Despite potentially increased sales and operational efficiencies, a surprising number of firms have not adopted e-business. Annual surveys of e-business use in Canada and other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries reveal significant differences in adoption rates between sectors. The surveys identify product characteristics as a key rationale for not adopting online selling. There are examples, however, of firms in all sectors that have discovered how to use online selling (i.e., through direct retailing, portals, online auctions - or other models). This research identifies the key internal capabilities that let firms implement online selling tools and reconfigure their way of doing business, by innovating their business model, to take advantage of e-business. Wheeler’s (2002) Net-Enabled Business Innovation Cycle (NEBIC) model is a theoretical framework for studying the process of implementing e-business tools as technology innovations for business growth where “net-enablement” refers to a firm’s innovative use of networks connected via information technologies. The NEBIC model suggests four sets of capabilities a firm needs to create value for its customers by utilizing technology: choosing enabling technologies, matching technology benefits with economic opportunities, executing business innovation for growth, and assessing customer value. The model is grounded in dynamic capability and absorptive capacity theories, offering an integrated way to adopt an e-business application, such as online selling, using internal capabilities that management can develop through planning, knowledge acquisition, training, and recruitment. This research is the first to operationalize the constructs in the NEBIC model and increase the understanding of the firm capabilities required to implement online selling as a technology innovation for business growth. The study also extends the NEBIC model by developing a construct to measure the innovation in business models firms need as they implement online selling tools. Data gathered from a national sample of Canadian firms are analyzed to test four hypotheses. These concern net-enablement capabilities, and the selection and implementation of online selling, together with the associated outcome of such innovation in terms of business model innovation. The overarching hypothesis is that firms that successfully select and implement online selling have better developed net-enablement capabilities. Further, those firms will innovate their business model. The research to test these hypotheses proceeded in two stages. First, exploratory research accessed both current literature and feedback from academic and professional experts to identify and develop scales and measurements for the net-enablement constructs of the research model. In the second empirical stage, these scales were used to measure capability development and business model innovation in a cross-section sample of Canadian firms. Responses to an online survey were analyzed to test the statistical properties of the scales, and structural equation modeling (SEM) assessed the hypothesized relationships between net-enablement capability for online selling and actual business model innovation. The research contributes to the literature on e-business adoption, and the application of dynamic capability and absorptive capability theories for technology adoption. In particular, it provides empirical support for Wheeler’s NEBIC model for e-business tools selection and implementation. The data confirm that firms with better-developed net-enablement capabilities are more likely to select and implement online selling tools successfully. The data also substantiate the view that online sellers have indeed innovated their business models to incorporate the practical tools of online selling. Practitioners considering extending their market through online sales are advised to assess their net-enablement capability first. The scales developed through this research provide a tool for identifying these important capabilities and routines within organizations. It is particularly important that firms looking to incorporate online selling should evaluate (and develop as necessary) their ability to access new technology; evaluate their strategic options and match them with the benefits of the proposed technology; handle, manage, and implement the project; and reconfigure elements of their business model, i.e., make changes to their product or service and its payment methods. Successful online sellers do not depend on a single factor; rather they develop “net-enablement” capability, a continuous and multi-faceted process of related capability sets that involve all parts of the organization.

Transportation is important in making supply chain decisions. With the careful consideration of transportation expenses, the performance of each supply chain member, as well as the entire supply chain, could be improved significantly. The purpose of this research is: 1) to explore and identify the various situations that relate to replenishment and transportation activities; and 2) to reveal the strength of the connection between purchase quantity and transportation discounts, and integrate the two discounts to enhance supply-chain coordination. The problem is analyzed and categorized into four representative cases, depending on transportation. To aid the supplier or the carrier to determine the discount that should be offered, in light of the buyer's reaction to that discount, decision models are proposed under three different circumstances. First, assuming a single product, we investigate the quantity discounts from the supplier's perspective, via a noncooperative game-theoretical approach and also a joint decision model. Taking into account the price elasticity of demand, this analysis aids a sole supplier in establishing an all-unit quantity discount policy in light of the buyer's best reaction. The Stackelberg equilibrium and the Pareto-optimal solution set are derived for the noncooperative and joint-decision cases, respectively. Our research indicates that channel efficiency can be improved significantly if the quantity discount decision is made jointly rather than noncooperatively. Moreover, we extend our model in several directions: (a) the product is transported by a private fleet; (b) the buyer may choose to offer her customers a different percentage discount than that she obtained from the supplier; and (c) the case of multiple (heterogeneous) buyers. Numerical examples are employed, here and throughout the thesis, to illustrate the practical applications of the models presented and the sensitivity to model parameters. Secondly, we consider a situation with a family of SKUs for which the supplier will offer a quantity discount, according to the aggregate purchases of the product group. Management of those items is based on the modified periodic policy. From the supplier's point of view, what are the optimal parameters (breakpoint and discount percentage)? For deterministic demand, we discuss the cases in which demand is both constant and price-sensitive. First as a noncooperative Stackelberg game, and then when the two parties make the discount and replenishment decisions jointly, we illustrate the impact of price-sensitivity and joint decision making on the supplier's discount policy. The third approach studies the case in which transportation of the goods by a common carrier (a public, for-hire trucking company) is integrated in the quantity discount decisions. In reality, it is quite difficult for the carrier to determine the proper transportation discount, especially in the case of LTL (less-than-truckload) trucking. This is not only because of the "phantom freight" phenomenon, caused by possible over-declaration of the weight by the shipper, but also due to the fact that the discount relates to both transportation and inventory issues. In this research, we study the problem of coordinating the transportation and quantity discount decisions from the perspectives of the parties who offer the discounts, rather than the ones that take them. By comparison of the noncooperative and cooperative models, we show that cooperation provides better overall results, not only to each party, but also to the entire supply chain. To divide the extra payoffs gained from that cooperation, we further conduct a coalition analysis, based upon the concept of "Shapley Value." A detailed algorithm and numerical examples are provided to illustrate the solution procedure. Finally, the thesis concludes with comprehensive remarks. We summarize the contributions of this thesis, show the overall results obtained here, and present the directions that our research may take in the future.

Protection of personal information has become a critical issue in the digital world. Many companies and service provider websites have adopted privacy policies and practices to protect users’ personal information to some extent. In addition, various governments are adopting privacy protection legislation. System developers, service providers, and interface designers play an important role in determining how to make systems fulfill legal requirements and satisfy users. The human factor requirements for effective privacy interface design can be categorized into four groups: (1) comprehension, (2) consciousness, (3) control, and (4) consent (Patrick & Kenny, 2003). Moreover, the type of technology that people are engaged with has a crucial role in determining what type of practices should be adopted. As Weiser (1996) envisioned, we are now in an “ubiquitous computing” (Ubicomp) era in which technologies such as digital tabletops (what Weiser called LiveBoards) are emerging for use in public settings. The collaborative and open nature of this type of smart device introduces new privacy threats that have not yet been thoroughly investigated and as a result have not been addressed in companies’ and governmental privacy statements and legislation. In this thesis, I provide an analytical description of the privacy threats unique to tabletop display environments. I then present several design suggestions for a tabletop display interface that addresses and mitigates these threats, followed by a qualitative evaluation of these designs based on Patrick and Kenny’s (2003) model. Results show that most participants have often experienced being shoulder-surfed or had privacy issues when sharing information with someone in a collaborative environment. Therefore, they found most of the techniques designed in this thesis helpful in providing information privacy for them when they are engaged with online social activities on digital tabletops in public settings. Among all of the proposed tested designs, the first three have proven to be effective in providing the required privacy. However, designs 4 and 5 had some shortfalls that made them less helpful for participants. The main problem with these two designs was that participants had difficulty understanding what they had to do in order to complete the given tasks.

This exploratory research investigates students’ responses to innovative instructional methods, focusing primarily on identifying the barriers that discourage students from engaging with methods that are new or not expected. The instructional methods explored are examples of learning-centred teaching and assessment methods, and are considered to be innovative since they are not yet widely used in higher education. To investigate this issue, literature from organizational change management, resistance to change, and higher education is reviewed. Gaps from the higher education literature suggest that no comprehensive framework or model exists regarding students’ barriers to engaging with innovative, learning-centred instructional methods. Additionally, few studies compare faculty member and student perceptions, clarify whether the instructional methods studied are innovative for the students, or apply theories and concepts from the change management literature. This research attempts to address these gaps. Case study methodology is selected to enable a detailed study of a course that employs innovative instructional methods. A modified grounded theory approach is used to inform both research instrument design and data analyses. Data are collected from multiple sources and via multiple methods, and both thematic and comparative analyses are presented. Overall, support is found for the four research propositions posed. The students’ barriers fall into eight key themes, and comprise various codes and properties to provide further understanding. The saliency of the codes appears to vary by time of term and type of instructional method. Other relevant factors include: the students’ year of study and amount of instructional variety, the academic discipline and culture of the innovative course, and misalignments between the students’ and instructor’s perceptions of the barriers to change. The value of course evaluation data as feedback about innovative courses is also questioned. Finally, connections are made between the findings and the Reasoned Action Approach theory for future possible research. The findings provide a new comprehensive barrier framework, analytic fishbone tool, and testable theory to help guide the development of future research projects. Additionally, future practitioners – both faculty members and educational developers – can benefit from knowing what factors to consider when planning for and confronting student resistance to innovative instructional methods.

For more than 20 years, cap-and-trade system has served as an efficient market-based mechanism to reduce emission of air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and greenhouse gas. In this system, a limited amount of emission allowances are traded between affected firms with no price restriction. A potential problem arises when market demand of the allowances significantly surpasses market supply: allowance prices could boom to unexpected high level that jeopardizes the overall economy. Safety valve, an innovative mechanism, sets an upper limit of the allowance price and eliminates the risk of allowance price spike. Yet individual firms would bear less incentive to undertake substantial investment in costly emission reduction equipment. This paper analyzes how firms would change their investment strategy when we add a safety valve to a cap-and trade system. Since the allowance price evolution process is time dependent and does not follow the standard Geometric Brownian Motion, there is no analytical solution to this problem, hence we base our analysis on numerical analysis. Using a lattice model, we conclude that a safety valve would undoubtedly delay firms’ actual investment in emission reduction equipment. We also conduct sensitivity tests to analyze how would a firm’s investment strategy respond to change in some model parameters.

This study examines the influence of inward technology transfers and international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) on the export performance of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). IEO and innovation are frequently cited as critical antecedents of export activities. Highly entrepreneurial and innovative firms seek to capitalize on their unique intellectual property by penetrating a niche global market quickly. Extant research primarily focuses on technology innovators, in countries well known for their technological advances and support of technology based start-ups. However, SMEs that do not have a technological niche also internationalize. This phenomenon is particularly prevalent in developing economies like Egypt, where horizontal flows of technology (the transfer of technology from one organization to another), especially from overseas companies, are more common than vertical transfers of technology (i.e., from researchers directly to organizations). The literature suggests that many SMEs, especially those in developing economies, rely on the horizontal inflow of technology to enhance their export potential. The hypothesis is that by importing technology, firms also develop an outward internationalization capability (OIC). A second hypothesis is that IEO contributes to creating such capability. The literature postulates that IEO is a dynamic capability that helps firms exploit and reconfigure their resources to pursue international opportunities. Thus, firms with a higher IEO are more likely to develop OIC than are their less entrepreneurially oriented counterparts. Also, firms with a higher IEO are more likely to be involved in inflow of technology processes than are their counterparts. Despite evidence of a link between innovation and export performance, there is a dearth of research examining how inward transfers of technology from other countries influence the development of capabilities and outward internationalization of firms. This research addresses this gap by using resource-based view of the firm, dynamic capabilities view, network theory, and the concept of entrepreneurial orientation, to develop an explanation of how inward transfers of foreign technology may influence the internationalization capability and export performance of firms. Hypotheses are tested in the context of horizontal transfers of foreign technology to SMEs located in Egypt. The research progressed in two stages. In the first stage, interviews with managers of firms having experience importing technology and with substantial export activity helped to identify and confirm relevant factors that comprise OIC. During the second stage, data on inflows of technology (IFT), IEO, OIC, and exports were collected from a sample of 214 SMEs by a survey. Research results identified capabilities that underlie the outward internationalization of SMEs, by developing an OIC scale. There are no measures for OIC in extant literature. Thus, this research contributes to the development of a valid and reliable measure of this construct. Findings support the hypothesis that IEO has a direct positive effect on export performance. The relationships between IEO and export performance is partially mediated by OIC. On the other hand, the relationship between inflows of technology and export performance is fully mediated by OIC, where this research found that IFT does not have a direct effect on export performance. The research results further suggest that the level of OIC development is mainly explained by IEO, but with some contribution from IFT. The research contributes to streams of literature in international business, international entrepreneurship and management of technology. In particular, it expands the understanding of linkages between inward internationalization (inward flow of technology) and outward internationalization (export activities). The linkage between inward and outward internationalization processes received limited attention in the literature, and such research is rarer still in the context of SMEs in developing economies. The research additionally investigates the influence of a 'firm's strategic orientation (IEO) on export performance. While IEO is suggested to have a direct effect on export performance, IEO is also suggested to be an antecedent of OIC, which in turn affects export performance. Studying the mediating effect of OIC contributes to clarifying the conflicting findings of previous studies that examined the impact of entrepreneurial behaviour on international performance. The results provide owners/managers of SMEs with guidance on how to lever technology transfers by building related capabilities. The research also provides SMEs with guidance on how to measure and assess their OIC, and understand how such capability can be built or enhanced. The results additionally clarify the role of a firm's strategic orientation (IEO) in the configuration of resources and the creation of capabilities. Finally, the research helps policy-makers structure export-support polices that explicitly take advantage of opportunities presented by technology imports.

Corporate scandals have disrupted the trust and confidence in leaders over the last two decades. Researchers have not addressed the spiritual intelligence of leaders and the role it might play in influencing organizational trust. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the role of spiritual intelligence in leader influence on organizational trust. The research question addressed the role of spiritual intelligence in leader influence on organizational trust within a global insurance company. The conceptual framework was based on intelligence theory, leadership theory, spiritual intelligence theory, trust theory, and servant leadership philosophy. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with a purposive sample of 16 employees from a global insurance company. Participant selection included senior leaders in the organization or employees who reported to one of those senior leaders. Data were coded, analyzed, and interpreted manually to identify 5 themes using the methodological framework of reflective lifeworld research: emotional intelligence, servant leadership, integrity, trustworthiness, and moral compass. Findings showed that spiritual intelligence plays a critical role in leaders' capacity to make good decisions, build relationships, and provide a sense of empowerment. Senior leaders who leverage their spiritual intelligence may create an organizational culture of trust and empowerment, and may become role models for others to follow.

Abstract Education policymakers in Nigeria lack the knowledge on the views of Niger Delta youths, who rely on entrepreneurship education and its contents to fight poverty and unemployment in their area. This study's purpose was to gain deeper understanding of the views of Niger Delta youths on entrepreneurship education, its contents, and its role in fighting their area's high rate of poverty and unemployment. This study was framed and guided by three key concepts that focus on the challenges of poor communities: youth unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa, entrepreneurship education, and youth entrepreneurship. To address this issue properly, a qualitative multiple-case study was designed. Data were collected from multiple sources: semi structured interviews, archival data from government labor reports , and the researcher's field notes.Data analysis was completed through thematic and cross-case synthesis analysis. . The findings showed that the Niger Delta is less privileged in financial availability, deepened in economic recessions under unemployment, poverty, inflation, hunger and starvations, with less chance of obtaining education, without qualification for employable white-collar jobs, neglected by the government of Nigeria, irrespective that Niger Delta region is the city of petroleum production that gives approximately 95% of Nigerian national revenue annually. With the adoption of entrepreneurship education in their school system and through training and skill acquisition, the Niger Delta would contribute to poverty alleviation, increased business career ownership, and meet the daily economic demands of their families, and be able to have a voice in social change. Social change can potentially be achieved through economic restoration and the enhancement of youths' education and employment status, which in turn would help decrease the rate of poverty.

Employee turnover in the retail industry is costly, difficult, and problematic, affecting organizational wages, benefits, and schedules in relation to serving clients, customers, and stakeholders. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore effective strategies used by retail store owners in the southeastern region of the United States to reduce employee turnover. The target population was 6 successful business owners of 6 small retail businesses in the southeastern United States who had effectively reduced employee turnover. The conceptual framework for this study was the Herzberg 2-factor theory related to workplace job satisfaction. Data were collected through face-to-face, semistructured interviews and review of archival company documents related to employee turnover. Data were coded, analyzed into themes using Yin's 5-step method, triangulated, and validated by member checking to strengthen the credibility of the analyses. Three themes emerged: effective communication, supportive leadership, and competitive compensation reduced employee turnover. The implications for positive social change include the potential to provide leaders with effective strategies to reduce employee turnover, leading to reductions in unemployment, stabilization of communities, and improvements to the human and social conditions outside the workplace.

Empirical research has established that the service sector is the engine of growth in global economies. Despite the contributions of the service sector to global economies, research in service innovation has been neglected. There are still empirical research gaps especially on the predictors of strategic service delivery innovation (SSDI). The problem statement addressed in this study was that no research used the resource advantage theory to investigate the nature of the relationship between SSI and SSDI with OS as a possible moderator variable. Using resource advantage theory as the foundation, the purpose of this correlational study was to determine whether organizational size moderates the relationship between SSI and SSDI. Survey data were collected from a random sample of IT managers in the United States (n = 250), and data were analyzed using SPSS to specifically test the three hypotheses of the study. The key findings indicated that SSI was positively related to SSDI F (3, 246) = 428.153, p < 0.001 OS was positively related to SSI (t = 10.4, p < 0.001), and OS moderated the relationship between SSI and SSDI F (1, 245) = 0.005, p = 0.006. Using the conceptual framework of the R-A theory was statistically significant to investigate the relationships between the three key variables. Positive social change should be achieved when IT managers realize that strategic service innovation is positively related to strategic service innovation delivery, and is moderated by organizational size, then this information should factor into IT managers' strategic planning to positively impact social change by minimizing cost of production in service delivery to consumers. The outcome of this study was two-fold: academic significance of delivery innovation (SSDI) and managerial significance.