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Show moreThis paper describes how in absence of strong sponsorship and often regardless of project outcome, leaders of high impact corporate change initiatives must simultaneously develop bonding social capital to become sustainable members of the enterprise’s leadership team. This particularly holds for executives brought in from outside the firm to lead change. We present the findings of a qualitative research study of 42 projects led by 30 executive leaders from a diverse portfolio of primarily manufacturing companies, leaders who were either Insiders (those established within their firms) or Outsiders (leaders brought in as fulltime employees from outside the firm specifically to lead the project). The basis of this study was a conceptual model of the extent to which change leaders are embedded in and leverage internal and external social networks to contribute to favorable project outcome, influencing their career development upon completion of the change initiative. The grounded theory analysis has revealed a topology of traits characterizing change leader identity and presents the interplay of social capital (relationships, trust and shared norms in addition to the leveraging of social networks internal and external to the firm), sponsorship, and in the case of several change leaders, a shift in self identity that unfolds in the course of leading planned organizational change. Leading change can change leaders.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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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
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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
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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
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Show moreIn this qualitative research paper, social/ethnic identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Berry, 1993) and relative deprivation theories (Dion, 2001) and their application to organizational identity are used to look at “self-limiting” behaviors – conscious or unconscious acts of non-cooperation and/or lower work effort (Metayer, 2003). The intent is to identify how management practice can be improved by better understanding the derivation and reasons for these behaviors in one type of non-dominant culture workplace – organizations where African Americans constitute the majority of the employee base. Among the major findings of this segment of the research is that while managers and supervisors of African American managed organizations are aware of self-limiting behaviors, they believe that (a) some, not all, self-limiting behaviors are part of the contextual fabric of their organizations and (b) there are concurrently “self-affirming” aspects embedded in many self-limiting behaviors. Another finding is that some managers and supervisors self-limit – they themselves dis-identify/disassociate with the workplace domain. Taken together, these findings reveal a strong ambivalence among African American managers/supervisors about the motivations for and consequences of self-limiting behaviors. As understood from the perspectives of these executives, this ambivalence has potentially powerful implications for practice. Key words: Ethnic identity, non-dominant culture organizations. organizational identity, production deviance, self-limiting behaviors, self-management failure
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreInvestment in self service technology (SST) is transforming the customer service encounter in virtually all industry sectors, pushing interpersonal service to a more automated and self initiated process. While firms are more familiar with operational implementation and customer acceptance factors of SST, there is much to learn concerning the cumulative implications of shifting customers from an interpersonal to a SST based service encounter. Of particular importance is what happens to trust between student and school the more students use self service technology to meet their financial aid service requests. Two groups of undergraduate students – some predisposed to SST based service and the other students predisposed to interpersonal based service - were studied using grounded theory, semi-structured qualitative interviews. Data analysis and coding resulted in a conceptual model that provides a contextual explanation of how SST impacts brand trust within the context of financial aid administration. The perceived attributes of “anticipation” and “education” are identified as key mediating variables. Within higher education administration, service encounter research is extended to contextual precision. Given the small sample of this study, large scale hypothesis testing is needed.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreDespite promotion as a national objective, information technology remains relatively underutilized in US healthcare. To better understand this reluctance by physicians to implement technology that will arguably improve the efficiency and effectiveness of American healthcare, we studied fifteen family medical practices - interviewing decision makers about the adoption of electronic health record systems. A resulting conceptual model provides a pragmatic explanation of the variables that influence adoption. Prior adoption theories that rely upon intention to use as a predictor of adoption proved inadequate to our purpose. These theories tend to ignore the decision to acquire technology – the heart of the EHR adoption issue. Findings include the observation that incentives are unnecessary for widespread EHR adoption to occur within the government’s guideline due to physician demographics and predictable circumstances fostering adoption.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThree intersecting trends create an interesting arena for this study – collaboration is increasingly being portrayed as the way to solve wicked problems at a time when significant cross-border social issues are ever more pressing and when the number and level of activity of Non Government Organizations (NGOs) is on the increase. The result is a world where NGOs are working together differently, more collaboratively, to address these intractable social issues. But results indicate that their collaboration efforts are not always successful. This study was based on interviews conducted with 19 leaders of NGOs working collaboratively to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. It has powerful implications for practice in that there are differences from the conventional literature in both the nature of the collaboration as well as the barriers and enablers to collaboration. Our interviewees suggests that in this particular set of circumstances – NGOs collaborating to address wicked social problems in super-stressed environment – collaboration is a noisy, messy, unwieldy situation fraught with competition, tension and ambiguity and where seven ‘orientations’ are required for the collaboration to be successful, namely: a drive to action, clarity of roles and responsibilities, careful selection of partners, orchestration of the collaboration, management of internal competition, implementation of a sufficiency of structure and process and finally, knowing when to end or transform the collaboration. Keywords: NGO; collaboration; barriers and enablers; wicked social problems; superstressed environments
Doctorate of Management Programs
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Show moreThis paper presents findings from an investigation of pattern-changing social entrepreneurs. We examined the efforts of fifteen entrepreneurs and sought to understand the factors that enable successful ones to scale their social impact. All the entrepreneurs were operating in capital constrained environments and scaling required overcoming funding constraints. The findings indicate that pattern-changing social entrepreneurs are more concerned with scaling their impact than with growing their enterprises. Hence, many were pursuing both direct scaling where they grew their own enterprises and indirect scaling where they pursued impact through influencing other organizations. Social entrepreneurship is not a linear process; rather it is one of discovery, evolution, growth, learning and reinforcement. Most of the entrepreneurs began with a unique and innovative idea and then “discovered” through trial and error how to build a successful enterprise. The findings indicate many similarities between social entrepreneurship and profit seeking entrepreneurship as characterized in the empirical literature. Key differences include implications of the social mission and resource acquisition for non-profit entrepreneurs. Successful entrepreneurs were able to build and access social and business networks in order to garner financial, human, and other resources. They then developed viable self-reinforcing resourcing and capability building approaches built on principles of value exchange with partners, funders, and customers. They delivered exceptional value to partners and key stakeholders providing satisfaction and building credibility and strong reputations. The most successful social entrepreneurs discovered innovative ways to improve the profitability and mission-focus of key activities and once they had refined their model, they focused their energies to exploit the opportunity and scale their impact. A critical success factor for scale was moving from individual-level skills to the building of core organizational-level competencies.
Doctorate of Management Programs
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