This work provides an alternative theory of gendered consumption that explains chronic and situational shifts in consumers' preferences for masculine, feminine, and androgynous choices, beyond the effects of gender identities.

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 …

Through the use of multiple methodologies and analytical approaches, this dissertation combines (1) sales control; (2) call center service; and (3) motivational theory to extend sales control literature beyond its current state, to consider the conflicting motivational perspectives an inside sales agent has to experience. To achieve this unification, this dissertation consists of three essays intended to: (1) identify the influence of autonomous and controlled motivation on operational sales outcome controls and performance; (2) explore the influence these motivators have on sales controls and sales performance; and, (3) understand the impact of autonomous and controlled motivation on sales agent tenure.