Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Robert E. Deyle, Florida State University, College of Social Sciences, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-186).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-153). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1980. / Typescript.

Over the past decade, outsourcing has emerged as an imperative for competitive success in modern organizations. Yet, the high failure rate of outsourcing initiatives suggests that despite the significant opportunities available through outsourcing, several organizations remain unprepared for the transformation that it brings. My dissertation, “Essays on the Organization and Value of Outsourcing Relationships,” identifies governance strategies that maximize the strategic value of outsourcing investments and estimates the size of governance effects by analyzing the contribution of efficient governance to an increase in shareholder value of the outsourcing firm. The first two essays, “An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Information Capabilities Design on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Performance” and “An Empirical Analysis of the Contractual and Information Structures of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Relationships,” focus on business process outsourcing (BPO), the fastest growing segment of the outsourcing market. In particular, the first essay emphasizes the information intensive nature of BPO to posit that performance heterogeneity across BPO relationships is a function of the fit between the information requirements and information capabilities of the relationship. The design of information capabilities extends contract design that addresses incentive conflicts to include design of the information structure comprising relational processes and technologies that address cognitive conflict between the participant firms. The second essay demonstrates complementarities between the contractual and information structures to emphasize that their joint assessment is necessary to enhance the explanatory power of extant theories of organization. These results have important implications for how BPO relationships must be designed and managed to realize strategic value. The third essay in my dissertation, “Outsourcing Discount or Paradox? A Comparative Analysis of the Long-Term Abnormal Stock Returns and Operational Performance Gains across Outsourcing Contracts,” estimates the extent of this strategic value by assessing the longterm abnormal stock returns to the hundred largest outsourcing initiatives implemented between 1996 and 2005. I find that transaction cost economizing outsourcing decisions yield significantly higher abnormal returns. The results imply the need to exercise caution in initiating outsourcing initiatives and emphasize that value chain scoping and management are important sources of comparative advantage in the modern firm. / text

The purpose of this study is to further our understanding of organizational communication in collaborative interorganizational relationships (IORs) in the nonprofit sector. The specific communication practices of leadership and stakeholder participation were investigated during a 10-month ethnographic field study, which included meeting observations, in-depth interviews, and document analysis. Results indicate that collaborative IORs demonstrate a form of leadership that is distributed throughout the collaborative partners that mediates between common and competing interests and is sustained through communicative practices of casting vision, translating, asking, & listening. This enables collaborative IORs to foster collective action, despite the absence of formal authority structures. Additionally, this study demonstrates the reciprocal process of stakeholder participation needed to sustain collective action in collaborative IORs. Authentic participation is both provided to collaboration members through voice and opportunity, and provided to collaborative structures by collaboration members through contribution and commitment. Furthermore, the participation of multiple stakeholders in collaborative IORs gives rise to three communicative tensions: focus/inclusion, talk/action, and sector discourse/collaborative discourse. These tensions are balance through interaction between collaboration members as the continually negotiate the social order that constitutes collaborative IORs. Overall, these findings help us better understand the practices of human interaction that foster collaborative relationships among organizations, particularly health and human service organizations. This gives much-needed attention to the process of interorganizational collaboration, which complements the literature's dominant focus on antecedent conditions and outcomes. This research also draws more attention to the important social issues of communication and interaction in interorganizational collaboration, beyond the economic and resource-based theories so prevalent in past research. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are also discussed. / text

This research is a comparative field study of the influence of societal culture on organization structure and process. Past empirical studies were used to dérive a framework incorporating four fundamental dimensions of cultural values: power, authority distance, group orientation, and cognitive orientation- From thèse dimensions, five configurations were identified which accounted for most of the organizations reviewed in previous field studies: the Autocracy, the Political Entourage, the Traditional Bureaucracy, the Modem Bureaucracy and the Consensus configuration.[...] / Cette recherche est une étude comparative de l’Influence de la culture sociale sur les structures et processus d’organisation. Un cadre Incluant quatre dimensions fondamentales des systèmes de valeurs culturels, soit le pouvoir, la distance d’autorité, l’orientation de groupe et l’orientation cognitive, fut dérivé d’études empiriques passées. Cinq configurations furent Identifiées à partir de ces dimensions et expliquèrent la plupart des organisations étudiées dans des ouvrages antérieurs: l’Autocratie. l’Entourage Politique, la Bureaucratie Traditionnelle, la Bureaucratie Moderne et la configuration du Consensus.[...]

Organizations are increasingly focusing on their value chain activities in an effort to improve their performance, especially in the recent economic times. Improving the effectiveness and efficiency of their channel activities has become a focal point for many organizations. Interorganizational systems (IOS’s) have played an important part in this effort. While in theory, IOS’s have the ability to enhance the degree of cooperation and coordination between two channel partners, often the results obtained are not what is expected. Hence, it becomes very important to understand the barriers to the assimilation of these technologies. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives of governance, including transaction cost analysis (TCA), control theory and agency theory, we develop an integrative model that examines the factors that influence an organizations assimilation process. The model identifies and examines three stages of assimilation: technological, exploitive and explorative assimilation that add value to an organization. The model features asset specificity, technological uncertainty, performance documentation, agent orientation and bilateral governance mechanisms as antecedents to assimilation. It also examines the moderating effects of bilateral mechanisms. Our results suggest that theories of governance provide an additional lens to examine assimilation phenomena. In specific, our empirical analysis leads to several key findings: (1) channel partners who are locked in to the relationship with high levels of asset specificity are more likely to assimilate the technology; (2) bilateral governance mechanisms are a key force in the assimilation process, with both direct and moderated effects; (3) organizations that view the channel partner as an agent of the firm are less likely to adopt the technology, especially when the relationship exhibits low levels of bilateral governance mechanisms. Together these findings provide new insights into barriers to the assimilation of IOS’s in channel relationships.

In a time when interdependence in business becomes more prevalent and necessary to maintain and sustain competitive advantage, understanding the mechanisms by which businesses relate and collaboratively adapt become central to collaborative growth and mutual success. Learning becomes central to the adaptive process. Interorganizational learning is an often challenging result of collaborative efforts. The more different the organizations are from one another, the more challenging the adaptive process and interorganizational learning. This writing addresses some of the complexities involved in collaborative learning of organizations with divergent goals through the lens of exploration exploitation phenomena. It further addresses how interorganizational learning happens between organizations that are private and public in nature. This writing is a case study that answers the question of how organizations working in collaboratives learn from each other to attain mutually beneficial results by examining two such entities in a government and private partnership. This study extends concepts of interorganizational learning as well as provides guidelines for business entities seeking to attain or sustain learning organizations. It also provides a framework from which government entities may work synergistically with private enterprise to provide competitive service to their respective demographic.