Team-based management is a popular contemporary method of redesigning jobs in order to more effectively utilize the human potential of employees. The use of such management techniques should result in increased satisfaction and team commitment; however, many research studies have failed to demonstrate increases in affective outcomes on the part of the employee. The research question examined in this study is, "What specific job dimensions and situational factors result in higher levels of satisfaction and team commitment?" The Job Characteristics Model (Hackman & Oldham, 1975) provided a basis for this study. The model was designed for individual contributors and has not been extensively used in team research. As expected it was found that within a team-based environment higher levels of the five core job dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and job feedback were associated with increased satisfaction and team commitment. Organization-based self-esteem was found to mediate the relationship between the five core job dimensions and the affective outcome variables. Contrary to expectations, however, it was found that consultative team members experienced higher levels of satisfaction and commitment than substantive team members. In addition, consultative team members reported higher levels of two core job dimensions, skill variety …

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.

Individuals with different personal demographics and job-based factors have different attitudes and behaviors, which can influence their levels of commitment to their organizations. These differences in organizational commitment increase as their cultural backgrounds differ significantly. Personal demographics and job-related factors are reliable predictors of employees' commitment to their employing organizations. The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate if there is a difference in the level of employees' commitment to Saudi petrochemical companies on the basis of differences in their personal demographics and job-related factors.

The main research question pertains to the relationship between time-based manufacturing competence and business performance: Is there a positive relationship between time-based manufacturing competence and business performance. The objective of the study, therefore, is to examine the relationship between time -based manufacturing competence and business performance.

This study is an examination of the hypothesis that selected contemporary American novels offer vivid illustrations of modern problems and practices of management as seen in business and industry. Too often, university management courses treat management processes as isolated cases in limited and static settings. Novelists, on the other hand, treat these same processes in a broader context and often deal quite subtly and perceptively with everything from the mammoth corporation to the single proprietorship. Students proposing to become businessmen, therefore, should benefit from this novelistic perspective so frequently overlooked.

This research is a systematic, in depth empirical test of the strong form of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) using the dual-fund industry as the research subject. Unlike most strong-form EMH research, this study deals with a small, homogeneous sector of the investment company industry with a comparable origin date. To obtain homogeneity of the research subjects, the sample size is necessarily small (7), thus, making it difficult to find statistically significant results. In general, portfolio performance is negatively correlated with variability in measures of portfolio characteristics such as the major mix, common stock categories, portfolio turnover, etc. The better-performing dual funds were more consistently managed while the lower-performing companies had significant and sometimes frequent changes in portfolio policies. In line with the efficient market hypothesis, "passive" management, i.e., low turnover, few changes in major mix or common stock composition, shows better results in the dual-fund industry from inception through 1973.

Within the past two decades U.S. companies have experienced increased competition from foreign companies. In an effort to combat this competition many U.S. companies focused on quality as a solution to the problem. Researchers agree this emphasis on quality systems has changed the way many managers conduct business. Yet, no studies have identified which components of world-class quality systems, if any, contribute most to changes in performance. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate three research questions pertaining to world-class quality systems: (1) What are the components of world-class quality systems? (2) Does a relationship exist between world-class quality system components and improved organizational performance? (3) Which world-class quality system components contribute most to changes in performance? The theoretical foundation for investigating these relationships is developed from Galbraith's (1977) information processing model of organization design. An extensive literature review resulted in the identification of seven components common to world-class quality systems: management involvement, customer involvement, employee involvement, supplier involvement, product/service design, process management, and continuous improvement. The literature suggests implementation of these components leads to changes in performance in such areas as productivity, throughput time, and quality output. A cross-sectional field study was used to gather data to …

The research question addressed by the study asks, "Is international integration strategic and departmental structural fit a predictor of performance in U.S.-based, single-business multinational organizations?" The study is designed to extend existing research in international integration strategy, which is often called "global strategy," "globalization," or "internationalization" in the popular press and academic research literature.

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.

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 …

This study is concerned with the impact of job insecurity on the vital social exchange relationship between employee and employer. Specifically, it explored the relationship between job insecurity and two important social exchange outcomes—organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Moreover, it assessed the moderating effects of individual factors (communal orientation and powerlessness) and situational factors (trust in management, procedural fairness, and organizational support) on these relationships.

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 …

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 …

Empirical research exploring the complex phenomenon of job burnout is still considered to be in its infancy stage. One clearly established stream of research, though, has focused on the antecedents of the three job burnout components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. In particular, situational characteristics have received a great deal of attention to date. Four situational factors: (1) role ambiguity, (2) role conflict, (3) quantitative role overload, and (4) organizational support were included in this analysis to test their significance as predictors of job burnout. Another set of antecedents that has received far less attention in job burnout research is personal dispositions. Individual differences, most notably personality traits, may help us understand why some employees experience burnout whereas others do not, even within the same work environment. Four personality characteristics: (1) self-esteem, (2) locus of control, (3) communal orientation, and (4) negative affectivity were included to test their significance as predictors of job burnout. An on-site, self-report survey instrument was used. A sample of 149 human service professionals employed at a large government social services department voluntarily participated in this research. The main data analysis techniques used to test the research hypotheses were canonical correlation analysis and hierarchical analysis …

Corporate diversification continues to be an important phenomenon in the modern business world. More than thirty years of research on diversification suggests that the degree of relatedness among a firm's business units is a factor that can affect firm performance, but the true effect of diversification relatedness on firm performance is still inconclusive. The purpose of this dissertation is to shed more light on this inconclusive association. However, attention is focused on the performance implications of individual diversification actions (e.g., acquisitions and joint ventures) rather than on the overall performance of firms with different levels of diversification. A non-experimental, longitudinal analysis of secondary data was conducted on over 450 unique acquisitions and on more than 210 joint ventures. Results suggest that even when individual diversification actions rather than entire business portfolios are examined, an inverted curvilinear association between diversification relatedness and performance is likely to emerge. This pattern is observed in both acquisitions and joint ventures. However, the association between diversification relatedness and performance in acquisitions is moderated by the level of industry adversity, though factors such as corporate coherence and heterogeneous experience do not moderate the association between diversification relatedness and performance. This study augments the body of knowledge …

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

Researchers suggest that value congruence in superior-subordinate dyads results in positive outcomes for an organization (Kemelgor, 1980; Meglino, Ravlin, & Adkins, 1989; 1990; Parkington & Schneider, 1979; Senger, 1971; Weeks, Chonko, Kahle, 1989). Further, evidence is presented which suggests that commitment at the organizational level is achieved, in part, through value congruence at the individual level of analysis. Analysis at the individual level reflects the effect of shared values on interpersonal relations. Work value congruence in a dyad enhances the development of a high quality dyadic relationship. The subordinate in such a relationship perceives being allowed more participation in decision making, more positive work experiences, and less role stress (Turban & Jones, 1988). These items have been found to be predictor variables of commitment from Steer's (1977) framework of antecedents. In this study, a research model was proposed which suggests that work value congruence in the subordinate-superior dyad leads to organizational commitment through its effect on subordinate perceptions of role stress characteristics, participation, and work experiences. The model integrates the organizational aspects of the Steer's (1977) framework for organizational commitment with the interpersonal effect of work value congruence. A field study design using a sample of 96 subordinate-superior dyads at …

The field of strategic management addresses challenges that firms encounter in an attempt to remain competitive. The ability to explain variation in firm success through examination of knowledge flows has become a prominent focus of research in the strategic management literature. Specifically, researchers have sought to further examine how firms convert knowledge, a phenomenon conceptualized as absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity is the firm’s ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit knowledge. Few studies have captured the richness and multi-dimensionality of absorptive capacity, and it remains to be understood how the dimensions of the phenomenon convert knowledge. Furthermore, how absorptive capacity influences the firm remains to be understood. To address these research gaps, this dissertation seeks to (1) determine how absorptive capacity converts knowledge, and (2) determine how absorptive capacity influences firm capabilities. The research questions are investigated using structural modeling techniques to analyze data collected from software-industry firms. The findings offer contributions to the absorptive capacity and capability literatures. For example, absorptive capacity is hypothesized to consist of complex relationships among its internal dimensions. However, findings of this study suggest the relationships among the dimensions are linear in nature. This finding is in line with the theoretical foundations of and …

The specific problem confronted by this dissertation research is this: Do college students who are quite decided about their vocational choices have more developed and implemented self-concepts than do college students who are quite undecided about their vocational choices? If the decided students have more developed and implemented self-concepts than the undecided students, it can be logically reasoned that the developing and implementing of the self-concept is essential in the vocational choice process of college students. The purpose of this study is to resolve the problem concerning the possible self-conceptual differences between highly decided and highly undecided college students.

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.