Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Labor and Human Resources

The strategic role of the compensation system has been increasingly important to business. However, there has been little knowledge or research about how the compensation system strategically impacts organizations (Gerhart, 2000; Heneman, Ledford, & Gresham, 2000). Therefore, research is needed to substantiate how to improve the effectiveness of the compensation strategy. In this study, a large-scale survey was conducted to examine the effect of compensation practices in a wide variety of organizations. A total of 130 firms responded to the survey; of these firms, six had multiple respondents. The empirical results revealed that long-term incentive, group-based pay, and merit-pay programs positively impact perceptual and financial performance. As well as identifying direct impact, this study examined the indirect impact of compensation programs and practices. In this process, OCB plays a mediating role in the effect of several compensation programs such as, merit pay, group-based pay, and long-term incentive on a firm's performance. The model developed in this study adds valuable insight to the existing strategic compensation literature by identifying the means through which the compensation strategy leads to a firm's success. The current study also makes a theoretical contribution. The use of several compensation programs may have the potential to improve “flexibility” by developing several characteristics of human resources, which in turn are integrated into a firm's success. This study supports the universal perspective by demonstrating positive effects of specific types of compensation programs across organizations and industries. Furthermore, unless human resource attributes achieve “fit” with the features of a compensation program, the strength in the relationship between the compensation program and a firm's performance becomes lower. The findings support the contingency perspective that compensation program characteristics must be consistent with human resou (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Heneman Robert (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2001, Business Administration : Management

How organizations secure resources has occupied the attention of management scholars throughout the history of the discipline. The question addressed by this research is what factors are important in the decision to make, versus buy a component? The outcome of this decision can be seen as defining the boundaries of the firm. Four theoretical perspectives, transaction cost economics, strategic choice, resource dependence and institutionalism offer varying explanations as to the conditions that predict the outcome of the make-buy decision. Transaction cost and strategy are economic perspectives that suggest that a certain calculus among a limited number of variables will dictate sourcing decisions that will produce efficiency maximizing results. Resource dependence and institutional perspectives are effectiveness approaches that suggest that make-buy decision making is embedded in social structures that have a profound effect on the decision. This research is unique in that four make-buy perspectives were ies may have found significance for a specific theoretical perspective simply because that was the only one for which variables were operationalized. Including variables that represent four perspectives remedies that weakness. Eight hypotheses were proposed to test the principle variables of each of the four perspectives. The hypotheses were tested using data collected from purchasing buyers from a large midwestern manufacturer. Surveys containing 60 objective items were used to collect 165 useable responses from a response population of 647 personnel. Principle components analysis was used to develop a ten-factor measurement model. Logistic regression was subsequently used to regress the outcome of make-buy decisions on the variable sets representing the four perspectives. Tests of a model that included all four theoretical perspectives found support for only hypotheses representing institutionalism. Specifically, the influence of local and national unions was found (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lawrence Gales (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2001, Business Administration : Operations Management

In the 1980's, the U.S. government along with important commercial organizations realized the significance of improving the quality of products and services in order to enhance the international competitiveness of companies and the national economy. (Anonymous, 1999) This realization led to the development of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Performance Excellence criteria that has now spread across all sections of the business community. Research has determined that implementing the Baldrige criteria can result in positive impacts on firms allowing them to achieve performance excellence and improve competitiveness in their markets. (Barclay (1993), Hendricks and Singhal (1996), Mendham et al, (1994)) Small organizations with their limited resources can apply the Baldrige principles with measurable success, and without undue expense. (Ghobadian and Gallear, 1996) Yet, others find the frameworks themselves lacking. According to Wilkes and Dale (1998) the development of the EFQM model (European model based on Baldrige) to suit the characteristics of small firms is needed and more needs to be done to simplify the language, the format of the model and the application process. Familiarity with a particular theoretical framework and understanding the underlying principals found in a framework are two different conditions. It is our argument that it seems logical (discussed by McTeer and Dale, 1994 and Van der Wiele and Brown, 1998 for TQM) that small firms may not be specifically familiar with Baldrige but may practice its principles every day without placing such a label on it. So, there may be a lack of specific knowledge concerning Baldrige but not the underlying management principles. The goal of this research is to identify the importance of the Baldrige criteria to small firms by examining the specific management practices elucidated throughout the criteria. Additionally, the research will determine how endemic these practices are throughout the small (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Evans (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2000, Business Administration : Quantitative Analysis

This study defines Volume Flexibility as: the ability to profitably increase or decrease aggregate production (output) in response to changes in customer demand. We use a triangulated approach to measure and relate volume flexibility to firm performance. Part 1 uses secondary data to measure volume flexibility. Other researchers use variability in sales to measure volume flexibility and conclude that small firms are more volume flexible than large firms are. But, variability in sales essentially measures diversity in the environment, and therefore, it may not be a valid measure of volume flexibility. Our measures consider the combined impact of the firms technology and environmental diversity by incorporating process properties such as inventory levels and costs incurred in meeting sales variation. Using 20 years (1979-1998) of Compustat data on 550 firms in the capital goods industries (SICs 3510-3590), we identify key sources of volume flexibility that give competitive advantages to small firms. But, when we simultaneously account for environmental uncertainty, production technology, and performance, we find that large firms are more volume flexible than small firms are. We also revalidate these findings with a second data set representing 20 years (1979-1998) of data on 2,100 firms in 93 industries. In part 2, we conduct case studies of three small firms in the capital goods industries. We document and assess the drivers and sources of volume flexibility. Our key findings identify drivers of volume flexibility in two categories: external market forces and internal strategic choices. We also identify key sources of volume flexibility and categorize them into a taxonomy of short-term and long-term sources as well as internal and external sources of volume flexibility. Finally, in Part 3, we conduct a field survey of 750 APICS managers to understand the leverage that volume flexibility provides across small and large firms. Our results validate that the short-term a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Amitabh Raturi (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Business Administration : Business Administration

This dissertation offers a lens to understand the critical processes of organizational emergence by examining the network processes and outcomes in the development of early stage entrepreneurial founding teams. In addition, this dissertation explores the important boundary condition of high technology and its effect on the early stage network processes. Using a mixed methodology approach, this dissertation explores the question of how founders construct organizations. In the quantitative section, panel data is used to explore how the level of technological intensity affects the organizational demography and social network structure of the founding team. Results from logistic regression show the level of technology affects the motives through which founders constructed organizations. Increasing levels of technology are associated with greater demographic diversity and lower density social networks. These findings highlight the role of technological intensity as an important antecedent to organizational demography and social network structure. In the qualitative section, in-depth interviews were conducted with 40 early stage entrepreneurs and team members to explore how the decision making process affects the construction of organizations. Through this analysis, a series of three grounded conceptual models are developed to explain the mutual decision making process of entrepreneurial team formation: 1.) the first model highlights the role of individual level factors (e.g., attitude towards networking) and situational factors (e.g., geography) in the identification and screening processes of decision making; 2.) the second conceptual model explores the opportunity costs of pursuing different search processes in the identification of team members; and 3.) the third model identifies the overall marginal benefits of different search processes after accounting for both the benefits and costs of each search process. Taken together, these models describe how the decision mak (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Glen Kreiner (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2006, Business Administration : Business Administration

This study developed and tested an interactive model of innovative behavior of frontline employees in the public sector. Three gaps in innovation research have given rise to this study: the need for contextualization, the need for studies that include the frontline employee, and the need for studies that examine the interactions of factors that influence individual level innovative behavior. In the study of innovation, the notion of context is an under-examined contingency. The context of interest in this study is the public sector, as it is generally believed that the public sector differs from the private sector in key ways that may influence the extent of innovative behavior, including the difference in rewards for innovation available for public sector employees and the overabundance of rules and procedures that influence an individual's ability to be adaptable and innovative. Innovation research in the public sector has been biased toward the organization level, and individual innovative behavior has received minor attention despite the major practical implications of individual innovative behavior for organization innovation. Even when the individual level has been addressed in innovation research, frontline employees have often been overlooked, though they are in a prime position to recognize opportunities for innovation. Although innovative researchers are increasingly recognizing the merits of an interactive approach, the innovation literature could profit from more research that examines how factors at multiple levels combine to influence innovative behavior. This study examined the interaction of factors at the individual and organization level that influence innovative behavior of frontline employees in the public sector. In contrast to studies in the private sector, this study did not find a relationship between creative problem solving style and innovative behavior. The study concludes with a discussion of the contextual differences in the public secto (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. M Welsh (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Business Administration : Business Administration

We examine the behavior of a manufacturer and a retailer in decentralized supply chains under price-dependent demand. We investigate the use of several price-commitment policies as coordination mechanisms. The first policy we examine is a retailer's fixed markup (RFM) policy where the retailer commits to a fixed price markup over wholesale price to determine her retail price. The second is a price protection policy where the manufacturer agrees to reimburse the retailer for decreases in the wholesale price. In our first paper we examine the effect of RFM on individual agents' profits and supply chain performance under single period, stochastic demand. Our focus here is on exogenously determined markup values and linear additive demand forms. We prove the existence of optimal pricing and replenishment policies. We also find that RFM can result in significantly greater profit for the supply chain than the price-only contract and leads to Pareto-improving solutions. The second paper extends our analysis by examining the RFM policy under both multiplicative and linear additive demand forms. We obtain closed-form solutions for both RFM and price-only policies and analytically prove that Pareto-improving solutions are not possible under iso-price-elastic, multiplicative demand. We also consider the effect of pricing power in the supply chain by varying who determines the retail price markup. Our results reveal that the effect of retailer ex-ante markup commitment is heavily dependent on both the nature of the demand function and the relative pricing power of different players in the supply chain. The final paper in this dissertation investigates a multi-period, deterministic demand setting. We compare price commitments made by both the retailer and the supplier. RFM represents the retailer's price commitment and price protection is a form of manufacturer price commitment. We prove the existence of unique, optimal pricing and ordering solutions for all policies considered. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Michael Fry (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Business Administration : Quantitative Analysis

This dissertation consists of three essays that address issues in production and inventory management. The first essay focuses on inventory management. We study a fixed-reorder-interval, order-up-to (R, nT) inventory replenishment policy in a two-stage serial system with stochastic demand at the lower stage. We develop a simulation based optimization procedure to estimate the long-run average cost and optimal parameter values. The numerical results show that the (R, nT) policy is, on average, 4.4% (5.8%) more expensive than the continuous review (r, nQ) policy (lower bounds). The cost difference is much smaller when the setup cost at the upstream stage and the demand rate are larger. The (R, nT) costs are relatively insensitive to the choice of reorder intervals, T, provided the best corresponding order-up-to level, R, is selected. The second essay deals with production scheduling. We consider the computationally-hard, re-entrant flow, cyclic scheduling problem considered by Graves et al. (1983) and Roundy (1992). We present two problem formulations to minimize job flow time (work-in-process), given a target cycle length (throughput). We describe an efficient optimization method and a new ImproveAlignment (IA) heuristic. Numerical experiments indicate that proposed optimization method was significantly faster than CPLEX-8.0 and solved 40% more test instances to optimality within the specified run time and memory limits. The proposed IA heuristic quickly produced solutions which were, on average, (i) 22% better than those from the Graves' et al. heuristic and (ii) within 14% of the optimal. The third essay focuses on resource planning. We examine a single end-product, discrete-time inventory replenishment problem in a material requirements planning (MRP) environment with demand uncertainty and supply capacity limits on replenishment orders. We develop a simulation-based optimization approach and two novel heuristics. We also evaluate the traditional MRP and safety st (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Uday Rao (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Business Administration : Business Administration

In today's business environment, creativity has become essential for gaining and sustaining competitive advantage for organizations. As such, researchers and practitioners alike have been interested in understanding ways to enhance creativity. In today's highly interactive work environment social relationships have become an important feature of organizational life. Yet there has been little empirical research that focuses on the relational environment and its impact on creativity. To fill this gap in the literature, this study develops and empirically tests a social exchange model of creativity, proposing that employees' perceptions of the relational environment (i.e., fairness and trust) will influence their social exchange relationships, which in turn will affect creativity-relevant behaviors, and ultimately, creativity. The model simultaneously proposes and tests these linkages for both organizational and supervisory levels. To test the model, the data were collected from 205 employees and their supervisors at a large chemical engineering plant, where creativity is an explicitly stated goal. Employees reported on their perceptions of organizational fairness and trust, supervisory fairness and trust, perceived organizational support, and leader member exchange. Supervisors provided information on employees' creativity-relevant behaviors (information sharing, risk taking, social loafing, and political tactics), and creativity. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and test the social exchange model of creativity. The results revealed support for several hypotheses. At the organizational level, employees' perceptions of procedural and informational justice were significantly related to organizational trust, which in turn was significantly related to perceived organizational support. Furthermore, perceived organizational support was marginally related to two types of political tactics, exchange and upward appeal, which were not found to be relate (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Suzanne Masterson (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Business Administration : Business Administration

Entrepreneurial opportunities are the “fuel” for economic progress. Accordingly, a key question posed by researchers and practitioners alike focuses on why some individuals, but not others, recognize and choose to exploit entrepreneurial opportunity (Venkataraman, 1997). Despite both the theoretical and practical importance of this phenomenon, we know little about the underlying entrepreneurial thought processes that allow opportunities to manifest themselves as credible across individuals in part because researchers have done little to understand their complexity (Krueger, 2003). This dissertation seeks to extend existing theory on why it is that some individuals come to recognize and exploit economic opportunities by directly examining the theoretical premise that entrepreneurial thinking is both unique, as well as more complex than previous efforts have proposed. More specifically, this research draws on extant theory to investigate whether three broad types of capital – general knowledge, self-knowledge and cognitive motivation – make up a unique, multidimensional resource base that contributes to the recognition and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunity. Hypotheses related to the tacit and explicit knowledge sources employed, self-related knowledge, and the influence of individual motivations on nascent entrepreneurial activity and performance-related outcomes are developed and tested. Data were obtained from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) database, a longitudinal panel survey identifying a sample of nascent entrepreneurs within the United States. Hypotheses were tested and inferences derived through descriptive statistics, logistic and multivariate regression techniques appropriate for examining the central research questions guiding this project. Findings provide robust support for the intuitive and commonly held yet sparsely tested presumption that entrepreneurs can and do think differently than non-entrepreneurs. The results al (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Charles Matthews (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2003, Business Administration : Management

Business Format Franchising is thought to be successful because of the application of a formulaic approach prescribed by the franchisor. The relationship between franchisor and franchisee is based on the uniformity built into the contractual relationship and operations manual. Despite the pressure to conform, franchisee outcomes still vary even within a system.This study examines the interaction between franchisor control and franchisee personality as a predictor of franchisee outcomes. Franchisee cognitive traits are combined with an environmental variable allowing the research to investigate both personality and context. Data are collected from franchisees in five systems exhibiting different levels of control. Models are tested for the influence of cognitive processes on franchisees' outcomes.

Committee: Dr. Charles H. Matthews (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2003, Business Administration : Management

People who are similar to one another with regards to important, visible, demographic categories, such as ethnicity, tend to naturally develop friendships with each other within organizations (e.g., Marsden & Hurlbert, 1988). An important, but understudied, consequence of this general tendency to choose "homophilous" others as friends in organizations is that minority group friendship networks tend to be more cohesive than those of the majority. I selected an all-minority group of voluntarily associated management doctoral students, The PhD Project, which consists of African Americans as the majority group and Hispanic Americans as the minority group in order to empirically test two potentially competing explanations for friendship formation. Two theoretical perspectives, structural versus cultural, were used to investigate the impact of ethnicity on these friendships. Using distinctiveness theory (McGuire, 1984) to test the structural explanation and cultural identity theory (Ferdman, 1995) to test the cultural explanation, hypotheses were proposed suggesting which ethnic group would form the more homophilous relationships. The findings in this study strongly supported the structural theory. As a group, Hispanic Americans, who were in the numeric minority, were significantly more cohesive than the African Americans, who were in the numeric majority. I also investigated the impact of personality differences, using self-construal, to explore whether it had important consequences for individuals' relative position in interaction networks and career success. I found no significant results for personality as a predictor of publications and presentations, as proxies for performance, nor did I find that it was an explicator of an individual's position in the social structure. However, interdependent self-construal did predict increased levels of perceived stress. Findings revealed that there were positive and significant linkages between an individual's position in the fr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ralph Katerberg (Committee Co-Chair); Ajay Mehra (Committee Co-Chair); Marianne Lewis (Other); Karen Machleit (Other); Suzanne Masterson (Other) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2002, Interdisciplinary : Interdisciplinary Studies

The present study examines the impact of transformational leadership, management of meaning, and vision characteristics on the growth of dotcoms. Transformational leadership is a popular leadership theory that describes two opposite dimensions known as transformational and transactional leadership styles (Bass, 1985; Bass & Avolio, 1990). Leadership as the “management of meaning” is an extension of the visionary and transformational leadership literatures and may help explain the intricacies involved in the visioning process. The literature is based on two key assumptions. First, leadership becomes real in the process of framing and defining reality for employees (Smirich & Morgan, 1982). Second, there is a clear distinction between leaders and managers based on presentation of a vision (Zaleznik, 1977; Pondy, 1978; Pfeffer, 1981; Bennis & Nanus, 1985). The literature also suggests that a vision must have seven key characteristics that make it successful. Using startups as a point of reference, dotcom is defined as an organization that is dependent on some form of seed funding or venture capital with up to 150 employees. Generally, the organization has been in business for less than five years and relies heavily on the Internet as a basis for its business model. Dotcoms distinguish themselves by adding “.com” to the name of their business and promote certain cultural elements that distinguish them from a startup, although the specific characteristics of the culture are less clear. The research is driven by three hypotheses that focus on the impact of the three preceding variables on growth. The results show no support for the hypotheses although the interview data does reveal that the role of the CEO and CFO as transformational leaders is evolving. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Committee: Gail Fairhurst (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

Doctor of Manufacturing Management, University of Toledo, 2007, Manufacturing Management

This research studies the impact of various supply chain management (SCM) practices - external to the organization - and modularity based manufacturing practices - within the organization - on supply chain responsiveness. The study, further investigates the dimensions of supply chain responsiveness through an extensive literature review. It develops a reliable and valid instrument for the supply chain responsiveness construct, which will be beneficial for both practitioners and academicians. The study also assesses the impact of supply chain responsiveness on the outcome variable - competitive advantage - of the firm. The large scale web-based survey yielded 294 responses from industry professionals in the manufacturing and supply chain area. The data collected was put through rigorous statistical analysis to test for content, construct, and criterion-related validity, as well as reliability analyses. Further a structural equation model was developed to test the relationships between SCM practices, modularity based manufacturing practices, supply chain responsiveness, and competitive advantage. In addition, rigorous regression analyses and MANOVA were performed to analyze the effects of various relationships at the sub-construct level as well as item level. The research findings supported the hypotheses that SCM practices positively impact supply chain responsiveness, modularity based manufacturing practices are positively associated with supply chain responsiveness, supply chain responsiveness positively impacts competitive advantage of a firm, and SCM practices are positively associated with competitive advantage of a firm. The research also uncovered the critical and specific practices (at the sub-construct and item level) that increase supply chain responsiveness. Furthermore, the study uncovered the specific SCM practices and supply chain responsiveness criteria that increase competitive advantage of a firm.

Committee: Subba Rao (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2005, Manufacturing Management

With advances in information technology (IT), information systems integration (ISI) and its role in an integrated supply chain have become important to executives and researchers. ISI represents the degree of cooperation in information system practices between business functions within a firm and between a firm and its trading partners. It has been documented that the introduction and utilization of ISI for supply chain management enhance the firms' competitiveness and growth. While many firms focus on achieving high levels of IT utilization, without high levels of ISI, supply chain members may not attain the full benefits of working within a supply chain. The concept of ISI can be captured using two main sub-constructs (e.g., internal ISI and external ISI) and can be conceptualized at three levels – (1) Strategic, (2) Operational, and (3) Infrastructural. Studying the effects of ISI in these levels can help researchers and executives understand how ISI practices at different levels contribute to overall supply chain effectiveness. The implications of such an understanding may bring significant benefits to both operations researchers and practitioners. Such benefits may include making better decisions about which IT to utilize, which information systems (IS) practices to emphasize, and what level of ISI to attain. From a practitioner's perspective, this research provides important guidelines so firms may better understand ISI issues and effectively implement IT. This study proposes three significant contributions to supply chain management research. First, this study applies an information system perspective to study both causes and effects of supply chain integration. It proposes a theoretical framework that considers the role of ISI as a mediator between IT utilization and supply chain integration. Second, this study provides the inferences made from an instrument that is valid and reliable for the current study's context, which are beneficial for both practitione (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: T.S. Ragu-Nathan (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

Doctor of Manufacturing Management, University of Toledo, 2005, Manufacturing Management

Decision support systems are a key to gaining competitive advantage. Many corporations have built or are building unified decision-support databases called data warehouses on which decision makers can carry out their analysis. A data warehouse is a very large data base that integrates information extracted from multiple, independent, heterogeneous data sources to support business analysis activities and decision-making tasks. The data that is likely to be in demand is generally pre-computed and stored ahead of time at the data warehouse in the form of materialized views. This dramatically reduces execution time of decision support queries from hours or days to minutes or even seconds. There are many architectural issues concerning the efficient design of a data warehouse. This dissertation studies in depth three important issues. The first issue addressed is the Materialized View Selection (MVS) problem, which is the problem of choosing an optimal set of views to materialize under resource constraints. We have formulated interesting bottleneck versions of this problem and presented the 0-1 Integer Programming models as well as the heuristic procedures. Performance analysis of the heuristic procedures is also presented. Formulation of the MVS problem requires knowledge of the number of rows in each view in a given lattice structure, which refers to views and their interrelationships for a given set of dimensions. Counting actual number of rows present in each view takes considerable time. The second issue addressed in this dissertation focuses on the statistical sampling techniques applied to data warehouses to estimate number of rows in each view in a given lattice structure. We have shown that the application of sampling techniques results in significant time savings without compromising on accuracy. The third issue deals with modeling the behavior and performance of a data warehouse system using simulation. We implemented the model in ARENA. The model enables a da (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mesbah Ahmed (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Business Administration

First, we study the problem of rescheduling for multiple new orders. Assume that a set of original jobs has been scheduled on a single machine, but not processed, when a set of new jobs arrives. The decision maker needs to insert the new jobs into the existing schedule without excessively changing it. The objective is minimization of the maximum lateness of the jobs, subject to a customer service requirement modeled by a limit on the maximum time change of the original jobs. We show that this scheduling problem is intractable, even if no new jobs arrive. We describe several approximation algorithms and analyze their worst-case performance. Next, we develop a branch and bound algorithm that solves 99.9% of randomly generated instances with up to 1000 jobs within 60 seconds. Second, we consider a multiple product supply chain where a manufacturer receives orders from several distributors. If the orders cannot all be met from available production capacity, then the manufacturer allocates that capacity among the distributors. The distributors may share their allocated capacity among themselves before submitting revised orders. Finally, the manufacturer schedules the revised orders to minimize its cost. We consider three practical coordination issues. First, we estimate the benefit to the manufacturer from considering scheduling costs and constraints in making capacity allocation decisions. Second, we estimate the additional profit that the distributors achieve when they share their allocated capacity. Third, we estimate the value of coordination between the manufacturer and the distributors. Third, we consider a problem where a group of agents, each with a set of jobs, need to schedule their jobs on a common processing facility. Each agent wants to minimize an objective function which depends on its own job completion times. Time slots are allocated to the various jobs based on the bids of the participating agents. We investigate the efficiency and effectiveness of thre (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nicholas Hall (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Family and Consumer Sciences Education

The hospitality industry is highly oriented toward intangibles such as market knowledge, management skills, organizational routines, brand image, and corporate reputation. In order to exploit intangible capital successfully and thus create value from intangible capital overseas in the hospitality, the decision on where and how to transfer intangible capital across borders is critical. Thus, the choice of entry mode is critical for a firm's competitive advantage and the success in international markets. However, both academicians and practitioners have ignored the two important factors that determine the success of international expansions – intangible assets and entry mode. Therefore, the current study focuses on the issues of intangible capital of the hospitality firms [measured by two: market capital (external) and human capital (internal)] and their impact on the choice of foreign market entry mode (Greenfield, acquisition, joint venture, & contractual modes – franchising and management contract). To test this, the data is collected from Compustate, Mergent, Security Data Companies, and 10-K reports of the selected 10 international lodging companies. The selected 10 companies meet the criteria – their parent companies are located in the U.S. and they have at least one international operation. For a dependent variable (the choice of entry mode), each case of foreign market entry mode of the selected companies between 1995 and 2005 is examined. Independent variables are the value of intangible capital of each entry mode case. From the result of testing the relationship between the level of intangible and the choice of entry mode using multinomial logistic regression, it is revealed that as the level of intangibles increase, the entry mode moves from joint venture to acquisition to franchising to Greenfield to management contract. This is quite consistent with the traditional RBV approach to the entry mode developed in the manufacturing industry. In addition, it is (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: H.G. Parsa (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Labor and Human Resources

This dissertation examined how parental responsibilities impacted three organizational networks characteristics, network size, network ties, and network content across employees. The study was based on theory and research from sociology (i.e. social networks), careers, and the work-family literature. The study was designed to understand the potential moderators of the relationship between parental status and the three network characteristics. This dissertation sought to understand the relationship between the three network characteristics of interest and two career outcomes including career success and career management perceptions. The career success measures included in this study were salary, salary growth, promotions, and career satisfaction. The career management perception measures included in this study were career planning, career tactics, and career mobility preparedness. This study utilized network analysis and investigated the organizational networks of working adults with children in comparison to the networks of working adults without children. The goal of this dissertation was to understand the following research questions: Research Question: First, how do networks differ after the birth of a child for males vs females? Secondly, how do networks differ between working adults with and without children? Thirdly, what constraints produce those differences? The study results suggest that network characteristic, network content, may vary across parental status, where working parents reported a higher percentage of their network content (i.e. topics of conversation) to be non-work and kin relevant topics. There were no significant interactions between parental status and the four moderators of interest, including gender, family involvement, job involvement, and role segmentation. However, significant main effects were found for both job involvement and role segmentation on network ties and network content. Finally, the results suggest that network size has a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Raymond Noe (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Business Administration

Many scholars today agree that institutions matter, but how they matter, for what strategies, under what circumstances, and to what extent are not well understood in the literature. Most of the existing research has focused on the effect of national culture on firms' strategic choices in international expansions. However, the effect of formal institutions, such as legal systems, political structures, and rules governing corporate transparency, has yet to be studied extensively. My dissertation investigates this central question: How do institutions affect firms' strategic choices and performance? Utilizing both theoretical modeling and empirical analysis, I investigate the impact of different dimensions of institutions on three important business strategies: strategies in managing business-to-business relationships, strategies in dealing with business- to- government relationships, and strategies on foreign expansions in my three essays of the dissertation respectively. Specifically, my first essay models the cross-country heterogeneity in the orientation of choosing relational transactions versus arm's length transactions, as well as the dynamics of governance choices during institutional transitions. My second essay empirically examines the institutional antecedents and growth consequences of bribery strategy, and finds that poor market-supporting institutions lead to more bribery and hurt the growth of small firms, although the growth of large firms remains unaffected. My third essay explores the effect of information institutions governing corporate transparency on bidders' market performance in international acquisitions. The empirical results show that investors will discount the value of the bidders when there is high information asymmetry due to poor information institutions in a target country. However, the degree of discount is also contingent on micro firm-level and transaction-level factors. In sum, these three essays systematically explore the effect of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jaideep Anand (Advisor) Subjects: Business Administration, Management