<p> The current funding situation for community college athletics and future funding remains unclear (Byrd &amp; Williams, 2007). The purpose of the qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences and perceptions of athletic directors to understand the financing issues with athletic programs. Sixteen athletic directors from the state of California were interviewed until the point of data saturation on the topic. Analysis of the interview responses revealed that managing the athletic programs, the budget, and Title IX are ways athletic directors can deal with the financial issues. The results of the current research study may provide current and future business leaders with information that will facilitate making decisions about financing community college athletic programs.</p>

<p>The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) can leverage open innovation to increase their economic viability and success in this modern, globalized post-industrial society marked by constant change and intense competition. To date, most open innovation research has focused exclusively on large companies, while neglecting the specific competitive challenges and strategies of SMEs. This dissertation evaluates the open innovation landscape from the vantage point of SMEs because these firms play a significant role in economies around the globe. Innovation is a crucial driver in their ability to survive, compete, and prosper. The dissertation author created three new models to explore the research topic. The first, the <i>Holistic Model of Innovation</i>, is useful to more fully understand the entire innovation landscape (both closed and open innovation as well as product and non-product innovations). This dissertation also presents the author&rsquo;s <i>SME Competitive Challenges Model </i>, which identifies the main size-related competitive hurdles that SMEs face (i.e., challenges related to a lack of resources, limited dynamic capabilities, and excessive risk exposure). Additionally, the author presents his <i>SME Open Innovation Strategies Model</i>, which evaluates various open innovation strategies for overcoming these competitive challenges. This dissertation presents a series of propositions based on these new conceptual models and tests them by conducting a systematic review, several meta-syntheses, a case study, and multiple statistical meta-analyses with data from 34,676 SMEs across dozens of industries in 27 countries. </p><p> <i><b>Keywords:</b></i> Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), Small Business Strategy, Global Open Innovation, Closed Innovation, Size-Related Competitive Challenges </p>

<p> This exploratory dissertation examines governmental influences during the ongoing emergence of NewSpace, which is a community of private, entrepreneurial organizations pursuing space-related business opportunities outside of the traditional NASA-Military-Industrial complex model. </p><p> While recent research has provided significant insights into how organizations, populations and communities emerge, our understanding of the influence of government in this process has been minimal. Since government is the single most important actor in the modern economy, correcting this oversight is crucial to any modeling of community emergence. As emerging communities are lacking in traditional quantitative data, and the goals of this research are exploratory rather than theory testing, an inductive, qualitative methodology is utilized. The first step towards understanding governmental influence during the emergence of a new community is documenting exactly what the government does in this environment. Chapter IV uses grounded theory methodology to produce a Taxonomy of Governmental Roles in the Emergence of High-Technology Communities. The question of whether government facilitates the creation of new industries - or whether entrepreneurs manipulate government - is of critical importance to researchers of entrepreneurship and policy. Chapter V uses historical analysis to consider the causal role of government in the establishment of the environment in which this new community of organizations is emerging. Institutional legitimacy is crucial to the survival of entrepreneurial firms as well as to new populations and communities. Chapter VI considers the government's key role as legitimizer, and proposes a theoretical model for the process of legitimacy transfer from governmental agencies to entrepreneurial firms, populations and communities. </p><p> This dissertation makes contributions to the literatures of organizational evolution, community emergence, institutional theory, entrepreneurship and policy. It offers researchers a framework to better model governmental influence. It also provides entrepreneurs with a holistic view of governmental influence on their environments and offers governmental actors a fuller understanding of the impact that their legislation and enforcement activities have on new organizations and industries.</p>

<p> This qualitative study, using a two iteration Delphi method, identified five supply chain leadership best practices. The primary focus of the best practices is to provide proven practices that meet the needs and requirements of supply chain leaders to effectively lead supply chains. A panel of experts selected from the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals online database provided data for the study via a commercial electronic survey service. The expert panel provided open and closed ended, subjective responses to the study questions. The survey service collected and summarized the raw data. Manual analysis provided the basis for modifications to the Delphi survey instruments after the pilot study and the first iterations of the Delphi process. The findings allowed validation of three of the four candidate best practices identified during the literature review and two best practices identified during analysis of the first iteration responses. The five leadership best practices could provide leaders the knowledge to improve innovation and strategic leadership within supply chains.</p>

<p> Problem and Purpose </p><p> Innovative solutions in national defense are needed to respond to national security threats in our uncertain environment. Leader attitudes and behaviors have a substantial impact on innovation. Unfortunately we did not completely understand the effect of leader attitudes and behaviors on innovation and the team dynamics that lead to innovation, especially in the military. The purpose of this study was to determine how leadership attitudes and behaviors contribute to product innovation within the U.S. Navy and how leadership emerges within this complex adaptive system of innovation. </p><p> Method </p><p> The research was a qualitative design based on a multiple or comparative case study. A theoretical/conceptual framework of complexity leadership theory was used as a meso model to understand adaptive innovative processes at work in the context of bureaucratic forms of organizing. </p><p> Three teams based on three product innovations were selected because they demonstrated breakthrough innovation with disruptive technology and successfully fielded their capabilities within cost and schedule thresholds. </p><p> Data from three project teams were collected using interviews, focus groups, and program documentation. Eighteen individuals participated in interviews and focus groups. The attitudes and behaviors of nine formal leaders and several emerging leaders were analyzed and evaluated. The results were summarized in six different themes that were apparent across all three projects and multiple leaders. </p><p> Results </p><p> These six themes were a combination of leader attitudes and behaviors that contributed to the success of the three projects. These attitudes and behaviors were observed at all levels of the organization from the program manager, to the IPT leaders, to the engineers getting the job done. The first theme was urgency driven by a heartfelt need. The second theme was that these leaders would listen and were open to ideas. The third theme was to know the process and challenge the process while managing risk and ensuring it is good enough. The fourth theme was vision, passion, assertive, persistence, and moderating setbacks. The fifth theme was trusted leader with credibility, integrity, and was professional. The last theme was collaboration, teamwork, and recognition. Communication was apparent throughout all the themes and links them together. </p><p> Conclusions </p><p> The attitudes and behaviors of the leaders in this study contributed to the innovation by keeping the polarity within these themes in creative tension. The leaders established a strong sense of urgency based on a heartfelt need while also creating an atmosphere and practice of making sure everyone had a voice and their voice counted. The leaders were professional with credibility and integrity. They knew the process, but also challenged the process, managed risk, and encouraged a solution that was good enough. The leaders were passionate about the vision and were assertive and persistent in removing obstacles. But they also encouraged collaboration and teamwork. They moderated setbacks and prevented the team from getting discouraged and took opportunities to recognize the team both informally and formally. These leader attitudes and behaviors contributed toward leaders emerging in the organization. </p><p> A wheel of innovation is proposed that demonstrates the themes in a synergistic and balanced approach. While this improved our understanding of how leader attitudes and behaviors drive innovation, there are still significant areas for further study. Further case studies are needed to determine if this wheel of innovation is applicable outside of the U.S. Navy. Quantitative studies based on these findings are needed to expand the understanding and generalizability of the model.</p>

<p> Social ventures are organizations created to exploit opportunities for social value creation (Lumpkin et al., 2011; Zahra et al., 2009). In fact, scholars argue that the main distinction between commercial and social entrepreneurship lies in the relative priority given to social wealth creation versus economic wealth creation (Mair &amp; Marti, 2006). Given the increasing importance of social ventures, understanding the internal and external dynamics of such organizations would be beneficial for research and practice. The following three essays explore antecedents, consequences, and strategies of social ventures. </p><p> Essay 1. This essay addresses the need for research concerning environmental influences on social entrepreneurship by specifically focusing on the environmental conditions that affect social venture creation rates. Though some scholars have suggested that entrepreneurs respond to certain socioeconomic conditions by engaging in social venturing activity (e.g. Weerawardena &amp; Sullivan Mort, 2006), compelling empirical evidence is still lacking. A prevalent explanation of social venture creation is the market failure perspective. This perspective holds that social ventures are created to address social issues that the market and the government have failed to deal with effectively (Austin et al., 2006). In this essay, I delve into the market failure perspective to explain social venture creation rates and provide an empirical test at the macro-level. The results in this essay support the market failure perspective by suggesting that social venture creation rates increase with suboptimal economic conditions and high levels of government failure in dealing with social issues. </p><p> Essay 2. Research investigating how social entrepreneurship influences commercial entrepreneurship remains scarce in the social entrepreneurship literature. Following an ecological perspective (Hannan &amp; Freeman, 1977), Essay 2 predicts that social venture creation exerts a negative influence on commercial venture creation, as social and commercial ventures compete for similar resources at the time of founding. Previous research has also suggested that a positive relationship exists, but it has failed to account for the mechanism through which a positive influence may occur. Following the social entrepreneurship and new venture creation literatures, it is proposed that such mechanism is social value creation. That is, social ventures create better environments in which commercial ventures can be created. This effect, in turn, diminishes the negative influence suggested by population ecology. The results strongly support the hypothesized competitive relationship between social and commercial ventures. Similarly, the results suggest that social ventures, in fact, create social value that improves the wellbeing of the region in which they operate. </p><p> Essay 3. Social entrepreneurship scholars have called for research that addresses factors that may lead or prevent failure among social ventures (e.g. Haugh, 2005). Essay 3 examines a series of factors that affect social ventures' failure at different levels of analysis, specifically at the firm- and environmental-levels. Following both Resource Dependence Theory (Pfeffer &amp; Salancik, 1978) and the Resource Based View (Barney, 1991), I propose that nonprofit social ventures engage in strategic actions to ensure the continuous flow of resources. Such actions, in turn, reduce the probability of organizational failure. The results suggested a U-shape relationship between earned income and the probability of nonprofit failure. This relationship holds when the nonprofit social venture generates high proportions of income from unrelated business activities, but becomes an inverted-U when the proportions of unrelated business income are smaller. The availability of financial capital had a similar effect on the relationship. Some concerns are raised regarding one of the definitions of entrepreneurialism in the nonprofit sector. That is, the requirement that nonprofits generate a good proportion of their income from commercial activities. The results suggest that earned income generation is a good strategy to prevent failure among nonprofits, as long as these organizations do not over rely on this source of revenue.</p>

<p> Practices of collaborative relationships between industry and academia have a long-standing history traced to the time when prototypes of modern universities emerged in the medieval period. The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify the extent of agreements in stakeholder perceptions on the benefits of industry-academia collaborations for sustainable growth in Trinidad and Tobago. One hundred and thirty three persons participated in 13-item survey instrument over the Internet from industry and academia in Trinidad and Tobago to measure perceptions. The measurements were in goal achievement, benefits, satisfaction levels, influences, barriers, and key success factors. The unit of analysis was individuals from industry and academia. Analysis of the data revealed that perceptions to goal achievement from both industry and academia towards collaborative relations ranged from important to very important. Benefits to industry and academia ranged from important to very important while the perceived influences from Government were indifferent. The main barriers to collaborative relations were communications, leadership, and cultural awareness. The key findings were significant differences between industry and academia perceptions on additional income for universities as a goal of collaborative relations; joint representation on technical committees as a means of information; lack of entrepreneurial culture and communication as a barrier to collaborative relations. The recommendations include the need for entrepreneurial development and improved communications among the stakeholders as a pre-requisite to success in collaborative partnerships.</p>

<p> Local retail jewelry leaders of Saudi Arabian (S.A.) small to medium enterprises (SMEs) have struggled to survive through declining profits and increasing business foreclosures, thus threatening the sustainability of the Saudi retail sector and the Saudi economy. A globalization strategy to enhance profitability for jewelry retail SMEs in S.A. is needed, given the limited options for improving profitability. Despite this acknowledged need, leaders in S.A. have refrained from such a strategy because they lack knowledge of economic attraction features to target in the globalization process. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study using discriminant analysis was to examine specific countries' economic attraction features in the historical globalization strategy of a leading U.S. global jewelry company that could facilitate the implementation of a successful globalization strategy for a local Saudi jewelry SME retail company. The study addressed the effects of 6 independent predictor variables of 25 target countries' economic attractions on the dependent grouping variable, which distinguished among 3 order-of-entry groups according to the U.S. company's date of entry in each country between 1972 and 2009. Results indicated that except for the Hofstede index, no other variable had a significant role in the classification of the target countries. Because there was a scarcity of research on this topic, the study is beneficial for its theoretical and academic value, and may be practical for the derivative benefits of catalyzing business growth by empowering leaders of local, successful luxury brands in S.A. to implement their own globalization expansion process and increase employment in the Middle East.</p>

<p> This study examined the relationship between innovation strategy, as represented by assignee patents, and the financial performance of firms traded on stock exchanges in the United States. Building upon previous industry-specific research, this study broadens these investigations to relationships across multiple industries with respect to innovation and value creation. As a basis for examining the aforementioned relationships, this study was based on a framework shaped by Schumpeter's (1934) economic value of innovation theory. This study seeks to answer three research questions: (a) To what degree does innovation and a company's financial performance correlate across different industries, (b) To what degree does innovation strategy for publicly traded mid-capitalized firms and a company's financial performance correlate across different industries, and (c) To what degree does innovation strategy for publicly traded large-capitalized firms and a company's financial performance correlate across different industries? In addressing these questions, the study analyzed secondary data from the United States Patent and Trade Office and company financial data from the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) online system. Regression analysis was conducted to analyze the relationship between company financial data and innovation as a function of patent awards. While no significant relationship was found to exist across a range of financial measures, significance was found for selected measures of mid-capitalized firms over a seven-year period. Recommendations for future research was provided in the conclusions to the study.</p>

<p> The current qualitative phenomenological study was conducted to explore small and medium enterprise (SME) business leaders&rsquo; lived experiences with e-commerce practices. The central research question for the current study was as follows: What is the lived experience of SME leaders who have used e-commerce practices within their business with regard to the effect and critical success factors (CSFs) of e-commerce in the SMEs&rsquo; success? The findings of this study offer insights into how the adoption of e-commerce practices might help SMEs in Puerto Rico to achieve competitive advantage and contribute to their success or survival. The study served to define the knowledge and skills required for leaders to manage e-commerce operations. Research findings indicated that e-commerce helps to generate revenue and profitability for a business. A key negative aspect of e-commerce that leaders must consider is distrust in terms of security risks and identity fraud, among others. The study findings indicate that SME leaders in Puerto Rico are using e-commerce practices such as media advertising and promotion based on electronic marketing media, and cutting-edge technology through more interactive websites, among others. Other key factors for e-commerce success were the knowledge and skills that the SME leaders possessed, which included knowledge of technology like Web programming, and know how to create and use different tools based on computer systems, among others. The findings of the current study can serve as a roadmap to those considering adopting e-commerce, and lead future research related to the use e-commerce practices in SMEs.</p>