<p> Disengaged employees cost U.S. companies billions of dollars annually in lowered productivity, a cost which has been compounded by the difficult economic situations in the country. The potential for increasing productivity through increased employee engagement was examined in this study. Using personal engagement theory and the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how the experiences of salaried aerospace employees affected productivity and the financial performance of an organization. Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 20 aerospace employees whose responses were codified and analyzed to identify themes. The analysis indicated that (a) the lived experiences of employees influenced employee engagement, (b) employee engagement affects organizational commitment and performance, and (c) trust and respect and leadership are essential components to keep employees engaged. Eighty percent of the participants indicated that as employee engagement increases so too does organizational performance. The implications for positive social change include new insights for leaders seeking to increase productivity and financial performance, and to support employee engagement for maintaining sustainability, retaining talent, increasing profits, and improving the economy.</p>

<p> The onset or inception of organizational decline has been largely bypassed in management research over the past two decades, even though understanding this fundamental typology is key to mitigating organizational failure, while also providing important insight regarding how managers respond to phenomena that they may neither expect or understand. Understanding how managers observe, decide, and act in times of uncertainty, and how organizational culture and other factors may shape that environment, are important for scholars and practitioners alike to understand. This dissertation argues that corporate decline has largely been misunderstood from the perspective of onset or initiation; that the manager's decision-making process in times of decline must be considered in relation to the actual causes and factors associated with decline, and that the fundamental definition of organizational decline must be revised in light of advances in our understanding in management over the past three decades. This qualitative empirical descriptive study reviews literature regarding organizational decline with emphasis on the onset of decline, presents an equation for understanding a firm's propensity for decline, provides a revised definition of organizational decline, and examines the decision-making process of management when faced with decline based on symbolic interactionism theory.</p>

<p> Volunteers provide valuable human resource assets in many areas of society and are critical to the success of non-profit organizations. The Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) has been used for over ten years and has received the most attention from researchers who cite the theoretical basis, the predictive nature, and the general purpose application of the inventory as major strengths. However, there are several shortcoming of the instrument which limits its value to organizations that use volunteers. Several researchers have suggested that additional functions should be included in the VFI. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify missing functions that should be part of this inventory in order to improve its effectiveness as a tool for identifying volunteer motivations. The problem was that the VFL is an incomplete survey of functions for volunteer motivations, which limits its usefulness to practitioners and researchers. This research study was a qualitative multiple case study analysis which included interviews with volunteers, informant feedback, and focus group review of the coding of excerpts. A total of twelve volunteers from three volunteer organizations were purposefully selected for maximum variation. Questions were field tested with four experts and the researcher conducted face-to-face interviews with each participant. Informant feedback was used to verify the transcription and the analysis of the results, and a focus group performed a sorting procedure to verify the results. The analysis supported use of the six functions included in the VFI, and found considerable support for the concepts of civic responsibility and debt or obligation as functions that provide motivation for volunteerism. There were a notable number of comments by the participants that aligned with these two functions, and were validated through the triangulation methods of participant feedback and the focus group. Based on this study, the researcher concludes that civic responsibility and debt or obligation are functions that should be included in the VFI. The researcher recommends that additional studies should be conducted to develop a modified VFI including these functions. This includes creating and validating questions for the two additional functions, and a testing and validating a revised inventory.</p>

<p> In this dissertation I investigated how non-dominant firms manage their nonmarket environment when they face the presence of firms with strong political and market power. I conducted a case study of the telecommunications market in Mexico, Chile and Uruguay. A total of 52 informants were interviewed including regulatory and legal affairs executives, innovation executives, regulators and government officials, scholars, and consultants. I argue that an institutional framework that imposes barriers for competition in the market through limited access to resources and lack of clarity in the decision-making results in less innovation or innovation at a slower pace. Also, actions taken by the regulatory authorities in favor of competition impose competitive pressures in the market that result in more innovation. The results show that non-dominant firms in these markets develop nonmarket strategies following two strategic perspectives: operational and prospective. These strategies rely on a different set of tactics and rhetoric compared to dominant firms and its effectiveness depend on the characteristics of the institutional environment. This dissertation attempts to provide a better understanding of the competitive industry dynamics helpful for the design and implementation of integrated innovation and nonmarket strategies. Additionally, the results of this study might provide insight for antitrust and industry-specific regulators that aim to incentivize innovation in the market.</p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> nonmarket strategies, Latin America, telecommunications market.</p>

<p> Servant leadership as envisioned by Robert Greenleaf (1970) is a philosophy whereby leaders put the interests and growth of the follower ahead of themselves. Though the concept has been around since antiquity, scholars and practitioners in organizations began to embrace and expand the idea since the early 1990s. There are currently 20 models of servant leadership with 16 associated survey instruments. Colleges and universities may want to instill servant leadership in their students. This study used Wong and Page&rsquo;s (2003) model and their Revised Servant Leadership Profile instrument along with interviews to conduct a mixed-method, concurrent triangulation phenomenology consisting of both qualitative and quantitative analysis. It proposed eight research questions to see if there are any relationships between eight independent variables and the seven dimensions of servant leadership in Wong and Page&rsquo;s model: (a) developing and empowering others; (b) vulnerability and humility; (c) authentic leadership; (d) open, participatory leadership; (e) inspiring leadership; (f) visionary leadership; and (g) courageous leadership. Specifically, the study examined whether exposure to servant leadership concepts at Southeastern University (SEU) make a difference in students&rsquo; self-perception of servant leadership. The eight independent variables are (a) gender, (b) ethnicity and nationality, (c) age, (d) academic college, (e) leadership-related courses taken at SEU, (f) SEU Leadership Forum attendance, (g) leadership positions held at SEU, and (h) number of years at SEU. The findings showed that gender, ethnicity, attending the SEU Leadership Forum, and taking leadership-related courses at SEU were not statistically significantly related to any of the seven servant leadership dimensions. A student&rsquo;s college was related to vulnerability and humility. Years at SEU was related to developing and empowering others. Age was related to developing and empowering others, inspiring leadership, visionary leadership, and courageous leadership. Holding a student leadership position at SEU was related to developing and empowering others, inspiring leadership, and visionary leadership. The study concluded with the implication of the findings, areas for future research, and advice on encouraging servant leadership development.</p>

<p> According to Markus's theory of reuse, when digital repositories are deployed to collect and distribute organizational assets, they supposedly help ensure accountability, extend information exchange, and improve productivity. Such repositories require a large investment due to the continuing costs of hardware, software, user licenses, training, and technical support. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of evidence in the literature on whether users in fact reused enough digital assets in repositories to justify the investment. The objective of the study was to investigate the organizational value of repositories to better inform architectural, construction, software and other industries whether repositories are worth the investment. This study was designed to examine asset reuse of medical images at a health information publisher. The research question focused on the amount of asset reuse over time, which was determined from existing repository transaction logs generated over an 8-year period by all users. A longitudinal census data analysis of archival research was performed on the entire dataset of 85,250 transaction logs. The results showed that 42 users downloaded those assets, including 11,059 images, indicating that the repository was used by sufficient users at this publisher of about 80 employees. From those images, 1,443 medical images were reused for new product development, showing a minimal asset reuse rate of 13%. Assistants (42%), writers (20%), and librarians (16%) were the primary users of this repository. Collectively, these results demonstrated the value of repositories in improving organizational productivity&mdash;through reuse of existing digital assets such as medical images to avoid unnecessary duplication costs&mdash;for social change and economic transformation.</p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how business management associate degree students attending a university in Independence, Ohio, valued and applied interpersonal skills in work and classroom settings. The central research issue addressed in this case study was to explore and describe the personal views, instances, and perspectives from respondents on the effects of interpersonal skills in employee relationships, manager relationships, organizational performance, and effective leadership. The research questions that produced an in-depth examination of the central research issue included: 1) What ways have students applied interpersonal skills in employee relationships? 2) What manner have students applied interpersonal skills in manager relationships? 3) What ways have interpersonal skills influenced the student organization&rsquo;s performance? 4) What are the student&rsquo;s perceptions of interpersonal skills to become an effective leader? Using NVivo 9, the data analysis aided in identifying common themes. The findings from the case study build on existing research involving the influence interpersonal skills have on the central research issue.</p><p> Recommendations from the case study highlighted a constant need to instruct interpersonal skills in universities and to review current curriculum and course materials to improve instruction. Universities with new faculty orientations, faculty development workshops, new student orientations, for-profit, and nonprofit institutions can benefit from implementing interpersonal skills training. This case study builds on the body of knowledge on interpersonal skills and its influence on productivity and leadership in the workplace.</p>

<p> The purpose of the quantitative descriptive correlation study was to understand whether leaders of financial institutions considered operational risks when making decisions. A 6-point Likert scale questionnaire surveyed 30 leaders from 30 publicly held Small, Midsize, and Large Size financial institutions headquartered in the United States. The collection of data included demographic constructs, leader position, and size of organization. Dependent variables in the study were strategic, tactical, and operational decision types, and the independent variables were people risk, process risk, technology risk, and external event risk. Using Microsoft XLSTAT, descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze the data. Statistical analysis using Pearson product-moment correlation matrix indicated a positive correlation between operational risk elements when making strategic and operational decisions and a positive correlation between people-process, process-technology, process-external, and technology-external risks when making tactical decisions, resulting in acceptance of the alternate hypotheses and rejecting the null. The findings did not result in significant evidence to support the alternate hypothesis and reject the null hypothesis for relationships between people-technology and people-external when making tactical decisions, resulting in a do not reject the null for these operational risk elements. Findings from the study may assist financial industry leaders in understanding if financial institution leaders consider operational risk when making strategic, tactical, and operational decisions affording the opportunity to improve leader decision-making in the industry.</p>

<p> Entering into joint ventures for the purpose of addressing resource scarcity and maximizing resources with the goal of increasing competitive advantage has long been an effective strategy for companies in the United States. The question arises as to the value of such an arrangement on the long-term results of joint venture participation, specifically if this alliance strategy influences sustained competitive advantage. This dissertation examined joint ventures for firms involved in defense, technology and aerospace industries using post hoc quantitative analysis of secondary data between 1997 and 2006. This study sought to answer specific research questions to determine if firm performance, research and development intensity, and incremental innovation influences sustained competitive advantage. Results indicated that firm performance was not influenced by joint venture participation. Research and development intensity was influenced; however, results were in the opposite direction of those hypothesized. Incremental innovation among joint venture participants was highly significant for joint venture participation compared to non-participants. </p>

<p> Based on the community of practice theory by Lave and Wenger this quantitative non-experimental study investigated the relationship between economic trust and sense of community of members who participate in virtual communities of practice to help them find answers to work related issues. The Classroom Community Scale and the Economic Trust Scale was the survey instrument utilized in this study. The participants in the study numbered 108 with their ages ranging from 18 to 65. Participants were working adults who currently used virtual community of practices for work related issues. The data collected in the study were analyzed using Pearson correlation and descriptive statistics. The results of the study found a significant correlation between economic trust and sense of community. The study also analyzed the two sub-constructs of sense of community, which are learning and connectedness to determine if a correlation existed with economic trust. The findings showed that learning was not significantly impacted by trust but connectedness was. </p>