The study of firm-level or corporate entrepreneurship (CE) has created an interest in the posture of the firm to act entrepreneurial, leading some researchers to develop the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct, the dimensions of which are firm-level risk taking, proactiveness, and innovativeness (Miller & Friesen, 1982). Lumpkin and Dess (1996) subsequently expanded the construct to include competitive aggressiveness and autonomy. The results of empirical research on various antecedents and moderators to the EO-performance linkage have been mixed and a myriad of taxonomic and modeling approaches has not served to facilitate a CE paradigm. From the strategy literature, entrepreneurship scholars have borrowed the focus on alignment or fit between the organization and its environment and have introduced structural contingency and configuration frameworks to the EO modeling process. The relatively limited international research in EO includes primarily single-country studies, with some cross-cultural research based on Hoftsede's (1980) dimensions. The majority of these studies have involved samples of small and medium-size, established firms across multiple manufacturing industries. Based on the Miller and Friesen (1982) and Lumpkin and Dess (1996) models, this study explores the intersection of three domains—entrepreneurship, strategy and comparative international research. A contingency approach is used to explore the impact of various combinations of EO, environmental forces and organizational factors on the performance of small and medium-sized firms in a single high-tech industry, systems integration, in the US and Germany. Challenging the strength of the EO-Performance linkage, the study looks as well at strategic process, organicity, national environment and turbulent industry environment and their impact on performance Survey data from 94 US and German executives is analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results suggest that EO alone is not a significant determinant of firm performance, the latter being influenced significantly by country context and the interaction of a strong strategic process or an organic firm with a turbulent industry environment. The reliability of the dimensions within the EO construct for high-tech firms is questioned and the need to contextualize the construct with respect to turbulent industries and multi-national studies addressed.

The impact of knowledge on firm performance has been seen as one explanation of firm performance heterogeneity, which is a central question in the area of Strategic Management. However, there has been surprisingly limited research into the role of new knowledge internalization within firms. Further, the ubiquitous role of external knowledge providers, especially those that explicitly exist to provide knowledge to firms (Consulting Service Firms) has been negligibly studied. Specifically this dissertation looked at how firms first understand new knowledge and suggested that firms differ in their ability to discern the impact of this new knowledge based on the absorptive capacity that they already possess. I examine how firms internalize this new knowledge and suggest that they can either use existing internal resources or seek external assistance to achieve this internalization. This dissertation has empirically examined these linkages. A survey sent to the top management of 2015 Indian firms, yielded 277 usable responses, which have provided insights into the new knowledge internalization pathways in firms. I use structural equation modeling and hierarchical regressions to test my hypotheses. I find that firms do differ in their use of internal and external knowledge providers, while attempting to internalize new knowledge and that the quality of the relationship impacts the outcomes of any external engagement. I also find that firms with absorptive capacity benefit both by having better short term financial performance and also by being well situated to increase their stocks of knowledge assets, which can help long term performance. This dissertation contributes to several streams of literature in the field of strategic management. I add to the knowledge based view literature and more specifically to the absorptive capacity literature by partially opening the black box of organizational routines. This dissertation also contributes to the professional service literature by suggesting that consultants can help firms generate performance, although this is particularly beneficial to firms that already posses high absorptive capacity. Implications of the results from both practice and research perspectives are discussed and areas of future research are suggested.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the doubling of the global retailing from seven to fourteen trillion dollars has been accompanied by a soaring competition in the marketplace. Further, ever-rising customer expectations for the availability of in-store products and on-time delivery of online purchases have intensified retail competition. Nimble distribution tactics are essential to manage retail delivery and replenishment operations in such a competitive environment. This dissertation investigates two new distribution tactics for retail demand fulfillment of fast moving full-pallet products, and commit-to-delivery online purchased products. The first distribution tactic is that of the shipment of full-pallet products via a subset of retail stores instead of established distribution centers. The tactic is studied by developing a solution methodology which employs both clustering and optimization. The methodology is applied in a computational study which required generating instances for multiple U.S. census regions, and successive optimization of multiple mixed integer multi-commodity network models for each problem instance. A Java application is developed which uses US Census Zip Code population demand based data to generate retail distribution regions. The application then clusters a distribution region into several service areas. Finally it optimizes each service area separately using the IBM ILOG CPLEX libraries, and visualizes the obtained solution as well as the clustering stages of each problem instance. The computational study reveals that through-store-transshipment achieves up to 11.6% cost reduction in distribution of full-pallet products. The solution methodology can solve the model instances faster than the exact method by an order of magnitude. The second distribution tactic is the use of an alternate distribution channel for online order fulfillment. The problem of identifying online order fulfillment channels is modelled as a two-stage location-routing problem for which a heuristic solution algorithm is developed. The algorithm rests on the selection of candidate fulfillment centers first, and successive optimization of stores reassignment at subsets of fulfillment centers next. It is implemented in Java using the IBM ILOG CPLEX solver libraries with automated solution visualization using Tikz libraries. The performance of the algorithm is tested in a computational study that includes three prototypical chains of retailers with presence in New England and Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Pacific census regions. Computational tests verify the viability of the developed solution algorithm both in terms of obtained solution quality and computation time-efficiency.

Pay matters to most employers and their employees, and given that pay has important organizational consequences (Heneman & Judge, 2000), most companies have an interest in understanding how their employees assess pay satisfaction. Given this recognized importance of compensation, pay satisfaction has been an area of interest among scholars for many years, and organizational justice theory provides a framework for considering how people make pay satisfaction assessments. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of several organizational justice constructs on pay satisfaction. Variables of interest included are: internal equity, individual equity, external equity, procedural justice, and interactional justice. Using a policy capturing approach, fifty-two middle and senior level managers at a large financial organization evaluated thirty-two hypothetical pay situations. The findings revealed that each of the justice constructs had a positive relationship with pay satisfaction. The three forms of distributive equity (individual, external, and internal equity) were viewed as more influential than procedural equity or interactional equity, and individual equity had the greatest influence. The cluster analysis established distinct clusters of managers who employed different decision policies, but all clusters had individual equity as the greatest influence. Some of the clusters had a more balanced approach while other clusters relied much more on the distributive equity components. These results support the early exchange theories, which were derived from social comparison theory, and reveal the overriding importance of similar comparisons when establishing pay models in organizations.

During the past two decades, interest in entrepreneurial firms has increased dramatically. One of the most widely studied aspects of entrepreneurship is CEO leadership style. Traditionally, leadership research has relied on micro variables such as leader/member relations, subordinate readiness, or task complexity to explain leadership style. While such research is plentiful, several reviews have shown that there exists a morass of contradictory and inconclusive findings (Klenke, 1993). In response some leadership scholars have called for more emphasis on a macro orientation (e.g., Waldman & Yammarino, 1999), though there has been limited empirical investigation to date. A key problem with integrating macro variables to examine leadership is that debates of causality are widespread in the organization theory literature. To mitigate this problem, the proposed research adopts the configuration approach (Miller & Friesen, 1983). The underlying assumption of the configuration approach is that organizations can be classified into a finite collection of sub-groupings based on their design and contextual characteristics. This study compared CEO leadership patterns in two configurations: the simple bureaucracy and entrepreneurial adhocracy (Mintzberg, 1983). The consumer banking and software development industries were used to represent the simple bureaucracy (consumer banking) and the entrepreneurial adhocracy (software development) configurations. Two pretests indicated that these industries match the contextual and structural characteristics identified by Mintzberg. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with an upper executive in each industry. Second, a manipulation check was included on the mailed survey to assess the two samples quantitatively. Participants in this study included upper-echelon managers. These individuals described their CEOs according to Manz and Sims's (1991) typology, which is comprised of four broad leadership types: the strongman, transactor, visionary, and SuperLeader. Data were received from 71 software firms and 97 banks. Four hypotheses were tested. The first two predicted that the strongman and transactor archetypes would be more prevalent in simple bureaucracies than in entrepreneurial adhocracies. Hypotheses three and four predicted that CEOs in entrepreneurial adhocracies would have higher visionary leadership and SuperLeadership ratings than in simple bureaucracies. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that only a single sub-dimension (instruction and command under the strongman archetype) was significantly different. Based on the results of this study, it appears that the leadership profiles in both configurations were virtually identical.

Professional Service Firms (PSFs) have become increasingly prevalent in today's society due to increased demand for consultants, lawyers, accountants and other individuals who utilize abstract knowledge to solve organizational problems (Abbott, 1988). Despite their importance to the U.S. economy, little research exists on managerial practices within PSFs, particularly on promotion practices, an area which needs to be explored since these firms have substantially different advancement systems than their more traditional counterparts. This study explores the importance of technical skills, internal connections and external connections in making promotion decisions within PSFs. Using agency theory, social capital theory, and network theory as the theoretical base for the conceptual model, a number of hypotheses postulated that technical skills would become decreasingly important as one moves up the hierarchy whereas internal and external connections would become increasingly important. At the lower levels of the firm where advancement decisions are less risky to equity holders, it was hypothesized that technical skills would be the most important criterion used in making promotion decisions. As partners become more susceptible to agency problems such as goal incongruence and information assymetries, partners create relationships with promotion candidates, in order to understand if these candidates have similar objectives for the firm as the partners. Therefore, it was hypothesized that internal connections would be the most important promotion criterion for the penultimate promotion. Because the mere existence of the PSF depends on establishing client contacts and maintaining long term customers, it was hypothesized that external connections become the most important criterion for advancement to partner. A policy-capturing methodology was used to gather data for this study, which examined three different promotion decisions: Associate to Manager, Manager to Principal, and Principal to Partner. Participants consisted of 41 business consultants who were actively engaged in making promotion decisions for their respective firms. Results indicated that technical skills were the most important criterion at the lowest levels, whereas external connections were considered the most heavily for promotions to Partner. Internal connections were never the most important criterion in any advancement decision. Analyses also suggest that promotion criteria differ depending on the level of promotion.

Risk arbitrage is a strategy that seeks to profit from takeover offers by generally simultaneously purchasing and selling the shares of the merging companies. This dissertation consists of three essays that address three different issues related to risk arbitrage strategy: takeover success prediction, risk arbitrage for stock swap offers with collars and the determinants of risk arbitrage spreads. The first essay addresses methodology issues related to takeover success prediction modeling: case-control design vs. non-case-control design; logistic regression model vs. neural networks. The case-control design is shown to bias the intercept upward and, thus, tends to increase the estimated probability of failure, which will, in turn, result in a biased estimate of the expected return on each merger deal. Next, an adjustment to the probability estimates that removes the bias is explored. Second, neural networks is found to outperform logistic regression in predicting failed takeover attempts and performs as well as logistic regression in predicting successful takeover attempts. The second essay explores the risk and return characteristics of risk arbitrage strategy for a particular type of merger offers: stock swap offers with collars, utilizing an option type dynamic delta hedging strategy. A strong positive correlation in the risk return profile is found in a declining market and an insignificant correlation in a flat or rising market. This latter finding appears to be due to the increased probability of deal failure in market downturn. Contingent claims analysis shows a monthly abnormal return of 1.8%. The third essay studies the determinants of the cross sectional variation in risk arbitrage spreads and extends the literature by relating arbitrage spreads to transaction costs, supply of capital and price pressure. The empirical evidence shows that arbitrage spread is positively correlated with transaction costs. Limitation on the supply of arbitrage capital increases the deviation of the arbitrage spread, in either direction, from the efficient level. This finding is consistent with the limited arbitrage theory. Moreover, information costs dominate the selling pressure from the target shareholders in determining the arbitrage spread.

Buildings make it possible for people to work together in organizations. In organization studies research, the physical aspects of organizations have been neglected in favor of intangible aspects (Gagliardi, 1996; Strati, 1999). Much of the research in management and organizational studies about physical workplaces concentrates on the instrumental aspects of offices, such as the relationship between open-plan offices and employee attitudes and behaviors (e.g. Hatch, 1987; Oldham, 1988), but it does not address the aesthetic aspects of offices. The physical workplace is part of the field of organizational aesthetics, which encompasses a range of topics and theoretical approaches, from aesthetics as a way of knowing organizations to the arts and related industries. This study explored the importance of aesthetics—beauty or its lack—in the day-to-day lives of people in organizations by exploring individuals’ meanings of and experiences of their offices. At the same time, it examined the relationship between aesthetics and instrumentality of the physical workplace. How do office aesthetics matter in the way that work gets done in an organization? This study used Q-methodology (Brown, 1980; Stephenson, 1953) to explore individuals’ experiences of their physical workplaces. Aesthetics and instrumentality were connected through site selection. Sites were chosen based on their combination of good/bad aesthetics and good/limited functionality. Twenty-one participants in four locations were interviewed about their offices—what they liked and disliked, and why. From the interviews, a Q-sample of statements was developed, and 19 participants sorted them into a normal distribution from “most like my opinions of my office” to “most unlike my opinions of my office.” The sorts were factor analyzed and interpreted using statement content, demographic characteristics of participants, and information about the organizations and participants that was learned through the interviews. The resulting four factors gave four different perspectives on office aesthetics. One group of participants loved their work and saw their offices as an avenue of self-expression, an extension of themselves. Another group experienced considerable emotional distress because their offices did not reflect the quality of their organizations’ work. For a third group, functionality was primary. For the last group, the office stood in for the organization as a whole—their feelings about their workspaces mirrored their feelings about their organization.

This study explores the roles of subordinates' individual differences in predicting their perceptions of abusive supervision. Supervisor behavior was controlled via a video vignette to assess if subjects perceived the same supervisor behavior differently. A sample of 756 working adults revealed that subjects' hostile attribution styles, negative affectivity, entitlement, trait anger, and external locus of control directly predicted perceptions of abusive supervision while self-efficacy and internal locus of control did not. Attributions for performance failures mediated the relationships between hostile attribution style, self-efficacy, entitlement, external and internal locus of control and perceptions of abusive supervision. These results extend abusive supervision research by controlling for differences in supervisory behavior and demonstrating that individual differences influence subjects' perceptions of abuse. Attribution research is extended by demonstrating that hostile attribution styles predict attributions and that attributions mediate the effects of individual differences in perceptions of abuse. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2012. / January 26, 2012. / Abusive supervision, Attributions, Individual differences / Includes bibliographical references. / Mark J. Martinko, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Brady, University Representative; Gerald Ferris, Committee Member; Chad Van Iddekinge, Committee Member; Paul Harvey, Committee Member.

Although there are millions of Veterans of the United States military (i.e., Veterans) currently working in civilian organizations, and millions of unemployed Veterans seeking jobs in civilian organizations, little research has examined if, how, and to what extent Veterans and non-Veterans (i.e., individuals without any military experience) experience workplace stress in civilian organizations differently. In my dissertation, I completed three research essays to address this gap in the stress literature. In the first essay, I developed a conceptual model of Veterans' workplace stress that incorporated the role of chronic strain resultant from Veterans' experiences while in the military. In the second essay, I tested an empirical model of workplace stress that accounted for the role of perceptions of hindrance stressors, challenge stressors, and organizational goodness-of-fit on employees' personal and organizational outcomes (i.e., job tension, vigor, job satisfaction, work intensity, interpersonal deviance, work-family interference). In the third essay, I built off of the findings from the second essay by exploring the role of self-regulation at work in the stress process. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / December 8, 2014. / resources, self-regulation, stress, stressors, Veterans / Includes bibliographical references. / Pamela L. Perrewé, Professor Directing Dissertation; Ronald E. Goldsmith, University Representative; Gerald R. Ferris, Committee Member; Mark J. Martinko, Committee Member; Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Committee Member.