Previous research on leadership as archetype considered archetype as metaphor and not as it is understood in other literatures as a collectively accepted and defined role within and across cultures. Archetypical theories are posited as useful because they help us understand universal aspects of human behavior; however, empirical research demonstrating archetypical thinking and behavior remains rare. Accordingly, this phenomenological study investigated whether a leadership archetype exists as a shared cognitive template and if so, what characteristics define it. The theoretical framework used to examine the phenomenon of leadership combined leadership theory, philosophy of the mind, Jungian psychology, social constructionist theory, and neuro-linguistic programming. Data were collected in semi-structured interviews from a convenience sample of 10 Midwestern subjects belonging to professional and social organizations and having an expressed interest in leadership. Interviews were coded and sequentially analyzed using a semiotic--phenomenological method that included thematic descriptions, reduction, and interpretation. Results failed to identify an archetypical view of a leader, but identified choice and attribution as key elements in selecting leaders and accepting their leadership. These findings suggested an explanation of leadership as a group consensus that emerges through a dynamic process rather than solely from leader behavior. Implications for positive social change result from the study's contribution toward further understanding of the psychology of leader selection and follower behavior. Given the multiplicity of existing leadership models, the insights gained from this research contribute to the scholarly literature highlighting group-dynamic influences and can lead to improvements in leadership training and leadership development outcomes.

Mergers and acquisitions have historically experienced failure rates from 50% to more than 80%. Successful integration of information technology (IT) systems can be the difference between postmerger success or failure. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the entropy phenomenon during postmerger IT integration. To that end, a purposive sample of 14 midlevel and first-line managers in a manufacturing environment was interviewed to understand how the negative effects of entropy affect the ultimate success of the IT integration process. Using the theoretical framework of the process school of thought, interview data were iteratively examined by using keywords, phrases, and concepts; coded into groups and themes; and analyzed to yield results. The data indicated that negative entropy factors were associated with the postmerger integration process. Participants' perception of loss emerged as a central theme for employees from both sides of the merger. A majority of the participants perceived entropy in terms of loss similar to the loss of a family member. The findings may contribute to social change by providing a framework for merger integration managers to mitigate the negative effects of entropy and facilitate a successful IT integration outcome. Successful mergers increase shareholder value and customer satisfaction, which strengthen the company's financial condition. A financially stable company will be in a better position to provide a positive contribution to the surrounding community, offer stable employment opportunities, and sponsor corporate social responsibility programs.

Dominant firms enjoy economic strengths which enable them to compete effectively in relevant markets through the use of collaborative knowledge management (CKM). While the literature is replete with general guiding principles for companies to adopt successful business strategies, there is very limited empirical research on effectively using CKM to improve company performance and market domination. The purpose of this study was to evaluate strategies for information sharing by companies to achieve better operations management and control, a wider range of customers, and stronger competitive edge in the global economy. Epistemological foundation for the study was provided by the literature on knowledge management and organizational dynamics. Data were collected by an electronically self-administered questionnaire on a convenience sample of 80 employees of three small businesses in Memphis, Tennessee. A quantitative method using Poisson regression was applied to test the hypotheses about relationships between six independent variables of value proposition, culture building, responsibilities, information technology, approaches and assessment and the dependent variable, collaborative knowledge management. Results indicate that value proposition, information technology, and building an organizational culture of responsibilities and best practices play significant roles in effective CKM. Social change implications of the study suggest that high-intensity collaborative knowledge management would produce creative leaders and workers, improved leader-worker collaboration, and more effective use of information technologies in organizational intelligence and decision making.

Disengaged employees cost U.S. companies billions of dollars annually in lowered productivity, a cost which has been compounded by the difficult economic situations in the country. The potential for increasing productivity through increased employee engagement was examined in this study. Using personal engagement theory and the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how the experiences of salaried aerospace employees affected productivity and the financial performance of an organization. Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 20 aerospace employees whose responses were codified and analyzed to identify themes. The analysis indicated that (a) the lived experiences of employees influenced employee engagement, (b) employee engagement affects organizational commitment and performance, and (c) trust and respect and leadership are essential components to keep employees engaged. Eighty percent of the participants indicated that as employee engagement increases so too does organizational performance. The implications for positive social change include new insights for leaders seeking to increase productivity and financial performance, and to support employee engagement for maintaining sustainability, retaining talent, increasing profits, and improving the economy.

As global competition has increased and organizations have become more competitive, a reliance on knowledge workers for innovation, initiative, and commitment is necessary. Having the ability to predict personnel intent to leave (ITL) provides business leaders the opportunity to reduce turnover and retain institutional knowledge. In the current study, a structural equation model was used to examine the degree to which organizational trust and commitment, as correlated variables, predicted ITL. Organizational citizenship behavior, social exchange, and organizational commitment theories formed the theoretical basis for the study. Data were gathered using online surveys from 423 participants at 5 financial institutions located in the southeastern United States. The 3 merged surveys---organizational trust index, affective organizational commitment scale, and intent to leave survey---had strong psychometric properties. Results from the analysis produced a structural equation model and measurement model with strong fit indices that provided a significant means of estimating ITL. These results may have applicability for financial institutions to predict employee turnover (as measured by ITL). Early implementation of interventions by management will improve the retention of key talent through focus on organizational commitment and trust. Such interventions could, in turn, facilitate even broader social change through more open and honest human resource practices that exhibit enhanced concern for employee well-being.

Au cours des vingt dernières années, le secteur des services est devenu le secteur le plus important en nombre d'actifs occupés dans l’économie mondiale, en particulier dans les pays développés. Par ailleurs, la concurrence et la coopération dans le secteur des services sont devenues de plus en plus populaires dans le contexte de la mondialisation économique. Comment collaborer avec un accord gagnant-gagnant apporte une source fertile de problèmes de management des opérations dans le domaine des services. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions des stratégies de collaboration dans des systèmes de services homogènes. Nous nous concentrons en particulier sur les stratégies de pooling des ressources de service.Dans les deux premières parties, nous étudions le problème de partage des coûts entre les fournisseurs de services indépendants avec des temps de service qui suivent une distribution générale et en tenant compte de l'abandon des clients. Nous modélisons à la fois chaque fournisseur de services et la coalition coopérative comme des files d'attente avec serveur unique, et spécialisons les stratégies de pooling avec les capacités de services fixes et modifiables. Dans la dernière partie, nous abordons le problème de pooling dans le cadre multiserveur pour évaluer la qualité de l'hypothèse "superserveur". Nous étudions numériquement l'impact de la variabilité de la durée de service et l'abandon des clients sur les jeux de mise en commun des ressources. Nous comparons aussi les partages des coûts entre le système de "super-serveur" et multiserveur. / In past twenty years, the service sector has emerged as the primary sector in the world economy, especially in developed countries. Competition and cooperation in service industries have become more and more popular in the context of economic globalization. How to operate the collaboration with a win-win agreement brings a fertile source of operations management issues in service science. In this thesis, we study collaborations between homogeneous service systems in terms of resource pooling strategies.In the first two parts, we investigate the cost-sharing problem among independent service providers with general service times and accounting for the customer abandonment. We model both the service provider and the cooperative coalition as single server queues, and specialize the capacity pooling strategies with the fixed and optimized service capacities.Finally, we address the service pooling problem in the multi-serverpooling setting to assess the quality of the "super-server" assumption.We numerically investigate the impact of service duration variability and customer abandonment on the pooling game. We compare between cost-sharing results of the two resource pooling concepts, with or without the "super-server" assumptions.

Ces travaux s’intéressent à la coordination entre services au sein d’un hôpital. Il s’agit d’améliorer la prise en charge des patients en prenant une vision de leur parcours qui intègre toutes les unités impliquées. Nous nous sommes particulièrement intéressés au cas de la chimiothérapie ambulatoire, en partenariat avec l’hôpital Henri Mondor de Créteil. Trois questions sont traitées :1. Comment concevoir et mener un programme de changement dans un contexte multi-services à l’hôpital ?2. Comment améliorer la délivrance des chimiothérapies ambulatoires ?3. Pourquoi la planification stratégique dans les Centre Hospitalo-Universitaires donne-t-elle des résultats décevants, comparés aux contextes industriels où ces approches ont été appliquées avec succès ?Pour répondre, notre principale méthode d’investigation a été la recherche-action. Dans le cadre de projets de réorganisation à l’hôpital Henri Mondor, nous avons adapté et combiné des méthodes de recherche opérationnelle et de génie industriel pour prendre en compte les spécificités du contexte hospitalier. Nos travaux aboutissent à la proposition et à l’évaluation de méthodes de réorganisation centrées sur la coordination entre services, et sur une meilleure connaissance de l’environnement spécifique de l’hôpital, un contexte différent de ceux où s’est traditionnellement développé le génie industriel. / This dissertation addresses the challenge of coordinating hospital services. We take an integrated view on care delivery and the various units involved in a care process, with a case study in outpatient chemotherapy process at Henri Mondor hospital, Créteil, France. We tackle three research questions :1. How should a change program in a multi-department setting be designed and managed?2. How can one improve outpatient chemotherapy delivery?3. Why do strategic plans look so disconcerting and disappointing in public academic medical centers, compared to otherindustrial organizations, when similar methods are applied?Our main research method is action-research. During reorganization projects, we adapt and combine methods from operational research and industrial engineering in order to integrate hospitals’ specificities. We propose and evaluate reorganisation methods focused on interdepartmental coordination, and we contribute to a better knowledge of the specific environment of hospitals, which is quite different from the contexts in which industrial engineering traditionally developed.

Cette thèse traite de diverses problématiques liées à la gestion des opérations dans l'industrie automobile. Plus particulièrement, les modèles développés cherchent à améliorer la gestion des stocks et des opérations de logistique interne chez Faurecia, un équipementier automobile. Dans un premier temps, à l’aide d’un modèle de simulation à événements discrets, nous déterminons les niveaux de stocks nominaux optimaux et les dates de lancement de production optimales de produits finis dans les usines d’assemblage, de type longue distance. L'impact de l’utilisation de l'information avancée sur la demande en termes de réduction de coûts de stock et de pénalités de retard est évalué. Ensuite, nous proposons un modèle analytique approximatif pour optimiser les niveaux de stock de sécurité de composants qui minimisent les coûts de stock et des livraisons exceptionnelles.Le modèle proposé est appliqué dans une usine de type courte distance et présente des réductions de coût intéressantes par rapport au modèle de calcul utilisé en pratique. Avant de développer ce nouveau modèle, nous déterminons la loi de probabilité de la demande relative aux composants et nous proposons une méthode générale d'analyse de la demande de composants dans les systèmes d’assemblage à la commande. La dernière partie de la thèse traite de la gestion des opérations de cross-docking interne (dans l’usine) en comparant différentes politiques de cross-docking couramment utilisées en pratique. Ce travail permet de comparer les politiques (en termes de coût de stockage et de main d’œuvre) et d’identifier les contextes dans lesquels il est intéressant d’utiliser chacune d’elles. Plusieurs extensions et perspectives de recherche sont proposées à la fin de la thèse. / This thesis addresses new research questions related to operations management in the automotive industry. More particularly, we aim at improving inventory control and internal logistics operations management in Faurecia, an auto parts maker. First, by using a discrete event simulation model, we calculate the optimal base stocks levels and optimal release lead times of finished goods in long-distance plants. The impact of using advance demand information on inventory holding and backorder penalty costs reduction is evaluated. Then, we propose an approximate analytical model to optimize components safety stock that minimizes inventory holding and rush ordering costs.The proposed model is applied in a short-distance plant and shows interesting cost reductions compared to the currently used calculation model. Before developing this new model, we determine the probability distribution of components demand and propose a general method of components demand analysis in Assemble-to-Order systems. We also study the management of internal (plant) cross-docking operations by comparing different cross-docking policies commonly used in practice. The cost related to each policy is assessed in terms of surface and man-hours. Several extensions and research perspectives are proposed at the end of the manuscript.

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The purpose of this three-essay dissertation was to expand knowledge and theory regarding soft systems methodologies (SSMs) and data visualization approaches in business, engineering, and other social sciences. The first essay depicts a bibliometric analysis study of the historic impacts of SSM from 1980-2018 on business, engineering, and other social sciences fields. This study found 285 articles that described or employed SSM for research and included outcomes such as top SSM authors, author citation impacts, common dissemination outlets, time-bound distribution of publications, and other relevant findings. This study provided a picture of who, what, why, when, and where SSM has had the greatest impact on academic thought and practice. The second essay presents research on the academic impact of Systemigrams, an associated data visualization approach, finding examples of conceptual or research development that employed Systemigrams to depict complex problem situations. Recommendations for improvement of designing these data visualizations to increase their field use resulted from this study. The final essay leverages a selection of the articles as use cases to produce a grounded theory study to identify phenomena that arose from the use of SSM for operations and firm strategy research. This study identified two broad themes including (i) scope, structure, and process challenges and (ii) performance and evaluation limitations. These themes were explained by six patterns that emerged from the publications. Each produced change recommendations for SSM process, practice, and reporting to support its continued viability and adoption in business and operations research.