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 …

This study tests whether criteria variance in five job-facet satisfactions and performance rating explained by selected demographic and personality variables is significantly greater than by the selected demographic variables. This study offers a useful procedure for treating job-satisfaction data and predictor variables and measures the significance in predictability between criteria variance accounted for by variables not generally found in personnel files and those usually found there. It was found that job satisfactions and performance rating differ both in terms of predictability and functional relationships with Predictor Sets.

This study examined the effectiveness of strategic planning systems in strategy formulation in a changing business environment. It also investigated differences in the designs, processes, levels of top management involvement, and perceived levels of achievement and performance of the strategic planning systems of companies classified as leaders, challengers, followers, and nichers in the electronic computing equipment community. For the most part no significant correlations were found between perceived levels of achievement and performance of planning systems and organizational performance measured by financial ratios. However, significant correlations were found between perceived level of achievement and performance and the design, process and level of top management involvement in the strategic planning process.

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of determining and analyzing the problems of human resources created in Iran. These problems are rooted deeply and stream from Iranian history, culture, and social environment. The main purposes of this study are three. The first is to determine and analyze problems of human resources created in Iran, including social environment, education, and employment. The second is to study and evaluate the manpower policy of Iranian economic development. The third is to apply human resource development in planning, educating, training, and developing the human resources required for the economic development of Iran. Based on the reports and recommendations of the three research groups, a detailed plan and strategies are written to develop Iran's human resources.

The purpose of this research was to develop an empirical model which could be used to predict job tenure for sewing machine operators in a large garment factory. Although the model did accurately predict tenure in each of five scoring ranges, the results did not meet the level of significance set forth in the hypothesis. It can be fairly stated that the results were trending in the right direction, but were not statistically significant.

Prior research has examined entrepreneurial businesses spatially located in the physical or offline context; however, recent radical information and technological breakthroughs allow entrepreneurs to launch their businesses completely online. The growth of the online business industry has been phenomenal. Predictions for worldwide online sales estimate it to reach $2 trillion in 2016. Virtual entrepreneurship refers to the pursuit and exploitation of opportunities via virtual platforms. Web 2.0 cybermediaries offer web-based platforms that function similarly to traditional intermediaries in a virtual setting and minimize barriers to entry for virtual entrepreneurial firms. The use of such cybermediaries with increasing success suggests an implicit shift in the dominant logic that typically underpins the functioning of entrepreneurial firms operating in the physical world. In this relatively uncharted territory, marked by a focus on profit, cooperation, collaboration and community, three ideal-type institutional logics i.e. Market, Corporation and Community, blend together. It is posited that a Virtual Entrepreneurial Logic guides the norms, behaviors, and practices of entrepreneurial firms operating via these virtual platforms. This raises the question whether the blending of three ideal-type logics leads to the existence of different antecedents of performance. A business model antecedent addressing the economic dimension, a community antecedent addressing the …

Prior research on incumbent firm response to radical technological innovation identifies firm, technology, and environmental factors associated with incumbents’ performance after a technology shift. What remains unexplored are factors affecting choice of response made before a technological shift occurs. Such ex ante choices are important intermediate outcomes affecting long-term performance outcomes. Competitive considerations may be influential inputs in choice processes because technological innovation is often related to competitive strategy. The resulting research question for this study is: What role do competitive considerations play in incumbent firms’ ex ante strategic choices in response to potentially radical technological innovations? Findings from a survey of key informants in the electronics industry whose firms face a potential technological disruption (n=120) suggest that incumbents’ response choices are affected by competitor-related orientations and by perceptions of relative strength of their strategic assets. Limited support is found for a moderating effect of perceptions of the competitive environment. The results of this study extend theory on incumbent response to radical technological change by shedding light on the influence of competitor interdependence. Findings also suggest the importance of strategic choice as an intermediate variable in understanding incumbents’ long-term performance. Research examining choice factors at varied stages of a technology’s …

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 …

In the last three decades, strategic management scholars have explored the organization’s need to reconfigure its capabilities to leverage opportunities in a changing environment. The first objective of this study was to identify the underlying elements of the managerial processes of dynamic capabilities, and to offer a reconceptualization of the dynamic capabilities construct. The second objective of this investigation was to determine how the reconceptualized dynamic capabilities construct could influence the alignment of ordinary capabilities. Findings from this investigation indicate that organizational processes and managerial processes are unique components of dynamic capabilities. In addition, these organizational processes were found to be significantly and positively correlated with the alignment of ordinary capabilities. Furthermore, managerial processes were found to moderate the relationship between organizational processes and one type of ordinary capability alignment (i.e. innovation-operations capability alignment). Taken together, the findings of this study support the notion that dynamic capabilities are context specific, and that understanding how they influence the organization’s ability to change is complex. The developments and findings in this study offer a reconceptualized and empirically tested framework for the capability alignment process, thereby providing a more comprehensive picture of the underlying processes.

The purpose of this study was to develop a probabilistic model that could be used by petroleum refiners to evaluate the economic potential of refinery capital investment proposals. The following two requirements were placed on the development at the outset: (1) that the model use linear programming to simulate refinery operations; and (2) that the model keep computer time within reasonable bounds. A probabilistic model was developed that requires the following steps for its application: (1) use linear programming to simulate both the operations of the existing refinery and the operations assuming that the investment is made; (2) select two variables that can be treated as probabilistic variables and assign either a theoretical or a subjective probability distribution to represent future values for the two variables; (3) develop return on investment interpolation data by computing a return on investment for all pair combinations of three tenth year values for each of the two probabilistic variables; (4) develop a return on investment distribution by selecting values at random from the two probability distributions and interpolating among the interpolation data to obtain return on investment data; (5) interpret the return on investment distribution. The model was applied to an actual refining situation …

This dissertation examines the relationship between computer technology and management science and changes in the role of profit planning within the commercial banking system of the U.S.A. The objective of the study is to develop a generalized profit-planning model which employs the existing decision processes to create pro-forma financial statements for a commercial bank. The study concentrated on the 300 largest commercial banks (ranked by deposits as of December 31, 1969) of the Federal Reserve System. These particular banks held the greatest potential for having a Planning Department, the computing capability necessary for problem solving, and a Management Science Department actively employing management science techniques to profit-planning problems. The research for the dissertation included an in-depth study of secondary sources, an interrogation of commercial bank executives and a detailed questionnaire which was submitted to each of the 300 largest banks. Sponsorship for the Financial Planning Questionnaire was obtained from the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. The sponsorship helped obtain a large sample return (in excess of 50.0 percent) and thereby increased the statistical reliability of the results of the study.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of examining the association between personality as measured by a standard scale and the extent of projection in a social perception role projection task. The investigation assumes that perceptions regarding environment are systematically related to choice behavior. In this regard, the research examines those specific dimensions of personality that facilitate or inhibit social perception. Chapter I presents an introduction to the problem. Additionally, the background of the problem, purpose of the study, the hypotheses, the limits of the study, and the assumptions are given. Chapter II is the methodology. The nature of the subjects, the procedure, the research instrument and the methodological steps used for analysis of data are explained. Results of the investigation are given in Chapter III, while Chapter IV presents a discussion of the results, including the conclusions, implications of the study, and suggestions for further research.

One of the newest organizational developments in the junior college world is the multicampus junior college system. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a difference in the understanding of authority relationships between chief district administrators and chief campus administrators in multicampus junior college systems. This information should be valuable to junior college administrators who are now, or will be, faced with the problem of clarifying this authority relationship in daily activities and future planning. The semantic differential was the measuring instrument used in this study. Its use required that a questionnaire be developed to include functions to be differentiated against a set of corresponding bi-polar adjectives. The functions selected were evaluated by several individuals experienced in multicampus junior college administration. The nine pairs of bi-polar descriptive adjectives selected were from general adjectives previous factorial studies showed to have high factor loadings on either the evaluative, potency, or activity dimensions of connotative meaning.

The purpose of the study is to measure satisfactions for United States retired military officers and to determine if there is a relationship between retrospective military career satisfactions and current second career or retired satisfactions. Hypothesis I states that there is a positive relationship between a retrospective measure of an officer's military career satisfactions and his current second career satisfactions. Hypothesis II states that there is a positive relationship between a retrospective measure of an officer's military career satisfactions and his retirement satisfactions. The first conclusion is that Hypotheses I and II are supported. Pearson coefficients of correlation indicate that a positive relationship exists for each hypothesis. For Hypothesis I coefficients range from .040 for pay to .270 for co-workers. All are significant at the .01 level except pay, and there is no evidence that the pay coefficient is statistically significant. The coefficients of correlations supporting Hypothesis II range from .164 for work to .415 for finances. All coefficients are significant at the .01 level. All distributions are skewed. The skewness and possible homogeniety of the sample may in all probability account for the low values of the coefficients. The second conclusion is that military officers receive greater satisfactions from …

Much has been done to promote the use of management techniques designed to develop human resources within the business enterprise. Unfortunately, most of these procedures are applied after the individual has become an employee of the firm. Similar management techniques are needed for the proper recruitment and placement of each new employee. A major source of employee dissatisfaction and turnover lies in the incapacity of some jobs to satisfy the aspirations and job values of certain types of employees. Therefore, one key to employment stability for the college graduate is the relative compatibility between his job values and the capacity of the job to provide fulfillment for those aspirations. Much needs to be done in the areas of predicting the job values of a college senior and matching the individual graduate with that job which is most apt to provide a productive and meaningful career. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between grade point averages, job values, and career decisions as perceived by the Ma3 1973, graduating seniors of the College of Business Administration at North Texas State University, their professors, and their employment recruiters. The students provided background data such as grade point average, SAT …

The latest surge of corporate mergers has been characterized by a steadily increasing rate of conglomerate combinations. It would appear that one of the prime motivating factors in conglomerate merger is a firm belief in the principle of "synergism," or the mutually cooperating action of separate substances taken together to produce an effect greater than that of any component taken alone. It would also appear that in such instances wherein there is no direct relationship in regard to raw material source, product development, production technology, or marketing channels, the principle of synergism is not automatic, but must be implemented by appropriate management action. The hypothesis of the study is that the goal of achieving synergism through centrality of management influence has not yet become a reality in conglomerate business organizations as a group. It is the purpose of the study to investigate the degree of centralized management development in a number of management functions and relate this development to success in selected performance areas.

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 …

Managers are coming under increasing pressure from a wide array of stakeholders to improve the environmental performance of their firms while still achieving financial performance objectives. One of the most researched questions in the business and the natural environment (B&NE) literature is whether it pays to be green. Despite more than three decades of research, scholars have been unable to clearly answer this question. The purpose of this dissertation was to attempt to identify the antecedents that lead to increased, firm-level environmental performance and the conditions in which firms are then able to profit from enhanced environmental performance. First, I assessed three intra-organizational factors of top management teams (i.e. female representation, concern for non-financial stakeholders, and risk-seeking propensity) that theory indicated are associated with increased corporate environmental performance (CEP). Theory also leads us to believe that top management teams with these attributes should perform better in dynamic settings, so I tested to see if industry dynamism moderates these relationships. Second, I then examined industry-level forces that theory indicates would moderate the relationship between CEP and corporate financial performance (CFP). These moderating forces include industry profitability, industry dynamism, and the degree of industry environmental regulation. Hypotheses were tested using panel data …

Organizations have begun to focus heavily on diversity. As a result, organizations spend time and resources creating diversity policies and investing extensively in diversity training programs. While an abundance of research exists on demographic diversity, research has just begun to incorporate employees’ perceptions of diversity as an influential factor affecting organizationally relevant employee outcomes. Employees are a crucial reference in understanding whether organizations benefit from engaging in such actions. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of diversity climate on employees’ organizational identification. Furthermore, I investigate how organizational identification mediates the relationship between diversity climate perceptions and outcomes including turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior. I refine our understanding by identifying personal characteristics that influence the diversity climate (PDC) – organizational identification (OID) relationship. This research offers several contributions to management literature and scholars as well as practitioners. First this study empirically examines the relationship between PDC and OID. This connection is important as it identifies the psychological mechanism linking PDC to subsequent outcomes as well as showing how positive climate perception can influence an employee’s sense of belonging. The second contribution is the in-depth identification of personal characteristics and their role in this relationship …

Social innovations are solutions related to humanistic needs and the betterment of mankind with the intent of creating social value and eventual societal level changes. Social innovation therefore broadens traditional views of innovation to include processes of societal transformations and human behaviors. These social innovations are becoming more commonplace across all sectors, including capital markets. Private equity and venture capital firms in the capital markets sector engage in social innovation by investing capital with the goal of delivering both economic and social value. Despite the critical importance of venture capital (VC) in the success of social innovations through socially responsible investing, there is a paucity of research in understanding the factors that affect the performance of these social VC firms. This research gap is addressed by asking the following primary research question: What is the role of strategic and structural factors in the performance of socially innovative venture capital firms? The firm level research is theoretically based on the well-established design school. This framework highlights the overarching importance of strategy and structure in the accomplishment of firm goals. In the context of the venture capital industry, it was hypothesized that certain unique strategic and structural factors (i.e., stage of investment, …

Laboratory research was performed to understand leadership by attempting to link EEG baseline frequency patterns with data from the Leadership Opinion Questionnaire (LOQ) assessment survey. Research began with 293 right-handed males, 18 to 26 years-old, who completed the LOQ. Based on their scores, 61 subjects, grouped by the Ohio State Leadership Quadrants, were tested using brain-mapping technology.

This work collected four years of financial data from an employee-owned firm and a traditionally-owned firm from the same industry. The data were then organized to provide measures of three dimensions of corporate performance: (1) employee turnover, (2) productivity, and (3) profitability. Based upon a review of the literature, employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) are reported to enhance corporate performance after their adoption. Additionally, ESOPs are purported to perform better than traditionally-owned companies. This dissertation developed hypotheses to ascertain whether or not the particular ESOP used in this study conformed to these expectations. The first set of three hypotheses was tested using multiple regression techniques to determine if the ESOP experienced a reduction in turnover, an improvement in productivity, and an increase in profitability following its conversion to employee-ownership. The results of the regressions found that there was no incremental significance. There was no improvement noted in the performance of the ESOP firm. Another component of this investigation was to determine whether improvements in corporate performance were temporary or permanent phenomena. This portion of the research was rendered superfluous when no improvements were available for analysis. The final question that was examined was whether the ESOP would demonstrate better performance …

The organizational effectiveness and strategic management areas of organizational theory are the general focus of this study. Organizational effectiveness is defined as the extent to which an organization by the use of certain resources fulfills its objectives without depleting its resources and without placing undue strain upon its members and/or society. Strategic management is defined as an array of processes which leads to the development of an effective approach to achieve the organization's objectives. Little agreement appears to exist on how to evaluate organizational effectiveness and to what extent strategic management impacts organizational effectiveness. This is the problem this study addressed. This study presents an extensive review of the literature, formulates some syntheses and utilizes a questionnaire to gather pertinent data. The sample of respondents consisted of a group of key administrators from all the Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States. The questionnaire had a ninety percent response rate. This study was primarily a correlation study which emphasized the perceptions of the respondents regarding the elements and/or processes of strategic management and the concepts of organizational effectiveness. The Chi-Square and Spearman rank order tests were utilized for statistical measures. The analysis of data revealed any significant relationships between …

The purposes of this study were: (1) to present data resulting from an analysis of the ninety-seven published grievance-arbitration awards involving issues of racial discrimination occurring between April 1, 1974, and December 31, 1980? and (2) to determine from the data how labor arbitrators have reacted to Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36 (1974) . The Supreme Court held that labor arbitration was a "comparatively inappropriate" forum for the resolution of employment discrimination disputes. However, the Court said that an arbitral award could be "accorded great weight" by a lower court when certain relevant factors are present in an award. The cases were analyzed to determine the extent to which arbitrators responded to the factors set forth in the Gardner-Denver decision.