The purpose of this three-essay dissertation was to expand knowledge and theory regarding soft systems methodologies (SSMs) and data visualization approaches in business, engineering, and other social sciences. The first essay depicts a bibliometric analysis study of the historic impacts of SSM from 1980-2018 on business, engineering, and other social sciences fields. This study found 285 articles that described or employed SSM for research and included outcomes such as top SSM authors, author citation impacts, common dissemination outlets, time-bound distribution of publications, and other relevant findings. This study provided a picture of who, what, why, when, and where SSM has had the greatest impact on academic thought and practice. The second essay presents research on the academic impact of Systemigrams, an associated data visualization approach, finding examples of conceptual or research development that employed Systemigrams to depict complex problem situations. Recommendations for improvement of designing these data visualizations to increase their field use resulted from this study. The final essay leverages a selection of the articles as use cases to produce a grounded theory study to identify phenomena that arose from the use of SSM for operations and firm strategy research. This study identified two broad themes including (i) scope, …

Recent increases in stock repurchases among U.S. corporations coupled with a historically low cost of debt since the Global Financial Crisis has created media speculation that firms in recent years are paying for their expanding share buyback programs with debt. Repurchasing stock by increasing leverage, instead of using internal funds, implies that managers may speculate on current low interest rate environments at the expense of shareholders. Recent studies find that stock repurchases are associated with reductions in future firm employment and investments such as capital expenditures and research and development expenses. This study expands on prior studies by evaluating how debt-financed stock repurchases affect firm investment, investigating the likelihood of these repurchases in low interest rate environments and assessing the effects on firm value. Results confirm that, in recent years, debt-financed repurchases have increased substantially and the probability of debt-financed repurchases increases in the presence of low interest rates. This relationship is especially pronounced in the years following the Global Financial Crisis. Debt-financed repurchases are associated with small reductions in firm investment; however, these reductions are significantly less after adjusting for industry conditions. Finally, there is little evidence that the method of financing repurchases affects firm value nor does it …

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 …

Corporate corruption is a widespread phenomenon that persists in the functioning of both public and private companies of differing size, performance, industry, and national origin. As it generates negative effects both within and outside the organization, corporate corruption has been the subject of scholarly research. Yet, despite attempts to understand its antecedents and consequences, companies continue to struggle to eliminate corruption in their business practices. Thus, the overarching research question for this dissertation is "Why do companies continue engaging in corruption?" To answer this research question, I focused on the topic of organizational corruption control, i.e., a set of mechanisms that purposefully target the prevention of corrupt practices within an organization. Specifically, I investigated the trident of organizational corruption control via its effects and implications on three constructs - corporate social performance, opportunity attractiveness of organizational corruption and corporate corruption recidivism. Using distinct methodologies, I examined corporate corruption control in three separate studies to address 1) the effect of corruption control on the opportunity attractiveness of organizational corruption 2) the effect of corruption control on corporate social performance and 3) the implication of ineffective corruption control on organizational corruption recidivism. Based on interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives and several secondary data sources, …

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 …

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.