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Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Show moreFor military teams faced with the threat of death, this study found that the generally accepted positive effects of training and experience may be insufficient to ensure survival and met mission goals. Positive outcomes of acute?or ?at the point of death??events encountered by military team leaders did not correlate with general training, overall team leadership experience or frequency of experience. Survey responses of 494 military team leaders reveals situation awareness and perceived control trump training and experience in positive outcomes of in extremis events. These results empirically support the rapidly accreting, but, to date, mostly theoretical literature on situation awareness in acute crisis situations. Results relevant to military and other professional first-responders facing life threatening situations, may also be of interest to individuals facing tense, ambiguous, albeit less acute, circumstances.
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Show moreUniversity endowments with broad portfolio diversification have been correlated with performance, but antecedents to investment committees? diversification decisions have not been tested previously. Investment committee characteristics including diverse investment expertise, a learning commitment and open-mindedness are postulated to affect portfolio diversification via the mediating effect of Portfolio Theory. The use of Portfolio Theory framework leads to greater portfolio diversification among top-performing endowments than among bottom-performing endowments
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Show moreLeading during in extremis situations when lives are in peril remains one of the least addressed areas of leadership research. In particular, although lives may depend on it, little is known about how leaders in in extremis situations make sense of their situation and communicate that sense to others. Because most of the literature on sensemaking and sensegiving in in extremis situations is theoretical, we sought empirical evidence of how it proceeds in actual practice. To address this gap in the literature, a qualitative study was conducted based on semi-structured interviews with thirty U.S. Army leaders at West Point who had recently led teams in in extremis situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our data suggest simultaneity rather than sequentially of sense making and giving during in extremis situations and demonstrate the process proceeds best when leaders are in a heightened state of awareness. Training facilitates leader sensemaking by freeing up cognitive capacity, but sensegiving can originate from subordinates in certain circumstances. Our findings have implications for both theory and practice.
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Show moreThis research seeks to illuminate which managerial and organizational factors lead large corporations to operate in an environmentally conscious manner. We used a blended quantitative approach to test the effects of managerial and organizational factors on a corporation?s environmental performance. We used three data sets: (a) firm?s actual environmental performance, (b) firm?s actual safety performance, and (c) survey from top executives of the Fortune 500 companies. Our data shows that profit seeking positively affects environmental performance; in contrast, a manager?s intrinsic values have little effect; and surprisingly a corporation?s environmental performance is inversely related to coercive external pressure and risk aversion. Furthermore, environmental performance is positively associated with elevated concerns for employee safety. Results also indicate that pro-environmental behaviors are improved by an organization?s ability to transfer knowledge across functional boundaries: best performing corporations were able to source and exploit new information to improve safety and environmental performance. Overall, the study provides new and surprising insights into what motivates and enables firms to achieve superior ecological performance.
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Show moreManaging the unexpected is relevant for all organizations and banks experienced this bitterly during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. In this study we argue that the organizational mindset driving unexpected results within the banking sector stemmed from an inability to anticipate and detect the early warning signals. The goal of this study was to gain insights into how successful banks are continuously "adaptive" in that banks with higher levels of absorptive capacity (ACAP) - the mechanisms used for sensing and experimentation of knowledge- are more likely to screen and acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit knowledge to positively influence performance. We also show that absorptive capacity is affected by three antecedents of risk, operating and learning orientation. Data obtained from a survey of 165 bank CEOs confirm that among excellent performing banks ACAP indeed enhanced the firm's performance during the banking crisis by reducing (negative) variance in profits. We also demonstrated the multi-dimensional mediated structure of ACAP and show that the three identified antecedents positively affect ACAP and consequently firm performance. This shows that ACAP integrates knowledge into firm routines as to help firm discriminate against surprises. The study also advances the empirical validation of ACAP construct and related measures. Several directions for future studies of the unexpected are proposed.
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Show moreAlthough collaboration has often been suggested as a critical factor for improving performance, its relation to individual and organizational performance has been given little attention in management research. This paper proposes a model of collaboration including affective, cognitive and organizational antecedents, and measures its effects on individual and organizational success. Over 900 front line employees in two firms in the service industry were surveyed. Structural Equation Modeling and bootstrap analysis were used to examine its role as a mediator between three independent variables (i.e. commitment, self-efficacy, and rewards) and three dependent variables (i.e. individual success, organizational efficiency and quality) while controlling for management support. As anticipated, collaboration partially mediates the effects of affective commitment and self-efficacy on individual success, and partially mediates the effect of reward system on team efficiency and quality. Staffing practices and designing a collaborative-based reward system to enhance employee success and firm performance are discussed. Suggestions for scholars and practitioners are offered.
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Show morePhysician leaders span two professional groups- that of physician and of leader. While there have been many efforts at understanding the characteristics of effective physician leaders, a greater understanding is needed on the nature of physician leadership. We surveyed the largest health care organization for physician leaders in the United States to gain a greater understanding. Findings from our qualitative research guided this quantitative study, which used PLS to analyze results from 677 online surveys to understand the causal relationship of role conflict and role endorsement to participation. Our findings reveal the mediating influence that positivity exerts upon participation. Our findings also offer physicians interested in leadership, as well as health care leaders, an opportunity to increase understanding on the social identification process that leads a higher level of professional participation, which may ultimately increase effectiveness for physicians in leadership.
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Show moreInvestors of venture backed firms, seeking to increase knowledge diversity, cognitive conflict, professionalism and charisma within their top management teams (TMTs), tend to accelerate the turnover of executives within these teams, often resulting in multiple cohorts of tenure. Paradoxically, this search for increased professionalism and beneficial cognitive conflict results in heightened affective (or role based) conflict. Past studies have identified an inverse relationship between charisma and affective conflict, on one hand, and a positive relationship between tenure diversity and affective conflict, on the other hand. This study is the first to integrate these two relationships while simultaneously seeking to identify whether identity group formation mediates the direct effects of charisma and tenure diversity on the level of conflict across the spectrum of both high and low performing firms. We find that tenure identity group participation and TMT team identity group participation indeed mediate the effect of CEO charisma on conflict. We also find TMT identity group affiliation mediates the positive effect of tenure diversity on conflict in low performing teams.
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Show moreThe financial crisis served as an interesting backdrop for this study of the impact of identification upon banker engagement. Studies have shown that leadership style influences employee engagement, but little research reflects the impact of various levels of identity (nested identity) upon engagement. A survey of 511 mid-level bankers displayed the significance of career, organizational, and industry identity upon vigor, dedication, and absorption. Further, it was determined that organizational identity mediated the relationship between leadership and engagement. This research suggests that bank leadership would be wise to enact management tactics that elevate the level of career, organizational, and industry identity in order to improve company outcomes.
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Show moreThis study sought to explore and understand the drivers of family firm performance from a non-financial perspective. The key research question underlying this research is whether certain organizational traits may compose a predictor of firm financial performance. This research extends the findings of an earlier inductive study on aspects of success in private family owned manufacturing firms. Organizational traits identified in the prior inductive study appeared to influence either or both the family and the business and ultimately the long term sustainability of family firms. Research findings suggest that certain organizational features combine to form an `effective family business culture? that drives family firm financial performance
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Show more?The combination of inexplicable events and weakened resources for sensemaking is part of the scenario that leaders face right now. If we pose the challenge in that manner, then there are things a leader can do.? Karl Weick, in Leadership When Events Don't Play By the Rules We can choose to see tough times as an opportunity to take stock, get clear on what matters and what doesn?t, and find the wellspring of strength necessary to create or profit from the good times again. Keir Carroll, in The Luxury of Tough Times: Five Terrific Questions During the recent Great Recession and its aftermath, from 2007 - 2010, nonprofit organizations had to carry out their charitable missions to larger and needier constituencies despite endowment erosion, dwindling contributions, reduced staff, and severe funding cuts. Findings from our qualitative research guided this quantitative study, which used PLS to analyze results from 351 online surveys to discern how executive nonprofit leaders and their boards influenced organizational resiliency during this critical period, by employing protective / anticipatory measures and defensive / containment practices, as well as coping strategies. In this exploratory study, leaders' previous experience and external task focus, and demonstrated allegiance by boards were analyzed as causal agents for reliable, defensive performance. Our model, based on social psychology, organizational behavior theory, and actual nonprofit practice, provides a mission-defensive framework for analyzing connections between these predictors and risk resolution, mindful practice, coping and enterprising interventions, and financial resiliency. Findings reveal the influence Mindfulness and Mission-Defensive Posture exert on constructive outcomes during times of economic adversity, and substantiate a dynamic list of strategies that may be employed to counter the next recession's impact. In addition, we found that organizations used resourceful enterprises to generate new revenue, and also chose retrenchment options, including deficit spending, as a means to continue serving constituents. Further, we establish a scale for measuring 18 Mindfulness construct items postulated by Weick & Sutcliffe (2007).
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Show moreDespite strong evidence of substantial impact on the bottom line, most companies counter-intuitively neglect the pricing function ? as do most scholars. Only 2% of all articles published in major marketing journals focus on pricing and scholars have long begged the question of how organizational and behavioral characteristics of firms affect the link between pricing practices and firm performance. To address these practical and theoretical deficits we surveyed 748 professionals involved in pricing at firms from around the world to measure the influence of five organizational factors on pricing orientation and firm performance identified in a prior qualitative phase of our research. The five factors were: 1) Championing behaviors, 2) pricing capabilities, 3) organizational confidence, 4) organizational change capacity, and 5) center-led pricing management. Results demonstrate that all five factors positively and significantly influence relative performance, suggesting that pricing champions able to design organizations and allocate resources in a way that maximizes pricing capability can achieve superior financial outcomes. In aggregate, the five factors promote competitive advantage and comparative firm performance.
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Show moreSeventy-seven percent of low corporate governance ratings for U.S. publicly-traded companies are attributable to poorly-performing boards (GovernanceMetrics International (GMI), 2005). Research suggests a relationship between governance quality and financial performance with evidence of better performance by active vs. passive boards. While most governance research has focused on board member demographics to predict governance quality, few scholars have addressed board dynamics. Adopting a grounded theory approach to address this deficit, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 board directors of U.S. publically traded small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with high and low independently attributed governance ratings. Results indicate directors in both groups similarly distinguish front and back stage board environments characterized by discrete social norms ? but respond to violations of them differently. More ?democratically? recruited high governance-rated SME boards are less tolerant of deviant behavior and respond to it more directly resulting in higher board stability ? while low governance-rated boards, commonly ?inner circle? recruits, are more apt to purge perpetrators of affective conflict.
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Show moreCross-sector collaboration is a viable strategy for addressing complex social problems like the lack of affordable housing. However, the literature tells us collaboration is difficult, complicated and discouraged by some scholars. Qualitative research involving 31 leaders participating in affordable housing cross-sector collaborations revealed despite size, sector or success, most collaborations for affordable housing encounter a common set of obstacles: funding, partner, community and/or government barriers. Key findings also suggest leaders of successful collaborations exhibited heightened emotional and social competencies, took actions for creating a better future, remained mission focused, and collaborations continuously redesigned to meet ongoing challenges.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreUnemployment is rapidly becoming an American epidemic of social, political and economic crisis, even more so for ?at risk? groups such as older workers. This study focuses on issues and factors surrounding chronic under-employment, unemployment and even un-employability of our older workforce in America. As the American ?social contract? i.e. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are under enormous strain; much will be at stake as America deals with how social, societal, political, educational, legal and economic institutions handle this very complicated and multi-facetted issue? answering the question? ?Will Americans over 50 be our next lost generation?? This study analyzed qualitative data through grounded theory techniques. Respondents reported the importance of family as well as the utilization of relational networks to help bridge the gap between the trauma of unemployment and the successful attainment of replacement occupations. Participant?s data also reported that time out of work had a significant impact on the likelihoods of job search success, with one year out of work being a particularly important temporal event. Additionally, respondents reported that a significant amount of trauma was associated with the sudden and many times irreparable separation from the ?work family?. Not surprisingly, the impact of ageism on the job search was reported as being a substantial concern among those over 50. Key implication from this study point to the need for individuals to refocus on maintenance and even reestablishment of family and relational networks; as the hectic pace of our lives and the distance from our families grows, many times these networks are strained and even severed. In particular, there is a need for individuals to establish a modern and evolved framework (Promethean Life Engagement Practices) to serve as the foundation for managing the ?new reality?; a reality involving near constant economic disruption, convulsion and upheaval that will surely face national and global economies in the decades to come.
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Show moreInefficient knowledge transfer in biomedical sciences impacts quality and cost of healthcare while increasing economic burden. Such is of tremendous interest to society and practitioner scholars alike as we are encountering the situation where less physician scientists are entering this system making them ?endangered? due to the challenging crossroads they experience in this journey. In this study, we hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the challenges by determining factors that influence physician scientist lived experiences. How and to what extent do experience, motivation & skills, education & training, environment and institutional mission impact their role performance regarding knowledge creation, transfer and evolution of clinical care? Evidence existed for these factors and five additional factors emerged (i.e., social & family impact, phase transitions, team interaction, trusting relationships within an experiential backdrop that is best defined as a Hegelian dialectic) from this qualitative grounded theory study. We postulate that the five emergent themes impact life satisfaction and role performance within the context of Academic Medical Centers which facilitates scientific knowledge transfer to the practice of medicine, benefiting patients, while also stimulating economic growth.
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Show moreFraud is a powerful tool for profit in organizations and for individuals. Professional investors control more than half the world?s GDP and continue to commit fraud at an increasing scale which threatens entire countries and regions. Auditors utilize the framework of the fraud triangle for detection and deterrence. However, when fraud is systematic, both become challenging. Literature is silent concerning the lived experiences of the professional trading community, and there is a paucity of knowledge regarding fraud within it. Semi-structured interviews with 31 professional investors yielded insights into how fraud functions. Our analysis suggests that while opportunity and capability hold true to the literature, other factors such as pressure, rationalization (for a fraud predator), and integrity do not. The presence of an undiscovered sustainable system of fraud may be to blame.
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Show moreThe purpose of this research is to examine the impact that university student groups' practices have on their members? intercultural behavioral comfort and interactions and their cultural learning. We surveyed 360 undergraduate members of a national voluntary service organization at 50 U.S. four-year colleges. Findings indicate that an organization's ability to nurture a sense of feeling welcome and identification with organizational purpose predict skills and confidence in dealing with diverse intra-group members' a competency we call behavioral comfort. An additional practice using proactive efforts to promote social interaction predicts behavioral comfort when mediated by a sense of belonging. While high behavioral comfort within a group or organization promotes generalized cultural learning, it does not, surprisingly, result in more or higher quality intercultural interactions or additional cultural competence beyond the group. These findings have important implications for institutions of higher learning and voluntary organizations.
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Show moreOf three main orientations to pricing in industrial markets cost-based, competition-based and customer value-based most marketing and pricing scholars consider the latter superior but few firms use it. The literature is silent about how organizational and behavioral characteristics of industrial firms may affect pricing orientation and, more specifically, value-based pricing. Semi-structured interviews with 44 managers of small to medium size U.S. industrial firms yielded insights into firm pricing orientations, processes and decision making patterns. We identified five organizational characteristics common to firms implementing value-based pricing: ability to effect deep transformational change, presence of a champion, skill in diffusing organizational capabilities, organizational confidence, and center-led pricing process specialization. Our data demonstrates that value-based pricing is not simply adopted but internalized through a long, tenuous and deep transformation process supported by an experiential and transformative learning environment.
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Show moreWhereas incremental innovation (II) involves minor changes to an existing product or service, radical innovation (RI) creates a new user experience by altering the cognitive ecosystem of products and creating new markets. Recent RI products such as Apple?s iPhone, iPad, and iTunes and Amazon?s Kindle have demonstrated the potentially salubrious effect of RI. However, technological uncertainty, business inexperience, and unknown customer preferences render RI a high-risk proposition. Accordingly, the innovation processes of RI and II are different: whereas II is widely studied through gate and structured process models, comparatively little is known about how to engage and manage RI. One reason for this is that conceptualizations of RI do not adequately reflect critical interdependencies in the CE/IT ecosystem that permit identification or RI opportunities. To analyze RI processes and how they recognize interdependencies within the CE/IT ecosystem, we conducted semistructured interviews with 38 highly experienced designers and innovation managers. Using grounded theory to analyze the interviews, we propose a new conceptualization of RI that suggests that RI emerges from novel interactions between technology, application, and market trends. To illustrate these interactions, we formulate a Technology, Application, and Market Trend (TAMT) model that illustrates the novel dynamics of RI and highlights differences between RI and II. Using the model, we note that unarticulated market needs are the key source of most RIs. Radical innovators must constantly search for unarticulated market needs through experimentation and bold thinking to identify RI opportunities and engage in it successfully.
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