<p> In this paper, presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration/Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Management, I will examine the keys to success for collaboration between nonprofit and commercial theatrical entities in the form of an enhancement deal. I will demonstrate the defining elements of nonprofit and commercial theatrical ventures, define how they collaborate with each other in the form of enhancement deals. Then, based on my research, I will give recommendations for best practices for both parties when approaching an enhancement deal. Finally I will propose what relevance an enhancement project may have for the California Repertory Company.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to identify the qualities that characterize informal leadership in small organizations in the Greater Salt Lake City, Utah area and to develop a grounded theory regarding qualities that characterize informal leadership. The study involved 28 employees and 13 managers from three small organizations in the Greater Salt Lake City, Utah area. As a result of analyzing the data acquired from responses to an open-ended questionnaire and a review of peer-reviewed literature, a grounded theory and model of informal leadership were developed. The grounded theory identified individual competence, organizational structure, and situational requirements as themes related to informal leadership. Sub-themes that were identified represent informal leadership qualities. The sub-themes of confidence, ability, knowledge, willingness, example, and influence emerged from the study as qualities related to individual competence. The sub-themes of encouragement, ideas, asking, and opportunities emerged from the study as qualities related to organizational structure. The sub-themes of ability, organization, skills, goals, effectiveness, company, and teams emerged from the study as qualities related to situational requirements. Understanding gained from the current study may help leaders to realize that organizational culture will either promote or hinder the effectiveness of informal leadership. An understanding of the role that informal leadership plays in the leadership of the organization can offer leaders the opportunity to benefit from the specific qualities that individuals within the organization have to offer in an informal leadership capacity. The findings contribute to filling the gap in peer-reviewed literature related to informal leadership and to the body of knowledge relating to informal leadership as highlighted by the perceptions of employees and managers in small organizations. </p>

<p>Supply chains consist of all parties that, working together as suppliers, customers of suppliers, final customers, and logistics companies, transform raw materials into finished products for delivery to customers. Supply chain executives oversee the activities of supply chain management (SCM) professionals. Supply chain professionals coordinate efforts to ensure that products meet cost, delivery, and quality standards. Supply chain management is the coordination of activities required to purchase, transform, and deliver products to customers through coordination of efforts by suppliers, mediators, and service providers. Supply chain management performance is the degree purchased item costs, deliveries, and quality performance meet standards established by buyers and sellers. Lowering costs may contribute to profitability, but may also lead to decreased quality and thereby contribute to less profitability. The problem was that SCM executives overseeing the efforts of SCM professionals responsible for supply chain performance often did not attain the SCM performance expected by their senior executives. The purpose of the quantitative study was to determine associations among five components of SCM executive transformational leadership style and SCM performance, according to the perceptions of SCM professionals who report to those executives. Eighty-two SCM professionals completed the questionnaire. The results indicated moderate associations between (a) idealized influence behavior <i>r</i>(82) = -.338; <i> p</i> =.01, a weak correlation between (b) idealized influence attributed <i> r</i>(82) = .294; <i>p</i> = .003, a moderate correlation between (c) individualized consideration r(82) = .422; <i>p</i> &lt; .01, a weak correlation between (d) inspirational motivation <i>r</i>(82) = .313; <i>p</i> =.005, and a weak correlation between (e) intellectual stimulation, <i>r</i>(82) = .322; <i>p</i> = .010, with the criterion variable. Stepwise regression resulted in one significant model <i> R²</i> = .178; <i>F</i> (1,80) = 17.288, *<i> p</i> &lt;.01. Individual consideration was a statistically significant predictor of perceived SCM performance. For each point improvement of individual consideration, the criterion variable increased by .282, thereby, improving professionals' perceived SCM performance. Recommendations for further research include investigation of additional leadership styles and SCM performance, investigation of transactional and laissez faire styles, and investigation of large versus small businesses. Researchers may build on this study by adding members of other professional organizations such as those of the Institute of Supply Management. </p>

<p> Organizations are focused on growth, and one important means to enhance growth is inorganic growth through merger &amp; acquisition (M&amp;A). As an important component of inorganic growth, the literature spends significant time focused on human factors as a critical component supporting accomplishment of stated goals and objectives of the M&amp;A. Yet, the literature is less robust when looking at the role of leadership as one of the major aspects of human factors to consider in M&amp;As for both the acquirer and the target organization. While the literature recognizes the importance of leadership as a component of successful M&amp;As, it is largely focused anecdotal aspects of leadership and little or no focus on empirical studies of leadership in M&amp;As. For these organizations engaged in M&amp;A activities, understanding the role of organizational leadership capability as a predictor in M&amp;A success can be a key differentiator. M&amp;As generate a large amount of risk and this requires assessing and understanding variables that impact M&amp;A success in order to reduce the risk of the M&amp;A decision and enhance chances for successful integration at the conclusion of the M&amp;A deal. Within this dissertation, organizational leadership capability as determined by 360-degree leadership assessment instruments are leveraged across a wide range of M&amp;As and industry sectors to identify organizational leadership capability areas and competencies that might be predictors of M&amp;A success. Identifying organizational leadership capability profiles through these combinations of leadership areas and competencies can aid M&amp;A decision making and reduce inherent risk in those decisions.</p>

Control charts are regularly developed with the assumption that the process observations have an independent relationship. However, a common occurrence in certain industries is the collection of autocorrelated data. Two approaches are investigated that deal with this issue. The time series approach is based on modeling the data with an appropriate time series model to remove the autocorrelative structure. The EWMA approach is based on modeling the observations as a weighted average of previous data. The residuals from the two approaches are plotted on control charts and the average run lengths are compared. Both methods are applied to simulations that generate in-control data and data that have strategically located nonstandard conditions. The nonstandard conditions simulated are process change, linear drift, mean shift, and variance shift. It is proposed that the time series approach tends to perform better in these situations.

The critical nature of the venture capital-entrepreneur relationship is emphasized by the 46.4% exponential growth rate of venture capital investments throughout the 1990s. It is that time in the venture capital cycle between the time the first stage funding is made and the venture capitalist exits that the greatest opportunity exists for the venture capitalist to influence the outcome of his limited partners' investment. Theories have been offered to explain the effectiveness of the venture capitalist through agency, procedural justice, information, environment, and power theories. The first stage of this study investigates the predictive ability of the entrepreneur's attitudes toward his venture capital partner for long-term performance using entrepreneur attitudes in the light of these theories. The focus of the second and third stages of this analysis is on the ability of internal auditing and environmental factors characterizing the firm at the time of its IPO as predictors of long-term investor wealth appreciation. Data mining involves conducting all three steps in the development of a mathematical model of any phenomenon: structure generation, parameter estimation, and model confirmation, on the same set of data. In this development of a prediction scheme of firm performance we focus on model generation and preliminary model parameter estimation. The data for these analyses were obtained from a 1990 survey of top management of 145 venture capital funded enterprises, plus SEC filings on 563 Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) issued in 1997, stock market prices, and public accounting data. Both sets of data are treated according to an operational measurement theory rather than the traditional representational mode. As a result: (1) entrepreneur appreciation for strategic information, and new idea support, from his venture capitalist, are found to be predictive of subsequent business performance as successful IPO or merger/acquisition harvests; (2) routine application of non-parametric methods to wealth appreciation data for the time 1997--2001 casts doubt on the characterization of that time as a "boom," while confirming the anomaly of IPO underperformance; and (3) accounting data available at the time of IPO may be able to predict subsequent stock market performance three years out.

The distribution of products and merchandises can be done in various modes. The mode aimed by this study is the "integrated" distribution. It brings together a manufacturer and merchants who are linked by contract. The object of the latter is to oblige the merchants to buy, exclusively or not, the manufacturer's goods for reselling on their behalf. This resale is organized by the manufacturer who dictates to them the obligations concerning the sale and the maintenance of the goods. / Those obligations engender contractual relationships on a regular basis between the parties which are essential for the commercial survival of the resalers. In fact, the latter put their enterprise of distribution at the manufacturer's disposal. Thus, the parties adhere to a same procedure of distribution because the manufacturer can follow his goods from the production to the consumption stage. / The preliminary chapter of this thesis specifies and elaborates the terminology in Quebec Law on the usual terms relative to those contracts. This was rendered necessary because of the influence of American terminology on the subject. This work naturally led to an historic overview of the contracts of integrated distribution in five major juridical systems: United States, England, Canada, France and Quebec. / The first chapter's purpose is to establish a classification of those contracts which are proteiforms. To this end, we used two types of criterion of classification, namely the economical criteria and the juridical criteria. The economical criteria will study the economic activity aimed by those contracts and the form of economic concentration which they represent. Our juridical criteria will analyse the clause of exclusivity and the clause of control. / Having thus established the criteria of classification, we will then, in a second chapter, examine the obligational content of the contracts of integrated distribution. These can be divided in two main categories according to whether they possess or not a clause of territoriality. Contracts that do not have a clause of territoriality can be divided between those which have or do not have the exclusivity of supply.

This dissertation reports findings from an exploratory study of the formation of emergent strategy (Mintzberg 1978; Mintzberg & Waters 1985) in large and complex organizations. The study tracks autonomous strategic behaviour (Burgelman, 1983b), which is theorized and shown to be an important precursor to emergent strategy, using a single case study covering a period of ten years at a large telecommunications company. Building on Bower and Burgelman's model (Bower, 1970; Burgelman, 1983a, 1983b, 1983c), the dissertation develops a process model for emergent strategy which features four key components: project definition; mobilizing wider support to provide impetus; manipulating strategic context; and embedding within structural context. In addition, the study identifies four paths for emergent strategy formation by distinguishing between initiatives resulting from new ideas and initiatives resulting from the recycling of preexisting ideas from prior projects; and between projects for which "promoting" is an early priority versus those for which "executing" is an early priority. The study also identifies mechanisms through which autonomous strategic behaviour becomes "ephemeral" and disappears rather than enduring to become realized as emergent strategy. / Cette étude exploratoire analyse la formation de la stratégie émergente (Mintzberg 1978; Mintzberg et Waters 1985) au sein des entreprises complexes de grande envergure. Notre étude fait un examen systématique des comportements stratégiques autonomes (Burgelman, 1983b), que l'on théorise comme précurseurs importants de la stratégie émergente. La recherche utilise une étude du cas d'une grande entreprise de télécommunication couvrant une période de dix ans. S'appuyant sur les travaux de Bower et Burgelman (Bower, 1970; Burgelman, 1983a, 1983b, 1983c), nous développons un modèle de processus qui comprend quatre composantes, soit : la définition du projet, la mobilisation de bases de support élargies pour donner de l'impulsion, la manipulation du contexte stratégique, ainsi que l'inclusion au sein du contexte structurel. De plus, l'étude identifie quatre chemins pour la formation de la stratégie émergente en différentiant d'une part les projets issus d'une nouvelle idée, plutôt que ceux faisant appel à une idée préexistante, et d'une part, les projets que l'on « soutient d'abord », de ceux que l'on « exécute d'abord », L'étude identifie aussi les mécanismes par lesquels les comportements stratégiques autonomes deviennent « éphémère» et disparaissent plutôt que de perdurer dans le temps et se réaliser en stratégie émergente.

This dissertation comprises three essays. In the first essay, we provide results for the valuation of European style contingent claims for a large class of specifications of the underlying asset returns. Our valuation results obtain in a discrete time, an infinite state-space setup using the no-arbitrage principle. Our approach allows for general forms of heteroskedasticity in returns. It also allows for conditional non-normal return inno- vations, which is critically important because heteroskedasticity alone does not su¢ ce to capture the option smirk. The resulting risk-neutral return dynamics are from the same family of distributions as the physical return dynamics. Our framework nests the valuation results obtained by Duan (1995), and Heston and Nandi (2000) by allowing for a time-varying price of risk and non-normal innovations. In the second essay, we develop a methodology to study the linkages between equity and corporate bond risk premia and apply it to a large panel of corporate bond transaction data. We find that a significant part of the time variation in bond default risk premia can be explained by equity-implied bond risk premium estimates. We compute these estimates using a recent structural credit risk model. In addition, we show by means of linear regressions that augmenting the set of variables predicted by typical structural models with equity-implied bond default risk premia significantly increases explanatory power. This, in turn, suggests that time-varying risk premia are a desirable feature for future structural models. In the third essay, we first document empirically that embedded put option values are related to proxies for term structure risk, default risk and illiquidity. In a second step, we develop a valuation model that simultaneously captures default and interest rate risk. We use this model to disentangle the reduction in yield spread enjoyed by putable bonds that can be attributed to each risk. Perhaps surprisingly, the most imp / Cette thèse comprend trois essais. Dans le premier essai nous avons développé des résultats pour l'évaluation des actifs contingents de type Européen pour une vaste classe de spécification du rendement de l'actif sous-adjacent. Notre méthode est obtenue dans une économie à temps discret et espace infini en utilisant seulement la condition de non arbitrage dans le marché. Notre approche permet une forme générale d'heteroskedasticité pour les rendements. Les résultats pour les cas d'homoskedasticité sont retrouvés comme des cas spéciaux. Notre approche permet d'accommoder les cas où l'innovation dans la dynamique du rendement est conditionnellement non normale. Cette flexibilité est extrêmement importante car l'heteroskedasticité seulement n'est pas su¢ sant pour cap- turer le phénomène du "smirk" dans les prix des options. Nos résultats emboîtent ceux obtenue dans Duan (1995) et Heston et Nandi (2000). Dans le deuxième essai nous avons développé une méthodologie pour étudier le lien entre la prime de risque dans les obligations corporatives et celle de l'actif risqué de la firme. Nous avons appliqué notre méthode sur une large base de données des transactions des obligations corporatives. Nous avons trouvé qu'une importante partie de la variation temporelle du risque de défaut dans ces obligations peut être expliquer par des estimées de la prime de risque du défaut reconstruite à partir de l'actif risqué de la firme seulement. En plus, nous avons démontré à l'aide des régressions linéaires qu'augmentant la série des variables prédites par le modèle structurel par notre estimé de la prime du risque de défaut ajoute une explication significative. Dans le troisième essai nous avons montré empiriquement que la valeur des obligations corporatives du type" puttable" est reliée aux risques de défaut, de liquidité et celui dû aux taux d'intérêts. Dans la deuxième étape de ce projet nous avons développé un mo

This thesis comprises two papers that investigate the impact of operational and/or financial hedging on risk management in a global supply chain environment. The problems are derived from the current climate in which many North American firms are heavily contracting overseas suppliers located in China, India, Vietnam and other countries. The theoretical and numerical results obtained in this thesis provide managerial insights to mitigate demand and exchange rate risks in outsourcing in the event that firms are risk averse. The first paper studies operational hedging strategy for firms that face both exchange rate and demand uncertainties. Operational hedging comes in the form of real option to switch production between domestic suppliers and offshore outsourcing suppliers. It demonstrates that these firms benefit from maintaining capacities with both suppliers. The value of the operational option increases as the exchange rate uncertainty or demand uncertainty increases. In addition, when firms become risk-averse, they may use domestic capacity as a hedge against offshore capacity. As a result, the firms may choose to sustain local capacity even if it exhibits negative marginal contribution to the profit. Furthermore, risk-averse firms may retain more total capacity than risk-neutral firms. The second paper expands on the first paper by including financial hedging strategy. It studies a capacity planning problem in which a risk-averse firm plans to reserve capacities with potential suppliers located in multiple countries to hedge demand and exchange rate risks. It provides both analytical and numerical results from a general model with n suppliers, as well as a special case with two suppliers in China and Vietnam. With financial hedging, the risk-averse firm has access to financial markets so that it is able to adjust capacity and production allocation decisions conditional on financial information, the result of which always increases optimal utility. In general / La thèse consiste en deux papiers qui étudient l'impact de la couverture opérationnelle et/ou financière sur la gestion du risque dans la chaine de distribution globale. Les problèmes proviennent du fait que beaucoup de firmes nord-américaine sous-contracte une bonne partie de leurs opérations à des fournisseurs situé outre-mer, notamment en Chine, en Inde, au Vietnam ainsi que dans d'autres pays. Les résultats théoriques et numériques obtenu dans cette thèse donnent un aperçu des méthodes de gestion pour mitiger le risque de demande et le risque de taux de change, lors de la sous-traitance à des firmes situés à l'étranger. Le premier papier étudie les stratégies de couverture opérationnelles pour les firmes qui font face à la fois à des incertitudes sur le taux de change et sur la demande. La couverture opérationnelle se présente sous la forme d'une option réelle de changer la production entre des fournisseurs locaux et outre-mer. Nous démontrons que les firmes bénéficient à conserver des capacités de production avec les deux types de fournisseurs. La valeur de l'option opérationnelle augmente avec l'incertitude sur les taux de change et sur la demande. De plus lorsque les firmes sont averse au risque, elles peuvent utilisées les capacités locales pour se couvrir contre les capacités outre-mer. Il en résulte que les firmes peuvent choisir de maintenir la capacité locale même si elle montre une contribution marginale négative au profit. De plus des firmes averses au risque peuvent maintenir encore davantage de capacité. Le deuxième papier étend le premier papier and incluant les stratégies de couverture financière. Dans ce papier nous étudions les problèmes de planification de la capacité de production, dans lesquels les firmes planifient de réserver des capacités de production avec des fournisseurs potentiels situés dans plusieurs pays afin de se couvrir contre le risque de demande et de taux de change. Nous off