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Scheller College of Business

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70690

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Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

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Institute for Leadership and Social Impact

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https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/255

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 54

When change leadership impacts commitment to change and when it doesn't: a multi-level multi-dimensional investigation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-12-09) Liu, Yi

Recent research has urged more comprehensive theoretical development and empirical validation in the field of organizational change. This study is aimed at further developing the change leadership construct and investigating its effect on employees¡¯ commitment to a particular change, along with investigating the moderating roles of leaders¡¯ general transformational leadership styles and subordinates¡¯ affective commitment to the larger organization. The results for the change leadership measure suggest that change leadership behaviors encompass two factors¡ªleaders¡¯ change-selling behavior and change- implementing behavior. Hierarchical linear modeling results indicate that the two aspects of change leadership have different effects on employees¡¯ affective commitment to change. Results on the three-way interaction also provided a more comprehensive view of organizational change situations. Additional theoretical and empirical implications are discussed.
Predicting two types of proactive socialization tactics: the roles of context, experience, and age

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-09-15) Walker, Wendy Jackson

Proactive socialization tactics, measures that organizational newcomers take to facilitate their own adjustment, have been shown to predict adjustment and more distal work-related outcomes, such as organizational commitment and intent to remain with the organization. Several cognitions and behaviors are considered to be types of proactive socialization tactics, but research has yet to distinguish between different types. Also, several individual dispositions have been identified as antecedents of proactive socialization tactics, but there has been little focus on identifying contextual or non-dispositional individual difference antecedents. The purpose of this research was to propose a dual-mode conceptualization of proactive socialization tactics and to distinguish between tactics directed toward changing oneself and those directed toward changing one's environment. This research also examined the role of contextual factors, the newcomer's age, and the newcomer's work experience as antecedents of proactive socialization tactics. The results of this research suggest that job and workgroup characteristics do indeed play a role in predicting proactive socialization tactics. Age and work experience were predictors as well, but not as strong as expected. Both self-directed and environment-directed proactive socialization tactics predicted desirable adjustment outcomes, but self-directed tactics were clearly stronger predictors of these outcomes. There was some evidence to suggest that newcomers' early fit perceptions moderated relationships between antecedents, such as workgroup characteristics, and proactive socialization tactics. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Essays on operations strategies

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-09-15) Jacobs, Brian W.

Operations strategies, whether prompted by competitive or regulatory forces, can greatly impact firm performance. While operations strategies cover a wide spectrum of issues - supply chain management, technology choice, capacity allocation, etc. - this dissertation focuses on two such issues, namely, sustainability and product development. The thesis comprises three essays. The first essay (Chapter 2) examines a regulatory aspect of sustainability strategy, product take-back, a form of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). With a stylized model, we analyze the trade-offs between assigning full responsibility for product recovery to a single echelon in a multi-echelon supply chain versus sharing responsibility between echelons. We demonstrate how the sharing of EPR program costs between the echelons can move the supply chain closer to the coordinated profit benchmark. The second essay (Chapter 3) examines a voluntary aspect of sustainability from an empirical perspective. We investigate the impact from various types of corporate environmental initiatives and environmental awards and certifications on the market value of the firm. We find that the market is selective in reacting to environmental performance, with certain types of initiatives and awards even valued negatively. The third essay (Chapter 4) is an empirical examination of the shareholder value effects that result from the restructuring of firms' product development activities. We find that, on average, the stock market reacts positively to product development restructuring, and that the reaction is dependent on the firm's prior financial performance, restructuring objective, R&D expenditures, and size.
Essays in regulatory focus and price acceptance

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-07-06) Patil, Ashutosh R.

Part one of the thesis studies differential diagnosticity towards substantive extrinsic information available in the environment. This research tests the interaction between regulatory focus and availability of extrinsic-substantive information such as consensus information, on the range of acceptable price. Prior research on regulatory focus led us to two divergent predictions. Our findings lend support to the asymmetric-elaboration account. Under this account, only prevention-oriented consumers are likely to change their acceptable price range if combinations of favorable-and-unfavorable consensus information are available in the environment, while promotion-oriented consumers disregard such information. We find that this difference is due to the differences in the level of difficulty experienced in specifying acceptable price range across the two regulatory foci. Further, we also undertake random-parameters regression models that provide unique general findings. For example, we find that for promotion-oriented consumers it is their high-level product construal, while for prevention-oriented consumers it is their low-level product construal that influences their respective acceptable price ranges, irrespective of level of external information available. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Three essays on the role of information structures on new product development strategies

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-06-12) Oraiopoulos, Nektarios

The new product development (NPD) process has been long conceptualized as an intense information processing task, yet several questions about the role of information in shaping NPD decisions remain open. For instance, the persistent representation of NPD decisions as a single decision-maker outcome in existing theory; it limits our understanding of decisions that involve multiple and heterogeneous organizational stakeholders, and it appears distant from the managerial realities. This dissertation focuses on managerial decisions where information acquisition, ownership and interpretation exhibit heterogeneity. The first essay (Chapter 2) examines the role of informational asymmetries that competing firms face when investing in R&D. The second essay (Chapter 3) reveals the detrimental effects of interpretive diversity (i.e., different people may interpret differently the same information) on project termination decisions. The third essay (Chapter 4) examines how consumers' information regarding future market conditions can affect a firm's strategy on striking a balance between its primary and secondary markets.
Essays on the role of peer networks in investment banking

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-05-18) Chuluun, Tugsjargal

The following series of three essays examine the impact of peer networks of investment banks, including those commercial banks that recently entered security underwriting, on investment banking activities. Specifically, I focus on underwriter and financial advisor peer networks in security underwriting and mergers and acquisitions advisory services, and examine how the structure of these peer networks affects the performance of initial public offerings, the shareholders' wealth in mergers and acquisitions, and the market share of underwriters. The results indicate that the peer relations of underwriters and advisors have significant implications along various dimensions.
Essays on knowledge management strategies in new product development

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-01-02) Ozkan, Gulru F.

Management of knowledge involved in the new product development (NPD) projects is critical to the success of firms competing in environments that require rapid innovation. Unfortunately, many firms lack an understanding of how to develop knowledge management (KM) strategies that drive successful outcomes. In this thesis I develop a rich and multifaceted understanding of how KM strategies drive successful NPD outcomes. I examine KM strategies for NPD at two different decision making levels. First, I consider the how the manager of a single NPD project should pursue knowledge acquisition for its product and process design teams and knowledge transfer between the teams over time throughout the development project. The ability to develop and integrate knowledge drives the net revenue earned at the product release time. I show that two different dynamic KM strategies arise: a delay strategy and a front-loading strategy. I characterize drivers of each strategy and the drivers of the market entry time strategy. In contrast to the deterministic approach above, I introduce a stochastic model. The manager of a single NPD project maximizes expected net revenue which reflects the effectiveness of product and process development. I consider the effect of rework that occurs as a result of the KM activities. Although manager's strategies for knowledge creation satisfy either the delay or front-loading strategy the drivers of each strategy in this model are substantially different from those in the first model reflecting the stochastic nature of the project and the effect of rework. In a third model, I consider the strategic level question of how a firm engages in relationships with its competitor regarding the sharing or transfer of knowledge resources for NPD. I consider two cooperative mechanisms: knowledge transfer when both firms ultimately enter the market separately as competitors versus knowledge sharing when both firms enter the market together following the joint development of a new product. In this thesis, I develop the KM strategies followed by the firms for each cooperation mechanism. In addition, I analyze the impact of firm and market characteristics on firms decision to whether to cooperate or not, and other KM decisions.
Three essays on stock market seasonality

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-11-17) Choi, Hyung-Suk

Three Essays on Stock Market Seasonality Hyung-Suk Choi 136 pages Directed by Dr. Cheol S. Eun In chapter 1, we examine seasonality in returns to style portfolios, which serve as important benchmarks for asset allocation, and investigate its implications for investment. In doing so, we consider monthly returns on the style portfolios classified by six size/book-to-market sorting and six size/prior-return sorting over the sample period 1927 - 2006. The key findings are: first, as is well documented in the literature, small-cap oriented portfolios are subject to the January effect, but also to the 'negative' September and October effects. Second, cross-style return dispersion exhibits a seasonal pattern of its own (it is largest in January and smallest in August), suggesting possibly profitable trading strategies. Third, our seasonal strategies indeed yield significant profits, as high as about 18.7 % per annum. This profit is mostly attributable to the seasonal autocorrelation in style returns. Lastly, we find substantial seasonal patterns in style returns not only in the U.S. but also in other major stock markets Germany, Japan, and the U.K. Our seasonal style rotation strategy yields economically and statistically significant profits in all of these stock markets. In chapter 2, we examine the abnormal, negative stock returns in September which have received little attention from academic researchers. We find that in most of the 18 developed stock markets the mean return in September is negative and in 15 countries it is significantly lower than the unconditional monthly mean return. This September effect has not weakened in the recent period. Further, the examinations of the various style portfolios in the US market show that the September effect is the most pervasive anomalous phenomenon that is not affected by size, book-to-market ratio, past performance, or industry. Our finding suggests that the forward looking nature of stock prices combined with the negative economic growth in the last quarter causes the September effect. Especially in the fall season when most investors become more risk averse, the stock prices reflect the future economic growth more than the rest of the year. Our investment strategy based on the September effect yields a higher mean return and a lower standard deviation than the buy-and-hold strategy. In chapter 3, we establish the presence of seasonality in the cash flows to the U.S. domestic mutual funds. January is the month with the highest net cash flows to equity funds and December is the month with the lowest net cash flows. The large net flows in January are attributed to the increased purchases, and the small net flows in December are due to the increased redemptions. Thus, the turn-of-the-year period is the time when most mutual fund investors make their investment decisions. We offer the possible sources for the seasonality in mutual funds flows.
University entrpreneurship: the role of U.S. faculty in technology transfer and commercialization

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-10-27) Fuller, Anne W.

My dissertation research focuses commercializing university related technology. My first essay investigates whether patents assigned to U.S. universities largely represent the totality of faculty inventions patented. In contrast to prior work that identified faculty patents by searching for patents assigned to the university, I find in a sample of patents with US faculty as inventors, 26% are assigned solely to firms rather than universities. This initially seems to conflict with US university employment policies and Bayh-Dole. I relate assignment to patent characteristics, university policy, inventor field and academic entrepreneurship. Patents assigned to firms (whether established or start-ups with inventor as principal) are less basic than those assigned to universities suggesting these patents result from faculty consulting. The second essay examines the growing phenomena of U.S. academic entrepreneurship. Building on prior work demonstrating the embryonic state of science and engineering research that is licensed through the university (Jensen & Thursby 2001), I extend this framework to university inventions commercialized by new technology-based firms (NTBFs). I posit that the presence of faculty inventor founders will be beneficial to the NTBF. This is tested with a uniquely constructed dataset representing a variety of university and industry settings. Results indicate firms with faculty founders have a higher likelihood to experience an IPO or become acquired than other similar new firms. Second, faculty members with highly cited publications have incrementally more impact on the likelihood of the firm having an IPO. Thus I discern that while faculty founders matter, 'star' scientists matter more. The third essay identifies significant variables in the observed career level patent assignment patterns of academic serial inventors. Existing life cycle models test the idea that consulting occurs later in the career span of academic scientists. I find that indeed the proxy for consulting (firm assignment of patents) is more likely the later the patent application is from the year of Phd for the faculty inventors. I found strong evidence that faculty performing industry consulting are more likely to continue consulting in subsequent work. However the use of rolling lag variables based on transition probability matrices increased the variance explained in the regression model by a factor of three indicating factors other than life cycle may be significant.
Essays on the economics of electronic commerce

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-08-20) Luo, Jifeng

This dissertation examines the innovations in electronic commerce and their managerial impacts. In the first essay, we investigate the importance of product and retailer uncertainty in a customer's online purchase decision as well as the uncertainty-reduction effects of retailer characteristics. In the second essay, we examine online pricing strategies of B2C retailers, with an aim to understand whether and how the driving factors of price dispersion evolve over time. Based on the theories of resource-based view (RBV), IT business value, and competitive dynamics, the third essay examines the factors that affect cross-channel capabilities and competitive actions in the apparel industry in the U.S.