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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
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Show moreOur qualitative study sought to understand the meaning of success within the context of the family owned firm. The study, designed to identify success factors that distinguished more successful firms from less successful firms, revealed four significant and three moderate differentiators. Significant among the findings was the role of trust not only within the owning family but also between the family and non-family members of the firm. Implications of the study suggest it may be possible to construct a multi-attribute model of family firm success.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreWe interviewed seventeen successful leaders to explore their experience of effective strategic conversations yielding innovative outcomes. Although these organizational leaders uniformly espoused emergent conversation, whereby they prefer to collaborate with their teams in an experiential learning process, their conversations were primarily leader-driven directed discussions with specific outcomes in mind. Moreover, they described not single events, but multiple strategic conversations distributed over time, with varied participants and purposes. Successful strategic conversations appear to develop, over time, in a dialectic space formed by the leader's desire for authentic contributions by participants and the experience of organizational and cultural forces that inhibit emergent innovation. Keywords: conversational learning, strategic conversation, organizational discourse, time, collaborative innovation
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreDespite increasing need for interoperable enterprise-level information systems, achieving interoperability is persistently problematical. Our work highlights social factors as a major contributor to good design, development, and operating practices. The research was conducted at a technologically sophisticated Fortune 50 company where design artifacts suggested by the literature were found to be in place yet good interoperability between systems was not consistently achieved. The data suggest boundary spanners can facilitate interoperability by promoting shared meanings and mindsets that advance acculturation among cross-functional groups. Findings contrast with enterprise systems interoperability literature, which has focused mainly on technological factors to ensure good design and operational capability.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreDespite increasing need for interoperable enterprise-level information systems, achieving interoperability is persistently problematical. Our work highlights social factors as a major contributor to good design, development, and operating practices. The research was conducted at a technologically sophisticated Fortune 50 company where design artifacts suggested by the literature were found to be in place yet good interoperability between systems was not consistently achieved. The data suggest boundary spanners can facilitate interoperability by promoting shared meanings and mindsets that advance acculturation among cross-functional groups. Findings contrast with enterprise systems interoperability literature, which has focused mainly on technological factors to ensure good design and operational capability.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThere is a vast literature on the emotional intelligence (EI) of individuals, but comparatively little on team EI. We report findings of a qualitative inquiry involving 36 members of twelve IT teams – half of them effective and half less so – to explore the relationship between team EI and team performance. Trust, conflict resolution skills and team communication are seen to differentiate effective and less effective teams, as is the ability to adapt shared vision to changes in project specification. The research supports the that teams possess emotional intelligence and that it powerfully influences how they function and to what effect. . Our findings suggest that characteristics of trust, communication and a willingness to address conflict contribute to one’s ability to develop individual EI. Our findings also suggest a high team EI is required in order for the team to adapt its shared vision during difficult times. Implications for increasing organized work effectiveness and the research community are discussed. The review concludes by briefly considering implications and questions regarding team development and team sustainability.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreWith over 153 million U.S. citizens in the labor force but only about a quarter of them engaged in community volunteer work (Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, 2006), the workplace is clearly an under-tapped source of volunteer labor. As the need for volunteers accelerates and supply remains stagnant, it becomes imperative to understand how to recruit volunteers from the workplace. Interviews with twenty seven employees of six US corporations were conducted to probe how beliefs about outcomes and consequences of volunteerism, the influence of important social referent groups and self perceptions of relevant skills and abilities related to volunteering effect employee’s volunteer behaviors. Our findings indicate that corporate support for volunteering was not a strong influencing factor, but personal benefit in the form of social camaraderie, companionship, and connections with others is a primary objective for many employees. Employee propensity to volunteer based on a perceived positive social outcome suggests a focus for practice as well as further research. Last updated: January 24, 2009
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreAddressing a paucity of research about industrial adoption of environmentally benign technologies in Africa and, more generally, in tropical developing countries, we examined the Nigerian pulp and paper industry as a case study. Qualitative interviews with twenty upper echelon executives representing five Nigerian firms challenge conventional expectations that energy intensive industries in developing markets operate amid highly pollution-intensive conditions, within weak or non-existent formal environmental regulatory frameworks, and with limited institutional capacity. Our findings suggest a strong positive relationship between cleaner technology use and corporate financial performance of African industrial firms. Our study also suggests the adoption of classical ‘win-win’ integrated preventive environmental strategy, eco-efficiency and green productivity which improves industrial efficiency and profitability. Nigerian pulp and paper firms are shown to have moved beyond end-of-pipe technologies and cleaner technologies and adopted industrial ecology and “zero emission” principles with appropriate reuse of the remaining waste streams turning the production system into a sustainable industrial ecosystem.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThere is a vast literature on the emotional intelligence (EI) of individuals, but comparatively little on team EI. We report findings of a qualitative inquiry involving 36 members of twelve IT teams – half of them effective and half less so – to explore the relationship between team EI and team performance. Trust, conflict resolution skills and team communication are seen to differentiate effective and less effective teams, as is the ability to adapt shared vision to changes in project specification. The research supports that the teams possess emotional intelligence and that it powerfully influences how they function and to what effect. Our findings suggest that characteristics of trust, communication and a willingness to address conflict contribute to one’s ability to develop individual EI. Our findings also suggest a high team EI is required in order for the team to adapt its shared vision during difficult times. Implications for increasing organized work effectiveness and the research community are discussed. The review concludes by briefly considering implications and questions regarding team development and team sustainability.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreAs the number of International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs) operating in developing countries have burgeoned in recent decades, tension between these mainly Western agencies and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has accelerated. This paper examines, from the perspectives of nonprofit executives in Rwanda, how underlying tensions affect the ability of INGOs and NGOs to advance critical social goals. Qualitative research reveals how and to what extent the work is influenced top down by INGO and/or bottom up by local NGO management mindsets and practices and how inventive “workaround” strategies help both organizations manage tensions that challenge individual goals and collective work.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show morePrevious literature emphasizes that job-related factors influence employee engagement. However, a variety of factors and combinations of factors can contribute to more engaged employees. In this paper we adopt a contingency perspective and investigate the interaction of individual characteristics with cultural and job related factors to determine their effect on employee engagement. Survey data from 231 employees across two organizations were analyzed and results indicate that individual factors moderate the effects of structural and cultural characteristics on job and organizational engagement.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show more“The chief executive is pivotal and essential, and the future of the nonprofit sector depends on the ability of nonprofits to attract and retain talented and visionary chief executives who have a clear understanding of their role and who perform it well.” (Moyers, 2006: 30) “Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great” (Ralph Waldo Emerson) A 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.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreSociety faces many common challenges that the corporate sector can play a large role to help address. Security against terrorism is one such challenge and is an important pre-condition to sustainable development. Moreover, since terrorism often operates outside of the jurisdiction of state authorities, it is becoming clear that governments cannot address this issue alone. In the United States, for example, there is a large portion of the nation’s infrastructure that owned by the private sector. Using data obtained from 158 survey responses from security professionals in the public and private sector, our structural equation model determined that while prior field surveys indicate that there are many factors that influence the size of security spending including a sense of social responsibility and attitude toward risk, the most important factor is the costbenefit analysis that companies themselves undertake. These results may apply to many situations, such as global warming, piracy and pollution control, in which cooperation from the private sector is needed to address threats whose risk is difficult to assess.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreOrganizational trust repair is a burgeoning field of inquiry, due in large part to the ethical and financial failures in U.S. corporations, churches, governments, media outlets, and nonprofit organizations. The subsequent financial, professional, and emotional damage to stakeholders has resulted in a crisis of trust in organizations and their leaders. We explore the trust repair process from a stakeholder’s perspective in a qualitative study of executives, employees, and customers of three U.S. institutions: a Fortune 500 corporation, a nonprofit organization, and a government entity. Findings suggest trust repair is not a process-driven phenomenon. The provision of credible reparative information, evidence of organizational change, character of organizational executive leaders, and mode of communication most influence the repair of stakeholder trust.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreAmbiguity about firm and competitor competencies and resources challenges managerial decision making ? especially in developing countries where asymmetric information is higher than in the developed ones. Although a number of scholars have addressed “causal ambiguity” and its relationship with firm resources and competencies, and theorists have suggested a positive relationship between it and organizational performance, these links remain unclear. On one hand, ambiguity may protect a firm because competitors cannot easily imitate it (Alvarez & Antolin, 2005). On the other hand, causal ambiguity may impede imitation of valuable resources within the firm, limiting management´s ability to manage resources and competencies for competitive advantage (Szulanski, 1996). Our research, based on interviews with CEOs and Board Directors of large and medium sized Chilean corporations, illuminates the role of ambiguity and its impact on the performance of firms in developing markets. In contrast to claims about its deleterious effect on performance, our data revealed that CEOs of Chilean companies are quite comfortable with causal ambiguity and appreciate its potential.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreSemi-structured interviews with 21 partners of three long-standing, non-profit collaborations in the health and human services sector emphasize the role of constituents’ sense of “ownership”– and their continuous reproduction of it on collaboration sustainability. The data suggests that enduring collaborations are characterized, on the one hand, by employee behaviors typically considered aberrant – including rule breaking and rule making – and on the other, “appreciative” participant behaviors. Findings imply non-profit governance and leadership can purposefully foster environments in which collaboration ownership can reproduce.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreIn a nation with the lowest savings rate in the industrialized world, nearly 60% of U.S. small business owners do not provide retirement plans for their more than 40 million workers. There is a dearth of formal inquiry about small business owners’ perspectives of and attitudes toward retirement and the factors that motivate behavior related to it. Interviews with small business owners revealed that most are not concerned about their own retirements and are ambivalent about the retirement security of their employees. Those who have attempted to implement a plan find the process complex, intimidating and require the assistance of an outside expert. This research contributes to the literature on behavioral finance, entrepreneurial behavior and small business management.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreUsing critical realist research, we sought to understand how nonprofit organizations blend deliberate and emergent strategizing to cope with neoinstitutional dilemmas posed by donors’ competing logics. To gain organizational legitimacy and access to resources, international nonprofits must conform to donors’ normative processes and practices which tend to be ineffectual. An international nonprofit operating in the highly complex international development field provided an ideal setting for investigating how routines blend and moderate deliberate and emergent strategies. Consistent with the view that strategic insights come from different organizational levels, we examined key patterns of interactions and routines between middle and top-level managers. Our findings indicate that international nonprofit managers do not just incorporate institutional norms and rules of donors, but also enact, select, and interpret such rules creating polymorphic (rather than isomorphic) routines for more dynamic strategizing.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreUsing critical realist research, we sought to understand how nonprofit organizations blend deliberate and emergent strategizing to cope with neoinstitutional dilemmas posed by donors’ competing logics. To gain organizational legitimacy and access to resources, international nonprofits must conform to donors’ normative processes and practices which tend to be ineffectual. An international nonprofit operating in the highly complex international development field provided an ideal setting for investigating how routines blend and moderate deliberate and emergent strategies. Consistent with the view that strategic insights come from different organizational levels, we examined key patterns of interactions and routines between middle and top-level managers. Our findings indicate that international nonprofit managers do not just incorporate institutional norms and rules of donors, but also enact, select, and interpret such rules creating polymorphic (rather than isomorphic) routines for more dynamic strategizing.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThe advancement of modern medicine would not be possible without the development, diffusion, and adoption of medical technologies. Few studies have measured technology adoption at the level of the individual physician and fewer of surgeons per se. Computer assisted surgery (CAS), an example of clinically oriented technology, has experienced slow adoption by orthopedic surgeons. Our inquiry, based on semi-structured interviews with practitioners trained to use CAS in knee replacement surgeries, sheds light on how surgeons make decisions to adopt or reject clinical technologies. Findings suggest that classic technology acceptance models, TAM, TAM2 and TAM3, insufficiently explain clinical technology choice. Our data describes orthopedic surgeons as technology enthusiasts, who, while generally open to evaluating and quick to embrace new devices, are not unequivocal adopters of CAS. Trust, perceptions of self vs. technological efficacy, and beliefs about consequences of use differentiated adopters and rejecters.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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