This dissertation investigates the financial impact of a large sample of outsourcing contracts signed by corporations listed on the US markets from 1990 through 2003. We construct a data set that identifies the outsourcing client and vendor firms and use this data set to examine (a) the announcement effects of outsourcing contracts on firm value, (b) the impact of outsourcing contracts on long-run stock and accounting performance and (c) the impact of outsourcing contracts on the relation between client and vendor firms.

There are many reasons why managers are interested in maintaining control over their firm. Some potential reasons include compensation, autonomy, power, perquisites, and the ability to determine the terms under which the firm is acquired. This study examines one event that provides an opportunity for managers to take actions designed to maintain control of firm, the initial public offering (IPO). A simple rationing approach provides the mechanism which impacts managements ability to maintain control. The hypothesis underlying this study is that managers strategically underprice the IPO to influence outside blockholdings. By preventing large outside blocks from forming as part of the IPO, management reduces the incentive for outsiders to monitor their actions, resulting in greater autonomy. Chapter One documents that IPO underpricing is significantly related to country-level governance characteristics. Examining a sample of 4.698 IPOs across 24 countries for the 2000-2004 time period, the results suggest that IPO underpricing is higher in countries which offer greater protection to investors. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that IPO underpricing is an instrument used by managers to maintain control of the firm when country-level governance mechanisms favor investors rights Chapter Two finds that IPO underpricing exhibits a significant, positive relation with activity in the market for corporate control. Examining a sample of over 2,300 initial public offerings in the United States over the 1990-1998 time period, the results suggest that underpricing is greater when the market for corporate control is active. Additional results indicate that the corporate control climate prevailing at the time of the offering is related to the likelihood that a firm survives in subsequent years, that underpricing is associated with the post-offering ownership structure, and that the size of the external blockholdings formed concurrent with the offering are positively related to the probability a firm is taken over in the years following the event. Together, the findings presented in this study are consistent with the hypothesis that underpricing is an instrument used to protect managers when other governance mechanisms, including investors rights and the market for corporate control, threaten their control over the firm.

Interruptions are important phenomena in organizations, and researchers debate their effects on performance. This paper reviews the literature and argues that the degree of fit between task demands and an actors capacity determines whether the effects of interruptions on performance are positive or negative. The fit model hypothesizes that for actors working with a capacity deficit (i.e., their capacity scarcely meet the task demands), interruptions have detrimental effects on performance. Moreover, the greater the actors capacity, the less negative their reactions to interruptions will be. Time diaries, surveys, and archival studies were conducted among 92 public school principals in an urban school district in the eastern United States. The results support the hypothesis on the main effects of interruptions and partially support the proposed moderating effects of individual effort. The contributions of this research and its implications for future work are discussed.

This dissertation explores job crafting, or the processes through which individuals conceptualize and carry out tasks, enact relationships with others to get work done, and ascribe meaning and significance to their jobs. Previous literature in this area has remained relatively silent about the work context factors shaping job crafting. Thus, the research conducted in this dissertation addresses three primary questions: (1) What does it mean to craft a job?; (2) What are the effects of the structural and relational context of work on job crafting?; and (3) What are the outcomes of job crafting? A model of individual job crafting and its antecedents and consequences is proposed, to describe how the structural and relational contexts of work shape opportunities and motivations to engage in job crafting. The research model explores the influence of discretion in work, task complexity, and task interdependence with others, as well as the influence of workgroup psychological safety and occupational community of practice, on how individuals craft their jobs. Further, outcomes of job crafting for individuals as well as the collective (workgroup and organization) are also explored. Job crafting is examined empirically in two settings that facilitate observation of job crafting because they offer individuals high opportunities to craft work (Eisenhardt, 1989), and provide different lenses that complement each other in enriching our understanding of job crafting. Study one (manufacturing work) preliminarily explores job crafting in autonomous teams in a manufacturing organization - the Volvo Uddevalla car factory in Sweden, where considerable room is deliberately left for individual input. Study two (service work) affords a richer context to explore the content of job crafting and in particular, the organizational and collective influences on job crafting. This study surveyed special education professionals an occupation where there is no right way to do the work in a sample of 200 schools from a large urban public school district in the U.S. Based on extensive qualitative work, a rich measure of job crafting was developed. The findings suggest that work discretion, task complexity, and interdependence with others enable job crafting behaviors. The positive effect of work discretion on task crafting is stronger for individuals with broader skills than for those with narrower skills. With regard to collective influences, team psychological safety inhibits individuals job crafting. Further, the positive effects of the occupational community of practice on job crafting are stronger in organizational settings emphasizing collaborative work than in those emphasizing isolated work. With regard to outcomes, individual job crafting enhances employees job satisfaction and commitment levels, while increasing individual performance and reducing absenteeism levels. In addition, the effects of individual job crafting extend beyond the individual and positively impact team outcomes. Finally, implications of findings for researchers and practitioners are also discussed.

Why does a firm respond to a competitor's action as it does? Prior to this grounded theory study, there was no transparency, the black box of competitive response remained dark. Using a series of three embedded case studies and examining eighteen competitive responses, this study has illuminated the processes connecting the inputs and outputs related by previous content based research in competitive response. One pattern that quickly emerged was multiple responses to competitive actions/trends. Understanding why firms pursue multiple responses and what does and does not constrain their choices became the focus of this research. To widen the beam of light, this study takes a broader view of competitive response recognizing that, from an Austrian viewpoint, all responses - imitation, modified imitation or novel - can erode the advantage created by the initiating firm. To control for rival hypotheses, the participating firms were all in the same service industry characterized by high visibility that maximizes awareness and minimizes response uncertainty. Emerging from this study are five response processes, all with the potential to produce multiple responses. These processes are differentiated by their triggers, which include perceived survival threats, performance below expectations, trends with and without revenue opportunities and trends with an impact to firm identity. This study also revealed the response pressure mechanism in which a delay in the firm's main response and a looming penalty for not responding within a response window were found to generate interim responses. Implications from this study include: an initial understanding that how a firm responds depends on the triggers; a firm may respond more than once to a competitor action; responses come in all shapes, sizes and frequencies; the number of responses is dependent on the response pressure mechanism; and how a firm responds is molded by its perceptions, its current and aspired identities, and the customer appeal of the initial action. Though this study must be replicated in additional contexts to ensure generalizeability, a final contribution of this research is to demonstrate the complementary value of process and content research to allow the full picture of competitive response to take shape.

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPs) are commercial software packages that enable integration of information and business processes throughout the organization. Realizing the business value of information technology (IT) requires its successful assimilation by the firm. ERP assimilation refers to the effective application of this type of IT in supporting a firms business strategies and value-chain activities. To succeed at this, the IS function must continuously manage the adaptation between the organization and the ERP system, even after initial deployment. For this purpose, the IS function must continuously scan both the firms internal and external environment to identify new ERP adaptation opportunities that will allow the effective application of new ERP technologies to support the firms objectives. Also, it is important for the IS function to engage in evaluation activities to analyze and select those ERP adaptation opportunities with the greatest potential for impact on ERP assimilation. It is posited here that ERP scanning will have a direct positive effect on the firms level of ERP assimilation, and that this effect will be moderated by the extent of ERP evaluation activities. IS mindfulness, the degree of collective mindfulness present in the IS function, is also posited to moderate the relationship between ERP scanning and ERP assimilation. Collective mindfulness is an elevated state of alertness toward expectations, in the face of new and unprecedented situations or changes, with a nuanced appreciation of the specific context. IS mindfulness makes more likely the identification and realization of unexpected ERP adaptation opportunities leading to a higher level of ERP assimilation for the firm. A model is proposed to describe the relations among IS mindfulness, ERP scanning, ERP evaluation, and ERP assimilation. This model has been tested by collecting survey data from 113 firms. The results suggest that first, collective mindfulness is a construct with two dimensions: alertness/attention, a state of vigilant alertness, and change/situation, an awareness or knowledge of an unprecedented situation or change in the firms environment; second, scanning of the internal environment (scanning of needs) has a main effect on ERP assimilation, and this effect is moderated by the presence of IS mindfulness (alertness dimension), as predicted by the model; and third, ERP evaluation has rather a direct effect on ERP assimilation and does not moderate the scanning-assimilation relationship as expected.

I examine the effects of firms cluster membership on their alliance network structure, and how firms absorptive capacity moderates the relationship between alliance network structure and innovation. Little is known regarding the inter-relationship between cluster membership, network structure and innovation. This study bridges this gap by first establishing the endogenous nature of network structure with respect to cluster membership and then by studying the moderating effect of absorptive capacity for the alliance network structure and innovation relationship. I contribute to the strategic management literature in several important ways. First, I clarify the implications of cluster membership on network structure by including two competing explanations: complementary and substitution mechanisms. Contrary to the popular belief that cluster membership does not matter, I find that it does matter in the study of the US biopharmaceutical industry. My findings show that firms location within a cluster area does not substitute for their strategic choices specifically for their alliance strategies. Second, I theoretically argue and then empirically demonstrate that network structure is an endogenous phenomenon with respect to cluster membership. Third, I demonstrate that when controlled for endogeneity with respect to cluster membership, alliance network structure and innovation relationship is positively moderated by firms absorptive capacity. In contrast to prior literature, I find that the main effect of firms structural holes on innovation is not significant when controlled for endogeneity. This finding is important given the mixed findings for structural holes and innovation relationship in previous studies. Finally, to the best of my knowledge, in the strategic management literature this study is the first study to introduce an exponential regression model with Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) estimation that accounts for both the endogenous nature of independent variables and the count nature of dependent variable.

The concept of cognitive organizational obstruction is developed in this dissertation. Cognitive organizational obstruction is defined as an employees global belief that the organization obstructs, hinders or interferes with the accomplishment of his or her goals and objectives and is a detriment to his or her well-being. In addition to developing the COO construct, COO is theoretically differentiated from the related constructs of psychological contract breach, perceived organizational support, organizational politics and organizational frustration. In addition to being theoretically distinct, a new concept should be empirically differentiated from existing related constructs. The development of the COO scale is described. One major implicit assumption running throughout the theoretical development of the cognitive organizational obstruction construct is that employees distinguish between the treatment received from the organization and from agents of the organization. Employees ability to differentiate between similarly conceptualized constructs of cognitive organizational obstruction, cognitive supervisor obstruction (CSO) and organizational frustration is assessed. A cognitive supervisor obstruction scale is created by changing the referent of the COO scale from organization to supervisor. Results suggest that employees are able to distinguish between these sources of obstruction and frustration. The results from a validation study are presented next. The main objective of this study is to validate the COO scale and empirically distinguish COO from the related constructs of organizational frustration, perceived organizational support (POS), psychological contract breach (PCB), and perceived organizational politics (POP). Results suggest that employees are able to distinguish between these concepts. Additional analysis evaluates whether COO explains additional variance beyond POS, PCB, POP and frustration is described next. The overarching hypothesis of this study is: COO explains additional variance in the exit, voice, loyalty and neglect outcome framework beyond the existing constructs of psychological contract breach, perceived organizational support, organizational politics and organizational frustration. More specific hypotheses are developed and tested using hierarchical multiple linear regression. Results suggest that COO explains additional variance for exit, voice and neglect, but not loyalty.

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the effects of consumers identities and connections to others on their behaviors. In the first essay I examine the notion that consumers have multiple identities that interact to influence charitable judgments and behaviors. In the first study, I examine the effect of internal moral identity and gender on adult volunteers donation allocations to terrorist victims in London or Afghanistan. In studies 2 and 3, I explore the effect of these identities on judgments of relief efforts and donation intentions for terrorist victims in London and Iraq. The pattern in these studies indicate that males give more to ingroups (i.e., London) than to outgroups (i.e., Afghanistan or Iraq) when they have high internal moral identity whereas females with high internal moral identity give equally to both the ingroup and outgroup. Study 4 examines how self-construal moderates the effect of these identities on donation likelihood to victims of natural disasters. I show that consumers have multiple identities that interact to influence judgments, rather than a single salient identity that influences behavior. In my second essay I explore the role of closeness to others and domain relevance, using the self-evaluation maintenance model, on consumer regret. In the first study, I show that closeness to others moderates the effect of performance on regret in entrée choice. In two additional studies, I show that relevance moderates the effect of closeness and performance on regret such that consumers experience more regret when they compare to a friend than to a stranger for high relevance domains with the reverse effect occurring for low relevance domains. Jealousy mediates this interactive effect on regret. Finally, in my third essay I explore the effect of special promotions on purchase intentions. I consider when special promotions such as extended employee discounts or birthday discounts increase consumers intentions to purchase. Self-construal, or ones view of him or herself as connected to or distinct from others, moderates the effect of these inclusively- and exclusively-framed promotions on purchase intentions. Furthermore, I explore the role of feelings of brand connectedness in the effect of self-construal and promotion type on purchase intentions.

This dissertation integrates three perspectives capable of explaining how top managers identify their organization's competitors: categorization, economic and organizational identity. In order to explore these perspectives a qualitative theory elaboration methodology is employed. Accordingly, a model of managerial competitor identification is developed. In addition, the three perspectives are integrated into this model to produce a robust theoretical framework.