The market for online education is competitive, especially for graduate programs such as the Master of Business Administration (MBA). Attrition rates vary widely, and educators must understand the needs of online students and create engaging quality programs to be competitive. Social interaction and student connectedness are particularly important in online MBA programs where one of the expected benefits is the opportunity for students to build strong professional networks. This mixed methods study explores the student interactions, connectedness, and retention in the Online MBA Program at William & Mary. While previous research has explored building community in an online educational environment, a gap remains in the literature regarding the quality and type of student connections in a part-time online graduate program tailored to working professionals. In addition to surveying faculty who taught in the program, I attempted to survey all students of the program and used the results of the Online Student Connectedness Survey (Bolliger & Inan, 2012) to inform the student participant selection process for the qualitative case study. Rooted in the social constructivist paradigm, I created the Online Student Connectedness conceptual framework and sought to determine the extent to which students and alumni of the program felt connected. I also wanted to determine what the students’ experiences of connectedness were and the quality of those connections. The results of the quantitative survey revealed a moderately high perception of connectedness among students in the program. The results of the qualitative data indicated that several factors influenced the students’ experiences of connectedness. In addition to carefully planned collaborative and group work, a feeling of comfort and perception of community were key factors. Managing students’ expectations, support from others, and connection to the institution contributed positively to the high retention rate enjoyed by the program. The results of the study offer a number of implications for practice that may be beneficial to program administrators, professors, course developers, instructional designers, and to students. Through appropriate application of social constructivist theory and adult learning theory, educators can create learning activities that promote student connectedness and thereby, increase student satisfaction and retention rates.

Entrepreneurs need resources. Previous research has established that entrepreneurs send signals of "quality" to potential resource providers in order to obtain resources. However, a behavioral research approach would contend that resource acquisition depends on much more than venture quality signals. In this dissertation, I extend beyond the signaling paradigm and investigate the resource acquisition process using a framework contingent on entrepreneur signals, resource provider dispositional differences, and their interactive effects. Specifically, I leverage regulatory focus theory and regulatory fit theory to augment and move beyond the signaling theory approach. Methodologically, I undertake two studies. The first study uses archival field data consisting of a sample of 895 new venture pitches. In each of these pitches, I analyze the displays of promotion and prevention focus sent by entrepreneurs across video and textual narratives. To complete this analysis I develop novel measures of promotion and prevention focus suitable for computer-aided textual analysis (CATA). In the second study, I use a sample of 120 investors and a quasi-experimental approach to assess the moderating role of investor-level promotion and prevention focus on the relationship between entrepreneur displays of promotion and prevention focus and resource acquisition. The findings and their implications are discussed in relation to extant new venture resource acquisition literature and regulatory focus theory.

Climate for inclusion has captured the attention of management scholars as well as practitioners due to the positive effects inclusive climates have on organizations. Prior research has shown that a strong climate for inclusion leads to desirable outcomes such as increased organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and creativity, as well as a decrease in intent to turnover (e.g., Acquavita et al., 2009; Groeneveld, 2011; Choi & Rainey, 2010; Pitts, 2009). However, the field is lacking understanding of the factors that impact inclusion climate (Guillaume et al., 2014). To answer this call for inclusion climate formation research, this dissertation considers the relationship between supervisor perceptions of organizational rationale for diversity and climate for inclusion, moderated by organizational structure (formalization and communication) as well as supervisor and unit diversity orientation. Ely and Thomas' diversity perspectives and strategy framework (2001) suggests four rationales for diversity along with four complimentary strategies. This dissertation empirically tests the validity of this widely utilized diversity perspectives framework by first developing a 13- item measure for organizational rationale for diversity, then by investigating its relationship with inclusion climate. A second order factor structure with three first order factors resulted from confirmatory factor analysis of the organizational rationale for diversity measure. A sample of 22 work units with 95 employees from across the United States provided no support for the primary hypothesis that more inclusive supervisor perceptions of organizational rationale for diversity, along with the Integration-and-Learning rationale, would have a significant relationship with inclusion climate.

Most people must commute to and from work each day, yet little research has examined this critical time between home and work and the potential spillover effects of commuting on employees' subsequent workplace behavior. Drawing on self-regulation theory and the commuting stress literature, I propose that stressful driving conditions on the way to work (e.g., bad weather, traffic congestion, long routes) can cause employees to subsequently behave unethically at work. Specifically, I suggest this occurs through a depletion of self-regulation as resources are consumed while driving under stress and thus unavailable for deterring tempting, unethical behavior. I test this mediation model in two studies using an experimental-causal-chain design. In Study 1, using a sample of 204 participants recruited at a university, I manipulated commuting conditions in a driving simulator and measured self-regulatory depletion and dishonesty using behavioral tasks in the laboratory. In Study 2, using an online panel of 117 participants, I manipulated self-regulatory depletion and measured dishonesty using modified versions of the same behavioral tasks. Overall I find some support that driving—regardless of driving-induced stress level—depletes self-regulatory resources and that reduced self-regulation leads to a higher likelihood to engage in unethical behavior.

The dominant paradigm used in the literature to describe Organization Development (OD) has had limited success in fully representing OD-in-practice. The widespread reliance upon functionalist conventions to describe OD practice limits opportunities for insights and understanding obtainable through the use of alternative ontologies. Attempts to offer alternative conceptualizations are discouraged by the need of academicians to publish articles consistent with dominant perspectives and the lack of incentive for practitioners to publish at all. However, some initial efforts have been made to identify this problem and offer different ways of thinking about OD. The purpose of this study was to add to these efforts by offering a metaphor for considering organization and OD practice which reflects the more subjective assumptions of an interpretive paradigm. This study first reviewed the four most often used texts in OD graduate training programs across the continental United States. Texts were viewed as the repositories of conventional thinking, and Burrell and Morgan's (1979) multiparadigmatic framework served as a foil to explicate the assumptions of traditional views. This review suggested some oscillation between the image of organization invoked and descriptions of OD practice and practitioner role. Secondly, an elaboration of the interpretive perspective was offered, and examples of applications to organization theory reviewed. This served as a foundation for re-thinking organization and organization development as sense-making. Once a rudimentary framework of OD as sense-making was developed, seven practitioners were interviewed to ascertain whether the offered perspective either reflected or informed their descriptions of practice. Interestingly, practitioners offered perspectives along a continuum, with some consultants describing their work in fashions highly consistent with conventional views, and other invoking the more precarious notions of the social world consistent with interpretive assumptions. A final contrasting of conventional and alternative views of OD was developed, informed by insights gained as a result of the views practitioners shared.

Researchers increasingly study how firms pursue corporate social responsibility (CSR). In three related but stand-alone chapters, I advance this shift toward understanding different CSR approaches, and outcomes associated with them. Chapter 1 develops a multidimensional view of CSR signals in the context of strategic alliance formations. It argues environmental, social, and governance responsibilities signal a firm's innovativeness, commitment, and conscientiousness, shaping its ability to form alliances. Results indicate that environmental and social responsibility signals generally predict alliance formations, governance responsibility signals do not, and the CSR signals predict different types of alliance formations, given their governance structure or activity domain. Chapter 2 develops a portfolio-based view of CSR-as-insurance, introducing CSR portfolio industry-contribution and industry-conformity as two constructs that should shape CSR's overall insurance value. Results indicate that CSR reduces the severity of market losses firms suffer after a misconduct event, but it does not aid their recovery. Surprisingly, neither CSR portfolio industry-contribution nor industry-conformity moderates CSR's insurance value, these non-effects have remained stable, and CSR's insurance-like effect on the severity of losses has increased. I also find CSR portfolio industry-conformity independently aids firms' recovery. Chapter 3 develops a CSR portfolio theory. This theory loosens assumptions in the portfolio-based view of CSR regarding which stakeholders and performance outcomes managers should prioritize in CSR-related decision-making. It gives managers a central role in identifying whom their firms are responsible to and how they should respond to their responsibilities. From this foundation, I identify two attributes that characterize all CSR portfolios––integrativeness and congruence––which capture a CSR portfolio's relationships to stakeholder-related issues and relationships among the initiatives included in it. Drawing from research on complementarities in consumption and production, I explain how these attributes predict managers' ability to optimize the impact of their firms' CSR efforts on the stakeholder-related issues they target.

Since voice's introduction to the management literature, scholars have sought to answer the question "why do employees choose to speak up?" As the field has begun to consider voice at the collective (e.g., team) level, scholars have primarily investigated how leaders and power structures within teams impact team decisions to speak up. However, solely focusing on the role of power differences within teams ignores the important influence that social status differences among team members might have on team voice behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to take a more holistic approach to examining team structures as antecedents of team voice. I do this by testing how both power and status hierarchy steepness within teams influence team voice behavior through beliefs about when it is inappropriate to speak up based on power and status, a phenomenon known as implicit voice theories (IVTs). I begin by reviewing the literature on voice at the team-level and IVTs (Chapter 2). Then, I draw on the social hierarchy literature and social information processing theory to develop hypotheses linking power and status hierarchy steepness to team voice through team IVTs (Chapter 3). Prior to testing this theoretical model, I draw on status characteristics theory, expectation states theory, and the social hierarchy literature to develop IVTs related to status and create a scale to measure them. This status-related IVT scale was developed and validated in six stages across five studies (Chapter 4). Finally, I test my theoretical model in Chapter 5 using a sample of 68 organizational teams. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

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