Browsing by Subject "Management"
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Item Open Access A Comparison of Groundfish Management on the East and West Coasts of the United States(2004) Strader, RachelThe groundfish fisheries of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the US are valuable economically and ecologically. The industries in the two locations have faced depleted stocks and increased regulations by the New England and Pacific Fishery Management Councils over the years. Both fisheries contain a varied array of demersal fish in separate ecosystem contexts, and similar gear types are used in both locations. However, the community and geographical structures, composition and interactions of the Fishery Management Councils, industry organization, and activism create a different historical perspective with which to view management failures and successes. In New England, factors such as a greater value of independence, a lack of cooperation and coordination between stakeholders and scientists, and a longer history of fishery decline have contributed to the current management climate. The Pacific groundfishery has experienced a more recent illumination of overexploitation, but there is a longer history of cooperation between states, fishermen, and scientists. In addition, differences in the Pacific Fishery Management Council structure and process have created a distinct management picture. The management measures enacted by the two councils since the implementation of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act have differed, but neither has been successful—as evidenced by overexploited stocks. Recently, both fisheries management plans have undergone changes in response to the declines and subsequent lawsuits by stakeholder groups. From comparing the characteristics of the two council systems, their methods, and their participants, important lessons can be learned as fisheries management on both sides of the US continues, out of necessity, to evolve.Item Open Access A NATURAL RESOURCE ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS NATIONAL PARK AND VIRGIN ISLANDS CORAL REEF NATIONAL MONUMENT(2007) Collini, Kimberly; O’Rourke, KellyThe National Parks Conservation Association’s (NPCA) State of the Parks Program was developed to identify natural and cultural resources in jeopardy across the United States National Parks System. This natural resources assessment has been prepared on behalf of NPCA and in accordance with the guidelines outlined in NPCA’s Natural Resources Assessment and Ratings Methodology (NPCA 2006). It is intended to provide an ecosystem-level evaluation of the health of natural resources at Virgin Islands National Park and Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument. These protected areas are unique units within the National Parks System because of the diversity and complexity of habitats and organisms they contain, but outside pressures are threatening the integrity of some of the most critical systems within both the park and monument. Existing data from the National Park Service, other federal and territorial agencies, academic research studies, and peer-reviewed journals were used in conjunction with interviews of park staff and site visits to evaluate the health of the natural resources. The results of the assessment indicate that park and monument resources are vulnerable due to a combination of natural and anthropogenic stressors, including hurricanes, development, grazing of non-native animals, and visitor damage to sensitive systems such as coral reefs. Park staff have implemented numerous management initiatives to protect resources and mitigate threats to sensitive resources; however, the park and monument do not have sufficient funding or staff to enforce existing rules or to implement new programs that could help improve the state of vulnerable resources. This assessment concludes with management recommendations that would allow park managers to improve conditions and help ensure that the park’s resources are present and healthy for future generations.Item Open Access A ridge-to-reef framework to protect Guam's water quality and coral reef ecosystem(2023-04-25) Castro, FrancesWatershed pollution and fisheries exploitation are the priority, chronic stressors that impact Guam’s coral reefs. Yet, quantifying the relative contribution of individual stressors to any particular reef is difficult due to natural variations in biological assemblages across island scales and uncertain site-specific disturbance histories. A study of 26 sites in southern Guam watersheds shows the effects of pollution on coral reef and fish assemblages. Community, government, and legislative action need to take place to improve Guam’s water quality standards.Item Open Access A Theory and Test of How Speakers with Nonnative Accents are Evaluated in Entrepreneurial Settings(2016) Zhou Koval, ChristyAn abundance of research in the social sciences has demonstrated a persistent bias against nonnative English speakers (Giles & Billings, 2004; Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010). Yet, organizational scholars have only begun to investigate the underlying mechanisms that drive the bias against nonnative speakers and subsequently design interventions to mitigate these biases. In this dissertation, I offer an integrative model to organize past explanations for accent-based bias into a coherent framework, and posit that nonnative accents elicit social perceptions that have implications at the personal, relational, and group level. I also seek to complement the existing emphasis on main effects of accents, which focuses on the general tendency to discriminate against those with accents, by examining moderators that shed light on the conditions under which accent-based bias is most likely to occur. Specifically, I explore the idea that people’s beliefs about the controllability of accents can moderate their evaluations toward nonnative speakers, such that those who believe that accents can be controlled are more likely to demonstrate a bias against nonnative speakers. I empirically test my theoretical model in three studies in the context of entrepreneurial funding decisions. Results generally supported the proposed model. By examining the micro foundations of accent-based bias, the ideas explored in this dissertation set the stage for future research in an increasingly multilingual world.
Item Open Access A Theory, Measure, and Empirical Test of Subgroups in Work Teams(2011) Carton, Andrew MasciaAlthough subgroups are a central component of work teams, they have remained largely unexamined by organizational scholars. In three chapters, a theory and measure of subgroups are developed and then tested. The theory introduces a typology of subgroups and a depiction of the antecedents and consequences of subgroups. The measure, called the subgroup algorithm, determines the most dominant configurations of subgroups in real work teams--those that are most likely to influence team processes and outcomes. It contrasts the characteristics within a subgroup or set of subgroups versus the characteristics between subgroups or a set of subgroups for every potential configuration of subgroups on every work team in a given sample. The algorithm is tested with a simulation, with results suggesting that it adds value to the methodological literature on subgroups. The empirical test uses the subgroup algorithm to test key propositions put forth in the theory of subgroups. First, it is predicted that teams will perform better when identity-based subgroups are unequal in size and knowledge-based subgroups are equal in size. Second, it is predicted that, although teams will perform better with an increasing number of both identity-based and knowledge-based subgroups, there will be a discontinuity in this linear function for identity-based subgroups: teams with two identity-based subgroups will perform more poorly than teams with any other number of identity-based subgroups. The subgroup algorithm is used to test these predictions in a sample of 326 work teams. Results generally support the predictions.
Item Open Access An Evaluation of Water Quality Parameters and Flow Dynamics in High Rock Lake, North Carolina to Assist in the Development of Nutrient Criteria for Lakes and Reservoirs in the State(2018-04-26) Rudd, MorganHigh Rock Dam, located in Rowan and Davidson Counties in North Carolina, was constructed on the Yadkin River in 1927. High Rock Lake (HRL) is primarily fed by the Yadkin River and several smaller tributaries, draining a total area of 3974 square miles. HRL has been on the 303d list of impaired waters since 2004 due to elevated levels of turbidity, chlorophyll-a, and pH. North Carolina currently has surface water standards for chlorophyll-a (40 µg/L), turbidity (25 NTU- lakes), and pH (<6 or >9), but not for nutrients. NC DEQ chose HRL as a pilot study to help develop nutrient criteria for lakes throughout the state. There is a high degree of spatial variability in water quality in HRL. Turbidity, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus decrease with increasing proximity to the dam, whereas chlorophyll-a is most elevated within the mid-section of the lake. Phytoplankton taxonomic assemblage varies according to lake section, with the lower-section of the lake experiencing the most elevated levels of cyanobacteria. Riverine discharge appears to influence chlorophyll-a and biovolume, and future studies should aim to identify the impact of discharge on phytoplankton assemblage. An improved understanding of discharge-water quality relationships can help guide nutrient criteria development for the state’s reservoirs, particularly for reservoirs with short residence times (days-weeks).Item Open Access An Implementation Plan for Bio-Indicator Monitoring in support of Integrated Coastal Management in the U.S. Virgin Islands(2004) Hutchins, AaronRegulation and management of coastal systems is often compartmentalized into three broad categories: resource extraction (e.g. fisheries), coastal development, and pollution control. In the US Virgin Islands, the existing monitoring and research regimes dealing with coastal water quality, coral reef assessment, and fisheries management all have convergent goals of assessing and protecting coastal habitats. The methodologies and data analysis provided by these existing monitoring and research regimes are often incompatible as they are inherently designed to answer individual resource management or research questions associated with the regulatory program of interest. Environmental indicators are selected key statistics that represent or summarize a significant aspect of the state of the environment, natural resource suitability and related human activities (Vendermeulen, 1998). The application of biological indicators or bioindicators, as a tool for monitoring and assessing ecological integrity within key coastal systems is an emerging trend in natural resources management in the Caribbean. Bioindicators offer a signal of the biological condition within an ecosystem. Their application as an early indication of pollution or degradation in an ecosystem can help sustain critical resources (Dulcie and Warner, 2003). The most common bio-indicator programs found throughout the Caribbean are most often associated with coral reef monitoring programs. Coral reef monitoring programs are inherently bio-indicator monitoring programs as they principally measure a range of biological conditions and their changes over time. The US Virgin Islands has no overall coastal habitat and protection strategy that integrates the individual coastal monitoring and assessment programs historically or currently existing in the territory. The territorys environmental assessment and regulatory authority, the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, has recently undergone significant growth and expansion with its monitoring and assessment capabilities with support from various federal agencies and directives from new federal mandates. The opportunity now exists and warrants the creation of a comprehensive coastal and marine habitat monitoring and assessment program with a common goal of the preservation of ecological integrity. This would increase departmental efficiency and provide a solid mechanism for achieving a key component in the Departments overall mission and Five Year Strategic Plan (DPNR, 2000) along with addressing goals of the Departments Multi-Year Monitoring Strategy (DPNR, 2001). This approach would ultimately provide quantitative assessment tools allowing policy makers and program managers to more accurately track the preservation efforts and, over time, tailor their actions for the greatest effect. The integration of coastal management will be further enhanced by identifying common programmatic goals and streamlining field methodologies and monitoring station distribution where practicable.Item Open Access Assessing Fishing Pressure in a Small-Scale Fishery in St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean(2020-04-24) Cullinan, GraceWorld fisheries are an important source of food and income for millions of people around the world, and represents a billion dollar industry (FAO, 2018). As a result, research on fisheries has mainly focused on large, commercial fisheries and less on small-scale, subsistence and artisanal fisheries (Anticamara et al., 2011). The result is a perceived lack of data from small-scale fisheries, and therefore less is known about their impact on the surrounding environment and importance to the communities that utilize them. Recent research on small-scale fisheries (SSF) has shown that data deficiencies can impact sustainability efforts, and have a large impact on small island developing states (Nash et al. 2016, Gill et al. 2019). Global fisheries are at risk, and SSF even more so, as anthropogenic effects reduce catch, change the range distribution of fish, change productivity, and drive the decline of fish stocks (Brander, 2010; Doney et al., 2012; Hanich et al., 2018). In order to curb these potentially dangerous declines, more research and capital needs to be invested in researching small-scale fisheries. St. Eustatius, a small island developing nation, which is part of the Dutch Caribbean, has a marine park surrounding the entire island from the high water line down to 30 meters, as well as two marine reserves. As a small developing island territory, maintaining their coral reef ecosystem and their reef fisheries is important for the island economy, nutrition, and food security (de Graaf et al., 2015). However, up until now the effects of different gear types and fishing pressure on the surrounding coral reefs, fish populations, fish size, and how those trends have changed over time in St. Eustatius has been poorly understood. In this Masters Project, we will utilize the fisheries landings data and GCRMN data collected by STENAPA to assess fishing intensity and its potential effects on the surrounding reef ecosystem, in an effort to help with future management strategies, and offer a cost effective approach to addressing some of the knowledge gaps surrounding St. Eustatius fisheries.Item Open Access Behavioral Perspectives on Organizational Change: Practice Adoption, Product Culling, and Technological Search(2016) Wilson, Alex JamesThis dissertation explores the complex process of organizational change, applying a behavioral lens to understand change in processes, products, and search behaviors. Chapter 1 examines new practice adoption, exploring factors that predict the extent to which routines are adopted “as designed” within the organization. Using medical record data obtained from the hospital’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system I develop a novel measure of the “gap” between routine “as designed” and routine “as realized.” I link this to a survey administered to the hospital’s professional staff following the adoption of a new EHR system and find that beliefs about the expected impact of the change shape fidelity of the adopted practice to its design. This relationship is more pronounced in care units with experienced professionals and less pronounced when the care unit includes departmental leadership. This research offers new insights into the determinants of routine change in organizations, in particular suggesting the beliefs held by rank-and-file members of an organization are critical in new routine adoption. Chapter 2 explores changes to products, specifically examining culling behaviors in the mobile device industry. Using a panel of quarterly mobile device sales in Germany from 2004-2009, this chapter suggests that the organization’s response to performance feedback is conditional upon the degree to which decisions are centralized. While much of the research on product exit has pointed to economic drivers or prior experience, these central finding of this chapter—that performance below aspirations decreases the rate of phase-out—suggests that firms seek local solutions when doing poorly, which is consistent with behavioral explanations of organizational action. Chapter 3 uses a novel text analysis approach to examine how the allocation of attention within organizational subunits shapes adaptation in the form of search behaviors in Motorola from 1974-1997. It develops a theory that links organizational attention to search, and the results suggest a trade-off between both attentional specialization and coupling on search scope and depth. Specifically, specialized unit attention to a more narrow set of problems increases search scope but reduces search depth; increased attentional coupling also increases search scope at the cost of depth. This novel approach and these findings help clarify extant research on the behavioral outcomes of attention allocation, which have offered mixed results.
Item Open Access Biases in Creativity Assessment: How the Social Setting Influences Observer's Perceptions of Team and Individual Creativity(2013) Kay, MinOne important aspect of enhancing creativity in organizations is to measure and reward creativity. However, not every creative process can be immediately tied to and measured by numerical standards. In such cases, the manager's subjective impression of employee creativity may replace objective measures as the basis for decision-making. In an organizational context, the social context in which the work occurs must be thoroughly considered as employees often work in groups on major products. As such, this paper examines two questions on how the social setting affects the observer's creativity assessment. Firstly, I demonstrate that observers use surface features of groups to infer the creativity of group output: they expect demographically diverse groups to be more creative than homogeneous groups and this difference in expectation biases the evaluation. Secondly, when observers form impressions of individual creativity based on group output, I demonstrate that they commit the fundamental attribution error in partitioning credit between others in the group and the target individual. In turn this either benefits or costs the perceived creativity of the target, depending on the objective quality of group output. Taken together, the two questions addressed in this paper emphasize the need for further research on factors that influence the observer's perception of creativity in an organizational context.
Item Open Access Boom and Bust: The Effect of Entrepreneurial Inertia on Organizational Populations(Advances in Strategic Management, 2006) Ruef, MAlthough recent public attention has focused on boom-and-bust cycles in industries and financial markets, organizational theorists have made only limited contributions to our understanding of this issue. In this chapter, I argue that a distinctive strategic insight into the mechanisms generating boom-and-bust cycles arises from a focus on entrepreneurial inertia - the lag time exhibited by organizational founders or investors entering a market niche. While popular perceptions of boom-and-bust cycles emphasize the deleterious effect of hasty entrants or overvaluation, I suggest instead that slow, methodical entries into an organizational population or market may pose far greater threats to niche stability. This proposition is explored analytically, considering the development of U.S. medical schools since the mid-18th century. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Item Open Access Bridging and Bonding: How Diverse Networks Influence Organizational Outcomes(2015) Fulton, Brad RobertAlthough many organizations aspire to be diverse, both in their internal composition and external collaborations, diversity's consequences for organizational outcomes remain unclear. This project uses three separate studies to examine how diversity within and across organizations influences organizational outcomes. The first study uses original data from a national study of organizations to analyze how an organization's internal social composition is associated with its performance. It advances diversity-performance research by demonstrating how the mechanisms of social bridging and social bonding can work together within a diverse organization to improve its performance. The findings suggests that an organization can improve its performance by having socially diverse members who interact often and in ways that engage their social differences. The second study integrates social capital theory and network analysis to explore the relationship between interorganizational networks and organizational action. It uses cross-sectional and panel data from a national study of congregations to analyze the collaborative partnerships congregations form to provide social services. This study demonstrates that a congregation's network ties, net of the effects of its internal characteristics, are significantly associated with the number and types of social service programs it offers. The third study illustrates how an organization's external ties can shape its action by examining black churches and their responses to people living with HIV/AIDS. It uses data from a nationally representative sample of black congregations and draws on institutional theory to analyze congregations as open systems that can be influenced by their surrounding environment. This study indicates that black churches that are engaging their external environment are significantly more likely to have an HIV/AIDS program. Overall, by analyzing how individuals interact within organizations and how organizations interact with one another, these three studies demonstrate how diverse networks influence organizational outcomes.
Item Open Access Career Dynamics in the U.S. Civil Service(2019) Bruce, Joshua R.This dissertation examines how knowledge is developed and deployed among employees inside one of the largest internal labor markets in the United States: the federal civil service. Each chapter lays out the theoretical background behind career- and capabilities-based processes, discusses the application to the federal employment context, and tests hypotheses derived from theoretical review, extension, and development. This dissertation uses data from two similar but distinct datasets, which come from the US Office of Personnel Management’s administrative records database. These datasets cover different periods of time (either 1974-2014 or 1989-2011), but both contain core information on civil servants and their employment.
The dissertation begins with a short introduction to organizational theory and sociological research on bureaucracies. The first chapter shows, contrary to standard economic and sociological theory, generalists in the federal civil service experience higher downstream pay than specialists. Several competing mechanisms are discussed, laying the groundwork for the next chapter. The second chapter explores the mechanism of coordinative capability as a key component of civil servants’ career success, finding that integration with the skillsets of co-workers positively predicts later salaries and levels of authority. This effect is most pronounced in larger divisions of the government, where the need to coordinate among employees with diverse capabilities is greatest. Thethird chapter moves from individual processes to organizational aggregates, demonstrating the influence of public-sector personnel capabilities on private-sector research and development (R&D). This final chapter evaluates the impact of the government’s geographically-bounded scientific capabilities on private R&D funding mechanisms and the downstream likelihood of patenting by federally-funded firms.
As a whole, this dissertation traces the historical dynamics of career progression for hundreds of thousands of individuals over multiple decades, elucidating both the career dynamics experienced by civil servants as well as the external influence of those collective dynamics as allocative processes that influence non-governmental outcomes.
Item Open Access Climate change induced changes in moisture availability in eastern Wyoming ranchlands with management recommendations for adaptation(2008-04-25T20:24:54Z) Fox, RobIn the future there is an expectation for climate change to have impacts on both natural systems and agricultural enterprises. A number of studies have been conducted for the purpose of determining the effects of a changing climate on agricultural enterprises, but most of these studies are large scale in their scope and give non-specific recommendations for adaptation. In the United States much of agriculture, including ranching, requires large capital shifts to change their products and as such they need to have more specific advice as to how to respond. Having more specific advice today also means that individuals in agriculture can start planning to adapt today, rather than being surprised a few decades from now. This project utilizes historical climate information and projections of future temperature and precipitation based on IPCC regional expectations and local climate variability. These projected values were used in two versions of the Thornwaite moisture balance model to calculate a range of possible changes for moisture availability from 2009 to the year 2100. The estimated changes in available moisture (potential evapotranspiration, soil moisture, atmospheric moisture deficit, etc.) were compared to the baseline values to determine the decrease from normal values. The literature was searched to determine the amount of decrease in moisture availability that would likely result in ecological drought and hinder production. The evidence indicates that there will be varying degrees of diminishing of available moisture dependent upon the amount of temperature increase. Because of the range of possible impacts, a variety of management practice recommendations are included, as well as mechanisms to monitor the climate more carefully to better spot droughts as they begin. For scenarios with severe shifts in the climate, recommendations are made to make strong changes in their production methods or the uses of the land.Item Open Access Coordination Mechanism Design for Sustainable Global Supply Networks(2011) Liu, FangThis dissertation studies coordination mechanism design for sustainable supply networks in a globalized environment, with the goal of achieving long-term profitability, environmental friendliness and social responsibility. We examine three different types of supply networks in detail.
The first network consists of one supplier and multiple retailers. The main issue is how to efficiently share a scarce resource, such as capacities for green technology, among all members with private information under dynamically changing environment. We design a shared surplus supply agreement among the members which can lead to both efficient private investments and efficient capacity allocation under unpredictable and unverifiable market conditions.
The second network is a serial supply chain. The source node provides critical raw material (like coffee cherries) for the entire chain and is typically located in an underdeveloped economy, the end node is a retailer serving consumer at a developed economy (like Starbucks Co.). We construct a dynamic supply agreement that takes into account the changing market and production conditions to ensure fair compensations so that the partners have the right incentives to work together to develop sustainable quality supply.
The third network is a stylized global production network of a multinational company consisting of a home plant and a foreign branch. The branch serves the foreign market but receives a key component from the home plant. The distinctive feature is that both facilities belong to the same company, governed by the headquarters, yet they each also have their own autonomies. We analyze the role of the headquarters in designing coordination mechanism to improve efficiency. We show the headquarters can delegate the coordination effort to the home plant, as long as it keeps veto power.
Item Open Access Credit and Classification: The Impact of Industry Boundaries in 19th Century America(Administrative Science Quarterly, 2009) Ruef, M; Patterson, KIn this article, we examine how issues of multi-category membership (hybridity) were handled during the evolution of one of the first general systems of industrial classification in the United States, the credit rating schema of R. G. Dun and Company. Drawing on a repeated cross-sectional study of credit evaluations during the post bellum period (1870-1900), our empirical analyses suggest that organizational membership in multiple categories need not be problematic when classification systems themselves are emergent or in flux and when organizations avoid rare combinations or identities involving ambiguous components. As Dun's schema became institutionalized, boundaries between industries were more clearly defined and boundary violations became subject to increased attention and penalty by credit reporters. Our perspective highlights the utility of an evolutionary perspective and tests its implications for the salience of distinct mechanisms of hybridity. © 2009 by Johnson Graduate School, Cornell University.Item Open Access Denying the Value of Goals to the Disadvantaged(2022) Wingrove, Sara ClarkPursuing valued goals is a fundamental aspect of human behavior. In this dissertation, I explore the tendency of observers to underestimate the extent to which members of disadvantaged groups value their goals. Nine studies (N = 3,851) find evidence of a goal-value bias, such that people perceive goals across a variety of domains as more valuable to high-socioeconomic status (SES) individuals than to low-SES individuals (Studies 1 – 7), that these perceptions do not accurately reflect reality (Pilot and Study 3), and that those who are strongly motivated to justify inequality show the bias to a greater extent (Studies 1, 2a, 2b, and 7). In addition to motivated processes, I also test the extent to which these effects result from an inference error, such that people rely too heavily on an outcome-value association when judging value. Weakening the association between outcomes and goal value by considering additional factors that affect outcomes (e.g., time/effort, obstacles) reduces the bias (Studies 4, 6, and 7). Finally, I explore downstream implications of the bias, finding that people give greater support to high-SES individuals than to low-SES individuals, a discriminatory outcome that is partially driven by perceived goal value (Studies 5, 6, and 7). Across nine studies, I show that people expect higher-SES individuals to value achieving goals more than their lower-SES counterparts, and that this bias can lead people to support those who are already ahead.
Item Open Access Developing an alternative approach to wildlife management in the Duke Forest(2017-04-25) Kramer, Renee; PalmerDwore, Hannah; Satin, PeterWildlife management is not currently a major priority of the Duke Forest, but staff have expressed an interest in making it a more significant aspect in future forest management decisions. We here used a multi-criteria decision analysis framework to explore a variety of wildlife management and monitoring alternatives with the aim of providing Duke Forest staff an adaptive tool for making well-informed wildlife management decisions. We identified potential management strategies by looking at forest management plans in use by peer institutions and then conducting a meta-analysis to determine the effect each of the potential strategies had on taxa of interest to Forest staff. We also looked at the possibility of using a community-based monitoring approach to supplement limited Forest staff resources through the use of expert interviews and a formal review of the literature, and assessed the importance of multiple components in ensuring quality data monitoring. We used the results of both of these analyses to construct a decision framework Duke Forest can use to identify wildlife management and monitoring schemes.Item Open Access Empirical Essays on Gender in Organizations(2021) Lluent, Tatiana MichelleThis dissertation consists of three empirical essays on gender and organizations. It contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms that produce and reproduce gender inequality within organizations. The essays of this dissertation address causes of organizational gender inequality at the interpersonal and institutional levels. They do so drawing on rich datasets; one matching restricted-access administrative data on firms and their employees to data on acquisition deals, and a second one built during a year-long field study conducted at the headquarters of a multinational firm. In the first essay, I investigate the role of national culture on organizational inequality in the context of foreign acquisitions in France. I find that gender egalitarianism measured at the country level influences firm-level gender equality outcomes. In particular, I find that firms acquired by acquirers from more gender-egalitarian countries see a larger increase in female representation in management and a larger decrease in gender pay gap post-acquisition, compared to firms that get acquired by acquirers from less gender-egalitarian countries. This main effect is stronger when the post-acquisition integration process is more thorough and when a new CEO is appointed at the acquired firm. The second essay examines if the consistency between employees’ observed workflow networks and formally prescribed workflows is associated with individual employee performance and examines how gender-role expectations affect this relationship. I find, together with my co-authors, a relationship between the consistency between an employee’s formally prescribed workflow network and their observed workflow network, and their work performance. I find that this relationship between consistency and employee performance is contingent on the employee’s position in the formal structure; employees who are lower in the hierarchy (where roles imply lower levels of autonomy and higher task specificity) receive greater rewards when their actual workflow network is more consistent with their prescribed workflow network. This relationship however weakens for employees who are higher in the hierarchy (where roles imply higher levels of autonomy and lower task specificity). In turn, I find that employees’ gender does not matter for the relationship between workflow network consistency, position in the hierarchy, and individual performance.The third essay considers how gendered workplace contexts affect female employees' network building and in turn their career outcomes. I investigate how gender plays into the relationship between propinquity and network building. I exploit data from a quasi-field experiment leading to the reconfiguration of the seating plan in an office to investigate, following this exogenous shock on spatial proximity, gender differences in how employees form ties with desk neighbors. I further study how this reconfiguration impacts their network positions when said neighbors are experimentally manipulated to be dissimilar in terms of functional membership. I find that reconfiguring the seating plan of an office can help countervail structural and agentic barriers to network brokerage for female employees. Following the reconfiguration, I show that female employees are more likely than male employees to form friendship ties with their new desk neighbors and that women’s friendship networks are more likely to become more brokerage-rich.
Item Open Access Essays on Firm Innovation in Dynamic Product Markets: Examining Competitive Interactions During Technological Commercialization(2018) Du, Kevin KaiHow can firms gain competitive advantage from available technologies is a key question in strategy. In my dissertation, I develop new theory and provide evidence to show that a firm’s focus in selective technological areas may play a central role of creating competitive advantage in industries with rapid product turnover. Firms commit limited resources when selecting which technologies to develop, affecting the composition of their product portfolios and allowing some firms to subsequently capture greater value relative to others. I examine how firm attention to technologies within an industry affect their ability to swiftly incorporate them into products (essay 1); establish a theoretical foundation for firm-to-firm matching in the market for alliances (essay 2); develop an econometric methodology based on the insights from a firm-to-firm matching market (essay 3); and investigate how common technological interests attract partners in the market for interfirm collaboration (essay 4). Across four essays, I find that competitive advantage varies with the firm’s technological composition, its current focal area of technological development, and the collection of potential alliance partners. These findings contribute to understanding conditions under which a firm captures value from the component technologies scattered across its industry, and the key tradeoffs associated with allocating its technological focus.