The classic economic concept of the tragedy of the commons occurs when individuals overuse a public good, resulting in the complete depletion of the good. Comparatively, in the digital world public goods are non-rival and essentially infinitely abundant. However, the nearly infinite supply of a public digital good can still be tragic, albeit in a different manner. For example, the rise of the free crowdsourced digital good Wikipedia essentially destroyed billions of dollars of economic value in the encyclopedia industry. Despite this apparent destruction of value, the reduction in prices for many digital goods also represents a great opportunity. Firms are increasingly relying on the crowd to help shape future products, provide value for their customers, and build software crucial to the firm’s production process. This phenomenon is leading to a weakening of firm boundaries and a change in the nature of the firm’s innovative processes. My dissertation is comprised of four studies that explore this phenomenon to better understand the transformative nature of the digital commons. The first chapter, “Innovating Without Information Constraints: Organizations, Communities, and Innovation When Information Costs Approach Zero” (w/ Elizabeth Altman, and Michael Tushman), explores how technological progress and reductions in information costs are leading firms to increasingly engage with external digital communities. In particular, firms are increasingly engaging with networks of developers, external labor marketplaces, and users, with the latter frequently occurring through the process of crowdsourcing. This engagement leads to a weakening of firm boundaries such that the locus of innovation and value creation moves outside the boundaries of the firm. The increase in this phenomenon motivates a reevaluation of many traditional theories of how firms organize and innovate. Specifically, we consider how shifts in information costs affect the classic organizational concepts of firm boundaries, business models, interdependence, leadership, identity, search, and intellectual property. In turn, these effects on the firm’s organization alter how the firm innovates. The second chapter, “Digital Dark Matter and the Economic Contribution of Apache” (w/ Shane Greenstein) examines the impact of crowdsourced digital goods at a macro-level. We show that due to its reliance on price to measure value, GDP calculations do not account for “digital dark matter”, digital goods and services that are non-pecuniary and effectively limitless inputs into production. We scan 1% of the 1.5 billion IP addresses in the United States to measure the types of web servers businesses and individuals employ. We estimate the value of the free and open source nature of the predominant web server, Apache, by comparing it to the closest pecuniary alternative, Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) server. Our analysis shows that the lack of price for the Apache server leads to an underestimation of GDP by upwards of $12 billion. Although this is the value from only one piece of digital dark matter, this miscalculation represents a large proportion of all software sales and significantly alters economic growth projections. The third chapter, “Crowdsourced Digital Goods and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Open Source Software”, empirically measures the firm-level productivity impact of managers’ decisions to use non-pecuniary digital inputs from the crowd. Existing literature examining the impact of IT on productivity does not account for investments in such goods, as their use cannot properly be captured by traditional measurement methods based on price. Therefore, their contribution to the firm’s production process is currently unexplored, despite mounting evidence that firms are increasingly relying on these types of inputs. Employing data from a survey of technology use at nearly 2,000 firms over 10 years, I find that a 1% increase in the amount of non-pecuniary open source software (OSS) used by a firm leads to a .073% increase in productivity. This translates to a $1.35 million increase in productivity for the average firm in my sample. This is more than double the magnitude of the coefficient on investments in traditional pecuniary IT capital. I find that this effect is greater for larger firms and for firms in the services industry. I use inverse probability weighting, instrumental variables, firm-fixed effects and data on managerial quality from the World Management Survey to add support to a causal interpretation of these results. The final chapter of my dissertation, “Organizational Learning Through Contributing to Public Goods: Evidence from Open Source Software,” builds on the concepts developed in the other three to explore how firms that engage external communities and contribute to the development of crowdsourced digital goods enhance their ability to extract value from technology-related inputs via increased learning about how these complex goods operate. This study explores this mechanism by using data on firm contributions to Linux, an OSS operating system that is an important public digital good created via crowdsourcing. Using coarsened exact matching and inverse probability weighting to address endogeneity concerns, this study shows that firms who contribute to the development of OSS capture more productive value from the use of OSS than their non-contributing peers through a process similar to absorptive capacity. Further, this learning has a spillover effect that allows contributing firms to capture more productive value from all of their IT investments, not just OSS. Together, the results of these four studies show that the digital commons can help create a great deal of economic value, but that this value is difficult to measure via standard economic methods that rely on price to reflect value. These results have important strategic implications for managers and policy makers to consider as organizations increasingly engage with external communities and ecosystems to innovate and create value.

In these essays, I explore the relation between shareholder activism and corporate governance, mainly the board of directors and takeover defense measures. In the first essay, “Takeover defenses in the era of shareholder activism,” I examine whether or not takeover defense measures that were originally developed to protect the management have differential effects on the probability of shareholder activism. I also examine what are the types of demands activists make when there are defense measures in place and look at the outcomes following activist campaigns. I find that firms with a staggered board or dual-class shares are less likely to be targeted while firms with a poison pill in place are more likely to be targeted. Also, staggered board and poison pill are more likely to be removed following activism and target firms are more likely to be taken over following activism despite having defense measures in place. In the second essay, “Consequences to Directors of Shareholder Activism,” co-authored with Ian D. Gow and Suraj Srinivasan, we examine how shareholder activists can influence accountability of the board of directors. We find that the directors are more likely to leave the board in the two years following activist engagement and their turnover is more sensitive to their performance in the period leading up to shareholder activism. However, we do not find evidence of reputational consequences for the directors as we do not find changes in the number of other board seats. In the third essay, “Activist directors – determinants and consequences,” also co-authored with Ian D. Gow and Suraj Srinivasan, we examine whom the directors shareholder activists put in when they are granted a board seat or when they win proxy fights and whether having these board seats can help them achieve their goals more effectively. We identify 1,369 activist directors during the period of 2004–2015. Activists remain as shareholders longer when they have board seats and having activist directors is associated with significant strategic and operational actions by firms.

This case study investigates the US biosimilar business and the approach that should be implemented when financially analyzing biosimilar development candidates. To challenge the theory that the biosimilar business will be best suited for biologics experiencing the largest sales figures, this case study applied a financial analysis towards two biosimilar development candidates with contrasting sales. Using Soliris (eculizumab) and Remicade (infliximab) biosimilars as a test case, this case study hypothesized that a Soliris biosimilar has the opportunity to create more value over time—despite Soliris® having less sales than Remicade®—due to its favorable market outlook. Over the next few years, the US biosimilar landscape is expected to evolve into a profitable business venture as the first wave of biologics, particularly monoclonal antibodies, begin to lose patent protection. With some biologics experiencing more than $5 billion in annual sales, many analysts believe biosimilars to these biologics will generate more value than a biosimilar to a reference biologic making under $5 billion in sales. However, based on the findings from this case study, the opposite was true. Using a product- and market-driven net present value (NPV) evaluation, this case study uncovered that a Soliris biosimilar candidate has the potential to generate more value than a Remicade biosimilar. Demonstrating that the reference biologic’s sales did not translate to a greater valuation for the Remicade biosimilar, this case was able to substantiate the importance in financially analyzing biosimilar development candidates beyond the sales of a reference biologic. In addition, this case study was able to demonstrate the utility in using a product- and market-driven valuation approach in the value determination of biosimilar development candidates.

The following investigation is intended to determine how the large-cap US multinational corporation was further advanced during the pivotal years of 1895-1913 by a leading private unincorporated institution—House of Morgan. Historical review and assessment focused on the broader US society, government, monetary landscape, the House of Morgan, leading large cap US multinationals; looking at both the key organizations and underlying people in power. The report framework focuses upon the development of the US super structure within which all major companies work down to the way actual institutions organize economic assets in the form of a multinational corporation. Questions that have been considered include: how was business conducted globally with so little formal mechanisms in place, the importance of the various forms of capital for business, and the various roles politics played in business development. Other areas include how owners and managers were effectively separated, how these same companies were able to branch out its product offering and the importance of providing corporate incentives. The House of Morgan cooperated with leading merchant banks, governments, foundations in developing an over-arching environment that was better adapted to the realities of the recent agricultural, industrial, and transportation revolutions that had brought about an integrated world. To organize economic assets in a more efficient and stable manner, large-cap multinationals were the preferred alternative, with a wave of consolidation across industries, underpinned by the pristine Morgan name. Strong board presence, interlocking corporate representation, active role in strategic planning, and management selection ensured that not only were new corporations molded in the design of the House of Morgan but also that they would stay committed to the far-reaching objectives. The House of Morgan took on more than just a focus of increasing shareholder value. They were driven by lofty ambitions of providing comprehensive stability within society at large in a rapidly changing world. The partners of the House of Morgan families had for generations been at the vanguard for providing the highest level of leadership throughout society in areas including business, politics, finance, and religion. These leading families were instrumental in providing the backbone of American society including founding the US Republic, developing the most venerable education institutions, and providing a moral compass through religious revival movements. The House of Morgan would help bring about generally larger and more institutionalized solutions from preceding generations that were conducive for multinational corporations to operate within. This ranges from a US central bank, developing modern non-profits structure, and funding the transportation network making the world more integrated. In helping organize broader US society, the House of Morgan would interlock different subsystems, including finance, charity, and politics with business in promotion of a more harmonious, predictable and productive society. The House of Morgan development of leading US large-cap multinationals, including General Electric, International Harvester, International Mercantile Marine and US Steel illustrates how it not only provided for the macro landscape to operate within, but also developed the leading companies of the era.

This study addresses the antecedents of individuals' disposition to use telemedicine applications, as well as the antecedents of their usage to provide insight into creating sustained usage over time. The theoretical framework of this research is Bhattacherjee's expectation-confirmation IS continuance model. By combining a series of key factors which may influence the initial and continued usage of telemedicine applications with key constructs of Bhattacherjee's IS continuance model, this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of barriers to telemedicine app usage and how to facilitate continued use of these apps. Online survey data was collected from college students who are telemedicine application users. A total of 313 responses were gathered, and data analysis was conducted using SmartPLS 3. This dissertation contributes by looking at the IS adoption and IS continuance research simultaneously to connect these two research streams as well as suggesting the usage context of some established IS theory being different with regard to healthcare applications.

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This study explored the generalizability of citizenship behavior, support, and fit to the occupational domain. In doing so, arguments to include occupation constructs in organizational analyses were offered, reliability and validity testing of the occupation constructs was performed, and relationships among the occupation constructs, their respective organizational counterparts, occupation-related outcomes, and organization-related outcomes were explored. Results of the assessments demonstrated that occupational citizenship behavior, perceived occupational support, and person-occupation fit are distinguishable from their organizational counterparts and that occupation constructs and organization constructs contributed independently to occupational activity and work place behavior. Overall findings from the study suggest inclusion of occupation constructs in organizational analyses can enrich, complement and/or supplement our understanding of organizational behavior. / Business Administration