This dissertation empirically explores the facets of corporate innovation in the firm and the ultimate effects on firm value. In the first chapter I identify firm innovation as a new channel by which employee treatment affects firm value. Growth and innovation incentive theories support positive effects of “good” employee treatment on innovation. Alternatively, entrenchment theory suggests such treatment will lead to complacency and shirking, hence deterring innovation. These opposing views merit investigation since in the “new economy”, human capital is increasingly essential to firm value and the growth and success of a firm has become more reliant on corporate innovation. Using the KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. SOCRATES database and newly acquired patent/citation data, I find an overall significant positive relationship between positive employee treatment and innovation quantity (patents) and quality (citations per patent); both measures are significantly correlated to firm value in the literature. Furthermore, I find that favorable employee treatment improves innovation focus – innovation projects more related to firms’ core business. These findings, robust to an alternate data source and endogeneity concerns, are consistent with the theories of growth and innovation incentive and suggest corporate innovation represents a channel by which employee treatment enhances firm value. In the second chapter I use the context of mergers & acquisitions (M&A) to investigate the effect of firm innovative ability. Acquirer announcement returns in M&A are known for being low on average; however, recent studies indicate greater abnormal announcement and long-run returns to firms motivated by the acquisition of innovation. Although acquiring innovation is an important motive for M&A, prior studies have ii mostly focused on the characteristics of target firms. In this paper, I explore the effect of acquirers’ innovative abilities in the M&A transaction. I propose that acquirer’s ex-ante ability to transform internal and external innovation investment into a tangible valued output (i.e. sales or profitability) is subject to asymmetric information. I apply a unique measure of innovative ability to explain the cross-sectional variation in acquirer returns for mergers and find a positive relation between acquirers’ innovative abilities and their abnormal returns around M&A announcements. I further discover that greater CARs in high innovative ability acquirers only exist in a subsample of M&As in the later life cycle of firms. For early merger events (the first three M&As after IPOs), acquirers’ innovative abilities are not associated with significantly larger announcement returns, suggesting an altered market perception of the value impact of acquisitions of innovation and innovative ability. / Business Administration/Finance

Constatant la présence importante de citations dans l'écriture essayistique d'Yvon Rivard, ce mémoire vise à éclairer les rôles qu'y joue ce procédé. Dans cette recherche, il est question de montrer que la citation participe de l'élaboration de la pensée d'Yvon Rivard en même temps qu'elle performe les principales considérations éthiques de l'essayiste. Pour ce faire, nous avons recours à différentes approches de la citation qui s'intéressent au processus complexe d'appropriation de la lecture qui sous-tend ce procédé, soit principalement celles de Marielle Macé et Antoine Compagnon. De plus, certaines théories de l'essai, dont celle de Robert Vigneault, permettent de montrer la consubstantialité de l'écriture, de la subjectivité et de la dynamique des idées dans l'essai. Ces perspectives nous amènent, de pair avec les concepts du philosophe François Jullien, à observer comment l'usage de la citation chez Rivard aménage une tension dans l'écriture entre deux types de rapport à l'autre : la « rencontre » et la « relation ».

Sociologists ask a myriad of questions about their cultural environment, the relationships which are formed within it, and the social products of human interaction. In recent decades, sociologists have begun to ask these questions of the scientific research community. They have been interested in identifying the social and intellectual connections which bring together scholars and their ideas, forming subcultures within academic disciplines. The present study, which follows this line of sociological inquiry, employs author cocitation analysis to identify the distinct subcultures which characterize the field of higher education research. The cocitation patterns among the twenty-one most highly cited researchers in the field are examined through multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and an analysis of the authors’ vitae which reveals the cognitive and social contexts of the authors’ citation careers. A unique temporal factor is introduced, dividing the scholars’ Careers into time periods based on the dates of their cited articles, in order to evaluate the extent to which author's cognitive interests and relationships change over time. The statistical analyses reveal that three dimensions and five clusters best characterize the author cocitation data. As a result of these quantitative analyses, and the more subjective analysis of the authors’ vitae, five subcultures are identified within the field of higher education research: Organizational Structure and Leadership in Academia, Impact of College Environment on Student Outcomes, Material and Nonmaterial Culture of Academia, Student Perceptions and Effective Teaching, and Hierarchy and Inequality in Education. The temporal analysis reveals that six of the authors move from one subculture to another at some point during their careers; these subcultural shifts are explained through examination of the authors’ changing research foci and career developments. The subcultures are compared on characteristics such as cluster stability, and the length and extent of influence of the subcultures on the larger culture of higher education. The unique contributions and the methodological limitations of this study are discussed, as are suggestions for further analysis of higher education research. Finally, the present methodology is reviewed in relation to its applicability to the exploration of other academic cultures, using several areas within sociology as illustrations. / Ph. D.

Cette thèse rassemble principalement des contributions en économie de la science à laquelle les deux premières parties sont consacrées. La première teste l'importance des choix méthodologiques dans la mesure de la production scientifique et étudie les canaux de diffusion de la connaissance. La deuxième s'intéresse aux déterminants individuels et locaux de la productivité des chercheurs et au différentiel de promotion entre hommes et femmes sur le marché du travail académique. Sont établis les résultats suivants : les choix méthodologiques dans la mesure de la production scientifique n'affectent que très peu les classements des institutions de recherche. Les citations et les poids associés à la qualité des journaux mesurent globalement la même productivité de la recherche. La localisation des chercheurs a un impact sur leur productivité dans la mesure où certaines universités génèrent davantage d'externalités que d'autres. Ces externalités sont plus importantes là où les chercheurs sont homogènes en terme de performances, où la diversité thématique est grande, et dans une moindre mesure dans les grands centres de recherche, lorsqu'il y a plus de femmes, de chercheurs âgés, de stars et là où les chercheurs sont connectés à des co-auteurs à l'étranger. Si les femmes sont moins souvent Professeur des Universités (par opposition à Maître de Conférences) que les hommes, ce n'est ni parce qu'elles sont discriminées dans le processus de promotion, ni que le coût de promotion (mobilité) est plus important pour elles, ni qu'elles ont des préférences différentes concernant le salaire et le prestige des institutions dans lesquelles elles travaillent. / The core of this thesis lies in the field of economics of science to which the two first parts are devoted. The first part questions the impact of methodological choices in the measurement of research productivity and studies the channels of knowledge diffusion. The second part studies the impact on individual publication records of both individual and departments' characteristics and analyse the gender gap in occupations on the academic labour market. The main results are the following: methodological choices in the measurement of research productivity do not impact the estimated hierarchy of research institutions. Citations and journal quality weights measure the same dimension of publication productivity. Location matters in the academic research activity: some departments generate more externalities than others. Externalities are higher where academics are homogeneous in terms of publication performance and have diverse research fields, and, to a lower extent, if the department is large, with more women, older academics, stars and co-authors connection to foreign departments. If women are less likely to be full Professor (with respect to Assistant Professor) than men, this is neither because they are discriminated against in the promotion process, neither because the promotion cost (mobility) is higher for them, nor because they have different preferences for salaries versus department prestige. A possible, but not tested, explanation is that women self-select themselves by participating less in or exerting lower effort during the promotion process.

El maquiavelismo degollado est un défi lancé à tous les hommes de pouvoir tentés de suivre la voie pragmatique de Machiavel plutôt que celle tracée par l’Église catholique romaine ; son auteur, Claude Clément, fut alors considéré comme le plus radical des penseurs de l’anti-machiavélisme. Son œuvre n’a pourtant jamais été rééditée et reste mal connue probablement parce qu’elle est composée de trois textes publiés dans deux langues différentes et que sa version espagnole semble bien être une réécriture plutôt qu’une simple traduction. Parsemée de reproductions de documents, enrichie de nombreuses allusions, de citations parfois cachées, l’œuvre de Claude Clément se veut un recueil de la pensée politique de son temps. À l’aide de bases de données numériques, ce travail se donne pour objectif d’établir le texte du Maquiavelismo degollado dans sa diversité, d’expliquer les grands mécanismes de son évolution et de comprendre sa position dans le réseau des sources qui l’influencent. / El maquiavelismo degollado sounds as a challenge to all statesmen who could be tempted to follow the pragmatic way shown by Machiavelli rather than by the Roman Catholic Church. Then, Claude Clément was considered as a champion of the radical line in the anti-Machiavellian school of thought; however, the book has never been republished and, therefor, is not very well known. El maquiavelismo degollado is not a unique work knowing that three different books have been published, using two different languages and that the Spanish version really seems to be a re-written text rather than a simple translation. Scattered with reproductions of foreign documents, enriched with many allusions, quotations, some of them hidden away, this work seems to be a miscellany of political theories of its time. Using digital databases, this study attempts first to establish the text of El maquiavelismo degollado respecting its complexity, then to explain the main mechanism of its evolution from one version to the other and finally to determine how other works could have influenced it.

This experimental study examines an online module designed to increase student competence in oral citation behavior using a mastery training strategy. Students in the experimental condition provided complete citations at a higher rate and provided more citation information for traditional and web-based sources compared with a control group without required training. Although subjective norms set by instructors also influence citation behavior, the general trend depicted was that students completing the required module training performed more complete citations. Implications for student learning, mastery instruction, and course assessment were considered to be generally beneficial and at minimal cost.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), approximately 1.3 million U.S. residents are residing in nursing homes. CMS enforced regulations in the Nursing Home Reform Act. Training in the use of restraints in nursing homes is monitored through the CMS standards. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a correlation between training standards of health care practitioners and their use of restraints in nursing homes based on the patterns of citations by RNs and CNAs. Data were collected from Kansas, Louisiana, and Ohio within the CMS Nursing Home Data Compendium. The key research question examined differences in standard training requirements, policies, and citations regarding restraint use in the selected states. The theoretical framework for this study was the social influence theory. The results of the analysis of variance indicated that between 2008 and 2012, there were significant differences in policy and standards requirements for the training of registered nurses and certified nursing assistants regarding restraint use; there was also a relationship between the training of staff and the number of citations of restraint use in Kansas, Louisiana, and Ohio. There were significant (p < .02) variations throughout the 3 states regarding the policies, procedures, and training expectations. The positive social change that could result from these findings is the standardization of training that may help decrease restraint use and become the foundation of more respectful and caring practices in nursing homes.

This thesis attempts to analyze a part of the big and complex process of how intellectual property ownership and technological innovation influence the performance of firms and their revenues. Here I analyze a firm's stock market performance as a function of the quantity and quality of intellectual property (patents) owned by the firm in context of the three US high-technology sectors, Pharmaceuticals, Semiconductors and Wireless. In these sectors, value of a firm is predominantly driven by the technologies which a firm owns. I use citation based indicators and number of claims to measure the quality of patents. This research presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that in high-tech sectors, companies which generate better quality intellectual property perform better than average in the stock market. I also posit that firms which are producing better quality technologies (good R&D) invest more in R&D regardless of their market performance. Furthermore, though smaller firms get relatively less returns on quality and quantity of innovation, they tend to invest a bigger fraction of their total assets in R&D when they are generating high quality patents. Larger firms enjoy the super-additivity effects in terms of market performance as the same intellectual property gives better returns to them. In addition, returns to R&D are relatively higher in the pharmaceutical industry than semiconductor or wireless industries.

Described as accommodating both traditional and new information spaces (Fourie 2002: 53), the Web has significantly changed the milieu of research and study. The study determined how this changing research and study environment has affected the research behaviour of students in African higher education environments, specifically at the research entry level of master's degree programmes. The study examined both explicit examples of the affect of the Web on students' citation behaviour and tacit influences that may have determined the extent of this affect. Explicit examples of the affect of the Web were drawn from analysing changes in the citation patterns of Master of Information Studies (MIS) theses during a period of access to the Web, and specifically in the years 1996, 1999 and 2002. Tacit influences on students' citation behaviour were inferred from an investigation of the level and nature of MIS supervisors' use and support of the Web for research and of a background study of the facilities, resources and services supporting student access to the Web at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. Findings of this study concluded that the use of the Web medium has grown and in 2002 accounted for 17.5% of all citations included in MIS bibliographies. However use of this medium is disparate with a few bibliographies accounting for much of this growth. Findings indicated that the Web medium was mostly utilised for the delivery of sources that do not meet the traditional description of a scholarly source. The study also found that the Web was used as an alternative medium for the delivery of informal and grey literature sources without necessarily increasing the level of use of these sources. The study revealed greater support for this medium from the masters programme's supervisors than was evidenced from a citation analysis of the bibliographies of theses. Disparities in the support of this medium for research, within the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg's supporting infrastructure was also observed. Recommendations drawn from these conclusions include the need for greater intervention from teaching faculty, librarians and the institution in the provision of clear guidelines of expectations, relevant instruction and sufficient physical access at points of expertise, to effectively support the use of Web resources. / Thesis (M.I.S.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

Thesis (MPhil (Information Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / The incidence of referencing errors in research is difficult to manage due to the many types of bibliographic sources that have to be referenced. Preventing referencing errors is an essential part of bibliographic management and PBMS (Personal Bibliographic Management Systems) have been designed to manage this. To design appropriate strategies for preventing the errors, the prevalence of PBMS usage in higher education needs to be investigated. The aim of the research was to determine whether available PBMS used at institutions would address the referencing errors at a UoT (University of Technology), and to recommend a suitable PBMS for the institution. The main research instruments used to gather data consisted of questionnaires, interviews and a head-to-head comparison of five PBMS programs EndNote, ReferenceManager, ProCite, Biblioscape and B3. Researchers in the Faculty of Business were selected because they highlighted the difficulties with referencing errors. Questionnaires were sent to 10 researchers to investigate their awareness of PBMS, the kinds of bibliographic sources they use and the frequency that they reference the sources. A questionnaire, sent to eight libraries in the country ascertained their use of PBMS and whether PBMS reduced referencing errors. These libraries provided a representative sample of the use of PBMS at both historically “White” and “Black” institutions. A questionnaire to editors of journals and an online database investigated the incidence of referencing errors in academic publications and measures to prevent the errors. An interview with a vendor of PBMS revealed the extent of PBMS sales to higher education institutions and the capabilities of the PBMS. A head-to-head comparison, using selected criteria relevant to the study, was done of the five PBMS. The response rate on the questionnaires was 100%. Researchers indicated that they were not aware of PBMS, and were therefore not using any. In higher education, the majority of the libraries used PBMS, and these libraries reported that PBMS had reduced referencing errors. Editors responded that papers submitted for publication do contain referencing errors, but that adherence measures such as peer reviews, referencing guidelines and academic accreditation prevented referencing errors in published research. Data from all the research instruments led to the recommendation of using a combination of two PBMS programs at the UoT. The study has shown that there are software programs available to reduce referencing errors in research at the UoT, through the use of PBMS.