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.[...]

Includes copies of articles co-authored by the author during preparation of this thesis. / Bibliography: leaves 233-246. / ix, 246 p. : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This thesis pusues an understanding of relational coordination in business markets by contrasting firm and dyadic levels of analysis through comparing the roles of self and collective interest as interaction builds to high levels of interdependence in business relationships. The concept of actor bonds is extended beyond trust and commitment by introducing Macneil's Theory of Relational Norms. Thus a model of relational coordination based on collaborative interest is introduced to explain relationship performance. This model was tested on firms in the business software industry. A model of an interaction possibility space is also presented. Results indicate that interaction effects as well as magnitude and asymmetry of structure play a part in explaining relationship performance, dissonance and relationship classes. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Adelaide University, School of Commerce, 2001

Diss. Linköping : Univ., 2002.