Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Communication

Scholars have long interrogated the boundary between possessions and the self. In this tradition, Belk (1988) proposed self-extension as the extent to which “we regard our possessions as parts of ourselves” (p. 139). A growing literature has applied it to possessions that are almost always on the self: mobile communication technologies. The transition from cellphones to smartphones has expanded how mobile communication technology informs and reflects the self. Accordingly, an increasing number of studies have examined smartphone self-extension. However, extant work suggests that smartphone self-extension is only loosely related to actual smartphone behavior, calling its real-world impact into question. This dissertation clarifies how self-extension relates to behavior by examining more granular and theoretically grounded behaviors derived from a large, multi-faceted dataset of digital traces. I integrate work on smartphone self-extension and extended cognition to provide rationale for hypotheses linking smartphone self-extension with digital trace measures. I measure smartphone self-extension based on its original functional, anthropomorphic, and ontological dimensions (Park & Kaye, 2019) as well as an identity dimension, which subsumes the anthropomorphic and ontological dimensions (Ross & Bayer, 2021). The digital trace measures include overall frequency of smartphone use, frequencies of using smartphone functions, variety of smartphone functions, smartphone use across spatial contexts, smartphone use across temporal contexts, and potential for reactibility. Ontological self-extension received partial support across almost all hypotheses and research questions; identity self-extension retained some of these relationships; anthropomorphic self-extension was only positively associated with certain frequencies of using smartphone functions (particularly social media); and functional self-extension was unrelated to digital trace measures. These findings were generally (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joseph Bayer (Advisor); Roselyn Lee-Won (Committee Member); David DeAndrea (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Business Administration

This dissertation addresses the relative importance of price and non-price criteria in sourcing decisions from three distinct perspectives. Each essay is motivated by the same problem: that organizations tend to unintentionally overweight cost minimization objectives in their sourcing decisions. In the first of three essays, I show that excessively price-based decision-making is a widespread problem in sourcing. To do this, I combined two sources of data on contract awards by the US federal government. I applied coarsened exact matching to identify cases where contracts were awarded using different criteria in similar situations. I then used logistic regression to show that when non-price criteria are weighted more heavily, the same contractor is more likely to receive awards for similar work in the future. This relationship is absent when there is a requirement for the decision-maker to provide written justification for the use of the more price-based approach, allowing me to infer a solution to the problem identified. In the second essay, I investigate whether the procurement profession's identity influences the relative importance of price in supplier selection decisions. I first conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with current practitioners, eliciting their comments on: their level of identification with the procurement profession; procurement's group image; others' perceptions of procurement's group image; and, procurement's status within their organization. Drawing from the observed variation in responses, I designed and conducted a scenario-based experiment. I find that strong identification with the procurement profession can contribute to more price-based sourcing decisions. In the third essay, I expand my focus from procurement professionals to a broader set of professions that commonly contribute to sourcing decisions: supply management, engineering, and marketing. Seeking to understand how these different perspectives influence (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Gray (Advisor); James Hill (Advisor); Christian Blanco (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Management; Operations Research

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Organizational Behavior

Firms are challenged to achieve organizational goals in an environment of increasingly decentralized information. Cross-functional project teams are employed widely as a strategy to facilitate better coordination, yet projects still fail at a rate of 31% per year. Communication is a leading cause of failure. While inter-team communication has been studied extensively, less is understood about the intra-team communication of a cross-functional project team. The main finding of our study is that the success of a cross-functional team is dependent on the team's ability to inquire across multiple knowledge boundaries in a way that develops an awareness of each other's functional identity. Functional identity is defined as the norms and practices of a functional team which represent how they think about and prioritize their work. Whether or not this functional-identity knowledge-sharing process occurs determines whether a cross-functional team is able to construct a shared reality with respect to the projects' goals and priorities. Achieving a shared reality is what enables a team to perform successfully. We call the understanding of another's functional identity, constructed through a process of inquiry by the project team's members, their achievement of interpretive symmetry. Our findings are from an integrated mixed-methods study. Qualitative results from Study 1 began with the consideration that cross-functional team members live in two social worlds, that of the project team and that of their own functional team. Boundaries on a project exist both from a knowledge and a social membership perspective. Therefore, team members must engage in a process of inquiry across these boundaries. We found that successful teams have a receptive awareness that the project team does not “know” and needs to learn. This receptivity supported the team members in their open inquiry with one another and the sharing of not only functional knowledge but functional identity. Exposing t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Boland (Committee Chair); Phil Cola (Advisor); David Aron (Advisor); Yunmei Wang (Advisor) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Behavioral Sciences; Business Administration; Business Community; Cognitive Psychology; Communication; Information Technology; Management; Organization Theory; Organizational Behavior; Philosophy of Science; Social Psychology; Social Research; Social Structure; Sociology; Sustainability; Technology

MS, Kent State University, 2015, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Mathematical Sciences

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the surjective additive maps preserving zero products, and the additive maps that behave like derivation when acting on zero products. In both parts, we consider the maps from a ring A = Mn(R); n ≥ 2 into itself, where R is a unital ring.

Committee: Mikhail Chebotar Dr (Advisor); Jenya Soprunova Dr (Committee Member); Dmitry Ryabogin Dr (Committee Member) Subjects: Mathematics