The purpose of this research study was to explore the topic of organizational communication in higher education and examine staff members’ perceptions about their level of communication and job satisfaction in their workplaces. This study was also designed to test the relationship between communication satisfaction and job satisfaction by analyzing the significance of different dimensions of Communication Satisfaction with the view that satisfaction is multifaceted. A total of 463 non-faculty staff members from different units of a single higher education institution participated in this study. This study included non-teaching staff, including student workers and both full-time and part-time staff members. A modified version of Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ) developed by Downs and Hazen was used to collect data. The study used a Likert-type scale with a 7-point scale and had eight dimensions (personal feedback, relationship to supervisors, horizontal and informal communication, organizational integration, organizational perspective, communication climate, media quality, and job satisfaction). The statistical analyses of the data from eight research questions revealed some significant relationships and differences. The results found that staff members perceived their level of satisfaction with communication satisfaction dimensions personal feedback, relationship to supervisors, horizontal and informal communication, organizational integration, and media quality from somewhat satisfied to satisfied, and communication satisfaction dimensions organizational perspective and communication climate as somewhat satisfied. The results found significant differences among different dimensions of CSQ, indicating that communication satisfaction is multi-faceted. The staff members perceived their level of job satisfaction to be among somewhat satisfied to satisfied range. The results indicated that gender and number of years in service do not seem to make a significant difference among staff members’ level of satisfaction, but level of education and job classification does. There were strong positive relations found among all dimensions of CSQ. A strong positive relationship and statistically significant correlation was found between overall communication satisfaction and job satisfaction scores, indicating that when staff members feel satisfied with communication in their workplace, they also tend to feel satisfied with their job in their workplace.

Almost two decades after the burst of the Dot-com bubble, investors are opinionated as to whether a new technology bubble has formed in the equities market. Similar to the late 1990's and early 2000's, many Internet firms today go through initial public offering without yet turning over a dollar of earnings, but boast certain revenue-associated performance metrics to investors promising of future success. However, investors are known to hold sentiments sensitive to earnings announcements (Seok, Cho & Ryu, 2019) and reward firms which meet or beat earnings with higher stock returns (Bartov, Givoly & Hayn, 2002). That raises a question on the content of earnings announcements: Besides earnings and cash flow, are there other factors that may influence investor decisions to trade some Internet stocks? My primary hypothesis is that the voluntary disclosure of specific non-financial key performance indicators (NFKPI) during earnings announcement by Internet firms influences the investors' investing/trading decisions. My motivation for this research is to understand better whether there is a strategic element in the voluntary disclosure of NFKPI in Internet companies and how it may impact investors' decisions. The results could be useful to firms in their evaluations of whether to release NFKPI or similar information and to equity research analysts as well as investors in measuring their expectations and valuations of the firms' stocks. The intention of the study is not to generalize the findings to the full market, as the number of companies with the practice of voluntary disclosure of NFKPI is comparatively few compared to those without the practice. Instead, this study examines the effects of NFKPI on the stock returns of those companies which choose to disclose it. I use event study methodology to test the statistical significance of disclosure of NFKPIs during earnings announcements. By controlling for earnings surprise and other meaningful financial ratios, I also examine how the signaling effect of NFKPI could be distinguished from the signaling effects of important information concurrently released during earnings announcements. I focus on two types of NFKPI within the Internet industry: Gross Bookings for online booking agency services and Daily Active Users for social media. As earnings reports and quarterly filings often do not necessarily come together on the same date, I hand-collected data to estimate the surprise effect of NFKPI per earnings announcement, by using available broker forecasts of the respective NFKPI as a proxy for the investor's NFKPI expectation. The results show that while revenue surprise remains consistently the most influential variable to investors, NFKPI Surprise has a positive, statistically significant relationship with the firm's abnormal returns. Additionally, despite being insignificant when expected earnings is beat or in line with consensus, NFKPI Surprise is found statistically significant with a positive relationship to abnormal returns when expected earnings is missed. In line with existing research on management's motivation to prevent negative earnings surprises (Matsumoto, 2002), these findings imply that if firms could employ the voluntary disclosure of NFKPI to manipulate investors' impression and to cushion their stock prices against potential negative market reactions when earnings is missed.

A proliferation of social movements and a large group of young, politically active individuals have pushed corporate firms to pay more attention to increase resource allocation to corporate social responsibility. As of now, corporate social responsibility refers to a wide definition of general efforts made by firms to support society through social impacts. A review of current literature on corporate social responsibility reveals a gap in the way the quality is calculated as well as does not take into account the influence of social movements in the past couple of years. This paper assesses the specific social and political justice positions that firms have taken and whether these positions have had an effect on financial performance given the more actively conscious consumer base. Tobin’s Q is used to quantify these effects and show that positive corporate social responsibility increases financial performance, supporting the hypothesis, while negative corporate social responsibility does not significantly affect financial performance. Future research recommends a closer look at the industry differences in the subject as well as a clearer definition of the variance between the different issues that constitute corporate social responsibility.

Both corporations and their global conglomerates are looking into the face of an evolving idea of capitalism. As businesses become more intertwined with society, this special relationship is becoming increasingly deterministic of the condition of the world. This paper explores the possibility that if businesses integrate shared value -- a way to combine economic and social value -- into their long-term business plans, that not only will society be better off, but the businesses themselves may be able to explore previously unrecognized potential for profits.

The paper explores the driving forces behind corporate cash holdings by analyzing past literature and extending this research to the behavior of firms after the 2008 recession. I look at the cash to assets and net debt to assets ratios from October 1980 to October 2011 to obtain an understanding of the past and current state of cash holdings. A comprehensive literature review is done on agency costs and transactional motives to give the reader an overview of the costs and benefits of holding cash. This provides the foundation for the precautionary motives for companies today to keep cash as a risk management tool.

Organizational communication research indicates group member participation increases as the legitimate power differences among group members decreases. Lean principles and practices indicate Kaizen Event members will contribute regardless of legitimate power levels, due to member training, education, and the Lean team-oriented culture. Further study is needed to determine if Lean culture and training maximize group member contribution, or if legitimate power levels in Lean environments manipulate participation. The focus of this case study is a central Kentucky Lean manufacturing organization that practiced Lean principles for at least three years and completed a Kaizen Event within twelve months previous to the beginning of the study. The participating organization indicated the legitimate power levels of Kaizen Event members. Kaizen Event members received a voluntary survey consisting of Likert scalescored questions regarding his or her perceptions of level of participation, encouragement and opportunity to participate, comfort in participating, and the degree the group listened to the member. The results of the survey indicated participation in the Kaizen Event groups did not significantly differ among different legitimate power levels.

This paper focuses on the problem of collapsed “stay in the market” (SIM) beliefs during financial crises. The primary purpose of this investigation was to ascertain whether or not inoculation messages represent a viable communication strategy to preemptively protect SIM beliefs during forthcoming financial crises. Ancillary purposes of this study were to further investigate the role of print and video crises, explicit instructions regarding post-inoculation talk (PIT), and gain and loss frame inoculation messages on the inoculation process. This study used a between subjects factorial design (3 x 2 plus four additional conditions) to explore ten hypotheses. Data collected from 513 participants were analyzed using multivariate and univariate tests and planned comparisons. The results of this investigation indicate that inoculation messages can serve as a viable preemptive crisis communication strategy, that inoculation can protect beliefs equally well when the crisis message is presented through video or print, and that employing a loss frame can strengthen the inoculation process. Mixed results regarding PIT call for further research. Research and practical implications, as well as limitations, are discussed.

Shareholder activism has exploded in popularity since the turn of the century, due in large part to impressive relative returns generated by its major participants. The result has thus been a surge in assets invested in the category, to in excess of $170 billion today up from less than $3 billion in 2000 (Inglis 2015; Romito 2015). This influx of capital, in absolute dollars and pace of growth, has caused many to wonder whether activists truly create shareholder value and, if so, if the value generated is sustainable. Numerous studies of activist interventions prior to 2009 reveal significant stock price gains around the time of activist arrival and positive longer term buy-and-hold abnormal returns as well. The question remains, however, whether those trends have continued as volume of transactions and number of activists have increased post the recent global financial crisis. In this report, we perform an empirical analysis focused on a hand-collected dataset of 1,088 activist interventions from 1995-present. This dataset includes all 13D filings, as well as Under the Threshold activist campaigns. First, we analyze stock price returns for this group over short- and long-term periods and find that activists continue to unlock shareholder value in recent deals comparable to that of earlier ones. We then perform a proprietary regression to identify which factors drive the most successful returns. Such insights should prove informative for investors employing an activist strategy and companies looking to manage areas of vulnerability.

Research on social networks has established that those who bridge the gaps between dense social groups (i.e. structural holes) are granted a “vision advantage” compared to those who are embedded in dense groups. A common explanation for the advantage is that bridging a structural hole provides the broker with access to diverse information. What is less clear is how this process performs when the organizational context is turbulent. I propose that in a turbulent organizational context, when the organization is experiencing dramatic changes, employees benefit less from building a repertoire of diverse information and instead benefit more from adopting socially distant information. Information discussed by members of the organization which are several steps away from an employee would be more valuable in a turbulent context. Socially distant information would be more rare as people become rigid in response to threat, and it would be more relevant as local information becomes obsolete. To explore this idea, I study the case of two large organizations undergoing a merger integration. The members of the higher-status, acquiring organization experience relative stability compared to members of the target firm, who experience a great deal more uncertainty. The higher-status firm dominated the merger, the top management of the target firm was replaced, supervisory structures are changed, employees are forced to develop new routines, learn new technologies, and had to uproot their social support networks and move across the country. This case provides an opportunity to examine how two information flow mechanisms, which mediate the relationship between broker positions and individual career benefits, are altered in the presence of organizational turbulence. I measure information variance and the adoption of socially distant information of 612 organizational members by fitting a topic model on a dataset of email content covering a 14-month period immediately following the merger of two large consumer product firms. I test my hypotheses using a latent difference score model to test the impacts of increases in information variance, constraint, and adoption of socially distant information on increases in employee salary. I find that organizational turbulence alters the ways in which information flows provides benefits. Within turbulent contexts the pathways between access to diverse information and improved career outcomes are destroyed. Instead adopting socially distant information and information associated with power and status provides more benefits to the individual than incrementally improving a repertoire of diverse information. This study contributes to research on M&As, organizational change, and social network theory by expanding our understanding of the impact of organizational turbulence on the information mechanisms driving advantage in open networks.

This study examines the triple bottom line of sustainability, in the context of both profit-oriented and non-profit oriented organizations. Sustainability is a compound result of interaction between economic, environmental, and social dimensions. Sustainability cannot be achieved without balance between all three dimensions, which has implications for measuring sustainability and prioritizing goals. This study demonstrates a method for measuring organizational sustainability achievement in these three dimensions of sustainability. Content analysis of the annual reports of corporations from the United States, Continental Europe (and Scandinavia), and Asia reveals that the economic dimension remains the preeminent aspect, and corporations still have a long way to go to reach comprehensive sustainability by maintaining a balance between the three dimensions of sustainability. The analysis also shows a high level of isomorphism in the sustainability practices of corporations, suggesting that even the most sustainable corporations are taking a somewhat passive role in prioritizing sustainability goals. A list of 25 terms for each dimension of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social) has been developed which can be used by corporations to develop and communicate their sustainability practices most effectively to the maximum number of their stakeholders. In contrast, botanical gardens demonstrate more balance among the three dimensions of sustainability.