Risk perceptions and venture creation decisions: establishing the boundary conditions of overconfidence and perceived environmental munificence

This dissertation leverages cognition theory to examine the relationship between risk perceptions and venture creation decisions and seeks to establish overconfidence and perceived environmental munificence as boundary conditions for that relationship. Risk perceptions of the new venture are negatively associated with venture creation decisions. As the threat of possible loss and uncertainty associated with the new venture increase, the likelihood for gains associated with deciding to create the new venture decrease. Overconfidence and perceived environmental munificence are expected to moderate the relationship between risk perceptions of the new venture and venture creation decisions. Overconfidence is a cognitive bias that mitigates the relationship between risk perceptions of the new venture and venture creation decisions because the overconfident, while aware of risks, tend to be less sensitive to the possibilities of loss affecting their new ventures based upon skewed perceptions. Additionally, greater amounts of perceived environmental munificence are expected to weaken the negative relationship between risk perceptions of the new venture and venture creation decisions. The effects of risks on the new venture decision are perceived as less likely in resource-rich environments. The relationship between perceived risks and venture creation decisions is, thus, likely to be influenced by the boundary conditions of overconfidence and perceived environmental munificence. The results provide support for the hypothesized relationship between risk perceptions and venture creation decisions. It also provides evidence that perceived environmental munificence moderates the relationship between risk perceptions and venture creation decisions. However, it does not provide support for the hypothesized boundary condition of overconfidence. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Who has conflicts with whom?: a social capital approach to conflict and creativity in teams

Extant team conflict research treats conflict as a shared perceptual team property whereby it is assumed that all of a team's members experience equivalent amounts of conflict. This traditional approach is silent concerning whether team members vary according to how much conflict each team member experiences with each of their team members. This customary treatment of team conflict as a shared perceptual property of the team has led to inconsistent findings in the empirical record concerning the predictive power of the team conflict construct for predicting a team's creativity. In an effort to provide conceptual and empirical clarity to this issue, the present dissertation utilized social capital theory and analysis to examine the relationship between team conflict and team creativity. With its explicit focus on dyadic interactions, social capital is argued to be a more appropriate lens than the conventional paradigm for understanding how and why conflicts between team members influence team members' ability to be creative. It is argued that a social capital approach provides a more rigorous and appropriate test of the theoretical and empirical justifications for the team conflict--team creativity relationship. The dissertation attempted to replicate and extend the findings of previous studies of team conflict and team creativity by utilizing measures of conflict derived using both sociometric and psychometric methods. Results from a lagged study of 132 teams engaged in a complex, 10-week business game simulation revealed that team conflict was predictive of team creativity using the traditional, yet less precise, psychometric method, but was not predictive of team creativity using the sociometric method. The study's inability to replicate previous research findings using the social capital approach calls into question the validity of traditional team conflict approaches for predicting team creativity. Further, the discrepant findings open a new line of inquiry addressing when and under what conditions the social capital approach to conflict predicts team creativity. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Why did that happen: understanding the impact of witnessing employee-customer directed helping behavior

The involvement of other customers in a retail store or service setting has always been a unique component of the service experience. Interestingly, a missing component of the literature is an understanding of how the service experience changes for the customer who witnesses an encounter between another customer and an employee of the retail store or service establishment, particularly with regards to positive service encounters that are witnessed. In this dissertation, understanding these customer bystanders, those customers who witness an external event in which they are not the primary actor, was an important step in understanding the true ramifications of a service encounter or a service strategy on customers. In order to better understand how witnessed external events influence customer bystanders, two studies were conducted. The first study used a critical incident technique survey to explore the types of employee-customer interactions customer bystanders witness. The results of study one indicated that employee customer-directed helping behavior was the major positive witnessed type of event and serves as the primary focal employee-customer interaction for this dissertation. The second study in this dissertation, a scenario-based experimental survey, examined the evaluative judgments, emotions, and behavioral intentions of customer bystanders when witnessing an employee engaged in helping another customer when this action has no direct impact on the customer bystander his or herself. The employee customer-directed helping behavior was evaluated through customer bystanders' perceived views of the effort given by an employee in helping the other customer. The findings from study two provide firms with insights into the potential pros and cons of employee helping behavior and the impact of the overall service environment on customer bystanders by showing that customer bystanders are influenced by witnessed perceived employee effort. Theoretically, the findings provide researchers with information about the psychological evaluations, emotional reactions, and behavioral intentions of customer bystanders to witnessing different employee effort levels with regards to helping other customers, and the findings extend understanding of the impact of the overall service or retail environment on evaluations by customers. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

The danger of feast or famine: managing customer participation in value co-production

Customer participation in the new product development (NPD) process is becoming more common. Involving customers in the NPD process has been widely considered to enhance market adoption of co-created products and speed up time to market. However, several potential risks relevant to coordination among co-production activities have been raised in recent studies. Drawing on coordination theory, this dissertation examines the conditions under which customer participation in the NPD process improves or deteriorates new product success. The specific focus is on non-linear relationships between customer participation and market adoption and time to market. Furthermore, this dissertation investigates the differential effects on market adoption and time to market of when customers are engaged, the breadth of customer participation, NPD teams' capability to leverage customer insights, product individuality, and price positioning strategy of co-produced products. In Study 1, the hypotheses were tested using data from 647 NPD projects from SourceForge.net, a leading open source software development repository in which end users are involved in developing new software. To test generalizability of the results, Study 2 investigated the same hypotheses based on survey data from 159 NPD managers who have worked on NPD projects in which customers have been involved to some extent to co-create new products. The results of Study 1 show that customer participation enhances market adoption up to a certain point but degrades it beyond that point. Furthermore, the inverted U-shaped relationship between customer participation and market adoption is moderated by breadth of customer participation and the NPD team's co-production capability. With regard to time to market, the findings of Study 1 demonstrate that customer participation continuously slows time to market, confirming serious risks of customer participation. Although the curvilinear relationship found in Study 1 is not extended to various industries of Study 2, the results of Study 2 still indicate that the relationship between customer participation and market adoption is moderated by the timing and breadth of customer participation, and product individuality. The findings highlight a close analysis of benefits and costs of customer participation and provide insights into how and when customers should be engaged in the NPD process. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

CSR and facets of value creation: the role of key moderators

The value corporate social responsibility (CSR) creates for consumers still remains unexplored although its importance has been demonstrated in several contexts including pricing (Chang and Wildt 1994), retailing (Baker, Parasuraman, Grewal, and Voss 2002), and across cultures (Xiao and Kim 2009). Monroe (2003) argues that consumers would be willing to pay a higher price when they perceive a substantial value associated with making a purchase. In order to resolve many of the inconsistent findings in the CSR literature, such as the inconsistencies of CSR's ability to influence attitude (Sen, Bhattacharya, and Korschun 2006; Webb and Mohr 1998) and purchase intent (Mohr and Webb 2005; Trudel and Cotte 2009), it is necessary to explore which facets of perceived value consumers derive from CSR. However, without knowing what type of perceived value consumers gain from CSR, researchers and managers lack the information they need to understand why consumers are willing (or not willing) to pay a higher price in the context of CSR. The value created by CSR depends on the type of CSR activity that the company engages in (Peloza and Shang 2011). This study utilized cause-related marketing (CrM) as a type of CSR and proposed that it will influence consumers' values. Specifically, the value consumers derive from CrM will be moderated by perceptual and attitudinal factors. The perceptual factors examined in this study include the company's reputation, the authenticity of the CSR action, and the consumer's perceived personal role. The attitudinal factors included in the study are cynicism, moral disengagement, and consumer alienation. Two experiments were conducted, and the results show that an authentic CSR image accompanied with CrM influences consumers' esteem and spiritual values. This study also finds that consumer values of esteem and spirituality create favorable consumer responses. Finally, the consumer's perception that he or she has a personal role in impacting a cause enhances the value derived from CrM. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Ethical leadership in firms: antecedents and consequences

Recent ethical misconduct of leaders, in some high profile firms, has drawn increased attention to the reality that, ignorance on the ethics of leaders could threaten the survival of companies, and that ethical leadership may be a critical piece for company success. This dissertation aims to further our knowledge of ethical leadership by examining moral emotions as the antecedents (Model I) and employee creativity as the consequence (Model II) in two separate models. Specifically, drawing on empathy literature and moral affect theory of gratitude, Model I hypothesized that leaders' moral emotions (empathy and gratitude) should predict ethical leadership behaviors. Based on ethical leadership literature and theories of creativity, Model II hypothesized that ethical leadership, both directly and indirectly, should create high levels of psychological safety and certainty, and have an effective and positive influence on promoting employee creativity. Data collected from two semiconductor companies in China were used in the dissertation. Theoretical and practical implications as well as limitations and directions for future research were discussed. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Adherence to organizational routines: a micro-foundations lens

Organizational routines are viewed as a source of strategic competitive advantage that enhances firm performance. How do organizations continue to adhere to organizational routines after the routines are integrated in the work flow? I introduce and define a new construct, adherence to routines, which captures the theoretical phenomenon of maintaining the repeatability of organizational routines. I apply trait activation theory to explain why employees adhere to routines. I theorize that three individual traits: (1) conscientiousness, (2) openness to experience, and (3) individual entrepreneurial orientation impact adherence to routines. Moreover, I theorize that employees' perception of their supervisors' initiating structure leadership moderates the relationships between the three individual traits and adherence to routines. In this study, I developed a scale for the newly introduced construct adherence to routines. Using a sample of 543 employees surveyed in the U.S., I validated the new scale. The findings also support my arguments that conscientiousness is positively related to adherence to routines, and that openness to experience and individual entrepreneurial orientation are negatively related to adherence to routines. I also found support for employees' perception of their supervisors' initiating structure leadership as a moderator to the relationship between conscientiousness and adherence to routines. These results suggest that initiating structure leadership may have triggered the expression of conscientiousness, resulting in higher levels of adherence to routines. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Performance benefits of being a great firm to work for: an investigation from the employee perspective

Increased competitive pressure for speed and innovation, global commoditization, and competition for talented workers has provided firms with greater incentives to assess and improve their human resource strategies with respect to attracting, motivating, and retaining employees. Consequently, many firms want to be perceived by employees as a great firm to work for. However, becoming perceived by employees as a great firm to work for requires a significant resource commitment. If firms are going to make this resource commitment, a relationship between being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for and firm performance should be clearly established. Extant academic studies about being a great firm to work for are generally approached from the managerial perspective. Studies that investigate being a great firm to work for from the employee perspective are more scarce. In order to develop a better understanding of the potential performance benefits of being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for, this study compares the performance of great firms to work for (as determined by employees) to their respective industry averages. Further, potential contextual factors that affect the strength of the relationship between being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for and firm performance are examined in order to identify the situations where devoting resources to being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for is more beneficial. Results support the existence of a relationship between being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for and several firm performance outcomes. In addition, some support for the moderating roles of contextual factors is found. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

The role of firm resource demand in shoppers' service experiences

Firms are using more customer resources to increase the economic value of the service exchange. However, positive outcomes for a firm are not solely based on demanding more resource inputs from customers. In order to achieve a satisfactory service encounter for the firm and the customer, a firm must understand how a customer views the resource demands placed on them. This dissertation examines the conditions under which differing levels of firm resource demand improve or diminish the customer value through the customer's perceived effort, the equitability of the service exchange, and the overall satisfaction with the service experience. A number of boundary conditions built around customers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are expected to influence these relationships, including the customers' shopping enjoyment, the customers' value shopping orientation, and the firm provided rewards. In order to better understand how customers react to the demands firms place upon them, two studies are conducted. The first study uses a critical incident technique survey to explore the different demands placed on customers during a service encounter and the customers' reactions to those demands. The results from study one indicates that firms demand the use of a number of customer resources to complete a service encounter. Three main resource categories (financial, time, and knowledge) and a number of subcategories emerged from the data. The second study, a scenario-based experiment, examines the hypotheses developed from previous literature and the first study. The findings from study two provide managers' actionable insights into the costs and benefits of increasing the input demand placed on customers. Theoretically, the findings provide scholars with information about the psychological and behavioral reactions of customers to differing input demand levels. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

An examination of the mediators and moderators in the relationship between justifications, organizational contexts, and discrimination in personnel selection

Discrimination research has largely focused on what has been called old-fashioned racism. However, research exploring modern racism is a burgeoning area. This dissertation attempted to extend and build theory on modern racism by explaining when justifications and organizational contexts can lead people to discriminate in personnel selection situations. Explicit and implicit justifications are examined and tested using directives from leaders, coworkers, and customers. Additionally, two organizational contexts, diversity climate and the hiring context, are examined to determine when they may lead to discrimination. Three-way interactions are hypothesized among modern racism, submissiveness to authority, and agreeableness that are posited to affect one's propensity to discriminate. Finally, two mediation processes, stereotype activation/application and casuistry, are hypothesized as the psychological processes that explain the decision making process. Binary logistic regression was used to test the hypotheses. Results from three lab studies revealed that explicit coworker justifications led to both the selection of fewer and more Black job applicants. Stereotype activation/application mediated the relationship between explicit justifications and organizational contexts on the selection of Black job applicants but not between implicit justifications and Black job applicants. A complete discussion of the results along with the theoretical and managerial implications, limitations, and directions for future research are also presented. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries