This study examines the role of board social and human capital in assessing the market value of firms in the UK context. As the world economy has shifted from manufacturing to service and knowledge-based economies, attributes such as knowledge, expertise, skills, ability and reputation are increasingly fundamental to the success of business enterprises. There is a growing consensus that these attributes are an increasingly valuable form of capital, asset or resource, despite their intangibility. In accounting, there are a number of problems arising from the accountability of non-physical, non-financial capital. Firstly, some forms of capital and certain assets are neither recognised nor presented in the statement of financial position. Secondly, some accounting practices relating to intangible assets are very conservative, resulting in undervalued assets and overstated liabilities. Consequently, there is an increasing gap between the book value and market value of firms. This gap restricts the relevance of information presented in financial statements and suggests that there is something missing in financial statements. This is the research problem being addressed in this study. While prior literature demonstrates that it has proven difficult to operationalise intangible forms of capital, there has been significant empirical attention and theoretical development in social and human forms. This thesis aims to contribute to accounting theory and practice by exploring the impact that board social and human capital have on firm market value. In light of extant research, it is hypothesised that social and human capital possessed at board level are positively related to the market value of firms. This study employs the Ohlson’s (1995) residual income valuation model to test the impact of social and human capital using a sample of UK firms listed on the FTSE All Share index for a period of 10 years (2001-2010). Social and human capital measures are derived from interlocking directorate ties and detailed biographic information of board directors. This study benefits from Pajek and Ucinet network packages to generate network maps and calculate positional metrics such as centrality and structural hole measures.

Estudo qualitativo que objetivou analisar a rede social e o apoio social, disponíveis e acessíveis, durante a maternidade, na adolescência. Participaram da pesquisa 20 adolescentes que estavam vivenciando a maternidade, em um distrito de saúde em um município, no interior de São Paulo. Para a coleta de dados, utilizaram-se entrevistas semiestruturadas, diário de campo e a elaboração de um mapa de rede. Os resultados foram agrupados, de acordo com a análise de conteúdo temática, em quatro núcleos temáticos. \"Tendo o apoio da minha mãe, já tá bom\"; \"Depois que eu descobri, fiz o pré-natal certinho\"; \"Não, não trabalho e nem estudo\" e \"Foi difícil, mas foi bom\". O núcleo temático \"Tendo o apoio da minha mãe, já tá bom\" evidenciou a família, principalmente a mãe sendo fonte central do apoio social. Este núcleo também traz outras relações significativas para as adolescentes, como os amigos e o companheiro. O núcleo \"Depois que eu descobri, fiz o pré-natal certinho\" expressa o acesso à rede de serviços de saúde, principalmente os de tecnologia dura, que foi concretizado à medida que as adolescentes usufruíram as tecnologias para a realização do pré-natal. O núcleo \"Não, não trabalho e nem estudo\" revela as fragilidades da rede e do apoio social, principalmente as redes institucionais, que não conseguem fortalecer seus serviços, para dar o apoio social necessário à maternidade na adolescência. O último núcleo \"Foi difícil, mas foi bom\" relativiza a denotação negativa da experiência da maternidade na adolescência, trazendo novas percepções e sentidos dessa experiência, mesmo diante das dificuldades. Consideramos que compreender a rede social e o apoio que nela flui pode potencializar as condições de vida das adolescentes que vivenciam a maternidade. Entretanto o estudo revelou falhas na articulação da rede social, não havendo comunicação entre os serviços e as ações desenvolvidos em diversos setores, tais como educação, saúde e assistência social. Neste escopo, a articulação dos serviços é importante para transformar o quadro de fragilidades e vulnerabilidades. Esperamos que as discussões apresentadas neste estudo possam subsidiar a elaboração de ações intersetoriais, com base na integralidade, a partir das necessidades das adolescentes, com vistas à melhoria da qualidade de vida e à efetivação de seus direitos. / Qualitative research that aimed to analyze the available and accessible social network and social support during motherhood in adolescence. 20 adolescents living motherhood in a health district located in a town from the state of São Paulo took part on the research. Semi structured interviews, field notes and the development of a network map were used for the data collection. The results were grouped in four thematic nuclei, according to a theme-based content analysis. \"Having my mother\'s support is enough\"; \"After I found out, I did my prenatal care right\"; \"No, I don\'t work and I don\'t study\"; and \"It was hard, but it was good\". The thematic nucleus \"Having my mother\'s support is enough\" evidenced family, and especially the mother, as the main source of social support. This nucleus also brings other significant relationships to the adolescents, as friends and their partners. The nucleus \"After I found out, I did my prenatal care right\" expresses the access to the heath service network, especially the hard technology ones, which were achieved as the adolescents used technologies for their prenatal care. The nucleus \"No, I don\'t work and I don\'t study\" reveals the fragilities of both the social network and the social support, especially the institutional networks, unable to provide their services concerning the necessary social support for adolescent motherhood. The last nucleus, \"It was hard, but it was good\" puts the negative denotation of the experience of adolescent motherhood on perspective, bringing new perceptions and meanings for this experience, even facing the difficulties. We consider that understanding the social network and the support flowing through it may potentiate the living conditions of those teenagers experiencing motherhood. However, the study revealed flaws on the articulation of the social network, lacking communication between services and actions developed in several sectors, such as education, health and social work. In this scope, the articulation of services is important for transforming the situation of fragilities and vulnerabilities. We hope that the discussions presented on this study may subsidize the elaboration of inter-sector actions, based on integrality and considering the adolescents\' necessities, aiming both to improve their life quality and to carry out their rights.

Prospective education leaders face challenges in a demanding environment often lacking critical resources necessary to make a difference in schools. The potential to acquire these resources may be found in the mentoring relationships formed during internships in educational leadership preparation programs. A lack of understanding exists regarding variations in the nature of these mentoring relationships—specifically in terms of relational embeddedness—the type and degree to which partners form ties embedded within a social relationship. Variations in relational embeddedness may impact mentoring quality and the potential to acquire the resources needed to succeed in demanding school environments. Theoretical frameworks in mentoring and social network theory were used in this quantitative study to examine the nature of relational embeddedness and its association with a variety of internal and external factors, which may influence the potential relational embeddedness developed in these relationships. Internal factors such as sex and behavior characteristics of both the perspective education leaders and their mentor principals, as well as previous relationship history were among the variables associated with relational embeddedness. This study lays theoretical groundwork and suggests directions for future research regarding relational embeddedness as a means to influence the mentoring quality needed to acquire resources for effective school leadership outcomes. This study also provides practical implications for administrators in educational leadership preparation programs regarding the multidimensional nature of relational embeddedness and the internal and external factors associated with its development.

In spite of the ever-growing technology in information security, organizations are still vulnerable to security attacks due to mistakes made by their employees. To evaluate organizational security vulnerability and keep organizations alert on their security situation, in this dissertation, we developed a framework for measuring the security vulnerability of organizations based on online behaviours analysis of their employees. In this framework, the behavioural data of employees for their online privacy are taken as input, and the personal vulnerability profiles of them are generated and represented as confusion matrices. Then, by incorporating the personal vulnerability data into the local social network of interpersonal security influence in the workplace, the overall security vulnerability of each organization is evaluated and rated as a percentile value representing its position to all other organizations. Through evaluation with real-world data and simulation, this framework is verified to be both effective and efficient in estimating the actual security vulnerability status of organizations. Besides, a demo application is developed to illustrate the feasibility of this framework in the practice of improving information security for organizations. / Graduate

This study examines identity presentations on the online social networking site, Facebook.com. The two-phase research design includes a period of participant observation of a sample of 346 college students and recent graduates followed by an interview period with a sample subset of 48 interviewees. The study analyzes key performance components on the site using a symbolic interaction perspective, to determine common characteristics of Facebook profiles, importance of performance components, and categories of identity performance. Identity performance components are broken into two general categories, static and dynamic. Dynamic components, those that are updated frequently and drive much of the activity online, are far more important in terms of identity performance. Dynamic components on Facebook found to be important in this study are status updates, use of bumper stickers and pieces of flair, giving gifts, and photos. Analysis of these components supports the symbolic interaction literature in general and the works of George H. Mead specifically. The Facebook news feed allows Facebookers to continually observe identity performances of others as well as to give and receive feedback on performances. This continual flow of information allows for the development of a generalized other, used as the basis for anticipating reactions from others to potential activity. Based on these anticipations, in an effort to reduce misinterpretations, Facebookers develop exaggerated performances that serve to distinguish in-groups from out-groups.

This thesis consists of three essays and studies CEO compensation and mergers and acquisitions in empirical corporate finance. The first essay is sole-authored and is titled ‘The Effect of Social Interactions on Executive Compensation.' The second essay ‘The Role of Investment Banker Directors in M &A: Can Experts Help?' is a joint work with Qianqian Huang, Erik Lie, and Ke Yang. The third essay is titled ‘The Strategic Use of CEO Compensation in Labor Contract Negotiations' and is coauthored with Erik Lie and Tingting Que. In the first essay, I examine how executives' social interactions affect their compensation. Using the social networks among 2,936 chief executive officers (CEOs) during 1999-2008, I report that the compensation of a pair of socially connected CEOs is significantly more similar than that of a pair of non-connected CEOs. I further find that CEO compensation responds to a peer's change in pay caused by industry performance, especially if that change in pay is positive rather than negative and when the firm is suffering from weak corporate governance. I interpret these results as consistent with the notion that relative earnings concerns within social networks affect negotiations about compensation. Finally, I find that the past practice of backdating stock option grants spread across social networks, suggesting that social networks serve as a conduit for interpersonal information flow about compensation practices. Taken together, I show that CEOs' peer interactions have a substantial impact on executive pay. In the second essay, we examine how directors with investment banking experience affect firms' acquisition behavior. We find that firms have a higher probability of acquisition when an investment banker is a director. Furthermore, acquirers with investment banker directors on the board have significantly higher announcement returns, especially if the deal is relatively large and the bankers' experience and/or network is current. We also find evidence that investment banker directors help reduce the takeover premium and advisory fees paid to outside consultants. Finally, the presence of investment banker directors is positively related to long-run operating and stock performance. Lastly, in the third essay, we study whether firms strategically alter CEO compensation to improve their bargaining position with labor unions. We conjecture that (i) firms in heavily unionized industries offer lower compensation packages to their CEOs than do their non-union counterparts, (ii) unionized firms temporarily curtail CEO compensation before union contract negotiations, and (iii) the curtailment in compensation is most pronounced for option grants due to their discretionary nature. Our results support these conjectures. We also find that CEOs are more likely to sacrifice compensation if they hold a relatively large stake in the company whose value depends on the contract negotiations. Finally, we report evidence that curtailing CEO compensation helps reduce the negotiated salary growth.

The following dissertation comprises three studies that aim to better understand organizational identity in the field of U.S. higher education. Research in this area has focused largely on attributes that emphasize college and university distinctiveness, though a good deal of studies in higher education have found that many postsecondary institutions are very alike in their structure and behavior. On the other hand, qualitative research demonstrates that organizational identity helps to explain differences between colleges and universities. The studies herein conceptualize organizational identity as a series of claims about self that balance both sameness and distinctiveness. These studies analyze how organizational identity establishes an institution’s group membership, while distinguishing the institution from colleges and universities in other groups. Manuscripts analyze how organizational identity is associated with action using institutions’ self-selected comparison groups. The first study examines how institutions’ identity claims and aspirational identity claims, measured through their comparison groups, are associated with future action. The second study applies social network analysis techniques to identity communities of colleges and universities that are routinely nominated together. With specific focus on public comprehensive institutions (CIs), this analysis finds salient institutional groups that draw on a common set of organizing principles. CIs, for example, tend to enroll diverse student bodies and maintain low tuition prices when compared with other types of postsecondary institutions. The final study investigates how these common organizing principles influence organizational action in response to their environments. Findings suggest that under the same conditions, CIs enroll more students from low-income backgrounds as a share of their undergraduate bodies when compared with public research universities.

Abstract 1,000,000,000,000 people use Instagram and many use it on a daily basis, yet surprisingly few studies have been conducted to better understand how this social media platform affects our lives. This study is proposed to better understand how people use specific functions within the application for relationship maintenance. Participants will complete an online survey in which they will be randomly assigned to a hypothetical Instagram post. They will be told to imagine that it is either posted by a close friend or by an acquaintance in order to better understand how people treat in-group or out-group members. Their liking, commenting and unfollowing behaviors will be assessed, followed by various open-ended questions asking them about their reasoning for why they would like or not like the post, and so on. The results are expected to show that participants are more lenient and accepting of their friend’s offensive posts. They will also like and comment more on their friend’s post than on the acquaintance’s post, and will only unfollow an acquaintance. The severity of offensiveness will not matter as much for friend posts as it will for acquaintances. In the open-ended response section, their reasoning for why these findings are true will relate to Social Identity Theory because they will want to support their in-group members more, showing preferential treatment. It will also support Social Exchange Theory as they will run a cost-benefit analysis, evaluating whether or not it would be more harmful to the relationship if they did not interact, or more harmful to their reputation if they interact.

The goal of this study was to understand how a secondary principal uses a distributed perspective of leadership to support informal teacher leaders (ITLs) to improve classroom technology integration. Using a phenomenological lens, I employed a multi-site case study to inform the research goals. A conceptual framework based on Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory and Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice theory was used to guide the study’s methods and data collection. Data were collected in three phases. At each site, the first phase consisted of a digital survey with only closed-ended questions that was administered to all classroom teachers. The survey was analyzed using social network analysis to identify the ITLs at each school. During the second phase, individual interviews with the ITLs and the principal as well as a follow-up focus group interview with ITLs at each school were conducted. During the final phase of data collection, I observed the ITLs at work to understand how they embodied informal teacher leadership. Analyses of diverse data revealed how a principal influences the nature of informal teacher leadership in a school. Findings revealed that principals establish cultural expectations using teacher voice in leadership decisions, modeling the effective use of education technology, providing in-school and out-of-school leadership opportunities for ITLs, and establishing expectations for all teachers to assume roles of instructional leadership. It was clear in this study that although principals are not directly connected to the informal leading and learning network that occurs in a school, they indirectly influence the informal network by establishing school-wide cultural expectations for informal teacher leadership and by personally interacting with the ITLs.

Not only has gang membership been expanding, but the formation of cooperative ties with Mexican drug trafficking organizations (MDTOs) has been increasing as well. Collaborative relationships with MDTOs appear to be the driving force behind the continuing gang expansion and its subsequent effects. Using social network analysis, this study examines the linkage between MDTOs and American-based gang activity and the potential influence that MDTOs may have in U.S. drug market through their associations with American street gangs. Findings show the MDTOs to be extensively linked to each other by their affiliations with U.S. gangs, and a high level of connectivity exists between U.S. gangs and MDTOs. In addition, various centrality measures indicate the Sinaloa Cartel to have the broadest reach into the illicit drug market, as this cartel is affiliated with the highest number of gangs. The current study provides support for the continuance of multijurisdictional collaboration, and reaffirms the need for law enforcement to continue to explore the non-traditional approaches to crime and intelligence analysis.