- Browse Repository
- Weatherhead School of Management
- Student Scholarship
- Business planning (x)
- 2009-05 (x)
- Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Show moreThe executive education industry seems headed towards increased collaboration. This research explores ways university-based business schools and corporations interpret the rapidly changing environment in which they operate. Using population ecology as a theoretical framework, it seeks to understand the decision factors and processes used by providers and purchasers to develop new species of programs. It also explores reasons for the death or modification of existing programs species. The units of analysis are organizations (business schools and corporations)and the focus is on executive education programs, mainly non-degree, but also credit and degree programs. The sources of information are primarly those people who make decisions about the status of programs for their companies or business schools. Research in the literature on organizational/population ecology as well as on current trends in executive education supplements the analysis. Through a series of more than twenty five interviews with corporate and academic management educators, an attempt is made to understand and describe the mental models of institutional leaders. The focus is on reasons for their decisions to start and end programs either unilaterally or jointly. Major themes derived from the research include the evolutionary path species of executive education programs have taken, vulnerabilities faced by types of executive education programs (and the corresponding coping strategies schools and companies employ), trends in collaboration, and the connection between outcomes assessment and the intensity of provider/producer relationships. The greatest growth opportunities appear to lie in closed (restricted) enrollment programs, both customized (i.e., designed to facilitate culture change) and organizational problem solving (designed to produce real-time while engaged in action learning.) For most institutions, a balance between open and closed programs is a viable strategy. The report deals with characteristics that appear to favor the creation and survival of program species such as: reliability, accountability, reproduceability, incorporation of change at the sub-unit level, niche marketing, and the different boundary spanning practices of academic organizations (which favor buffering) versus corporations (which favor bridging.) Where trust has been established, the development of new program species may take place simulaneously with both parties contributing to and deriving value from the effort, a process termed "coevolution." Action recommendations for both business schools and corporations are provided.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreToday’s volatile business environment with unpredictable and shifting customer demands is forcing units within the hierarchy of the organization to respond collectively. But these very units are in competition for corporate support and resources in pursuit of their own interests – expand, enhance their position, and ensure differentiation – or their conception of the organization’s interest. This research explores the tensions among inter-unit competition and collaboration and the collective ability of the units to effectively cope with shifting demands of turbulent business environment while optimizing the overall organizational performance. The research findings extend our understanding of collaboration beyond mutual gains, common goals, and mutual trust, to define a collaboration life cycle that captures different characteristics and stages of working together. Coordination fit is presented as a set of criteria for selecting potential collaborators, and a framework is provided for analyzing market conditions and opportunities to determine the appropriate balance among inter-unit competition and collaboration for driving the desired level of performance. The repeated use of such framework allows organizations to cope with changes in business environment through adjustment of inter-unit competition and collaboration balance.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreIn this study I investigate the relationships between oil company competitors as they collaborate to develop mutually owned oil-field projects. Using fundamental theoretical principles derived from Transaction Cost Theory and Property Rights Theory, I have analyzed fourteen interviews with oil company leaders in an attempt to better explain partnership behavior. The typical oil-field partnership governance model (the Joint Operating Agreement – or JOA) is designed to minimize transaction costs and equitably distribute profit in accordance with Transaction Cost Theory. Property Rights Theory, however, more accurately describes JOA partner behavior by accounting for residual rights of control, which are a more dependable predictor of partner investment behavior than equity ownership. While residual rights help frame partner investment behavior within Joint Ventures, the JOA is unique, in that it establishes an unusual situation whereby residual rights are decoupled from ownership. In the case of residual rights decoupling within competitor partnerships, resulting power asymmetries prompt investment behavior not predicted by modern Property Rights Theory. Thus, the JOA presents an environment that highlights a gap in our understanding of residual rights of control. In fact, from this investigation, I find that residual rights decoupling within competitor partnerships initiates partner investment behavior counter to that predicted by classical Property Rights Theory. Under these circumstances, partners with less residual control invest as much or more in the Joint Venture than partners with more residual control. Thus, residual rights of control are not necessarily an incentive for investment.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreA changing business environment with market consolidation and convergence is imposing new demands on organizations where old ways of doing business are fast becoming obsolete. Much of the resulting interconnectivity and interdependence in the environment is obscure to organizational business units. As such they are unable to select a viable course of action- forcing the organizations to reexamine their operational strategies both at the organization and business unit levels. Constant restructuring to maintain differentiation among business units and alignment with shifting market segments is simply infeasible and disruptive. This paper explores intra-organizational collaboration as an alternate means for developing business unit networks that are dynamically differentiated and integrated to cope effectively with the demands of the changing business environment. A conceptual model of intra-organizational collaboration is described with potential variables identified. The research focuses at this stage is on evaluating and revising the conceptual model through qualitative methods. To this end, a set of research questions has been identified. Finally, the objective is to synthesize the insights gained from this study into a theory of collaborative advantage and a collaboration maturity model allowing organizations to access their collaboration capability, establish a vision of a desired maturity level to cope with the demands of the external environment, and develop systematic action plans to cover the gaps.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreGreat Lakes Compact 2005: A Collective Action to Protect the Great Lakes St. Lawrence River Basin By Building a Multijurisdictional Governing Regime Based on Cooperative Horizontal Federalism: Overcoming Barriers to Collective Action Through Governance, Leadership and Social Learning as Negotiated Order and Decision-Making Processes. The five Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario) and St. Lawrence River Basin hold twenty 20% of the World’s fresh water supply and 96% of the fresh water in the United States. It is a vast, complex ecosystem supporting 43 million people, industries and cities that are along and near its shorelines. The invasion of alien aquatic species, combined sewer waste water overflows and 150 years of industrial dumping continue to threaten the water quality. And, now, the threat of significant diversions of water outside of the Great Lakes Basin have brought this critical and unique resource to the brink of ecological collapse (Kuehner and Koff 2005). It is a prisoner’s dilemma: collective action to protect the Great Lakes St. Lawrence River Basin is clearly needed. How do the relevant parties overcome their individual interest for the greater good and develop an effective collective action, when failing to do so will result in a classic Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin 1977)? The stakes are high and the subject matter complex. Effective collective action to protect this unique and critical natural resource will not be easily achieved. To preserve and restore the Great Lakes will take a significant and effective large-scale collective action. The need for leadership, governance and decision making capacities are needed on an unprecedented scale and within a limited time frame. The collective action must be multijurisdictional as between the eight Great Lake States and transnational as between those States and the United States Government on the one hand and Canada and her Provinces of Ontario and Quebec on the other. Failure means the destruction of an irreplaceable and vital resource. The need is for a cooperative multigovernmental effort unprecedented since World War II. In December of 2005 the Council of Great Lakes Governors, Great Lakes Regional Collaboration and the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, along with the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec, Canada announced the signing of Compact and Sustainable Water Resource Agreements. These agreements craft an organizational structure and regimen for the governance and management of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence River Basin designed to prevent water diversions, promote water quality, direct restoration priorities and provide for ongoing study, monitoring and enforcement of regional water management standards. In short, the outcome of the collective action is the Compact 2005 and the companion Sustainable Water Resource Agreement (Appendices). The regimen will not be complete (enforceable as between the states), however, until the compact is approved by the eight Great Lake States, the US Congress and President. To obtain treaty status with Canada will require affirmation by the Canadian national government.. Compact 2005 and the Sustainable Water Resource Agreements will start their ways through the various State Legislatures during 2006. This paper explores the historical, political and social networks and legal complexities that marked the development of Compact 2005 unique in its scale and scope and how the participants overcame barriers to collective action. A key proposition of this paper is that the prime motive for collective action and collaboration was the fear of water diversions outside of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence River Basin and that the barriers to collective action were overcome by that common fear. Most importantly, this study examines the key factors and processes of the collective action and how: (a) political leadership, (b) governance (organizational structure and functioning); (c) social learning and negotiated order as decisionmaking processes and (d) a historical dynamic collaborative community overcame the barriers to Great Lakes collective action. The structure and legal framing of the collective action as represented by Compact 2005 were the requirements of American Federalism (i.e. political structure of power not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to the states) and Constitutional Law. Specific provision of the U.S. Constitution (commonly called the “compact clause”) provided a clear method to frame a governing regimen between the eight Great Lakes States and the United States federal government. To be fully enforceable across national boundaries will require a treaty between the United States and the Canadian national governments. These same Constitutional process remain the most significant barrier to completing construction of the collective action regime.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreToday’s college and university endowments look dramatically different than they did 25 years ago. The quest for greater investment returns has been accompanied by an explosion in the number of asset classes in endowment portfolios, particularly among large endowments. According to Modern Portfolio Theory, greater diversification of holdings can help to improve the return/risk profile of a portfolio either by: a) enabling greater returns without adding to risk; or b) lowering risk without lowering returns. Transformation toward greater diversification has resembled to some extent the diffusion process described in institutional theory, where new practices are initiated by large, prestigious organizations and become increasingly adopted by smaller organizations as they seek legitimacy. While large endowments in general have embraced much broader diversification, the adoption process has been mixed among smaller endowments and their overall performance has lagged. This inquiry addresses the question of how some smaller and mid-sized endowments have succeeded in adopting broader diversification while others have not. Institutional theory is used to explain some of the external factors that affect the diffusion of new practices (such as Modern Portfolio Theory) throughout an industry or organizational field. However, institutional theory appears to fall short in explaining some of the internal factors in an organization that either facilitate or inhibit the adoption process. Absorptive capacity is explored in regards to its ability to explain some of those internal factors in the adoption/non-adoption process. The purpose of the study is to better understand the factors that facilitate and inhibit the adoption of broader portfolio diversification in an attempt to provide useful insights to endowment fiduciaries.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreResearch on experiences of gays and lesbians in the executive suite is almost nonexistent. We conducted, to our knowledge, the first empirical study specifically focused on gay and lesbian senior executives who came out in their organizations at late career stages. Phenomenological interviews with 25 executives revealed prioritization of professional vs. personal identity both before and after coming out, emphasized the recursive nature of coming out in the executive suite and showed positive organizational outcomes of personal intentional change when gay and lesbian executives leverage their status to promote policy and culture reforms.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreOrganizations requiring their employees to maintain consistent standards of ethical behavior have need of a means of disseminating the required standards throughout the organization. The use of selected workplace programs, such as workplace ethics programs, has been found to fulfill that requirement. The creation of certain types of workplace ethics programs requires the establishment of employee commitment to those programs, as well as a means of reinforcing that commitment. This paper provides a preliminary conceptual framework for identifying and studying those elements that aid in the long-term sustainability of workplace ethics programs. Two related theories, work commitment theory and innovation theory, provide the basis for future research. Further, research questions are identified for this study.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreThe current study attempts to confirm and measure the impact of nonprofit commitment, nonprofit collaboration and community participation on community development and education reform. We found commitment represent the social values that urges nonprofits to be involved in community development and education reform to local communities. We also found collaboration is the skills that enables nonprofits to respond their engagement and address the needs of local communities. Both commitment and collaboration are based on the shared vision and public good engagement. The study found that 1) shared vision makes nonprofits aware of their duty to be committed to local communities; 2) public good engagement is a general behavior among nonprofits that emerges through nonprofit commitment to local communities; 3) commitment conveys values that urge nonprofits to be involved in local communities; 4) community participation assures the success of nonprofits in being involved with local communities. The study suggests that nonprofits, in working on getting people committed to improving their local communities, can multiply the impact of nonprofits’ contribution and sustainability of the community. Key words: shared vision, public good sustainability, nonprofit commitment, nonprofit collaboration, community participation, community development, and education reform.
Show less
Show moreThe nature of the employee/employer relationship continues to evolve as firms respond to competition, globalization, shifts in technology and other changes in the business environment (Cavanaugh & Noe 1999; Hallier & James 1997; Handy 1990). Employees are increasingly assumed to be responsible for their own career progression and ultimately their own employability (Cavanaugh & Noe 1999). These changes in employee's expectations and obligations to the firm have important implications for individual and organizational outcomes. One way to examine the evolution of the employee/employer relationship is through psychological contract theory. The psychological contract has been defined as an "individual's beliefs regarding reciprocal obligations" (Rousseau 1990: p.390). Although early work focused primarily on employee expectations (Robinson & Rousseau 1994; Robinson, Kraatz & Rousseau 1994; Rousseau 1990) psychological contract theory has increasingly emphasized the dyadic nature of the employee/manager relationship (Tekeleab & Taylor 2003; Turnley, Bolino et al. 2003; Uhl-Bien & Maslyn 2003; Lester, Turnley et al. 2002). We add to a growing body of prior work on psychological contracts that suggests that it is the degree to which the employee beliefs about the contract do not match, or are incongruent with, the contract beliefs of the employer that impact performance outcomes. The studies of employer and employee disagreement on global measures of psychological contracts, termed incongruence in the literature (Morrison & Robinson 1997) have found that disagreement leads to lower performance outcomes (Turnley, Bolino et al. 2003; Lester, Turnley et al. 2002). However, little work has been done to date on the impact of disagreement on the specific terms of psychological contracts. We depart from the incongruence literature by suggesting that employee/manager disagreement with respect to different types of psychological contracts produce different performance outcomes. Although we agree that global or overall disagreement leads to lower performance outcomes we hypothesize that disagreement with respect to the terms of different types of contracts produce different effects on overall incongruence. Few studies have examined this issue and the one study that has appears to lend support to this hypothesis. In that study disagreement on relational terms of the contract (non-economic, socio-emotional obligations) was associated with lower performance outcomes while disagreement on the transactional terms of the contract (economic obligations) had no relationship to these outcomes (Turnley, Bolino et al. 2003). This study provides support for the proposition that the type of contractual disagreement occurring between a manager and an employee is important and different types of overall incongruence lead to different performance outcomes. We study the effect of incongruence in psychological contract terms on important individual and organizational outcomes, such as in role and extra role performance, opportunistic behavior, and creative performance. Prior work suggests these are important outcomes for organizations, and more specifically that these are outcomes are positively related to employee/manager congruence on psychological contracts (Tekeleab & Taylor 2003; Turnley, Bolino et al. 2003; Uhl-Bien & Maslyn 2003; Lester, Turnley et al. 2002). We argue that the direct effect of contract incongruence on these outcomes will be mediated by trust and commitment, constructs that have been shown to be highly relevant in the literature (Robinson 1996; Hunt & Morgan 1994; Morgan & Hunt 1994; Konovsky & Pugh 1994). We proceed by discussing psychological contracts in more depth, focusing on how the mismatch in contract perceptions between employees and managers is of particular relevance to understanding work behavior and performance in the organization. Secondly, we focus on the role of trust and commitment, which are hypothesized as key mediating variables in our study (Morgan & Hunt 1994). We then examine performance outcomes, which may be either organizationally desired (in role and extra role behaviors and creative performance) or not (increased opportunistic behavior).
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreHow do leaders of non-profit (volunteer-based) faith-based organizations deal with the lack of active engagement on the part of their members? How do Chinese church attendees’ satisfaction with the church and their perception of problems within the church affect their long-term commitment and engagement in the church? This paper focuses on (a) how social influences and perceived church problems influence satisfaction with commitment to the church and (b) how the mediating influences of satisfaction, commitment, and affective perception influence the personal engagement of individuals. This study has given insight leading to an understanding of managerial issues relating to the nurture of active engagement among church attendees.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreOrganizations increasingly face competitive and security threats that require better intelligence to guide action. National policy makers face an especially pressing need for intelligence, and rely on complex, diverse information from many sources in monitoring their environment. The primary formal information system for conveying knowledge to government leaders is the system of national intelligence briefings, which collects data from a global network of analysts that is presented by a briefer to individual government leaders, in a short daily session. The quantity of information created by intelligence analysts far exceeds the capacity of a policy maker to assimilate, and the briefer has severe time restrictions for assembling and communicating the daily briefing. In this important, yet highly constrained setting, our exploratory research question is: ?How does the briefer experience communication with policy makers, and how does the briefer act to ensure that the information produced by intelligence analysts is useful to and understood by policy makers?? We conducted a qualitative study of boundary spanning dyad chains reaching from field analysts to policy makers at high levels in the United States federal government, and found: (1) a low degree of shared context between significantly different social and professional worlds; (2) a four-phase communication pattern crossing multiple boundaries, multiple times; and (3) a common 3-step embedded structure within the communication pattern in which the briefer tried to create shared meaning. Despite the extreme setting, we propose that the 3-step embedded structure our subjects enacted can be applied to improving communication for any manager across a wide range of thick boundaries in profit, non-profit and government boundary spanning contexts.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreThis paper presents the findings of a qualitative research study of the extent to which horizontal and vertical communication affect the three levels of employee identity – personal, group or organizational – and its affect on employee attitudes engaged in merger or acquisition integration. A conceptual framework was proposed and conjectures tested via 19, 60-90 minute interviews with professional level employees about their experiences in a positive and/or negative merger or acquisition business consolidation. The professionals were from a portfolio of industries and including banking, telecommunications, health care, insurance, manufacturing and information systems. The transcription analysis has led to an understanding of role that vertical communication (that which emanates from senior management) and horizontal communication (that which occurs between peers) ultimately affect any of the three employee identity orientations – personal, group or organizational. Finally, identity plays a critical role in the positive or negative attitude adopted by the employees charged with integration duties. Following a brief discussion of the conceptual study and literature analysis behind this work, research methodology and major findings are presented. The paper will close with implications, limitations and areas for future research as portrayed by a revised conceptual model.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreIn recent years, volunteers and practitioners alike have been drawn to creating and participating in various types of alliances and coalitions as a way to address and solve complex community problems. Community coalitions, in particular, have brought together diverse volunteers and agencies committed to specific community change. In many cases these community coalitions have been highly successful. However, just as often, they have failed to reach their goals and produced messy, unpredictable, and disappointing results. Community coalitions are complex systems populated with volunteers and professionals and their networks. They move these shadow systems forward in unpredictable and sometimes counterproductive ways operating at the edge of formal organizations. This paper will explore the dynamics of agent interaction within community coalitions using a complexity framework to illuminate characteristics of networks and agent interaction.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreThis research is part of a larger exploratory study of successful women and how they have developed and used their personal networks. Specifically in this paper, we are interested in understanding the differences between network composition and network strategies used by women entrepreneurs and women professionals. The focus herein is on the business/professional and social/friendship networks of successful women. We conceptualize that the personal network characteristics of women entrepreneurs are different from those of professional women and suggest that by understanding the similarities and difference in the their personal networks this study will assist women in developing practical, appropriate personalized strategies. We will be comparing the weak tie/strong tie network characteristics of both women entrepreneurs and women professionals, and exploring the commonalties and differences in their strategies for developing personal networks.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreUsing the real world laboratory of one leading private equity (PE) firm, this paper attempts to directly connect professional competencies to performance outcomes, and more specifically, to skewed performance distributions. Though no extant research appears to focus on the shape of PE return distributions, data presented in multiple studies indicates that returns are right skewed at the levels of funds and individual portfolio company investments. At both levels, a small percentage of actors drive an outsized portion of industry returns. This paper finds that within one leading PE firm, this right skew exists at both the levels of individual investments and investment professional portfolios. The paper then leverages methods from organizational behavior, finance, and statistics to identify the mixes of investment professional competencies that distinguish right-tail outperformance within the analyzed firm, and then attempts to link these items to investment outcomes. The paper finds that professionals who lead outperforming investments tend to excel in three different clusters of competencies and related style elements (identifiable behaviors that may be based upon groups of competencies), that they display more robust and varied toolkits within each cluster than do professionals who lead underperforming investments, and that these mixes contribute to investment outcomes in identifiable ways. Keywords: Competencies; competency clusters; power laws; private equity; private equity returns; skewed distributions; leadership styles
Show less
Show moreAirport managers tend to view airport efficiency through the lens of their own experience based on measurements of travelers’ interactions with the airline after the traveler has entered the airport process. They ignore the times when the traveler is not empirically measurable, for example, the period between arrival at the airport and checks-in with the airline, and therefore miss important insight into how travelers cope with uncertainty and anxiety of the airport experience. In this paper, the author, an Airline Executive, suggests that ethnographic studies based on the techniques of rich observation, note-taking, coding, and inductive analysis will be a useful complement to airline/airport measures because ethnography can focus on travelers’ behaviors from the travelers’ point-of-view. Airport studies based on ethnographic studies should contain richer, more behaviorally complex and more customer-centric insights, leading to better, comprehensive problem identification and process redesign.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreThe gap between electricity supply and demand, in Nigeria, is not decreasing. To gain more insight into the phenomenon, we sought to take a holistic approach at analysis and learn about the relationship between dimensions of investment, policy, entrepreneurial orientation innovation, and the electricity situation in Nigeria. In this qualitative study, we interviewed 30 individuals, who have experience in Nigeria. The interviewees also have sound perspectives on key stakeholders in the electricity ecosystem. Building on this foundation, we make the case that the dimension of national character, and its second order constructs has a relationship with the previous dimensions, in addition to implications on the electricity situation in Nigeria. While interest in the lack of infrastructural development has a long history in several research studies, little research has taken a holistic approach to analysis. Key words: colonialism, legacies and institutions, social capital; social network; complexity; culture; energy; development
Show less
Show moreIt has been well documented that over 50% of all mergers and acquisitions (M and A) fail. Despite a multitude of studies by M and A researchers, failure rates have not significantly changed for several decades. As such, the complex behavior of mergers, acquisitions, and their failure remains largely unexplained. Some researchers believe that the emerging field of complexity science may be the key to unlocking the secrets of M and A success. Complexity science, as applied to organizations, asserts that the simple interactions between managers can result in the complex behavior of the management team, specifically in its ability to address organizational change. In fact, companies that consistently beat the odds, such as Cisco and GE Capital, focus on developing high performance M and A management teams. The purpose of the proposed study is to explore the correlation between manager interactions and management team behavior toward organizational change in successfully merged or acquired firms.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less
Show moreComputer assisted surgery has not been overwhelmingly adopted by surgeons even after extensive formal training in the technique. Physician technology adoption behavior is not well understood, particularly technology that changes clinical practice. Within technology adoption research there are limited studies in discontinuance. The traditional research states that discontinuers tend to be less educated and of a lower socio-economic status. This is clearly not the case with surgeons who experiment with but subsequently discontinue using computer assisted surgery. This paper is a proposal to research this discontinuance phenomenon.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less