<p> This study explores the importance of effective leadership on the success of mergers and acquisitions for the organization and employees of merged companies. More precisely, this study addresses how the nature and influence of leadership and leadership styles impact the integration of merging companies and their employees during the post-merger integration process. Qualitative data from 10 interviews was used to provide a deeper examination of the study participants about their beliefs, responses, opinions, and points of view. This study supports much of the current research in that leadership style does have an effect on both merger and employee satisfaction. This study found that leadership styles should be a key component for organizations to review and take under serious consideration, when preparing and planning for a merger.</p><p>

<p> The quest to improve organizational performance and build effective organizational culture is prevalent today. This effort can be complex. This dissertation explores the question: Does culture change enable performance? If so, how? This dissertation focuses on the measurement of the four culture constructs: learning, power, identity, and conflict management and its relationship to performance. The article &ldquo;Changing the Way We Change,&rdquo; whose assertions I test in my research, provides a present-day view using all four constructs. Unique to this study, there is no known combination of the four constructs directly linked to organizational performance in research and additional empirical evidence to support enhancing organizational performance. Data from a Fortune 500 organization was analyzed and tested to see whether positive associations exist between these four constructs that enable performance change at various organization levels. The author utilized mixed-level and multilevel linear regression procedures of data analysis, and found that team empowerment and individual organizational identity significantly enabled performance change. Conversely, there was a negative relationship between employee empowerment and individual performance. Conflict management and performance also had a negative association. The paradox of organizational culture change and performance with suggestions for future research for scholars and implications for practitioners is discussed.</p><p>

<p> This qualitative phenomenological study provided an exploration of the lived experience of organizational commitment among generation X leaders. The study used a modified van Kaam approach to explore the participant&rsquo;s responses to the interview questions. The research study utilized the Meyer and Allen (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment as the construct for organizational commitment in the exploration of the lived experiences of generation X (Gen Xers) leaders. The current literature suggests that Gen Xers are perceived to be self-reliant, independent, like informality, are non-traditional about time and space and want to have balance in their work and personal lives. The findings of the study revealed that the participants noted the factors of having and maintaining relationships was critical, tenure at an organization is not important as much as having the right opportunity and feeling connected to the organization, and having the opportunity to work in an organization that has a culture or environment that is flexible in its management style, supports work life balance, and fosters employee development. The findings relate to the components of the Meyer &amp; Allen model of organizational commitment, and given the size of the generation X population, their current and future status as organizational leaders, the findings can be used by organizational leaders to develop human resource policies, programs and strategies that influence tenure and organizational costs.</p><p>

Knowledge-intensive firms are a growing and increasingly important part of our economy. They compete by bringing their knowledge resources to bear on their customers' challenging problems. Such knowledge resources can reside in workers, routines and work processes, stored data and knowledge, and relationships. Scholarship on these important firms, though, has focused largely on their workers' knowledge and skill, i.e., their human capital. This is in spite of the fact that the other forms of knowledge—organizational capital and social capital—both play important roles in firms. Additionally, there has been little research into the role of strategies in these firms. The research questions of this paper are designed to address these substantial gaps in our understanding of these firms. First, I examine the development and use of the full set of knowledge resources. I argue that organizational capital consists of both procedural and declarative organizational capital, and that all of these forms of intellectual capital play unique roles. Second, the paper suggests that the key strategic driver for such firms is how uncertainty impacts their ability to develop and use intellectual capital assets. Specifically, I examine the uncertainty that is brought into the firm by its customer interactions. The paper hypothesizes that the relationship between customer interaction uncertainty and organizational capital, as well as their relationships to human and social capital, will drive the performance of these firms. These questions are examined using both survey and archival data from 94 financial service organizations using linear regression and Hierarchical Linear Modeling. I find support for several of the hypotheses. Customer interaction uncertainty is positively associated with human and declarative organizational capital. Further, human and procedural organizational capital interact to impact performance, as do human capital and declarative organizational capital.

The past two decades have witnessed an increasingly popular research interest in applying established organizational justice concepts, theories, and models to non-Western cultures and societies. Prior research has shown that cultural values can create national variations in individuals' justice judgments and reactions. Although cross-cultural organizational justice studies have extended our understanding of the cultural influence on justice perceptions beyond a Western framework, these studies have made broad cross-cultural comparisons without examining whether justice perceptions in different cultures are comparable in the first place. A general concern for justice does not suggest that justice has the same meaning across human societies. Moreover, organizational justice is a social psychological concept and its meaning is largely determined by sociocultural norms. The failure to attain the emic knowledge of organizational justice in non-Western cultures, along with the assumption of the universality of the meaning of organizational justice concepts in all cultures, has jeopardized the validity of cross-cultural organizational justice studies. Three overarching research questions prompt the current investigation. First, what is the context-specific meaning of organizational justice in a non-Western culture? Second, what is the dimensionality of the justice construct in a non-Western culture? Third, what is the relationship between organizational justice and other related theoretical constructs in a nomological network in a non-Western culture? In order to answer these questions, two studies, one qualitative and one quantitative, were conducted. First, I conducted an inductive, qualitative study to develop indigenous organizational justice measures based on qualitative data from in-depth personal interviews and open-ended surveys with survivors and laid-off employees from five organizations in China. In the second study, these indigenous measures were used to develop a survey and were validated using independent samples. After the validity was established, in study 2, I tested the effects of fairness perceptions on survivors' perceived employment relationships and their job performance as well as organizational citizenship behavior based on quantitative data from survey responses. In sum, results uncovered that in a Chinese context, organizational justice is an absolute term and refers to the legality and lawfulness of company rules and procedures; organizational fairness, is relative and refers to the fair treatment provided by the organization or its management. Hence, what has been labeled "organizational justice" is construed as "organizational fairness" in China. Further, while the etic dimensions of organizational fairness construct provide support that some aspects of fairness perceptions tend to be culturally invariant, the identification of emic dimensions challenges the previously assumed universality of the meaning of organizational justice. Finally, the present investigation revealed that the effects and importance of organizational fairness perceptions vary in a layoff situation. Not all fairness perceptions are equally important in influencing survivors' responses to layoffs. This exploratory investigation contributes to the building of global knowledge of organizational justice by advancing our understanding of what constitutes fair and just conducts in China, delineating differences and similarities between Chinese justice and fairness perceptions and those in the West, and explicating mechanisms underlying the effects of organizational fairness perceptions in a layoff situation.

The topic of organizational form has been gaining increased attention, its relevance often portrayed as 'new times' driving the need for new forms. However, what is more evident in the literature is that the need for new ways of looking at organizational form has yet to be addressed.^ I argue that the problem that "new organizational form" presents is precisely located in the inability of the field to think in other than "form" itself. By problematizing the focus on "form" I take issue with the largely ahistorical and aprocessual character of much organizational theorizing, but also with some process oriented theory, giving consideration as well to the possibility that the privilege obtained by modernist paradigmatic approaches in such theorizing is also part of the problem. With this as my point of departure, I argue for knowing the organizational as an ongoing process—i.e., "forming" over knowing "organizational form" by way of classification—and ask: How to arrive at processual knowing that might escape the modernist thirst for classification? ^ In addressing this question, I employ a two-stage research process. In the first stage, I consider whether the processual and more temporally sensitive lens of path dependence theory can take us out of the impasse of modernity. Empirically, what is of interest is how Ireland's Industrial Development Authority (the IDA) emerged at a particular point in time and how it evolved over time through the interplay of positive feedback mechanisms and reactive sequences. ^ In the second stage, I use actor-network theory (ANT) as metatheoretical lens to explore if path dependence theory performs "organizational forming." Via analyses supported by ANT, I highlight the performance of translation, hybridization and purification in path dependence theory, in the process translating path dependence, and show how the 'modern' works in re-articulating organizational form.^ In general, thus, it is my argument that the problem of "organizational form" cannot be addressed by following extant analytical approaches because such approaches focus on purification at the expense of translation and hybridization. I propose, therefore, an alternative theoretical emphasis and analytical approach, namely ANT, which would maintain an on-going opening for "forming."^

This dissertation investigates the relationship between organizational resources and organizational response to events in the external environment, specifically regulatory change in the commercial banking industry. The transformation of organizations arising from change and upheaval in the external environment dates back to Joseph Schumpeter's notion that economic structures in capitalist societies are continually reshaped in a process he called 'Creative Destruction'. Such changes in the external environment, many have argued, are accompanied often by fundamental transformation within individual organizations and have been referred to as 'Schumpeterian Shifts' resulting from exogenous shocks. Organizations invest in resources to build certain competitive capabilities that enable sustainable financial performance and the ability to respond to these shocks. I argue that organizational response to exogenous shock is influenced by the resource profile of the organization. The regulatory environment is a rich domain in which to perform this study. Examples abound regarding the impacts of regulation and deregulation on organizations. In the past three decades industries such as financial services, transportation, telecommunications, and health care have been significantly challenged by regulatory change. In industries where competition was once negligible are faced with competitive forces that pose serious threats to traditional organizations. The empirical part of the research is done in the commercial banking industry. The theoretical framework brings together theories of organizational change with the resource-based view of the firm literature, including ideas from industrial organization economics. The research is executed by conceptually developing and then empirically testing a set of hypotheses that predict certain relationships between internal resource profiles and organizational responses. The results do not show predictable or similar patterns among firms as hypothesized. This study indicates that firms are greater than their bundle of resources. Internal practices, knowledge, and managerial decisions on obtaining and utilizing resources may be stronger strategic factors influencing response to shifts in external environments. This study adds a new perspective to the organizational change and resource-based view literatures. It brings together two major areas of the strategic management ideology, the influence of the external environment on organizations and the influence of resources on organizational response to the external environment.

<p> As globalization drove increased need for distribution teams, it was necessary for global higher education leaders to develop collaboration to increase productivity, business success, and employee effectiveness; thus, further exploration was needed on effective aspects of collaboration in distributed settings from the employee and leader points of view. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore inter-team collaboration experiences from the perspective of higher education leaders and team members who work remotely from each other. Tuckman&rsquo;s theory of Small Group Development (SGD) served as the theoretical framework. The target population was the 669,380 virtual workers within the United States educational services sector and a purposeful sampling method was used to select a small sample of 11 employees at a privately-held educational services organization in the United States as appropriate for qualitative case study. Data analysis employed constant comparative analysis that resulted in two concomitant themes for both research question 1 and 2: (a) conscientious communication as a distributed team strategy and (b) accountability and responsibility attributed to distributed team success. One minor theme was found for research question 1: (a) trust determined by co-workers&rsquo; productivity; two minor themes were identified for research question 2: (b) technology enhanced and limited quality communication and (c) need for face-to-face interaction in distributed work environments. Implications focused on improved collaboration within distributed work teams and highlighted (a) need for clarity, openness, and respect, (b) inter-team transparency and task interdependence, (c) commitment and importance of deliverables, (d) specified methods of technology, and (e) beneficial face-to-face interaction. The recommendations for practice included (a) establish communication standards and protocols, (b) identify group metrics, (c) identify specific and prescribed technology, and (d) establish leadership training. The recommendations for future research included (a) a quantitative descriptive design study to analyze trust at each stage of distributed group development, (b) a quantitative quasi-experimental study to explore frequency of communication in one-to-one communication, and (c) mixed method study of the impact of visual technology.</p>

<p> The study explored whether the U.S. Marine Corps&rsquo; Basic Officer Course (BOC) creates a Marine Corps cultural identity within officers and how the acculturation process functions. The Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Communities of Practice (CoP) serve as the theoretical foundation for this study because identity is an integral aspect of both SIT and CoP. The researcher used a constructivist approach to identify and interpret the value-laden meanings and influencers of a Marine Corps cultural identity expressed by the participants. Since the study explored the perspectives of the participant group, the researcher determined a case study was the most fitting form of qualitative research. The research revealed that change, culture, adherence to behavioral norms, continual development, and cultural identity were themes expressed by every participant. Participant input showed the influence that cultural lore (Marine Corps history) has on the acculturation process. The study also refined the conceptual framework used for this research, which resulted in the researcher developing the Manufactured Culture Model (MCM). Recommendations for further study include: 1) the influence of gender on the acculturation process, 2) exploring any influences the Marine Corps&rsquo; acculturation process has (if any) on individuals that fail during the screening process, and 3) examine the dynamics of interactions among the Marine Corps&rsquo; culture and a Marine&rsquo;s culture of origin.</p>

<p> This study used grounded theory to analyze the influence of leadership behaviors on knowledge-sharing intentions. The main research question for this study was, how do leadership behaviors influence the intentions of organizational members to share knowledge? The data for this study were collected by interviewing four leaders and eight followers in the health care, information technology, and security industries. The findings of the study showed that empathy, empowerment, inclusiveness, and trustworthiness are the categories of behaviors that encourage knowledge sharing. Dishonesty, inconsideration, intimidation, and rigidity are the four major behavioral categories that discourage knowledge-sharing intentions. Each behavioral category had various subcategories of behaviors. Based on the findings of the study, it was theorized that the behaviors of the leaders create impressions on the followers, which in turn influence the intentions of the followers to share knowledge. The impressions of the followers mutually transferred between leadership behaviors and knowledge-sharing intentions. The study also showed some significant differences in the leadership behavioral expectations between leaders and followers. Based on the results of the study, 10 propositions were made about how leadership behaviors influence knowledge-sharing intentions of followers. These propositions were based on the behaviors of the leaders and the impressions created by leadership behaviors. </p>