Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2009, Organizational Behavior

The main purpose of this research is to understand how and what people are learning from an innovative business model that enjoins social and economic good. This study highlights an organization widely recognized as the most successful cooperative in history, Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa (MCC) located in Basque Country. I present seven characteristics that define what I have entitled a socio-business innovation (SBI) based on the MCC model and as one way to understand how organizing at the intersection of business and society is actualized. A cases-within-a-case study approach has been utilized to understand two important aspects: 1) attributes of MCC that define it as an SBI and 2) the diffusion process of an SBI. Nine secondary cases demonstrate how such a model has been adapted culminating in an emergent Theory of Socio-business Diffusion reflected in a three-phase process: Phase I - Precursors to an SBI draws on participants' personal experiences to uncover the motivations leading them to embark on the innovation journey and to humanize the diffusion process making it more readily understandable and relatable; Phase II - Discovering and Experiencing an SBI addresses how and what people learned from engaging with the primary site; and Phase III - Actualizing an SBI focuses on showcasing how various adaptations of the MCC model is manifested worldwide. Spin-offs are noted at three distinct levels of impact to include: organization, local/regional and country. Key findings from the study point to the critical role of values throughout the process including linking the social business divide. This research also demonstrates that SBIs are generative in nature, having offspring that bear similar hallmarks but are contextually distinct. Further, unlike most technical innovations that rely on a high level of replication, SBIs are extremely mutable toward meeting the needs of a specific context thus ensuring a positive fit within the locale. This research offers the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Cooperrider (Committee Chair); David Kolb (Committee Member); Ronald Fry (Committee Member); Peter Whitehouse (Committee Member) Subjects: Organizational Behavior

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Business: Business Administration

Family business is a vital economic driver, yet scant attention has been paid to the antecedents of family firm performance. Similarly, family business research remains limited in addressing innovation, despite its central role in firm performance and survival. This dissertation seeks to fill these gaps by unpacking innovation in the family firm. Borrowing from various theoretical lenses, I review factors deemed to fuel family firm performance and to foster organizational innovation. Additionally, scholars posit that family firms are imbued with paradoxical tensions, stemming from the juxtaposition of competing yet complementary values and demands, which can enhance or stymie innovation. Utilizing structural equation modeling, this study develops and tests a model of family firm innovation, hypothesizing that intergenerational leadership, practices, mindsets, and tensions fuel innovative behavior. The findings explicate the complexity of innovation for family firms, confirming several of the hypothesized relationships. The results highlight the existence of paradoxical tensions and the importance of leadership embracing paradoxical thinking and fostering a climate of risk taking in order to manage these inherent tensions. Moreover, findings suggest that family business leaders need to embrace risk, failure tolerance and think paradoxically to encourage innovative behavior. Additionally, findings stress that traditionally conceptualized antecedents of innovation are more complex in this context. Whereas, resources, idea time, leadership support and authority are traditionally conceptualized as direct drivers of a firm's innovative behavior, in this context, these antecedents are still important, yet mediated by family business leaders' paradoxical thinking, risk taking and failure tolerance. The results contribute to extant literature in several ways. First, this inquiry extends existing organizational innovation and paradox literatures into the realm of family busi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marianne Lewis PhD (Committee Chair); Sidney Barton PhD (Committee Member); Wei Pan PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Management

Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Franklin University, 2023, Business Administration

This research deployed a predictive model to determine the influence of the factors of communication, culture, leadership, assessment, and innovation on successful implementation of an integrated institutional effective (IE) plan. Increasingly, accrediting agencies are requiring higher education institutions (HEIs) to implement integrated IE plans; however, this tends to be the greatest area of failure in accreditation reviews. The research relied on literature to establish the five characteristics of administration in HEIs that aid in creating a successful IE plan. The study examined HEIs as complex adaptive systems (CAS) that integrate the independent variables toward achieving an integrated IE plan. Using multivariate logistic regression, the study examined the relationship between and among communication, culture, leadership, assessment, and innovation and their combined effect on implementing IE plans. This survey-based quantitative research created a predictive model for the successful implementation of an integrated IE plan in higher education. The study demonstrated that there is a statistically significant relationship between the combined independent variables of communication, culture, leadership, assessment, and innovation and a positive outcome on an IE plan implementation. The analysis also revealed that not all variables contributed equally with the variables of leadership and assessment not statistically significant within the model.

Committee: Gary Stroud (Committee Chair); John Nadalin (Committee Member); Charles Fenner (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Higher Education; Higher Education Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, Organizational Behavior

“What is the process by which individuals transcend their lifeworld to create transformative change in their field?” This dissertation proposes a dynamic model outlining the phenomenological pathways that enabled nineteen individuals to transcend their lifeworld, step away from the status quo, and socially construct a new paradigm within their field. To isolate the phenomenon, I explore in detail the distinctions between excellence – doing what everyone else does, but doing it better, and extraordinary (my phenomenon of interest) – deviating from the norm and creating new paradigms which change the way we view the world or what we think is possible. In doing so, I contribute a new level of conceptual precision about excellence and the extraordinary to bring to Positive Organizational Scholarship, and research on positive deviance. I applied a descriptive phenomenological lens to a grounded theory approach, with an additional iterative layer of thematic narrative analysis. My participants' stories revealed a dynamic model, beginning with a generative ground of outsider independence, alienation and/or a prospective mindset, usually passing through some kind of dissonance, whether intellectual, emotional or existential, which triggered them to enter discovery mode – openness to discovery, releasing assumptions, transformational learning, and seeing new possibilities, at which point they were compelled to find a new way. They got on with it, pathfinding, slogging it out, resisting naysayers, and attracted others, sharing the exploration, and co-creating to establish a new paradigm in their field. This model contributes to our understanding of the outer edge of radical innovation: paradigm creation. The turn into the 21st century has seen an upsurge of scholarship of the positive and the good. The field of organizational scholarship is ripe for the next surge – In Search of Extraordinary. This dissertation aims to operationalize what a new Science of the Extraordin (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Cooperrider (Committee Chair); Melvin Smith (Committee Member); John Paul Stephens (Committee Member); Youngjin Yoo (Committee Member) Subjects: Organizational Behavior

Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Franklin University, 2023, Business Administration

The aim of this study was to explore Property & Casualty insurance executives' views of innovative and disruptive technologies' influence on organizational culture, leadership, and change management as the Property and Casualty business environment is rapidly evolving and changing. The insurance industry faces competition from new entrants and long-time competitors. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a significant disruptor of the traditional business models. Customers have shifted their expectations to online and mobile options to interact and conduct business. This study will use a qualitative phenomenological descriptive approach to address the research question and five sub-research questions. The study's conceptual framework incorporated disruptive innovation and change management theories to guide the study. The study population consisted of fifteen leaders at a director or officer level, and a criterion sampling strategy was utilized in finding the study's participants. The participants were interviewed via Zoom technology and asked open-ended questions to provide in-depth responses regarding their views of innovative and disruptive technologies' influence on organizational culture, leadership, and change management. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, coded, and analyzed for major themes. NVivo software was used for the coding analysis of the collected data. The research could lead to a broader review of disruptive innovations' impact on the internal and external environments that affect the US P&C industry's business models, drive change management, and foster and develop innovative cultures.

Committee: Andy Igonor (Committee Chair); Bethany Poore (Committee Member); Tim Reymann (Committee Member) Subjects: Management; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Management

Though recognized as a popular approach to advancing innovation in organizations, design thinking remains largely marginalized. Paradoxically, it is design that gets in its own way. It is applauded for its ability to make great things, yet fetishizing making limits design's ability to progress beyond product creation in organizations. Underneath the veneer of cosmetic design lies a design cosmology with strong commitment to a making or techne paradigm. Based on the assumption that organizations are products in a sense—bigger and more complicated than artifacts but artifacts nonetheless—prevailing design theories double down on making and production in their efforts to incite systems change. Unfortunately, this only perpetuates the issue of marginalization. I offer an alternative hypothesis—a theory of design for organizational change rooted in institutional theory and inspired by Aristotle and Augustine. From Aristotle, we understand that the design of living social systems is less about technical production (making) and more about creative action (doing). From Augustine, we understand that time is an important source of both constraint and enablement for human action in systems. In a theory of design as action, individuals can shift their temporal orientations within the flow of time so that time's structure is repositioned from something constraining to something enabling. I propose three sources of design agency that correspond to the temporal dimensions of the past, future, and present: action via memory, expectation, and attention. A qualitative autoethnographic account is depicted to demonstrate what this is like or could be like in a complex healthcare environment. In conclusion, I suggest that “design doing,” or doing design, is a domain-relative management practice suitable for the shaping of human systems. It is an argument that challenges the commonplace notion of what management is and what design is not. The ethos of design doing serves as a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Buchanan (Committee Chair); Richard Boland Jr. (Committee Member); John Paul Stephens (Committee Member); Kalle Lyytinen (Committee Member); Fred Collopy (Committee Member) Subjects: Design; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Health Care; Health Care Management; Information Systems; Management; Organization Theory; Philosophy; Rhetoric; Systems Design

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2021, Management

Purpose: This paper aims to increase knowledge on the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), provide managers with tools to assess their service delivery of programs, and promote effectiveness at the organizational level to help identify and espouse best practices. There is a gap in the literature with regard to the factors that influence the effectiveness of NPOs in addressing the social aspects of well-being for individuals residing in food deserts. Design/methodology/approach: This mixed-methods research design examined the daily lives of food desert residents and how they achieve well-being. The research gained insight into the factors that influence a resident's well-being and whether or not residents found NPOs effective in helping them with the social aspects of well-being. The research examined how food desert residents achieved well-being before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and if residents found NPOs effective in helping them with the social aspects of their well-being before and during COVID-19. Findings: Findings affirm that the social lives of food desert residents have a strong positive effect on their well-being. Findings also show that NPOs were effective in helping food desert residents with their malnutrition. This research indicates that food desert residents found NPOs effective during the COVID-19 pandemic helping with the social aspects of their well-being and with access to healthy food. In sum, these three studies offer knowledge into how NPOs can increase their effectiveness in helping food desert residents' social aspects of their well-being. Originality/value: Research is limited on what constitutes NPO effectiveness and the approaches to measure it. This research extends NPO Effectiveness Theory and Complexity Theory to understand complicated food environments.

Committee: Chris Laszlo PhD (Committee Chair); David Aron MD (Committee Member); Eileen Doherty-Sil PhD (Committee Member); Yunmei Wang PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Environmental Health; Management; Organization Theory; Organizational Behavior; Sustainability; Systems Design

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2010, Weatherhead School of Management

We explore the effect of leadership styles on organizational innovation, focusing on the lived experience of leaders and investigating the impact of organizational leadership, learning and innovation on financial performance. In the first part, we interview seventeen leaders to explore their experience of using strategic conversations to yield innovative outcomes. Although these organizational leaders uniformly espoused emergent conversation, whereby they prefer to collaborate with their teams in an experiential learning process, their conversations were primarily leader-driven directed discussions with specific outcomes in mind. Moreover, they emphasized the critical role of multiple strategic conversations distributed over time, with varied participants and purposes. In the second part, we use a global sample of public companies to examine the relationships among transformational and transactional leadership, exploration and exploitation and performance. We found that balancing transformational and transactional leadership drives innovative learning more effectively than engaging in any single style separately. Additionally, “where” ideas are sourced and “how” they are shared fully mediates the relationship between leadership and performance, suggesting a strong correlation between idea sharing effectiveness and earnings growth. Leaders must balance innovative idea sourcing (exploration and exploitation) with entrepreneurial idea sharing to unleash their organization's collective learning to drive successful performance.

Committee: Nick Berente, Ph.D. (Advisor); Richard Boland, Ph.D. (Advisor); David A. Kolb, Ph.D. (Advisor); Kale Lyytinen, Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Organizational Behavior

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2011, Weatherhead School of Management

We adopted a mixed methods research approach to examine government-non-profit agency relations in highly regulated federally funded programs. A high profile U.S. government sponsored program with broad national scope and a vast network of funded grantees constituted an ideal context in which to empirically test power-dependence relationship theory through the myriad voices of multiple actors. In the first phase, semi-structured interviews of nonprofit executives and former Federal administrators provided insight into how and to what end government resource dependency affects innovative practices. In the second phase, 265 Head Start directors were surveyed to reveal perceptions of compliance, innovation, resource interdependence and program evaluative outcomes. Lastly, a subsample of the original qualitative research respondents were re-interviewed to help provide meaning and insights into both qualitative and quantitative findings. We suggest alternative theoretical perspectives that may facilitate further investigations of government-agency relations.

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen, Ph.D. (Advisor); Paul Salipante, Ph.D. (Advisor); Sheri J. Perelli, Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Business Administration

Despite significant interest on the topic of learning from failure in the management literature, we have little insight into how firms learn from failures to enhance subsequent innovation outcomes. This thesis takes a step forward in this direction by emphasizing the causally ambiguous nature of innovation, and the crucial role played by failures in helping to resolve this ambiguity. I argue that failures represent failed hypotheses, thus influencing the organization to reconsider its existing beliefs and seek out alternate theoretical explanations. In this way, failures can generate rich new insights into processes of innovation that bring about novel outcomes. In this thesis, I use three different contexts to examine how firms learn from failures. By using three different contexts, I am able to shed light on different mechanisms that help firms learn from failures in their pursuit of discovering novel innovation. In the first essay, I examine how firms learn from their own failures to enhance the novelty of subsequent innovation. In the second essay, I examine how litigation directed against a firm accused of patent infringement—a failure on this firm's part–offers it a unique opportunity to learn vicariously from unintended knowledge spillovers during litigation. Finally, I use the context of alliances to examine how firms learn from their R&D alliance partners' prior experience with failures to enhance their new product development capability. I test hypotheses for these studies using a unique database that captures drug development project characteristics, patent litigation and R&D alliance information pertaining to the global pharmaceutical industry.

Committee: Mona Makhija PhD (Committee Chair); Oded Shenkar PhD (Committee Member); Michael Leiblein PhD (Committee Member); Benjamin Campbell PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2016, Management

High-technology firms struggle to remain relevant in the relentless challenge to innovate in today's high-velocity dynamic markets. One of the most difficult challenges is knowing how to walk the fine line between disruptive or explorative innovations and incremental or exploitative innovations. Leaders struggle with how to switch from one set of innovation disciplines to the other, for example, going from "doing the right things" as a dynamic and entrepreneurial framework focused on disruption---which leverages outlier or inimitable knowledge or assets---to "doing things right," with an entirely different framework motivating technical efficiency. Most of the academic literature focuses on innovation management at the firm level and corresponding process frameworks. Far less attention is paid to how individual technology leaders use managerial capabilities to successfully deliver innovation through the firm's dynamic capabilities framework. The dissertation covers the motivation, detailed research questions, methods, research design, and key findings around this theme of leadership behaviors that contribute to innovation. We also review the implications of the findings for academia and practice. Our research inquiry follows a sequential exploratory mixed-methods research design that combines qualitative and quantitative inquiry. Using a grounded theory approach, the study conducts semi-structured ethnographic interviews among a theoretical sample comparing high-technology firms at key inflection points of growth, decline, and recovery. Based on the findings, a theoretical model is elaborated based on leadership factors underpinning dynamic capabilities. Two quantitative studies from surveys of R and D leaders and their multi-raters from individual companies are analyzed using structural equation modeling (PLS). Triangulation of all three studies finds that an innovation leader's capacity to influence strategic change through the use of managerial dynamic capabil (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Boyatzis (Committee Chair); Diana Bilimoria (Committee Member); Christopher Laszlo (Committee Member); Kalle Lyytinen (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Management

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2015, Manufacturing and Technology Management

As the degree of uncertainty and intensity within the complex business environment continues to increase, firms are forced to make timely changes to their product and process technologies. Such environments are often characterized by unpredictable demand patterns, rapid industry clockspeed, and heightened competitive intensity. As a result, firms face many difficulties in realizing sustained and superior performance, and are at risk of realizing decreases in market and financial performance. Firms can alleviate this risk by engaging in innovation practices that enable them to secure current profitability (efficiently serving existing customer segments) alongside future viability (adapting to meet the demand of new customer segments). Simultaneously serving existing and breakthrough product markets means that organizations must be able to balance paradoxical tensions in their innovation management capabilities. Ambidexterity is one such capability, in which the successful balance of exploration and exploitation promises to offer supernormal business performance. While the performance benefits of ambidexterity have been noted, research has not yet adequately sought to understand whether a firm's decision to pursue ambidexterity is contingent on certain business environment factors. Likewise, research has also not yet explored the intangible resources a firm must build and/or acquire and manage after deciding to pursue ambidexterity. Additionally, because no single firm can adapt and survive without the same being achieved by its supply chain partners, ambidexterity in supply chain capabilities is vital. However, the literature base examining the importance of ambidexterity in the supply chain is scarce. Lastly, ambidexterity and the process for implementing it within the firm and across the supply chain remains misunderstood amongst practitioners. To fill the aforementioned research gaps, this study builds a strategic innovation-based and interdisciplinary theor (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Paul Hong (Committee Co-Chair); Dr. Monideepa Tarafdar (Committee Co-Chair); Dr. Jenell Wittmer (Committee Member); Dr. Mark Gleim (Committee Member); Dr. Lakeesha Ransom (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Management; Operations Research; Organization Theory; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2015, Management

Today, in a world context defined by increasing complexity, deepening disparities and rising uncertainty, the imperative of connecting knowledge with action to create systemic social change and achieve more equitable futures for all human beings is greater than ever. The task is ongoing and necessitates both the adaptation of known solutions and the discovery of new possibilities. This dissertation investigates the subject matter of design as a deeply humanistic knowledge domain that is drawing mounting attention and praise for its ability to open up new possibilities for action oriented toward social innovation and human progress. Paradoxically, despite unequivocal signs of such forms of design gaining prominence in our institutions and organizations, the unique value that professional designers impart to the class of systemic challenges and innovation opportunities at stake is an understudied pursuit that lacks articulation and merits elucidation. This dissertation contributes to filling that critical gap. Integrating theories of social innovation, organizational culture, institutional logics and design, and building on the construct of “design attitude” (a set of unique capabilities, abilities and dispositions espoused by professional designers and that are related to organizational learning and innovation), the dissertation relies on the interpretation and analyses of three independent field studies organized in a multiphase mixed methods exploratory design sequence. The dissertation is organized in a dialectical progression that presents the following overarching research question: How might we elucidate the value designers bring to the field of social innovation? The first study combines a grounded theory approach with a comparative semantic analysis of four case studies of design for social innovation projects (conducted with design teams from IDEO.org, Frog Design, Mind Lab and the former Helsinki Design Lab). The insights culled from semi-struct (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Buchanan PhD (Committee Chair); Richard Boland Jr. PhD (Committee Member); Kalle Lyytinen PhD (Committee Member); John Paul Stephens PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Design; Entrepreneurship; Management

PHD, Kent State University, 2015, College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Ambassador Crawford / Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship

Research has shown that new product development's (NPD) impact on firm performance is ever important to a firm's competitive position, as it enhances competitive differentiation, establishes entry barriers to markets, and increases revenues and profits (e.g. Cooper 2011; Chen et al. 2010). Technology in today's markets has provided customers with greater information and the ability to communicate with companies on a global scale. With the growing transparency between firms and customers, more firms are utilizing customer participation in the NPD process, a collaborative NPD activity in which customers and firms create new knowledge and value through mutual, ongoing interactions (Blazevic and Lievens 2008). Research has shown that firms that utilize customers in NPD are expected to be more innovative (Fang et al. 2008) and have greater financial performance (Coviello and Joseph 2012). While initial empirical studies seem promising, much work still remains. The majority of research has focused on specific contexts, user groups, and has relied on case studies. This dissertation seeks to expand the nomological net of customer participation in NPD by examining its antecedents, consequences, and boundary conditions of its effectiveness in a more generalized context. While gaining insight from customers may be advantageous to develop new products, firms must be able to internalize the information in order to capitalize on it and must possess the resources and capabilities to maximize its effectiveness. As such, organizational learning theory, the resource based view and its extension, the dynamic capabilities literature, help guide the arguments in this dissertation. This research suggests that not all firms may wish to integrate customers into the NPD process and customer participation's effectiveness may be contingent upon a firm's absorptive capacity -- the ability to acquire, transform, assimilate, and exploit external knowledge and apply it to commercial ends (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sergey Anokhin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Robert Jewell Ph.D. (Committee Member); Eric Johnson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Joakim Wincent Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Entrepreneurship; Marketing

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

We live in a world where both strategic and operational advantages are driven by collaboration and sharing. To enable the collaborative innovation within a cross-functional team, transparent and efficient communication is necessary. Designers are trained to be proficient in communicating ideas through visual languages which can be easily identified and understood, naturally designers excel in describing and delivering information within a multi-disciplinary team environment. More importantly, being experts in divergent thinking from “naive” end-user perspective, designers prefer to bring creative ideas with comprehensive consideration of the product eco-system. However, in a collaborative working context, the value of design as communication media has not been well recognized because of the stereotyped view from outside disciplines as well as the individual weakness from the designers' lack of experience in project lifecycle management. This study attempts to frame a coherent model by which the effectiveness of design communication can be fully executed into the collaborative innovation. Issues like how to influence team decision making by taking full advantage of user-centered design thinking and multi-media design implementations will be discussed. The model of integrating the design process into product and team development process will be addressed and applied in the empirical case studies in the area of medical technology invention. Primary design history files were recorded with a few semi-structured interviews of stakeholders from distinct domains.

Committee: Paul Zender MFA (Committee Chair); Mary Privitera MDesign (Committee Member); Craig Vogel MD (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Psychology

Researchers have long been calling for an increased focus on a process-oriented approach to understanding the implementation of innovations. This research builds upon a framework of implementation originally proposed by Klein and Sorra in 1996, and empirically tests an enhanced model of antecedents and consequences of innovation implementation. Specifically, climate for implementation, compatibility, and project slack were hypothesized to be related to implementation effectiveness. Implementation effectiveness was hypothesized to be related to innovation effectiveness, or the consequences to the organization. Reinvention (the degree to which the innovation has been modified) was expected to moderate this relationship. The perceived need to maintain fidelity to the original innovation was expected to moderate the relationship between extent of reinvention and innovation effectiveness. The data for this study consists of data gathered from key informants in fifty mental health agencies in Ohio using surveys and interviews. Climate for implementation, compatibility, and project slack were each significantly related to implementation effectiveness. Interestingly, climate for implementation explained the most variance in implementation effectiveness. Implementation effectiveness was related to innovation effectiveness, but this relationship was not moderated by extent of reinvention. Reinvention was negatively related to innovation effectiveness, and this relationship was moderated by the perceived need to maintain fidelity to the original innovation model. Overall, implementation effectiveness mediated the effect of compatibility and project slack, respectively, on innovation effectiveness. Implementation effectiveness, however, did not mediate the influence of Climate for implementation on innovation effectiveness. This research makes a number of contributions to the innovation literature. Implications for theory development and application are discussed.

Committee: Robert Billings (Advisor) Subjects:

PHD, Kent State University, 2010, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Political Science

As advancements in mobility and communication technology significantly changed policing strategies in the twentieth century, recent advancements in analytical technology have the most potential to drive contemporary strategic innovation in policing organizations. The crime analysis function is essential to the implementation of innovations including problem-oriented, intelligence-led, and homeland security policing strategies. A robust analytical function is necessary for policing agencies to culturally and structurally transition from reactive and incident-driven organizations to proactive and mission-driven organizations. Although policing strategies that provide an alternative to the standard model of policing receive a considerable amount of scholarly attention, implementation of the analytical function required to institutionalize innovative strategies has only recently come under examination. This study poses three questions in examining the implementation of crime analysis in Ohio police departments. First, has crime analysis emerged in Ohio police departments? Second, has crime analysis been institutionalized in Ohio police departments? Finally, what type(s) of crime analysis is implemented in Ohio police departments? Data used in this study come from a survey administered to all municipal police departments in Ohio and interviews with chiefs of police. The data indicate low analytical capacity in Ohio police departments and poor understanding of crime analysis by policing executives. The absence of substantial analytical infrastructure, databases, distribution, and interpretive processes in Ohio police departments inhibits the implementation of strategic alternatives to the standard model of policing.

Committee: Steven Brown PhD (Committee Co-Chair); David Kessler PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Mark Colvin PhD (Committee Member); Susan Roxburgh PhD (Committee Member); Cathy DuBois PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Political Science; Public Administration; Public Policy

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2012, Management

Over the last two decades, firms have operated in increasingly accelerated ‘high-velocity' dynamic markets, which require them to become agile. During the same time frame, firms have increasingly deployed complex enterprise systems - large-scale packaged software innovations that integrate and automate enterprise-wide organizational processes. While supporting efficiency, literature is divided on whether such innovations promote or hinder organizational agility. Relatively little is known about the effects of enterprise systems on organizational agility along the dimensions of organizational impact, organizational processes and organizational knowledge. These dimensions form the basis for the research in this dissertation: 1) What is the organizational impact of enterprise systems on agility i.e. do enterprise systems promote or hinder agility? 2) What are the organizational processes by which organizations reconcile with enterprise systems' changing business needs driven by organizational agility? 3) What are the effects of organizational knowledge and competencies on the impact of enterprise systems on organizational agility? To address these research questions the dissertation adopts a mixed methods approach. Part 1 proposes a theoretical framework based on innovation assimilation and dynamic capabilities and utilizes a quantitative approach to empirically validate the framework, by measuring the impact of enterprise systems on organizational agility, the effects of systems agility on organizational agility, as well as how systems agility influences enterprise systems' impact on organizational agility. Part 2 employs a qualitative approach to examine a) how organizations reconcile with enterprise systems' changing business needs driven by agility, as well as b) the outcomes of such reconciliation processes. Part 3 uses a quantitative approach to more deeply delve into the critical role of two organizational competencies - business competence in IT (BCIT) and IT (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen PhD (Committee Chair); Nick Berente PhD (Committee Member); Bo Carlsson PhD (Committee Member); Varun Grover PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Information Systems; Information Technology; Management

Master of Science in Criminal Justice (MSCJ), Bowling Green State University, 2009, Criminal Justice

This study takes an organizational perspective to examine the adoption of research and planning units by 58 American municipal police departments. Two rival hypotheses are tested: 1) an organizational complexity hypothesis, 2) an environmental complexity hypothesis. T-test analysis supported the organizational complexity hypothesis and found that large, complex police organizations were more likely to have adopted a research and planning unit. The conclusion of this thesis discusses these findings, describes some problems with researching organizational innovation, and suggests remedies to these problems.

Committee: William R. King PhD (Committee Chair); Michael E Buerger PhD (Committee Member); John Liederbach PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology