Organizational Kinship is introduced and developed as a multilevel construct defined by a bundle of exchange conditions and social mechanisms within multi-organizational collaborative networks, and predictive of resilience in those same groupings. The dissertation follows extant multi-level construct development practices to propose the measurement of organizational kinship as composed of this cluster of first-order constructs that span inter-organizational and trans-organizational levels of analysis. This dissertation argues that the resilience or fragility exhibited within an interfirm alliance is an outcome of the collaborative exchange that occurs among member firms, specifically as a function of the exchange conditions perceived by alliance members and the social mechanisms present within the collaborative network. To support this claim, this dissertation considers the resilience of certain collaborative structures, such as family business groups and social cooperatives, which possess collaborative resilience and structural longevity far greater than what is seen in the general alliance literature. This dissertation terms such collaborations, socioeconomic collectives which are defined as interfirm alliances that engage in persistent collaboration in pursuit of both social and economic goals for the sustainability of the alliance structure and collective benefit of its organizational members. A battery of empirical tests were conducted to determine both the structure and effects of organizational kinship in these groupings. Findings suggest that indeed when a multi-level perspective is taken organizational kinship is composed of multiple predictors across levels of analysis, particularly trust, legitimacy, and shared knowledge at the inter-organizational level and network cohesion at the trans-organizational level. Finally, results from a series of multi-level structural equation models were supportive of the hypotheses that when organizational kinship is modeled at as a multi-level construct its predictive capabilities far exceed those of its component indicators at any individual level of analysis. These results, their limitations, and the implications of this dissertation’s findings on the literature of interfirm collaboration and collaborative resilience are discussed.

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<p>  </p> <p>This qualitative exploratory case study uses phenomenology to conduct an investigation of teacher collaboration and teacher empowerment within a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at a Title 1 elementary school. This study examined the experiences of five elementary and three administrators to learn about their perspectives on teacher collaboration and teacher empowerment at their school with a focus on discovering how administrators empower teachers and support teacher collaboration. The Professional Learning Community Organizer (PLCO) (Appendix A) developed by Hipp and Huffman (2010) is the framework utilized to assist in analyzing the responses from the respondents regarding collaboration and shared leadership in this study. From the responses from the interviews, the researcher identified in each of the five dimensions how the administrators initiated, implemented, and supported teacher collaboration and teacher empowerment at KES. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The emergent themes identified in this study were consistent with the research related to teacher collaboration and teacher empowerment in a PLC in Chapter 2. The themes include: 1) supportive relationships, 2) collaboration, 3) collective responsibility for all students, and 4) teacher empowerment. From these themes, three assertions were gleaned: 1) Administrators must create a culture of collaboration; 2) Administrators must create an environment that is conducive to supportive, trusting, respectful, and collaborative relationships; and 3) Administrators must create an environment that promotes and encourages shared leadership and teacher empowerment.</p>