Doctor of Business Administration, Cleveland State University, 2020, Monte Ahuja College of Business

Business analytics (BA) continues to be one of the top technology trends in recent years as well as one of the top priorities for CIO's in many large enterprises. Business analytic tools can significantly help small businesses in quickly responding to changing market conditions and improving their organizational performance. However, prior studies report that the adoption rate of business analytics in small businesses is extremely low such that only 32 percent small businesses have adopted Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions till now (SMB Group, 2018). As small businesses constitute a major force in the US economy, a slow rate of adoption of significant technological innovations, such as BA, may be a critical concern that can affect the economy in the longer run. Despite this, the extant small business literature as well as the information systems literature fails to provide an understanding of why small businesses are not receptive to current BA trends. Therefore, drawing upon the theoretical underpinnings of organizing vision theory, strategic orientation literature, and theory of upper echelon, this study investigates the willingness of small businesses to adopt newer innovations in BA. More specifically, this study investigates the impact of the reception of organizing vision of BA by owner-managers, learning orientation of small businesses, analytics orientation of small businesses, and personal characteristics of owner-mangers on small businesses' willingness to adopt BA. By drawing its motivation from prior strategic orientation and BA literature, this study is also among the first one to propose, formally develop, and validate the measurement construct of analytics orientation.

Committee: Radha Appan Dr. (Committee Chair); Raymond Henry Dr. (Committee Member); Sreedhar Madhavaram Dr. (Committee Member); Chieh-Chen Bowen Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Information Systems

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2014, Management

For 150 years, scholars and practitioners have been studying the relationship between the leaders of an organization and the performance of their firm, but despite this extensive research, there are few sure prescriptions for success. A recent survey revealed that 90% of board directors believe their personal performance is exemplary, but only 30% of directors feel the performance of their board as a whole is exemplary (Heidrick & Struggles, 2010). Equally disturbing is that 85% of directors believe the biggest weakness of their CEO is the ability to effectively lead teams and generate results (Larcker & Miles, 2013). My dissertation research explored this gap between individual and team performance at the board and C-Suite levels and further explored the impact of team dynamic quality on financial performance. We focused on the upper echelons of the organization as this level is has been shown to have a significant impact on firm outcomes (Hambrick, 2007). The dissertation describes four phases of research. In the first study, we interviewed 23 directors of public companies and looked at governance data from a third-party source to explore the relationship between team dynamic quality in the boardroom and governance quality of the firm. The second and third studies were quantitative and attempted to assess the quality of team dynamic in the boardroom and C-Suite to understand the role of team dynamic in explaining an organization’s ability to out-perform its competitors. Our second study analyzed input from 182 board directors, the majority of whom served on publicly-traded companies. Our third study analyzed input from 123 C-Suite executives of publicly traded organizations. Our research showed that the quality of board team dynamic can explain 4% of corporate profitability, and the quality of C-Suite team dynamic can explain 20% of corporate profitability. We also found a leveraged effect of team outcomes on financial performance for both samples, with boa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Tony Lingham PhD (Committee Chair); Kalle Lyytinen PhD (Committee Member); David Cooperrider PhD (Committee Member); Richard Leblanc PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Management