Businesspeople sometimes face moral equivocality at work, when they must discern the moral implications of a problem. That equivocality poses a risk of overlooking or misconstruing important implications of a problem; for that reason, many businesspeople seek the insight of others involved in a problem before making a decision. Moral openness describes the earnestness and validity of those inquiries. Some inquiries are too perfunctory to address the question, or directed toward people who are already expected to agree or who can be cajoled into agreement. Other inquiries seek out a broader range of opinions, refrain from bullying or co-opting participants, and pursue the inquiry to its resolution. The latter are more open, and are likely to lead to more robust conclusions. This dissertation conceptualizes moral openness climate as the set of shared perceptions among members of a work group that moral openness prevails when moral equivocality arises. The philosophical literature on discourse ethics, and the organizational behavior literatures on climate, silence, sensemaking, and empowerment together give definition to moral openness climate, which is then situated in a nomological net of related constructs. This dissertation also describes four studies, using both qualitative and quantitative data from the laboratory and the field. These illustrate the reality of moral equivocality and moral openness climate in the workplace, develop a survey scale for measuring moral openness climate, and relate moral openness climate to its expected consequences. Results indicate that moral openness climate is simpler in practice than might be expected in light of its philosophical roots, and in fact that it may not be distinct from existing constructs like respectful interaction or participatory decision-making. Its predictive validity is mixed, with significant results only for collective moral motivation and collective moral character. These findings suggest that while moral discourse and moral openness appear to be realities in organizations, businesspeople do not discern important aspects of moral openness climate. Implications for the literatures on discourse ethics in organizations, organizational silence, moral psychology, and sensemaking are discussed, as is future research on issue construction and moral leadership.

This dissertation addresses the question, What are the consequences of automation for the nature of work. First, I summarize the various approaches within the literature on management and organizations to the matters of technology, work, and social structure. Second, I present three groups of competing hypotheses that have persisted in the management literature regarding the relationship between automation and the nature of work. Third, these competing hypotheses are tested using data gathered as part of the O*NET project, comprising the responses of more than 100,000 individuals across nearly 800 occupations to various aspects of their work. I find that, in general, greater levels of automation alongside work are associated with greater levels of routinization, but lesser levels of education. Furthermore, I find that those occupations with little resource control see a strong and negative link between automation and education while those with high levels of resource control see no such reliable link. Finally, I summarize the implications of these findings for management research and practice, highlighting a challenge I describe as the automatorʼs dilemma, and outline new directions for research at the intersection of organizations, work, and automation.

This dissertation consists of three essays on empirical finance. In the first essay, I examine whether firms strategically substitute equity for debt to exploit market mispricing. I argue that previous studies reach conflicting conclusions about equity market timing because they neglect a confounding investment-in-growth-options effect. Using alternative testing procedures, I find evidence in support of the market timing hypothesis. Specifically, I find firms issue more equity relative to debt when analysts are more overoptimistic about their growth prospects and earn lower event returns at subsequent earnings announcements. After controlling for the confounding investment-in-growth-options effect, I find that these firms earn lower year-ahead stock returns than those issuing more debt relative to equity. In the second essay, I examine firm-specific heterogeneity in firms leverage decisions. I find that leverage models are characterized with heterogeneous slopes. I show that, by neglecting slope heterogeneity, the standard fixed effect estimation of leverage models can produce pseudo fixed effects. The presence of such mechanical effects should not be interpreted as evidence of time invariant leverage targets or evidence that previously identified capital structure determinants are unimportant (Lemmon, Roberts and Zender (2008)). With proper controls for slope heterogeneity, previously identified capital structure determinants can explain a much larger proportion of the variation in leverage. The evidence in this paper suggests that it is more appropriate to view firms as having heterogeneous sensitivities toward the changes in capital structure determinants (i.e., heterogeneous slopes in leverage models) than to view firms as being associated with firm-specific, time invariant leverage levels (i.e., heterogeneous intercepts in leverage models). In the third essay, I provide evidence for the use of size- and book-to-market (BM) based relative performance evaluation in deciding executive compensation. Specifically, I find a negative relation between CEOs total compensation and the performances of firms size and BM peer groups. Further analysis shows that my findings are more consistent with the relative performance evaluation model than with the managerial entrenchment hypothesis.

Existing research has argued that entrepreneurs identification with their ideas is linked to their persistence, yet scholars have also noted that entrepreneurs ideas rarely survive exposure to stakeholder demands. As such it remains unclear how entrepreneurs remain persistent with their organizing efforts despite frequent changes to their ideas. To address this research gap, I take a grounded theory approach that relies on ethnographic observation, recurring and in-depth interviews, and document analysis. I find that entrepreneurs navigate stakeholder demands by engaging in both sensemaking and sensegiving processes, whereby they alter or pivot their entrepreneurial ideas. As such I develop a theory of pivoting within the context of nascent entrepreneurship, specifying the various types of pivots that get made as well as the consequences for each type. My findings will also contribute to practice by highlighting how entrepreneurs more effectively navigate stakeholder demands on their ideas.

This dissertation uses forced CEO turnover events to provide new evidence on three important questions in finance and economics. Chapter one studies the causal relation between board structure and effectiveness of internal monitoring. Using the change in NYSE and Nasdaq listing rules following the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) as a source of exogenous variation, I find that firms that after SOX moved to a majority independent board or to a fully independent nominating committee experience significantly larger increases in sensitivity of forced CEO turnover to firm performance than other firms. Consistent with this increase in turnover-performance sensitivity representing more effective monitoring, I find that forced CEO turnovers in affected firms are on average followed by improvements in both stock and operating performance and there is no evidence that the quicker firing significantly increases the chance of making type I errors in the post-SOX period. Chapter two develops a unified framework for measuring information quality of stock prices and accounting earnings and provides strong evidence that information quality of stock prices (accounting earnings) significantly affects the boards updating on CEO ability based on stock (accounting) performance under a Bayesian learning framework. The effect is stronger for relatively new CEOs than for longer-tenured CEOs and for stock price information quality proxies than for accounting information quality proxies. The results suggest that information quality of firm performance measures puts significant constraints on corporate boards ability to quickly identify low ability CEOs for removal. Chapter three provides new evidence on the relation between competition and optimal managerial incentives through the effect of competition on sensitivity of firm profits to CEOs cost reduction effort or ability. Measuring competition by market size, entry costs and product substitutability, I find that market size (entry cost) is positively (negatively) related the probability of forced CEO turnover and sensitivity of forced CEO turnover to firm performance. Product substitutability is positively related to the probability of forced CEO turnover but negatively related to sensitivity of forced CEO turnover to firm performance. I further show that the results are primarily driven by firms in oligopoly industries.

This dissertation proposes that responses to concessions in negotiation depend not just on the size of concessions, but on the specific type of concessions that are made. Some concessions focus on giving items that are desired by the other party, while others focus on reducing items that are disliked by the other party. If the regulatory focus of the other party is promotion focused, I expect giving wants to have a stronger impact. If the regulatory focus of the other party is prevention-focused, I expect reducing dislikes to have a stronger impact. The results of two computer-simulated negotiation studies supported my hypotheses. The results of experiment 1 showed that regulatory-relevant (vs. incongruent) match between concession strategy and target negotiators regulatory focus generated greater reciprocal concessions and enhanced subjective feelings from the target negotiators. The results of experiment 2 revealed that self-construal interacted with concession strategy in the way that regulatory focus does.

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