions on the performance of acquiring firms has therefore remained inconclusive. A few reasons for this have been suggested and recent meta-analytic research efforts indicate that studies in M&A may have ignored variables that have significant effects on post-acquisition performance. In a bid to extend the literature on M&A and identify cogent variables that impact on acquisition performance, this dissertation draws on social network theory to advance a proposition for the value-of-ties. This was done by examining the impact of directorate interlocks on acquisitions specifically and organizational strategy in general. A non-experimental cross-sectional study of 98 interlocked directorate companies simultaneously involved in acquisitions was conducted. Several multiple regression analyses were conducted and the results obtained suggest that there is a positive linear relationship between director interlocks and post-acquisition performance and that to some extent this relationship is moderated by acquisition experience. The study also showed that director interlocks have a negative linear relationship with …

Technologists predict that electronic information dissemination will create a paperless work environment. In spite of such predictions, paper-based internal communication will remain the primary medium for disseminating information in organizations for decades to come. However, electronic technology will have an impact on paper information production that may be more profound than changes following word processing's introduction. Previously unavailable for everyday production to enhance word meaning, certain graphic techniques now can be used to access readers' preconditioned symbol meanings to increase comprehension of routine correspondence and information internalization. This quasi-experimental field study examines interactions among laser-printer graphic treatment and communication variables as contributors to explaining variance in comprehension. Set Multiple Regression/Correlation analysis identifies significant variance explained by conditional relationships between near-typeset quality text and readers' self-interest and between near-typeset quality text and text's readability. The conditional relationship of near-typeset quality and self-interest shows increase in reader comprehension at a greater rate than the comprehension increase rate attributed to the reader's self-interest increase alone. This suggests that conditional relationships may be accessing an internal judgment process interpreting greater self-interest in near-typeset printed text. The conditional relationship between near-typeset quality and readability reveals that at more difficult reading levels comprehension is greater for …

This empirical study is aimed at understanding the patterns of relationships among the organization structure of self-managed work teams in terms of three sets of constructs: 1. organization-based self-esteem; 2. consequent behaviors of intrinsic work motivation, general job satisfaction, organization citizenship, and organization commitment; and 3. performance. The primary significance of this study is that it adds to the pool of empirical knowledge in the field of self-managed work team research. The significance of this study to practicing managers is that it can help them make better-informed decisions on the use of the self-managed work team structure. This study was a sample survey composed of five standardized questionnaires using a five-point Likert-type scale, open-ended questions, and demographic questions. Unstructured interviews supplemented the structured survey and for means of triangulation of results. The variables were analyzed using regression analysis for the purpose of path analysis. The site was a manufacturing plant structured around self-managed work teams. The population was full-time, first-line production employees.