In modern society, organizations and individuals are facing great challenges in managing people’s identity because of some newly emerged social and organizational phenomena. However, academic research in the identity field fails to make explicit the process of identity construction; further, few supportive instruments have been developed to assist people in managing their identity construction process. The thesis aims to further expose the process of work identity construction, identifying problems and difficulties embedded in the process and developing a set of instruments to assist people in managing the process. In order to achieve these objectives, systems theories were introduced to the identity research field through an action research project. In depth long-term case studies were conducted based on four managers’ experiences of applying four systems approaches in their management practices and identity construction processes. Some advances in identity research and practice have been made in this research. By bringing in the perspectives of systems thinking, some new interpretations on the identity issue are achieved. By exploring the triggers, mechanisms and outcomes of identity construction, the identity construction process is further exposed. By summarizing and reflecting on the experience of application of systems approaches in assisting identity management, a new set of instruments is developed.

This thesis presents three original research frameworks, two in corporate governance and one in corporate finance, distributed in three empirical chapters, respectively. Specifically, in Chapter 1, a novel multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach is developed not only to quantify an aggregate quality of corporate governance at firm level, but also to overcome the limitations of the existing measures (i.e., corporate governance indices) mainly with respect to full compensatory structures and industry-wide heterogeneity. Furthermore, the empirical approach, using PROMETHEE methods and econometric analysis of panel data, provides a strong inverse relationship between firm performance and corporate governance quality. The results rely on outranking relationships (over five million pair comparisons) among companies (1,203 US listed firms during 2002 to 2014) across various corporate governance criteria, comparing the aggregate quality against a well-known corporate governance index (ASSET4 ESG in Datastream). In Chapter 2, the theory of system reliability is used to model the behaviour of companies in terms of their corporate governance practices and mechanisms. Particularly, machine-learning techniques are proposed to assess a corporate governance system. The mapping of its inputs or specific indicators (e.g., corporate social responsibility, average number of board meetings, compensation policy, auditing independency and independent board) as components (either in operating or failed state), along with firm-specific conditions (i.e., age, size, risk, growth), into a reliability system aims to determine an approximate structure function that models the behaviour of the system. The proposed approach is applied to another data sample set of 1,109 US listed companies during 2002 to 2014, the financial and non-financial indicators are modelled as components of the corporate governance system, and returns on assets is defined as the system output. The results show that growth opportunities matter for the proper functioning of the system, and suggest that if companies are more transparent (i.e., components show a low probability of failure) both the trustworthiness of the companies and the system reliability improves. In Chapter 3, a research framework to analyse failure in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) reveals that not only deal characteristics (i.e., deal attitude, means of payments, deal size, ownership), but also acquirers’ and targets’ firm size, acquirers’ economic freedom, and targets’ accounting returns significantly explain the likelihood of deal failure. To this aim, a large dataset of 137,116 worldwide M&A deals (during 1977–2014 on more than 140 countries) and novel specifications of logit regression models are analysed. This chapter contributes and expands the literature in M&A deals and business research by evaluating how incumbents’ specific information can constrain the firms’ assets movement (efficiency perspective). Regarding the implications, the findings in Chapter 1 are of particular interest to both scholars and decision makers (e.g., managers, shareholders, investor, policy makers) including rating agencies, who want to assess advantages and disadvantages of corporate governance indices. Chapter 2’s findings are useful mainly for board of directors for detecting what corporate governance components are more line up with the most successful companies, or for quantifying firm reliability. The results in Chapter 3 suggest to bidders to be aware of not only deal characteristics, but also firm size discernments, economic freedom outlooks, and accounting figures when considering the exit option of a deal withdrawal.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University

Scarcity has long been known to impact consumers' choices. Yet, the impact of shelf-based scarcity in retail environments, created by stocking level depletion, has received almost no attention in the literature. Indeed, little research to date has even examined if consumers will attend to shelf-based scarcity in retail environments, much less how this cue can impact choice. A priori, given the inherently noisy and cue-filled nature of retail environments, it is quite reasonable to expect that shelf-based scarcity would play little to no role in consumers' choices. However, across six chapters, this dissertation demonstrates that shelf-based scarcity can impact consumers' choices and identifies the mechanism underlying these effects. To begin, Chapter 1 introduces the research question, while Chapter 2 outlines the relevant extant literature and develops the hypotheses to be tested. Chapter 3 demonstrates not only that shelf-based scarcity can impact choices, but also that it does so through the inferences that it induces (i.e., the process through which shelf-based scarcity impacts choice is an inferential one). Chapter 4 examines moderators of the effect, demonstrating that shelf-based scarcity effects are reversed when popular products are considered undesirable. Further, Chapter 4 shows that (i) the shelf locations of the available alternatives and (ii) the consumer's concern about persuasion attempts can impact the inferences that consumers make regarding shelf-based scarcity, thereby attenuating its impact on choice. Next, Chapter 5 focuses its attention on the robustness of shelf-based scarcity effects, showing that shelf-based scarcity impacts choices when (i) the choice is made either for oneself or for others, (ii) sales ranking, objective quality, or brand name information is available, and (iii) the choices being made are real. Chapter 5 also demonstrates two boundary conditions under which shelf-based scarcity effects are attenuated or overwhelmed. Specifically, shelf-based scarcity does not impact choices either when the consumer has prior strong preferences or when a price promotion is available in the category of interest. Finally, Chapter 6 closes this dissertation with a summary of the findings as well as a discussion of the implications of this work, its limitations, and potentially fruitful directions for future research.

Strategic information transmission models, also called cheap talk models, have become increasingly popular in accounting, as they have successfully brought new insights to various accounting topics. This dissertation consists of two chapters, each analyzes a model of strategic information transmission between an expert and a decision maker. In the first chapter, I study how reputational concerns affect analysts' incentives to invest in information acquisition, and subsequently, their strategic communication with investors in form of "repeated cheap talk". In a setting where analysts' incentives may be misaligned with the investors in a particular fashion (i.e. biased towards issuing optimistic reports), an equilibrium exists in which only aligned analysts will acquire information. As a result, investors may favorably update their beliefs about the analysts' type (as being aligned) when the report is consistent with the realized state. Hence reputational concerns serve as a disciplining device to curb analysts' opportunistic behavior, consistent with economic intuition. This is in sharp contrast to earlier studies that have treated information as exogenous and identical, in which case reputational concerns may work against informative communication. The second chapter is based on joint work with Tim Baldenius and Nahum Melumad. In this work, we study the optimal board composition---of monitoring and advisory "types"---within a framework of strategic communication between the CEO and the board when the CEO is an empire builder. The board of directors performs the dual role of monitoring and advising the firm's management. At times, it makes certain key decisions itself. A major concern regarding the effectiveness of boards is CEO power, in particular as it relates to the board nomination process and CEO entrenchment. Monitoring types on the board aim to uncover information known to the CEO, whereas advisors aim to uncover incrementally decision-relevant information. Successful board monitoring allows for selective intervention even if authority is formally delegated to the CEO. Counter to conventional wisdom, we show that powerful CEOs, who influence the board nomination process, may in fact prefer more monitors on the board than do shareholders. Regulatory interventions (such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act) that attempt to strengthen the monitoring role of boards may thus be harmful in precisely those cases where agency problems are severe. Lastly, to prevent that CEOs entrench themselves by choosing "complex" projects, shareholders may want to commit to an advisor-heavy board.

This dissertation examines the rise and fall of participative and humanistic management in American organizational culture. In the years surrounding World War II, an influential network of psychologists and human-relations experts successfully promoted the idea that managers' involvement of subordinates in decision-making, along with their cultivation of underlings' authentic self-expression, would boost the effectiveness of organizations, individuals, and the nation as a whole. Four men proved particularly influential in this endeavor: German social psychologist Kurt Lewin (co-founder of the National Training Laboratories), survey pioneer Rensis Likert (founder of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan), humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow (developer of the "hierarchy of needs"), and industrial psychologist Douglas McGregor (author of The Human Side of Enterprise). Each of these men was deeply concerned about the fate of democracy in modern society, which they feared was endangered by both authoritarianism abroad and bureaucratic dehumanization at home. Each insisted that the nurturing of participation and "self-actualization" within organizations could help build an increasingly peaceful order in industry and the world at large. Ultimately, they found their most enthusiastic converts within the corner offices and personnel departments of corporations. The dissertation argues that for roughly two and a half decades after World War II, this network of anti-fascist, pro-democratic theorists and practitioners injected their idealism into corporate culture and ultimately recast popular expectations for the relationship between organizational work and selfhood. These theorists' ability to make humanistic and participative management palatable to industrial leaders- largely through promises of intertwined psychological and economic growth -offered them significant inroads into mainstream organizational culture and helped shape a humanistic rhetoric of personal growth that still thrives in some corporations today.

This study provides evidence on a significant real consequence of an opaque financial reporting information environment: increased corporate tax avoidance. Using an international sample of firms, I find that firms with a more opaque information environment, as measured at both the firm and country level, exhibit higher levels of firm-specific tax avoidance. More importantly, additional tests using the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as an exogenous shock to the information environment while simultaneously controlling for tax regime changes around the date of IFRS adoption provide direct evidence on the direction of the association, namely that opacity causes tax avoidance. Similarly, the results from tests using the initial enforcement of insider trading laws provide additional support for a directional hypothesis. In support of the firm-level findings, I also find evidence in the aggregate that opacity is associated with countries collecting less corporate tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product. In whole, these findings suggest that tax avoidance is a significant real effect of opacity with implications for practitioners, regulators, researchers, and tax-enforcement agencies.

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The object of this study is the processes that govern the flow of financial resources around an organisation. This is addressed in the context of the need for organisations to survive and prosper in an uncertain and dynamic world. Specifically, interest is focussed upon the mechanisms responsible for its ability to respond in an appropriate way to environmental disturbances in the short term and adapt to changes in the pattern of environmental disturbances over the longer term. The aim is to identify how this process is carried out and what implications this might have for the efficient and effective design of an organisations and practices and procedures. These are fundamental issues for any sort of social organisations. However, over the last fifty years a body of knowledge has accumulated – often described as systems theory – which seeks to identify and codify the principles that underpin all forms of organisation, whether it is sociological, biological or psychological. Advocates of systems theory claim that invariant principles can be applied, and knowledge transferred, across phenomenological domains. In academia, the study of the mechanisms that govern the flow of financial resources has received considerable attention. The study of Management Control Systems (MCS) in general and budgeting in particular is one of the most densely populated fields of accounting academic research. There has, however, been a surprisingly limited amount published on the application of systems theory to financial control processes. The broad issues that this thesis seeks to address are therefore: • What principles and concepts from systems theory can be applied to study of the management of financial resources in organisations? • How might they contribute to knowledge and understanding of such systems? • How can they be used to design and operate systems in practice?