<p> By 2030, almost every entry level role in the United States will be filled by a member of Generation Z (born after 1995). Researchers have noted an unclear understanding of the Generation Z perspective on leadership; despite Generation Z&rsquo;s increasing presence in the workforce. This knowledge gap is detrimental to organizational viability and can negatively impact organizational performance and strategy. The purpose of this study was to identify the leadership preferences of Generation Z based on their lived experience in the workplace; and discuss to what extent Generation Z prefers a transactional or transformational leadership style. A theoretical frame that links generational identity (generational cohort theory) to leadership theory supports the exploration of these preferences phenomenologically and establishes the significance of generational leadership preferences on organizational performance. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted and analyzed using a modified version of interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). IPA revealed six (6) emergent themes in the phenomenon under investigation (specifically Generation Z&rsquo;s workplace experiences); the themes were described and their implications interpreted. The findings were validated using a relatively novel tool for phenomenology: freelisting (a cultural domain analysis tool). The findings describe Generation Z&rsquo;s ideal leader and their introspective thoughts on their workplace identity and experiences. It was concluded that Generation Z tends to prefer transformational leadership more than transactional leadership, supported and predicted by the literature. Understanding Generation Z&rsquo;s leadership preferences will provide insight on better methods for organizations to recruit, train, and develop employees. Such insights will also be beneficial to future Generation Z research.</p><p>

<p> The very things that provide firms with advantages in the present may undermine their future viability. This dualism pervades the organizational and strategic management literature and leads to theorization of core organizational constructs as embodying trade-offs between stability and change. For example, the concept of organizational code focuses on how organizations structure information representation to enhance coordination effectiveness and efficiency; yet, efficiency comes at the cost of information loss. Economic-based organizational theories treat the code as an integral, yet inertial part of an organization&rsquo;s invested infrastructure, inseparable from the organization&rsquo;s historical-cognitive context, and understood across the entire organization. By conceptualizing forces for continuity and change as dualities, I show how the organizational code acts as a mechanism by which organizations manage these tensions. In an abductive, longitudinal case study of communication by and within a large, multi-national pharmaceutical company from 1985 to present, I examine firm-specific language and how this language emerges. I find that, when the code is discernable as firm-specific language, it typically has more to do with change than stability. Codified blueprints for practice are an exception to this, but these play a role more akin to proprietary technology or boundary objects than to theoretical conceptualizations of the organizational code. When an organization recognizes some need to change, there is an emergent or deliberate effort to articulate what that change should look like. The emergence of the code happens through these efforts to create a novel conceptual space with unique words, acronyms, phrases, and visuals (WAPVs). This new language, with its firm-specific meaning, has an important effect on how a firm creates value. It becomes meaningful as &lsquo;use cases&rsquo; for it are identified, enabling translation into practice and mindsets. Once an organization generates a use case &lsquo;catalogue&rsquo; for new WAPVs, members better understand why change is needed, what work needs to happen, and how that work gets done. By showing how an organization transforms the &lsquo;language we use to get work done&rsquo; into new practices and ways of thinking that enrich the organizational code, I explain how dualities of continuity and change are managed over time.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this research was to understand how people working in California&rsquo;s San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley technology industry love one another platonically in the workplace, as well as what effects they perceive from this love. Through this constructivist grounded theory study, a theory was developed. This <i>Work-based Platonic Love Theory</i> involves workplace relationships that are heavily centered around work itself. These relationships can begin in admiration for one another, conflict with one another, or even dislike. They are transformed into loving relationships through shared experiences of work-related hardship, challenging or innovative work, and/or spending long work hours together. Participants describe the relationships as familial, often team-oriented, caring, and rooted in work. Effects of these work relationships include the perception of greater individual and team success, high performance, and shatterproof teams. <i>Work-based Platonic Love Theory</i> resulted from data produced by in-depth interviews with 17 participants who reported experiences with platonic love in San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley technology firms. The study underscores the value of platonic love in the workplace to the work itself, to teams, and to individuals. It also suggests a heavily work-centric nature of loving relationships within the technology industry in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley.</p><p>

<p> Innovation is researched significantly throughout academic literature, ranging from leadership to organizational culture, with the aim of understanding how to enable greater creativity. This study attempted to address the knowledge gap on the common strategies of facilitating innovation in a group setting by evaluating this condition through four specific areas: environment, process, team dynamics, and facilitator behavior. This study built upon those four areas aiming to understand the process a facilitator puts a group of individuals through to stimulate innovation. Applying a qualitative phenomenological study, the researcher interviewed 15 facilitators of innovative thinking to understand the common strategies applied by practitioners in the field. Upon completion of the interviews, the best practices discovered in academic literature were compared against practitioner best practices, identifying the strategies that intersected both environments. Key elements that elicited greater innovation in a group setting were as follows: (a) leadership supporting experimentation cultures where taking risks is encouraged, (b) stretching the mind to enable ambiguous thought, (c) achieving a cognitively diverse team, and (d) striving to keep everyone engaged from the beginning to the end.</p><p>

<p> The field of Organizational Change has seen a proliferation of publications of all sorts over the past two decades. In view of the emerging breadth of the field, it is becoming increasingly difficult for practitioners and researchers alike to separate the wheat from the chaff. At the same time, research suggests the majority of Organizational Change efforts are not successful. It is therefore my intent to map the nomological structure of the field of Organizational Change, determine the most dominating concepts, and identify any patterns or trends.</p><p> For that purpose I have collected bibliometric data from 1948 to 2016 and conduct a network analysis based on co-occurrence of keywords of Organizational Change.</p><p> My network analysis suggests five major findings. First, the field of Organizational Change has reached a level of maturity, which reduces the likelihood of breakthrough innovations. Second, only five concepts are dominating the field of Organizational Change today, which I label the &ldquo;Top Five&rdquo;: Change management, leadership, organizational culture, organizational learning, and innovation. Third, we are barking up the wrong tree, which means there is an inherent inconsistency between the topicality of the field, i.e. the dominance of very few topics, and the low success rate of Organizational Change projects. Fourth, it is still unclear how to exactly define and reliably measure change. Finally fifth, there seems to be too much focus on the paradigm that change is always preferably over an equilibrium.</p><p> I therefore propose three suggestions for further research. First, look beyond the Top Five concepts and create more dissonant discussion within the field, including a critical review of established paradigms. Second, revisit the established definitions and measurements of change, which includes questioning the widespread assumption that the majority of change efforts are failing. Finally third, conduct a network analysis based on a network of social actors of the field of organizational change, i.e. authors of organizational change.</p><p>

The aim of the research was to investigate the factors to be considered in the adoption of the matrix management organization structure within State-Owned Enterprises. It also investigated how the employees understand the project matrix management organization structure and its application, how they observe it to be and whether their misunderstanding of their roles in the structure will have an impact on meeting the project objectives and performance. This research also investigated whether the utilization of the project matrix management organization structure promotes the successful completion of project or whether it delays the project. The problem examined was “the State-Owned enterprise is still experiencing problems meeting project objectives despite implementing the matrix management organization structure which was intended to facilitate the meeting of project objectives within the organization”. The misunderstanding on the roles and functions of personnel within a project environment using the matrix organization structure was also investigated on whether it has an impact on meeting project objectives and performance. The research question for this study was: “What are the factors that hinder or support the State-Owned Enterprise with the adoption of the matrix management organization structure to meet its project objectives?” The research paradigm was interpretivist. The strategy used was empirical, with an inductive approach. The study approach was qualitative with a survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews as data collection methods and the data analysis was thematic. The following were the key findings of the study: In terms of awareness of the structure, most respondents advised that the organisation is using a project matrix management organisation structure. The enablers that were agreed on are managing complexity, resource efficiency, communication effectiveness and output quality. The barriers that were agreed on were ambiguous authority and dual reporting, decision-making delays, management of cross-functional teams, lack of a matrix guardian and level of conflicts. The indication in terms of cost performance was that the projects had cost implications. Most projects were completed on budget with 51% indicating that the projects had an overspend. 74% indicated that the projects that they have worked on were completed behind schedule. 16% indicated that the projects were completed on time. The perception is that this type of structure, due to the number of the managers that are involved lacks decision making. The lack of decision making is caused by lack of communication and stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder engagement was also an issue that was highlighted as lacking.

<p> The Caribbean region consists of many small island developing states (SIDS) that are dependent on a sun, sea, and sand (3-S) tourism product. These SIDS are facing declining competitiveness vis-&agrave;-vis other tourism destinations and need to differentiate and rejuvenate their tourism product offerings. This study investigates the extent to which marijuana-tourism can lead to disruptive innovations (DI) in SIDS that are tourist dependent. A systematic review, using 53 research articles and a thematic synthesis analyzing seven different themes: (1) demographic profile of marijuana users and potential market size, (2) marijuana-tourism motivations, (3) common uses of marijuana, (4) types and structures of legal and regulatory frameworks, (5) cultivation, distribution, and marketing factors, (6) economic impacts of legalized recreational marijuana; and (7) adverse health and safety impacts were elaborated. The principal findings are that the regulatory framework for legalization acts as a mediating variable for defining the scope and structure of marijuana-related businesses and tourism niches that appear. When the recreational regulatory framework permits private competition, as evidenced in the early pioneering jurisdictions, significant economic benefits have resulted and at the same time social and health costs have been attenuated to date. In the context of SIDS, legal regimes are still largely prohibitionist, and in a few instances, partial liberalization has occurred. As liberalization progresses, structural and governance challenges exist that may moderate benefits. Further research is needed in many areas, given that the liberalization of marijuana laws is a recent phenomenon. More research is needed in areas, such as in-depth economic and social impacts analysis; the profile, composition, and expenditure patterns of marijuana tourists; the comparative advantages of different regulatory frameworks; and the public health and safety impacts for residents, marijuana tourists, and hospitality sector workers.</p><p>

This study proposes a framework for measuring and explaining partnership formation and resilience. The motivation for this study is that we currently do not understand the precise mechanism by which partnerships form or how they stay together in the face of change. The framework draws on a design view of systems to argue that partnerships manage change through boundary spanning practices that operate on multiple levels of social reality. The literature suggests that there are many different types of boundary spanning practices. Some types foster social-technical innovations called "boundary objects" while others facilitate the progressive standardization of those practices through the comparison and selection of boundary objects by social actors who are themselves transformed by their adoption of these objects. The framework proposes a way to measure partnership capacity and social learning that corresponds to the orders of boundary spanning practices. It furthermore proposes three hypotheses, one concerned with partnership formation and two concerned with resilience. The first hypothesis states that partnerships form through a convergence of boundary spanning practices and a community of practice. Convergence depends on a host of factors, including the capacity of innovators and early adopters to leverage their early successes to build additional capital to further promote and eventually institutionalize their boundary spanning practices. The second hypothesis predicts that partnerships that demonstrate a pattern of alignment practices integrating operational and strategic concerns will tend to oscillate within a defined range of partnership functions or "states" (restricted resilience). The third hypothesis predicts that partnerships that inculcate a learning culture of institutional design practices will tend to persist under a theoretically limitless range of environmental demands (general resilience). To assess the framework, four case studies of water resource management partnerships in the Columbia River Basin were carried out. Data collection centered on interviews with boundary spanners, field trips, and secondary data. The results partially confirmed the first hypothesis, while evaluations of the resilience hypotheses were inconclusive. However, boundary spanning practices were catalogued according to the various types of partnership processes to demonstrate how the methodology can be used for cross-case comparisons and theory-building.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1987.

<p> The primary focus of this qualitative grounded theory study was the reasons for the ability or inability of expatriate workers and their families to adjust and adapt to foreign cultures. The goal for this study was to investigate experiences of the whole expatriate family unit, including the children, to identify factors that could contribute to a successful expatriation assignment as well as develop a theory or model that could be used to help guide the success of the expatriate family tour time and decrease expatriate workers&lsquo; failure to complete their assignments. The qualitative grounded theory method was used to analyze the whole of each expatriate family unit&lsquo;s experiences; however, hermeneutic phenomenology as theory was integrated into the study to get to the deeper meanings of families&lsquo; actions, responses, memorabilia shared, and body language as stories were told in conversations and in response to open-ended questions. Seven family units participated in this study, for a total of 23 participants, to include children from age 7 (with parents&lsquo; approval), and contributed to the findings of three main themes, a concept of an expatriation adaptation model, and a list of factors that are essential to global expatriation processes. The theoretical framework that guided the study consisted of family systems theory and cultural leadership theory constructs. The findings resulted from a triangulated data collection process to include questionnaire, one-on-one interviews, and group interviews. The three main themes that developed were 360-degree support, the power of knowledge, and expatriate children as future expatriates and expatriate leaders. The results also resulted in the development of an expatriation adaptation process model as well as a list of factors that could contribute to a successful expatriation assignment with the whole expatriate family unit, which would keep all family members together for the expatriation experience.</p>