<p> This mixed methods study was to examine coaches who provided coaching for leaders to improve employee career development, defined as the individual's involvement and satisfaction with the organization in achieving his or her goals (Harter, Schmidt, &amp; Haynes, 2002). The purpose is to determine if these coaches are able to be evaluated through assessments to determine who is more effective in coaching leaders in the financial services industry, and to determine the overall effectiveness in working with leaders to determine a non-traditional return on investment that an organization can use to measure coaching. One way to measure a coaching outcome is by goal achievement (Spence, 2007). The individual will be able to determine if measureable progress is being made toward goal achievement, which allows for earlier assessment of whether or not coaching is successful. This study was implemented to find out earlier if the coaching is working and to develop a more systemic way to assist high potential executives rather than leaving it up to each individual coach. The research creates a survey instrument and pilots its use in a financial services organization to evaluate the effectiveness of the questionnaire set created to conduct this study.</p>

<p> Organizations seek legitimacy by copying the structure and operational models of similar organizations accepted as legitimate by society. This phenomenon is <i>institutional isomorphism.</i> Institutional isomorphism exists in Protestant congregations in the United States as evidenced by congregations holding to practices and structures identified by denominational bodies and society as legitimate. Leaders of some Protestant denominational congregations in the United States have decided to change their ministry model to the ministry model of another denomination's congregation. Congregations change to these ministry models and self-identify with the congregation with which the model originated. The practice of denominational congregations changing to the ministry model of another denomination is contrary to the theories of institutional isomorphism, which would expect congregations to hold to historically legitimizing denominational practices and structures. This study explored the case of a Protestant congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), located in the United States, which changed to the Purpose Driven ministry model. The case explored the question: "Why did the leaders of Trinity Presbyterian Church decide to change to the Purpose Driven ministry model?"</p>

<p> Employee turnover is one of the greatest problems facing top management teams. The general problem is that employee undesirable voluntary turnover regularly occurs in organizations. This study of job embeddedness is unprecedented and is the first scholarly work using a sample from the Aerospace and Defense Industry. The purpose of this quantitative study was to evaluate the primary data collected to examine the linear association between job (organization and community) embeddedness at the sub-dimension (fit, links, and sacrifice) level and voluntary turnover in the Aerospace and Defense Industry subpopulation System Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA) support contract workforce. The sample (n = 185) included full-time working adults age 18 to 65 in the United States. The respondents, for two weeks in mid-Spring 2014, self-reported and completed a Likert scale survey as the primary data collection instrument. Three research questions were investigated. Research question 1 determined the relationship between on-the-job embeddedness and voluntary turnover amongst defense SETA support contract employees. The study findings revealed there is a significant relationship between on-the-job embeddedness and intention to voluntary turnover. Research question 2 determined the relationship between off-the-job embeddedness and voluntary turnover amongst defense SETA support contract employees. The study findings revealed there is a significant relationship between off-the-job embeddedness and intention to voluntary turnover. Research question 3 asked, "What is the difference between age, job embeddedness, and voluntary turnover amongst defense SETA support contract employees?" This research question was eliminated because of data skew. In addition, significant gender statistical analysis differences exist.</p>

<p> This interpretive qualitative grounded theory study served to explore whether barriers still exist that impede employment for individuals with disabilities (IWD), and ascertain whether hidden factors impact employee engagement for IWD. This study includes a description of key terms related to this research in addition to other definitions of employee engagement to show the array of meanings associated with employee engagement. The literature review chapter includes a review of literature concerning barriers to employment for IWD, and employment engagement. However, a lack of literature exists that examines employee engagement for IWD. Additionally, the literature review chapter discusses the role of leadership concerning employee engagement, and the significant role of generational differences in the 21st century workforce. The data collection open-ended interview process and analysis focused on learning the meaning that the 33 participants held about employee engagement. The chapter on findings includes a discussion of the emerging grounded theory of resilience engagement in addition to the barriers to employment and factors to ensure employee engagement for IWD. The summary, conclusions, and recommendations chapter includes a description of implications and makes recommendations for further research. Finally, this dissertation shows that law makers and employers still have to ensure all members of society are treated equally and are able to live a prosperous life.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to illuminate leaders' lived experience of <i>authentic leadership moments</i>&mdash;those moments when leaders respond with increased authenticity, despite the challenges they face. The literature on authenticity, transformative learning, leadership, and Buddhism provided useful insights into this phenomenon.</p><p> Using a mindful inquiry method focusing on phenomenology, hermeneutics, and Buddhism (Bentz &amp; Shapiro, 1998), 10 participants were interviewed about their experience of authentic leadership moments. Five phenomenological themes were identified: (a) abiding in ambiguity, (b) listening to the body, (c) opening to possibilities, (d) communicating with honesty and vulnerability, and (e) acting with integrity and courage. Descriptions of participants' inauthentic moments helped enhance the understanding of these themes and clarified the experience of authentic moments. Prior to the moment itself, leaders faced situational and personal challenges, acknowledged their fear and hesitation, made a commitment or decision to work with the challenge(s), and prepared for the moment in a variety of ways. The analysis also showed that after the moment, leaders experienced a positive impact on their self-esteem, their relationships, and the organizations they served.</p>

<p> Disruptive Innovation theory explains how industry entrants can defeat established firms and quickly gain a significant share of their key markets, in spite of the fact that incumbents tend to be significantly more experienced and better resourced. The theory has been criticized for being underspecified: whilst the general mechanics of the phenomenon of disruptive innovation are clear, it has not been established which individual variables are essential to the process and which ones are merely ancillary. As a consequence, to date it has not been possible to build a predictive model on the basis of the theory managers can use to assess the disruptive potential of their own and their competitors' innovation projects. In this research project the predictive power of each of the main variables that are mentioned in the literature has been assessed on the basis of a qualitative analysis of five real world case studies. Only variables for which information can be collected using publicly available data <i>before</i> disruption happens have been retained. By clarifying the detail of disruptive innovation theory, this study has been able to address a key issue in the debate, namely, whether products that are more expensive and more complex than the market standard can ever be classified as 'disruptive innovations' or whether they should always be regarded as 'high-end anomalies'. In this study two distinct disruptive innovation strategies have been identified based on the current phase of the product life cycle, the current focus of mainstream demand and the market segments first targeted when coming to market. The first strategy entails growing an existing market by moving the focus of demand on to a secondary market driver as soon as customers begin to lose their willingness to pay a premium for upgrades in the performance areas they historically used to value. Early on in the product life cycle, disruptors can conquer the mainstream market 'from above' with products that are different and more reliable or more convenient <i> but not simpler or cheaper.</i> The second strategy creates a new separate market by offering a radically new type of additional functionality. Over time the new market replaces the old market. These products are likely to be expensive because of their small production run and difficult to use because they are the first models of their kind. High-end customers constitute a natural foothold market for these products as they are wealthy and highly skilled. </p>

This study examines the extent and patterns of supermarket use in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia and the town of Alor Star, a small town in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia. A total of 436 household heads were interviewed for the study. Although the supermarket was first introduced in Malaysia in 1964, the study revealed that the adoption of supermarkets among respondents was still low. Even in the high income residential areas, the percentage of respondents that could be classified as heavy users was less than 50%. However, the percentage of heavy users was found to be significantly higher in high and middle income residential areas than that of low income residential areas. The study also showed that there were different patterns of food shopping behaviour among respondents. Perishable food is commonly bought from wet-markets, staple food is normally purchased from neighbourhood grocery stores while processed food is mainly bought from supermarkets. Log-linear analysis showed that car-ownership has the strongest influence on the extent of supermarket use. Among the three major ethnic groups the Chinese were found to have the strongest tendency to patronize supermarkets. On the other hand the Malays were found to have the lowest tendency to become heavy supermarket users. The results of this study could be seen as useful, first, to supermarket operators in Malaysia in planning their marketing strategies. Consumer profiles associated with heavy supermarket users may be used as a basis for market segmentation. Secondly, it is useful to the government in its modernisation process of retail outlets, particularly in smaller towns, which should proceed slowly and with care. The urgent need of the food retail system today is the improvement and modernisation of the present wet-market system, where fresh food should be sold efficiently in a more hygienic environment.

During the last decade, a subject which has captivated the attention of marketing and strategy researchers is the concept of market orientation. This thesis examines empirically, the relationship between market orientation and business performance in the context of the machine tool industry based in the UK. A more comprehensive market orientation scale was redeveloped by conducting comparative analysis of three previously developed market orientation scales with a view to make it an industry specific measure. The unit of analysis used in the study is at individual firm level. In the analysis, it was discovered that there are four significan latent dimensions underlying market orientation. These dimensions were labelled as customer focus, competitors focus, customer satisfaction focus and marketing focus. Next, the influence of each dimension on performance was assessed. Findings suggest that customer focus and customer satisfaction focus have a stronger impact on performance than the other dimensions. It was also revealed that competitor orientation has a U-shape relationship with performance in the short term but a positive linear relationship in the long term. The findings caution against overemphasising competitive influences to the neglect of distinct capabilities of firms. In order to find out if the strength of relationship between market orientation-performance is moderated by environmental factors, it was learnt that the hypothesised relationship is stronger when market turbulence and technology turbulence is low; and competitive intensity is high. Managers could use the multidimensional conceptualisation to develop particular kinds of orientation required for better performance. Avenues for future research are also discussed

This research addresses the gap in the family firms strategy literature by distancing itself from the traditional classical paradigm, which is often applied to study strategy in the family firms. It also represents the first exploratory attempt to map the strategic choices of ethnic South Asians family firms. The contributions also lie in the domain of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where abundant support has been generated for the application of formal planning in the literature. In this research, propositions were generated using the prerequisites of contrasting strategy paradigms in the context of Whittington's (1993) model of perspectives on strategy which classifies the strategy literature into four schools of thought, classical, evolutionary, processual and systemic. An additional fifth school of thought regarded as resource based view was added. The primary hypotheses aim to investigate whether firms controlled by Anglo-Saxons and South Asians differ in telation to the five schools of strategic management. A secondary hypotheses which aims to investigate if family firms can be visualised in groups following particular schools of strategy was also submitted. The research also aimed to examine the relationship between summary independent variables such as age of business, ethnic origin, turnover and schools of strategic management as a dependent variable. By investigating fast growth firms, the domaninace of the classical paradigm of strategy in enhancing the firm's performance in literature is also examined in relation to other schools of strategy. A sample of 301 fast grwoing family firms was selected from the FAME database, and regional South Asian directories maintained by enterprise agencies using the UK SIC codes of 5139, 5134 and 7220. 76 firms agreed to participate in research. Questionnaires were filled in by the managing directors or senior managers of all the firms and in-depth interviews were conducted with 48 of them. The usable questionnaires numbered to seventy one. The questionnaire statements were developed adhering to the central premises of each school of thought. Statistical tests involved conducting hierarchical cluster analysis to group the family firms and study the commonalities amongst these firms. One way ANOVA was conducted to determine the inflcuence of ethnicity variable in each school of thought. In addition, regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between summary independent variables and schools of strategic management. This project attempts to study strategy in family firms by applying the wider dimensions of strategy management concept. The findings are contradictory to the research stream which has argued that fast growth firms are likely to follow the classical school of strategy. It is proposed that ethnic origin has an important influence in determining the dominance of a particular strategy paradigm in a firm, and that no one particular school of thought dominates the managerial thinking when the firms are grouped together. The findings also question the application of theoretical strategy models when studied in the context of real managerial world

<p> This research investigated the correlation between leadership behavior and its impact upon, supervisors, coworkers, and organizational leaders in generating knowledge usage. A quantitative approach was utilized and correlational statistical analyses were performed to examine the relationships among the variables of interest. The sample frame was the population of local, state, and federal government workers within the United States. Data was collected using an existing validated survey instrument. The instrument was managed by the research service company SurveyMonkey and yielded 413 completed surveys. The Pearson correlation was selected to analyze the survey data. Other demographic and background information collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics. This study confirmed that leader behaviors and actions are critical in eliciting knowledge within an organization.</p>