- Browse Repository
- Weatherhead School of Management
- Student Scholarship
- Business planning (x)
- 2016-04-04 (x)
- Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Show moreThe most current U.S. census data reveals that there are approximately 1.9 million African-American businesses (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010) in the United States. Only 1% of these African-American businesses are considered high performing firms, defined by the United States Census Bureau as those that have annual receipts of over $1 million. These high performing firms are responsible for 61% of all jobs created by African-American firms (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Current data also indicates that African-American owned business start-ups occur more frequently than any other group; however, they also tend to be the least successful of all minority groups. It is important to our communities, labor force and the economy that African-American owned businesses grow, scale and stay sustainable. This research project reveals the barriers that are faced by successful high performing African-American and women-owned businesses and how they overcome those barriers. Keywords: African American; high performing firms; minority business enterprise; diversity; minority entrepreneurship; women-owned business
Show less
Show moreThe cost of protecting U.S. private sector critical infrastructure assets is estimated at $10 billion per year. This qualitative research examined the incentives and obstacles for the willing expenditure on terrorism protection by American business, revealing that the implementation of security measures beyond the private sector’s day-to-day operational risks have characteristics similar to the private provision of a public good. Notions of moral hazard created by government actions in response to catastrophic events can have an effect that is at odds with encouraging greater private spending in this area. This paper may have important implications for policy-makers looking to address not only the issue of terrorism protection but also the private sector’s preparation for catastrophic events more broadly.
Show less
Show moreThis paper presents, in ethnographic fashion, observations of service industry craftsmanship in a familiar setting—a barbershop. It then relates these observations to a definition of service industry craftsmanship that is largely constructed from the works of Helms, Becker, and Barley and Orr. The meaning of service industry craftsmanship is then used to highlight implications of this concept to the worlds of practice and scholarship.
Show less
Show moreHistorically, accountability research has focused on operational methodologies and financial structures and disclosures designed to advantageously position, legitimate and heighten the esteem in which the nonprofit organization is held by various stakeholders. Society, however, has become increasingly interested in transparency beyond structural and financial boundaries and is more concerned with emergent forms of accountability. Grounded in recent qualitative research, the present study develops and tests a measurable form of negotiated accountability and the role this type of accountability plays in linking organizational commitment and performance in a nonprofit context. A new second-order negotiated accountability construct consisting of six dimensions is identified and validated. The results demonstrate accountability can be measured in new ways. The findings advance current understanding and provide a foundation for future research into accountability mechanisms.
Show less
Show moreDespite the enormous investment made annually in mergers and acquisitions the failure rate is at least 50%. Acquired executives responsible for leading the changes required for successful post merger integration leave their new firms in numbers far exceeding corporate norms. There is relatively little research that addresses the actual motivations that encourage acquired executives to stay and contribute to successful change, or leave prior to achieving the long-?term objectives. This qualitative study employs grounded theory methodology to explore the experience of acquired executives and what influences their decisions to stay or leave the new firm. We interviewed 32 key executives from multiple corporations in diverse sectors whose combined experiences included 76 separate acquisitions. What we discovered is that most executives will stay through the period of their formal contractual obligation despite making the decision to leave early in the transition process. This is important to both academicians and practitioners who seek to understand this phenomenon and improve the success rate of mergers and acquisitions. Key words: Post Merger Integration, Executive Turnover, Acquisition Management, Agency, Stewardship, and Psychological Contract
Show less
Show moreThis study investigated factors influencing community college student academic retention, specifically a student’s commitment to learn. Data was obtained from two local community colleges, and the study’s proposed model was evaluated using structural equation modelling. Student Identity Capital and Relational Climate functioned as mediating factors influencing academic retention as they relate to supportive faculty behaviors. Direct effects of supportive bonding faculty behaviors on academic retention were also considered. Results supported mediation from student identity capital to academic retention, and relational climate was found to be insignificant. Finally, supportive faculty behaviors proved to be a significant factor overall in the evaluation of the model’s relationships. Overall, the results suggest that supportive bonding faculty behaviors is a primary, significant factor when addressing a student’s academic commitment to learn. Suggestions for future research and recommendations for practice are provided. Key words: Bonding Faculty Behaviors, Empathy, Care, Humanness, Identity Capital, Academic Retention, Commitment to Learn, Relational Climate, Shared Vision, Compassion, Relational Energy, Community College
Show less
Show moreAccording to Taylor, Chait, and Holland (1996) and Carver (1997), boards of nonprofit organizations spend too much of their limited available time pursuing trivial decisions. This paper examines how boards of high-performing professional societies tackle big issues. Using a decision theoretic approach, the paper conceptualizes bold decision making as involving a particular decision space (Papadakis, Lioukas, & Chambers, 1998), a set of decision steps (DeSanctis & Gallupe, 1987; Nutt, 1984), and group processes associated with bounded rationality (Boland & Pondy, 1986; Simon, 1991). This framework is measured against findings from fieldwork, resulting in a revised conceptual model and general support for the ability of decision theory to provide insights into effective board functioning.
Show less
Show moreThe role that leaders perform in governing nonprofit organizations has confounded practitioners and scholars since the time of the early settlers, when the functions of governance were first separated. Is governance the role of the board, management, or both? Today, little has changed. Public and private nonprofit organizations, almost all of which are governed by boards of lay citizens and by professional executives, continue to define the gap between what the board's role is and what the chief executive officer's (CEO) role is. Organizations such as BoardSource (formerly the National Center for Nonprofit Boards), The Aspen Institute, the Independent Sector, and the Foundation Center fund, publish and disseminate research and reports in an attempt to educate, explain, and understand the complexity of nonprofit governance. This present study is based on empirical data of quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, and policy statements from 18 board-chairmen and CEOs with nonprofit electric co-operatives.1 The study describes the perceptions of their roles in governance. Our findings suggest that boards and CEOs recognize their overlapping role in governance. Hence, they put in place systems, processes, and boundaries to facilitate schemes of joint engagement. Furthermore, our results describe practices of engagement as a means of managing complexity and tension between boards and CEOs. The operatives can facilitate joint engagement between boards and CEOs. The results highlight implications of good governance and dimension of joint engagement for practitioners-boards and CEOs, as well as for scholars.
Show less
Show moreHow do boards make strategic decisions? Semi-structured interviews with twenty eight directors of small to medium size publicly traded U.S. companies in the high technology sector were conducted in order to gain insights into strategic decision-making at the board level. We identified six characteristics that distinguish two divergent views about strategic decision-making. These characteristics include the role of the board chair, the boardroom climate, the board’s shared vision and goals, the board’s agency primacy, the board’s process for decision closure and the board’s level of involvement in the strategic planning process.
Show less
Show morePrior studies of board effectiveness have primarily focused on the relationships between board structure and composition relative to the performance of the firm. To better understand the role of board members in strategic decision-making it may be helpful to gain deeper insights into the processes and behaviors that are actually utilized during strategic decision-making both within and outside the board room. Of particular interest to scholars are the specific processes that boards use to generate quality strategic decisions. We propose research to examine the conditions under which diverse board members’ individual biases, backgrounds and behaviors impact the collective strategic decision-making processes associated with strategy formation within the board environment. Semi-structured interviews of corporate directors and top management teams (TMTs) of mid-size public technology corporations, will provide insight into the question, how do individual board members’ attitudes towards vigilance, their proclivity towards monitoring or mediation, and their focus on long term or short term performance results effect quality strategic decision-making at the board level? This paper is primarily informed by agency, institutional and strategic choice theoretical perspectives.
Show less
Show moreThis study seeks to better understand board effectiveness by opening the "black box" associated with board dynamics and behaviors. Drawing on the process oriented perspective of board level strategic decision making from Forbes and Milliken (1999) as well as the group engagement model by Tyler and Blader (2000; 2003), we analyzed surveys from 151 board directors representing 119 U. S. publicly traded companies. Our findings show that the creation of a climate of respect within the boardroom, as well as board member and top management team (TMT) collaboration are positively related to "effort norms" and "cognitive conflict" processes. TMT and board member collaboration was also positively related to use of expertise. In turn, there was also evidence that effort norms and cognitive conflict have a positive effect on board task performance. As predicted, CEO/Board power did not have any impact on the boards' task performance. With support for how the boardroom climate conditions the strategic decision-making processes within the boardroom, future research and governance practices should look beyond a pure agency model to entertain more behavioral approaches for determining board level accountability.
Show less
Show moreA leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector looms. “Crossovers” from the corporate sector present an alternative source of CEO talent but a dearth of empirical research about boundary crossing has limited our understanding about the effects of leader origin on organizational performance. We surveyed 631 leaders who had crossed one to three boundaries– sector, organization and/or position – into top U.S. nonprofit jobs. Analysis of 18 combinations of leader experience including sector path, recent origin and role shift revealed– regardless of boundary? striking similarities rather than stark differences in how nonprofit CEOs lead. The effects of leaders’ sector experience and diversity of experience on behavioral repertoires and organizational culture were significant, suggesting variety of experience trumps single sector experience (whether for-profit or nonprofit) as the most salient criterion for nonprofit CEO selection. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are noted.
Show less
Show moreWomen occupy only 15.8 percent of the private and public positions occupied by Saudi nationals, according to statistics from the Central Department of Statistics and Information 2015. The Saudi government has highlighted the need to support women’s higher education and combat sociopolitical barriers to their employment. Despite facing substantial challenges to entering the labor market, females have made gains in Saudi society; these include higher literacy rates, greater employment, and moderate rates of entry into both positions of leadership and nontraditional careers. Qualitative research was based on semi-structured interviews with 30 women, 18 of whom had nontraditional careers and 12 of whom had left these for traditional careers. This research was motivated by the scarcity of literature about women’s employment in Saudi Arabia. Findings should be of interest to public policy makers, as I believe that public discourse that supports women’s economic participation and career development may influence patriarchal traditional attitudes towards women. Furthermore, I believe that stating the experiences of these women will provide inspirational role models for the next generation. Keywords: women, nontraditional careers, barriers, Saudi Arabia
Show less
Show moreUsing qualitative analysis of in-depth interview data from 23 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in diverse industries, the study aims to advance theoretical understanding of (a) when and how corporate leaders experience entrenchment, (b) what strategies corporate leaders use to disrupt or break free from their entrenchment and (c) how leaders generate disruptive strategies. Our findings show that CMOs experience both organizational and personal entrenchment, which differ in nature and significance. In general, CMOs are alert to entrenchment traps and deploy varied disruptive strategies to break free, sometimes with success. Finally, our data suggests that CMOs source their disruptive strategies from the same knowledge, experience and skills that entrench them.
Show less
Show moreIn the study of government-nonprofit power relationships, influence, authority, and accountability are often thought to be the purview of government and the burden of nonprofit service providers. A concern during this era of scarce financial resources and tight regulatory oversight is that the acceptance of public funds will impede the nonprofit’s ability to implement local innovations that build upon and support the expectations of a variety of key stakeholders (governing boards, service consumers, the public-at-large, and government/private funders). This paper examines the conditions under which federally funded nonprofit organizations exercise autonomy by pursuing ventures that resist conforming influences of government funders. Semi-structured interviews with nonprofit executives and past and present Federal government administrators will provide insight into the questions, how, and to what end, does government resource dependency affect innovative practices in nonprofit sector programs? What strategies do agencies adopt to manage the tension between funder requirements and innovative opportunity in the context of resource- dependent environments? The paper draws upon institutional theory, resource dependency theory, and disruptive innovation theory to examine these issues.
Show less
Show moreMuch has been written on the topic of leadership development however little on the development of top executives, and virtually nothing on the most efficient ways of developing executives. With succession pipelines to executive jobs weak across S&P 500 firms, executive succession weakness poses a real financial, continuity and governance risk to systems globally. To address this phenomenological gap, the authors conducted a qualitative inquiry involving semi-structured interviews with managers in a single S&P 50 global firm that operates across three industries. By probing into the "lived worlds" of these executive successors and high performing non-successors, new insight has been gained into the organizational factors that accelerate and impede executive readiness. Key Words: executive development, succession management, corporate governance, business continuity, executive effectiveness, global leadership, leadership development
Show less
Show moreAcademicians and practitioners continually reexamine the performance and interaction between nonprofit cooperative boards and managements as they relate to organizational effectiveness. Despite the volumes of academic research and the scores of practitioner-based "how-to" journals, neither present theory nor practice seems to have it rights. Perhaps the paradox is due to the difficulties of governance and the role that boards perform- or fail to perform- or maybe it fall squarely on the shoulders of management and the complexity of leadership. Regardless of the reasons, a performance gap exists (Nicholson & Kiel, 2004). If left unheeded, this gap will cause ineffectiveness and produce such things as misaligned missions, unattained goals, inefficient operations, unending conflict, unresponsive leadership, and most importantly, lack of stakeholder support. This paper proposes to bridge the performance gap through collaborative practices: practices that inspire dialogue between boards and chief executive officer (CEOs) in order to do what is in the best interest of the members [stakeholders] (Balser & McClusky, 2005), practices of 'lay' board members as they control and support management (Conforth, 2004), and most importantly, practices that are consistent with the cooperative's values and mission, rather than adopt 'best practices' of others (Herman & Renz, 2004). Because as past research has shown, leaders that intentionally strive to improve their performance also bolster the organization in its effectiveness (Brudney & Murray, 1998; Gill, Flynn, & Reissing, 2005; Herman & Renz, 1999; Holland & Jackson, 1998; Kiel & Nicholson, 2005).
Show less
Show moreA leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector is portended by sector growth, turnover at the top and a smaller cohort of leaders coming up from behind. Crossovers from the corporate sector present an alternative source of CEO talent, but a dearth of empirical research about top executives who cross the boundaries of sector, organization, and, at times role, stymies our understanding of the transition process of for-profit to non-profit leaders. In depth interviews with U.S. nonprofit leaders – both crossover CEOs and CEOs hired from within the nonprofit sector - compared and contrasted transition experiences. Rather than significant differences between the two groups, our research revealed surprisingly striking similarities in early work approaches. Findings revealed factors other than origin influence non-profit CEO success. Implications for candidates making more informed career choices to boards and search committees striving to improve selection and induction processes are noted.
Show less
Show moreThere is a projected leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector. This is a result of sector growth compounded by turnover at the top and a smaller cohort of leaders coming up from behind who are ambivalent about the CEO role as it is currently structured. Solving for this leadership gap is long term in nature. A more near term solution may be the mid to late career executive from the for profit sector who is interested in assuming the CEO role in the nonprofit sector. There are examples of these successful “crossovers” but also failures. While this talent pool may be viable many unknowns as well as concerns exist. Do they change as they become effective and behave more like those who come from within the sector or do they materially change the nature of the nonprofit because of their prior skills and experiences? Would large numbers of crossovers fundamentally change the nonprofit sector over time? Currently no empirical research exists – whether from within the sector or crossover – on what makes a nonprofit CEO effective or the transition process they go through in becoming effective upon joining an organization. The intended research is aimed at filling this knowledge gap. Building on theories of adult learning, career stages, upper echelons, organizational socialization, and social practices, this research presents a model for adaptation and adjustment with which to compare and contrast the transition experiences of successful CEOs with approximately two years of tenure – both from within the sector and crossovers.
Show less
Show moreThis paper examines the emotional, social and cognitive competencies that predict performance of a financial sales branch and its Financial Advisors. The focus – the unit of analysis - of this study is the Branch Manager. It is hypothesized that the Branch Manager, through a set of emotional, social and cognitive competencies, can, as a leader, influence better overall results. The research presented in this paper is a qualitative study that compares and contrasts both Outstanding Branch managers and Typical Branch Managers. It does this in two ways: by identifying those competencies that differentiate Outstanding from Typical Branch Managers; and by identifying the effects that Outstanding and Typical Branch Managers as well as their Management Teams have on their Rookies (Financial advisors in their first four years of their careers). The study validates a number of other studies suggesting that indeed there are a number of competencies that differentiate Outstanding Managers in general and, in the case of this paper, Outstanding Branch Managers. It also identifies a number of more negative themes that seem particular to Typical branch Managers. For those who are involved with, study or have an interest in the Financial Services world, this study may contribute to a better understanding of what constitutes a successful Branch Manager. Key words: emotional competencies; social competencies; cognitive competencies; performance.
Show less