Pursuit of novel and long-term goals is a double-edged sword. Reaching successful outcomes can be rewarding, yet pursuit of such goals are fraught with intermediate challenges including failures. How organizations pursue novel and long-term goals despite facing risks of failures is a noteworthy topic to explore. Generally, persistence with failed alternatives is considered an irrational decision. However, when organizations are faced with novel or risky alternatives that have superior long-term implications, the optimal behavior is to persist with short-term failures, as long as future success is likely. I suggest an important factor affecting the behavior and outcome of an organization, especially when it pertains to novel or risky projects is the level of delay of gratification in organizations. In other words, the capability of organizations and their members to overcome short-term failures and persist in long-term goals influences important outcomes such as innovation. In this dissertation, I examine various factors that influence delay of gratification in organizations. My empirical study is based on a multi-method analysis that draws upon three data-sources. Building on interviews with executives and entrepreneurs, I first construct validated delay of gratification in organizations using Amazon Mturk. Then, in the first essay I demonstrated from a survey-based experiment involving 190 top managers from medical device firms that contemplating about past outcomes influences executives’ perceived delay of gratification in their organizations. In the second essay, I demonstrated from an analysis of archival innovation data in conjunction with survey data of executives that in firms with high innovativeness, past innovation outcomes are strongly related to executives’ perceived delay of gratification in their organizations. Finally, in the third essay, I examine the micro-foundations of delay of gratification in organizations. Specifically, I found a positive and significant relationship between actors’ individual delay of gratification and their perceived delay of gratification in their organizations. Actors’ (top management team) TMT status neither influenced their perceived delay of gratification in their organizations nor affected the relationship between their individual delay of gratification and their perceived delay of gratification in organizations. The results of this dissertation have implications for research on organizational learning and innovation, behavioral strategy, strategic leadership, and the escalation of commitment. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / July 5, 2018. / Includes bibliographical references. / Bruce T. Lamont, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; David Maslach, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Charles F. Hofacker, University Representative; R. Michael Holmes, Jr., Committee Member; Derek Hillison, Committee Member.

<p> Information technologies are experiencing rapid transformation which has increased the amount of data available to organizational leaders. This advancement in technology and data has generated the need for increased focus at every level of the organization making evidence-based decision-making overwhelming. The research paper studies the impact of data-driven decision-making on organizational performance from the scholar-practitioner point of view with the aim of helping practitioners in this process. Based on an evidence-based approach a systematic review was used to select studies that were synthesized into a scholar-practitioner model. The approach combines what is known and not known about the research question at hand to give the best available evidence. The research evaluates thirty-four articles on data-driven decision-making, and organizational performance and provides leaders with a framework, based on evidence, to support them by simplifying this process into eight steps. The primary objective was to create a reliable assessment of the problem and evaluate the literature for solutions that are available for solving it. Using this technique, a management guide is provided so that practitioners can make the most of this research study.</p><p>

This dissertation contains three studies on competitive dynamics within digital platforms. All of my three essays focus on platform complementors (producers of complementary products to the platform) and their competitive landscape within the platform. The empirical settings of my dissertation are based on novel datasets that I constructed from multiple sources in the context of the U.S. leading mobile platforms. The first study investigates the factors associated with performance in digital platforms’ complementor markets, focusing on two product strategies: a) the extent to which complementors imitate features from competitors’ products and b) their reaction speed to changes introduced by the platform owner. The paper suggests an inverted U-shaped relationship between imitation and performance. The analysis also finds that the speed by which complementors react to owner-induced changes is positively associated with product performance. The paper further identifies platform-wide contingent factors which moderate the hypothesized relationships. The second study explores the coopetitive dynamics within a platform. The paper explores under-researched competitive dynamics between a platform owner and its complementors, focusing on an owner’s entry into its complementors’ product space – a phenomenon termed as intra-platform envelopment in this paper. The analysis shows that the overall effect of intra-platform envelopment on complementor performance is negative with a pooled data of Apple and Google platforms together. However, interesting divergent effects are found when analyzing each platform separately. These differences can be explained by idiosyncratic platform characteristics, particularly differences in the way that platform owners implemented their intra-platform envelopment actions. Further, the effect of these actions is found to vary not only across platforms, but with complementor-specific characteristics within a given platform. The third study investigates platform complementors’ strategic decision process of innovation adoption within the platform. The paper conceptualizes and empirically shows how competitive rivalry shapes platform entrepreneurs’ propensity to adopt innovation brought by the platform owner – that is, a rule-setter of the institution. The analysis finds that competition generally discourages adoption. The adoption by peer rivals has an inverted U-shaped effect on adoption likelihood where decreasing curve is driven by competitive rivalry, and competition from the institutional rule-setter negatively affects adoption likelihood. / 2020-06-30T00:00:00Z

<p> The baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are leaving considerable openings in leadership positions, as they age out of the workforce and into retirement. The nonprofit field faces a significant loss of leader knowledge if exiting leaders do not intentionally train new upcoming leaders to fill these roles successfully. Data for this quantitative study were from nonprofit retirees with the intent to look for relationships between the retirees&rsquo; perception of successive leader effectiveness and (a) duration of formal succession planning, (b) levels of leadership styles (directive, participative, achievement-oriented, supportive), and (c) demographics (gender, age, last position held before retirement.) Combined, two surveys (the Path-Goal Leadership Questionnaire and the Survey about Succession Planning and Succession Management Questionnaire) became one survey, and the Association of YMCA Retirees e-mailed it to 950 members of the AYR database. One hundred fifty retired men and women responded to the survey. Nonparametric correlations, independent samples <i>t</i> tests, and a one-way ANOVA were used to look for relationships or differences between the variables. The findings indicated that the longer the duration of succession planning, the higher the rating of successive leader effectiveness. Although directive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership styles did not significantly correlate to successive leader effectiveness, there was a statistically significant negative correlation between supportive leadership style and successive leader effectiveness. Findings showed that neither gender nor age related to significant differences in perception of successive leader effectiveness. Respondents who reported being a president/CEO before retirement rated their successive leaders significantly higher than did those who reported being an executive director before retirement. Results emphasize a need for current leaders in training and developing quality future leaders purposefully. Future studies should focus on other groups of participants, other nonprofit organizations or for-profit businesses where leaders are retiring in large numbers or on specific locations or organizations to develop case studies. </p><p>

Pursuit of novel and long-term goals is a double-edged sword. Reaching successful outcomes can be rewarding, yet pursuit of such goals are fraught with intermediate challenges including failures. How organizations pursue novel and long-term goals despite facing risks of failures is a noteworthy topic to explore. Generally, persistence with failed alternatives is considered an irrational decision. However, when organizations are faced with novel or risky alternatives that have superior long-term implications, the optimal behavior is to persist with short-term failures, as long as future success is likely. I suggest an important factor affecting the behavior and outcome of an organization, especially when it pertains to novel or risky projects is the level of delay of gratification in organizations. In other words, the capability of organizations and their members to overcome short-term failures and persist in long-term goals influences important outcomes such as innovation. In this dissertation, I examine various factors that influence delay of gratification in organizations. My empirical study is based on a multi-method analysis that draws upon three data-sources. Building on interviews with executives and entrepreneurs, I first construct validated delay of gratification in organizations using Amazon Mturk. Then, in the first essay I demonstrated from a survey-based experiment involving 190 top managers from medical device firms that contemplating about past outcomes influences executives’ perceived delay of gratification in their organizations. In the second essay, I demonstrated from an analysis of archival innovation data in conjunction with survey data of executives that in firms with high innovativeness, past innovation outcomes are strongly related to executives’ perceived delay of gratification in their organizations. Finally, in the third essay, I examine the micro-foundations of delay of gratification in organizations. Specifically, I found a positive and significant relationship between actors’ individual delay of gratification and their perceived delay of gratification in their organizations. Actors’ (top management team) TMT status neither influenced their perceived delay of gratification in their organizations nor affected the relationship between their individual delay of gratification and their perceived delay of gratification in organizations. The results of this dissertation have implications for research on organizational learning and innovation, behavioral strategy, strategic leadership, and the escalation of commitment. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / July 5, 2018. / Includes bibliographical references. / Bruce T. Lamont, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; David Maslach, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Charles F. Hofacker, University Representative; R. Michael Holmes, Jr., Committee Member; Derek Hillison, Committee Member.

This dissertation contains three chapters that describe the discretion of prosecutors in different ways. The first is a quantitative study that measures how many different interpretations a statute has and how that affects conviction rate. The second is an experiment that has mock prosecutors act out a courtroom situation to see if they select a law that is more just or one that gives them a higher economic pay-off. The third is a qualitative article that uses interviews with prosecutors and a survey to answer questions that are not addressed in the other two chapters. All of the chapters complement each other.

This dissertation contains three chapters that describe the discretion of prosecutors in different ways. The first is a quantitative study that measures how many different interpretations a statute has and how that affects conviction rate. The second is an experiment that has mock prosecutors act out a courtroom situation to see if they select a law that is more just or one that gives them a higher economic pay-off. The third is a qualitative article that uses interviews with prosecutors and a survey to answer questions that are not addressed in the other two chapters. All of the chapters complement each other.

When are decision makers able to learn from others? I argue that actors occupying network positions that enable social learning gain a competitive advantage. I show that the accuracy of security analysts' earnings forecasts improves when the coverage network readily conveys information about competitors' decision-making context. The benefits of social learning are most pronounced in unstable environments, measured by firms' forecast dispersion. Causality is established using a natural experiment: surviving analysts' network positions -along with their forecasting accuracy -deteriorated to the extent that their coverage overlapped with analysts who perished in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The importance of social learning in the analyst profession goes well beyond improving forecasting accuracy. I show that analysts' clients recognize narrow expertise on those stocks where the analyst is ideally positioned for social learning. This article contributes to organizational theory by specifying network positions providing a superior view of competitors' information environment and to strategy research by identifying conditions under which these positions confer a competitive advantage.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1973. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-161). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

The dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay finds that corporate giving is associated with CEO characteristics, but not with measures of firms most likely to benefit in terms of increased profitability. This result is robust to a natural experiment and holds even among firms that are most likely to benefit from corporate giving. Analysis of firm value shows that shareholders discount the equity value of cash for firms making large charitable contributions. To examine when corporate giving represents an agency problem, I focus on CEO preferences, stock price reactions to the initial disclosure of corporate giving where executives and directors have personal interests, corporate contributions to company-sponsored foundations where shareholders lose their claims to these often sizable assets, the relation between CEO compensation and corporate giving (presuming it is a perquisite), and strategic uses of corporate giving that build CEO social ties with the independent directors. My results indicate that CEOs advance their personal interests when firms contribute and suggest that the value reduction is due to managerial misuse of corporate resources. In the second essay, I use a 2009 Delaware case law as a natural experiment to examine the effect of officers fiduciary duties (OFDs) on corporate acquisition decisions. I find that acquirers whose officers were protected from market discipline prior to 2009 experienced increased announcement-period abnormal stock returns after the event, mainly because post-event acquisitions by these firms created more synergies and reduced officers control. I also find that OFDs are more important in firms where officers have wealth risk, face less product market competition or are insulated from the market for corporate control. These results suggest that OFDs are a critical corporate governance mechanism that works in tandem with other disciplinary mechanisms. In the third essay, I use natural disasters as potential shocks to firm-specific performance and find that the compensation of both CEOs and non-CEO top executives is asymmetrically adjusted for exogenous changes in firm-specific performance. The results are robust to the inclusion of several corporate governance measures, supporting the hypothesis that asymmetric pay-for-performance sensitivity is a result of implicit incentives.