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Open Access
Patterns of Team Interaction Under Asymmetric Information Distribution Conditions
(2014-07-09) Sohrab, Golchehreh; Waller, Mary J.
Over the last three decades, research on processing of asymmetrically distributed information in teams has been mostly dominated by studies in the hidden profile paradigm. Building on the groundbreaking studies by Stasser and Titus (1985, 1987), almost all studies in the hidden profile paradigm have been conducted under controlled experimental settings, with various design components closely following the original design by Stasser and Titus. In conducting the current research, I pursued two goals. First, I aimed to explore whether relaxing certain assumptions of the hidden profile would impact our understanding of team information processing. I designed my study so that participants did not develop any preferences before joining their team. Additionally, unlike the common design in the hidden profile studies, participants did not start with a clear list of alternatives; instead, they had to generate the alternatives as they progressed in the task. My second goal in conducting this research was to understand what behaviours and interaction patterns could lead to effective processing of asymmetrically distributed information in a team. Data were collected from 28 teams of MBA students who worked collaboratively on a problem-solving task in which information was asymmetrically distributed among team members. In addition to recording mentioning and repetition of shared and unshared pieces of information, building on a coding scheme developed by Scott Poole, I developed a coding scheme that captured information-oriented and solution-oriented behaviours of team members. I analysed the data using three techniques: analysis of aggregated coded behaviours, interaction pattern analysis, and phasic analysis. I found that even in the absence of initial preferences and a clear list of alternatives, team discussion is biased with shared information, with unshared information being mentioned and repeated significantly less than shared information. Furthermore, I found that compared with both average- and low-performing teams, high-performing teams tend to allocate a larger share of their discussion to information-oriented activities and less to solution-oriented activities. Additionally, the phasic analysis showed that low-performers, engaged in recurrent solution proposal and confirmation phases, suggesting that they engaged in alternative negotiation. Theoretical implications of these findings for team information processing and decision-making literatures are discussed.
Open Access
Sensegiving Word-of-Mouth and Collective Sensemaking About Epistemic Objects
(2015-01-26) Smith, Andrew Nicholas; Fischer, Eileen Mary
Using theories of sensegiving and sensemaking, I explore how people engage in word-of-mouth about stocks, which are conceptualized as epistemic objects. I draw on netnographic and interview data related to an online investment community, and find that people employ five broad types of word-of-mouth strategies – framing, cuing, connecting, action facilitating, and unsettling – in giving sense about epistemic objects. I also identify the ways in which audiences respond to this form of word-of-mouth, as a part of a collective sensemaking process, and find that their responses pertain to the speaker, the account, as well as their own behavior. Finally, I develop propositions that describe the relationships between sensegiving word-of-mouth strategies and the responses they elicit. This research makes a number of conceptual contributions. It develops the concept of discursive response, an important component of networked word-of-mouth and a manifestation of engagement, and identifies the word-of-mouth strategies associated with higher volumes and types of discursive response. It generates knowledge about word-of-mouth processes. It also provides learning about collective sensemaking and sensegiving. Along with these contributions, this research offers important insights for managers and public policy makers, such as how to elicit online engagement and assist in the collective sensemaking process.
Open Access
From Occupy Wall Street to Occupying the Academy: Three Interventions from One Demonstration
(2015-01-26) Earley, Amanda Jenny Layne; Belk, Russell W.
This primary purpose of this project was to further understand and theorize the meaning of Occupy Wall Street. Beyond that, the goal was to advance extant theorizations of the nature of economic justice movements more broadly. In order to achieve these goals, the theoretical lens of political philosophy is adopted. The dissertation starts with a brief introduction, which explains the rationale behind this choice, and begins the work of contextualizing the movement. The next chapter is a conceptual piece, which explains the utility of political philosophy in greater depth. Here, the discussion is framed in terms of the consumer culture theory literature, but the framework offered has relevance far beyond this discipline. Here, Badiou’s work on the event and subjectivity are employed, and it is argued that this provides an excellent theorization of how consumer culture operates—as well as resistance to consumer culture. The third chapter starts with a review of past discussions of consumer activism, and explains how the current framework can productively advance knowledge in the field. A Badiouian critical discourse analysis provides a great deal of insight into how individuals become committed to activist movements; how it changes their ethics; how it influences their choice of strategies; and how activism could lead to sustained social change. The final chapter critically interrogates the idea that marketing tactics should be used by social movements. Occupy Wall Street provides an ideal context for testing the limits of this argument, as it is simultaneously anti-marketing, as well as a movement where some protestors adhere to this idea that movements should be marketed. This chapter raises serious questions about the applicability of marketing techniques not only in this context, but also in many non-profit, social, governmental, and even for-profit contexts. In the end, it is my hope that this project provides a better understanding of politics and social movements not only for academics, but also for activists. The study presents important findings about the nature of consumer culture, and consequently the nature of strategies that are necessary for those who contest it.
Open Access
Entrepreneurial Action and Entrepreneurial Rents
(2015-01-26) Keyhani, Mohammad; Madhok, Anoop; Levesque, Moren
This dissertation is comprised of three independently standing research papers (chapters 2, 3 and 4) that come together in the common theme of investigating the relationship between entrepreneurial action and performance. The introduction chapter argues that this theme is the main agenda of an entrepreneurial approach to strategy, and provides some background and context for the core chapters. The entrepreneurial approach to strategy falls in line with an array of action-based theories of strategy that trace their economic foundations to the Austrian school of economics. Chapters 2 and 3 take a game theoretical modeling and computer simulation approach and represent one of the first attempts at formal analysis of the Austrian economic foundations of action-based strategy theory. These chapters attempt to demonstrate ways in which formal analysis can begin to approach compatibility with the central tenets of Austrian economics (i.e., subjectivism, dynamism, and methodological individualism). The simulation results shed light on our understanding of the relationship between opportunity creation and discovery, and economic rents in the process of moving towards and away from equilibrium. Chapter 4 operationalizes creation and discovery as exploration and exploitation in an empirical study using data from the Kauffman Firm Survey and highlights the trade-offs faced by start-ups in linking action to different dimensions of performance (i.e., survival, profitability, and getting acquired). Using multinomial logistic regression for competing risks analysis and random effects panel data regression, we find that high technology start-ups face a trade-off between acquisition likelihood and profitability-given-survival while low and medium technology start-ups face a trade-off between survival and profitability-given-survival. Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation by highlighting some of the overall contributions and suggesting avenues for future research.
Open Access
Three Essays on Information Intermediaries in Financial Markets
(2015-01-26) Driss, Hamdi; Bae, Kee-Hong; Massoud, Nadia
This dissertation examines novel issues related to information intermediaries in financial markets and consists of three essays on the following three distinct topics: (1) the monitoring role of credit rating agencies, (2) heterogeneity in the influence of sell-side analyst recommendation changes, and (3) the information flow from sell-side analysts to their affiliated asset managers.
Open Access
Integrative Practices in Supply Chains: Building Relationships for Competitiveness in Dynamic Environments
(2015-08-28) Ahmed, Muhammad Usman; Kristal, Mehmet Murat
Firms are increasingly relying on their supply-chain relationships to compete in an era of globalization and change. To this end firms integrate various processes and business activities with their supply chain partners. Supply chain integration (SCI) literature studies the performance benefits of such integration under different business conditions. Existing SCI research takes a black-box view of integration where different integrative practices are studied as one integration construct. This black-box view has limited applications because it masks the differences in SCI practices. In this dissertation we answer the following questions: what are the different elements that comprise the integration construct? What are the important differences between these elements in their relationships with performance and with environmental dynamism? We follow a rigorous and reproducible qualitative analysis procedure to identify the constructs that makeup the black-box of integration. We define the new elements of integration and generate measurement scales for them that are pre-tested using Q-sort. We then empirically verify our new conceptualization of integration by collecting survey data from manufacturers in North America. The survey results are analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to yield reliable and valid measurement scales. The survey data is used to analyze the performance impact of the various integration elements. We find that basic communication elements are no longer order-winners and cannot be a source of increased profitability. We also find that operational excellence elements and knowledge generation elements both increase profits but only the knowledge generation elements are able to increase competitive advantage over rivals. These results provide an explanation for the inconsistent findings in the literature on the integration performance relationship. We also test how environmental dynamism impacts the relationships between the elements of integration and performance. Our results show that knowledge generation elements are more useful in highly dynamic conditions, while operational excellence elements are more useful in stable conditions. This dissertation makes significant contributions in providing conceptual synthesis and extension of theory as well as empirical verification of new insights. Our work is relevant to practitioners as it can assist them in making relationship level decisions regarding integration under various business conditions.
Open Access
The Timing of Discrepant Interruptions and its Influence on Team Performance
(2015-08-28) Tajeddin, Golnaz; Waller, Mary J.
Discrepant interruptions are inevitable in today’s highly dynamic and turbulent environment. Organizations need to handle discrepant interruptions effectively in order to survive. Since organizations mostly rely on teams to do task and achieve goals, teams are required to deal with the discrepant interruptions and modify their plans and strategies to address the interruptions. A team’s approach in handling discrepant interruptions has a significant effect on team effectiveness and accordingly affects the organization’s performance. In addition, team development literature suggests that project teams working on a creative task under a deadline engage in task transition during their allotted time (Gersick, 1988, 1989; Waller, Zellmer-Bruhn, & Giambatista, 2002). This dissertation focuses on the timing of the discrepant interruptions with regards to task transition. More specifically, I aim to explore how the relative timing of a discrepant interruption affects how a team works under a deadline. Building on the literature, I hypothesize that teams facing discrepant interruptions after their task transition would perceive the interruption as a hindrance to their performance, and thus have lower team coordination and performance. In contrast teams who face the discrepant interruptions before their task transition would perceive the interruption as a challenge, and thus have higher team coordination and performance. To test these hypothesis, I conduct an experiment in which teams of three work on a creative task for 40 minutes. Their goal is to create an audio commercial for an existing airline. All teams face the same discrepant interruption at 20 minutes into the task. I measure their appraisal of the discrepant interruption and team coordination using a questionnaire and code their video for the time lapse of their task transition. My analysis shows no support for any of the hypotheses except for the positive association between team coordination and team performance. As next step, I present some exploratory analysis on my data and identify a number of interesting findings. I find that teams working on a creative task under deadline go through their task transitions at different times within their allotted time. Teams that have their first task transition before a discrepant interruption have higher performance than others. Moreover, in this setting, teams have lower performance if they make their transition too early or too late. Observing team coordination, I find that team coordination positively affects team performance given the context I created. Finally, exploring team members’ pacing style, I find that, for teams delaying their task transition until after a discrepant interruption, having a deadline action style increases team performance.
Open Access
Ambidexterity in Strategic Alliances: How do Firms Manage Exploration and Exploitation Alliances? An Examination of U.S. High Technology Industries from 1985 to 2009
(2015-08-28) Li, Wan; Tan, Justin
This dissertation examines the antecedents and consequences of exploration and exploitation in the context of strategic alliances. Research interest in the framework of exploration-exploitation has increased significantly with much progress made in current literature, yet many questions remain open. In this dissertation, I examine how environmental force (i.e., market uncertainty) and organizational features (i.e., innovative capacity and slack resources) drive organizations’ decisions on forming exploration versus exploitation alliances. In addition, I investigate the performance outcome of balancing exploration and exploitation alliances, by examining multiple approaches including the balance versus focus perspectives, the temporal separation approach, and the domain separation approach. My study of the antecedents reveals that firms with higher innovative capacity are more likely to form more exploitation alliances than exploration alliances; in contrast, those with more slack resources are inclined to engage in more exploration alliances than exploitation alliances. Under market uncertainty, firms tend to be risk adverse and reduce forming both types of alliances. Furthermore, higher innovative capacity and more slack generally mitigate the negative impact of market uncertainty on alliance formation. My findings regarding performance outcome of exploration and exploitation alliances suggest that balancing them simultaneously may hurt performance. Instead, balance can be executed via temporal separation (i.e., balancing through sequential emphasis on exploration and exploitation over time), or domain separation (i.e., balance through focus on exploration in one domain while exploitation in another), which is particularly important for smaller firms. Organizational ambidexterity does benefit firm performance, given that it is achieved tactically. On the aggregate, my findings confirm that exploration and exploitation are in tension. Organizational features may trigger a firm’s choice between exploration and exploitation in diverse directions; superior performance tends to be more dependent on effective management of the tension. In Previous research, inconsistent conclusions have been drawn regarding the antecedents of exploration and exploitation, and few studies have demonstrated how balance between exploration and exploitation alliances generates favorable outcomes. I have examined both the antecedents and consequences of this framework in the context of strategic alliances, in hope of contributing to a more coherent and complete body of work on this phenomenon.
Open Access
Essays On International Market Efficiency and Manipulation
(2015-08-28) Zhan, Feng; Cumming, Douglas J.
Three empirical studies in this dissertation all examine issues that important and related to the international market. Three essays share similar theme and try to address the common questions whether the institutional difference, such as exchange regulation, surveillance, national culture, economic and market condition, could explain the difference in market manipulation as well as market efficiency. The first essay examines the impact of stock exchange regulation and surveillance around the world and seeks to understand whether or not exchange regulation and their enforcement facilitate more efficient markets with greater integrity. Using new indices for market manipulation, insider trading, and broker-agency conflict based on the trading rules of each stock exchange, along with surveillance to detect non-compliance with such rules, we show that more detailed exchange trading rules and surveillance over time and across markets significantly reduce the number of cases, but increase the profits per case. The second essay examines the important role of high frequency traders (HFT) in the equity market. I show that the presence of high frequency trading (HFT) has significantly mitigated the frequency and severity of end-of-day price dislocation, counter to recent concerns expressed in the media. Moreover, the effect of HFT is more pronounced than the role of trading rules, surveillance, enforcement and legal conditions in curtailing the frequency and severity of end-of-day price dislocation. The third essay examines the institutional factor, national culture around the world and links this culture difference with overall stock market volatility. I find that Nations with lower value of individualistic culture are more likely to have a higher number of synchronized stock price movements. Further, the correlations between stock price movements apparently increase stock market volatility. The positive relationship between synchronized stock price movements and stock market volatility is stronger for emerging markets during the financial crisis from June 2007 to December 2008. Rather than due to the different levels of economic development, the empirical results here indicate that a portion of the difference in market level volatility is attributed to the investor bias of different cultures.
Open Access
Once in Orange Always in Orange? The Cognitive, Emotional and Material Elements of De-Identification and Logic Resilience
(2015-08-28) Toubiana, Madeline Joan; Oliver, Christine E.
Individuals within society are shaped by the institutional logics that have come to shape their identities. In this dissertation I explore how actors de-identify with the identities prescribed by institutional logics during a transition that renders these identities unproductive and inappropriate. In particular I examine the types of identity work previously incarcerated men engage in during the transition from prison back into society as they attempt to shed and de-identify with “convict identities”. My findings reveal that institutional logics have a resilient, that is enduring, influence on identity in the face of transition even when the identities prescribed by these logics are unproductive and potentially harmful. I find that identity work can be constrained and constituted by institutional logics and disable processes of de-identification. However, my findings also reveal that institutional logics can be de-activated though reflexive identity work. This identity work involves opening up, talking critically, and self-regulating to envision a new sense of self. Sustained de-identification through reflexive identity work is enabled by the availability and accessibility of alternative logics that are meaningful and believable and by emotion work to foster feelings of acceptance and faith. However, sustained de-identification is constrained by identity regulation and the absence of institutional materials. This dissertation thus highlights the importance of cognition, emotion and materiality to the resilience of institutional logics and de-identification.
Open Access
Essays on Exchange-Traded Fund Mispricing and Liquidity
(2015-12-16) Broman, Markus Sebastian; Shum, Pauline M. P.
In the first essay I investigate whether the high liquidity of ETFs attracts a clientele of short-term investors. I find that liquidity is an important determinant of fund flows, particularly at weekly and monthly horizons. I also investigate whether more liquid ETFs facilitates shorter-term trading. I document a liquidity clientele amongst institutional investors: i) their buys and sells are positively related to ETF liquidity, ii) liquidity is significantly more important for short- than for long-term investors, and iii) liquidity is inversely related to average holding periods. These findings are consistent with the idea that liquidity benefits short-term traders the most. In the second essay I show that changes in ETF misvaluation – as proxied by the return difference between an Exchange-Traded Fund and its underlying portfolio Net Asset Value – comove excessively across ETFs. Excess comovements are positive and highly significant across ETFs in matching investment styles, and negative and significant across distant styles. Further tests based on return reversals suggest that ETF premiums relative to NAV reflect misvaluation primarily in the ETF, rather than the NAV price, particularly for ETFs in more liquid styles (e.g. small-cap). Finally, the degree of return comovements is stronger for funds with high commonality in demand shocks and more attractive liquidity characteristics. These findings are consistent with the idea that liquidity can sometimes be detrimental to pricing efficiency, because liquidity attracts short-horizon noise traders with correlated demand for investment styles. The third essay investigates whether asset prices are exposed to local-trading induced misvaluation. My sample contains 2727 pairs of European ETFs from 15 different country pairs. Each ETF-pair has identical fundamentals, but is traded by investors from different countries. I document a strong country-specific factor in twin return differentials. This result holds from daily to monthly horizons, it is unrelated to exchange rates and it cannot be explained by liquidity differences. Consistent with local misvaluation in the stock market, I find a significantly positive relationship between twin return differentials and local stock returns, particularly at higher frequencies. Additional tests provide evidence against the alternative explanation that misvaluation is driven by similarities in information diffusion between twins.
Open Access
Hidden and surreptitious adoption of organizational information technology solutions
(2016-06-23) Aksulu, Altay; Johnston, David
"Despite a broad literature on organizational adoption of technological innovations, the extant research has paid very little attention to a particular adoption scenario corresponding to user-initiated, surreptitious acceptance of information technology (IT) solutions that have been rejected at the organizational level. This lack of attention is surprising considering the strong anecdotal evidence pointing to various examples of user initiated organizational adoption of IT solutions. For example, in spite of formal organizational policies, procedures and guidelines sanctioning only a small subset of ""pre-approved"" and mostly vendor-bound organizational IT solutions, illegitimate, surreptitious, or hidden adoption of free and open source systems and applications by technical users has become increasingly prevalent in today's organizations. While we have learned a great deal about the legitimate adoption of systems by people and organizations, we know very little about this growing category of organizational systems. Indeed, the antecedents and consequences of these forms of hidden and surreptitious adoption are likely to be multifaceted and complex. The concept of hidden and surreptitious adoption marks an important organizational occurrence where organizational hierarchy fails. The departure from ""the routine, established and sanctioned"" approaches provide an opportunity to drill down into the organizational logic behind this unexplored occurrence. Drawing on concepts from institutional theory as well as on technology adoption literature this dissertation creates a careful synthesis of two previously separate streams of research and brings together two distinct sets of factors under the umbrella concept of social influence. In an empirical study the concept of hidden and surreptitious adoption was then analyzed and a causal network was proposed to help create a better understanding of hidden and surreptitious adoption of IT systems in organizations today. The findings confirmed wide-spread organizational occurrence of hidden adoption. Four complementary causal streams were found to contribute towards the materialization and magnitude of hidden and surreptitious adoption of IT solutions. Three of these streams; normative pressures, identification pressures, and performance induced awareness were confirmed to contribute positively towards hidden adoption whereas the remaining stream, compliance pressures were found to have an inverse relationship. In turn, each stream was further evaluated in detail to uncover various factors that positively or negatively contributed to that particular stream. The empirical findings were then discussed in light of theory to identify their theoretical as well as practical implications."
Open Access
How Do Mainstream Cultural Market Categories Emerge: A Multi-Level Analysis of the Creation of Electronic Dance Music
(2016-09-20) Dolbec, Pierre-Yann Dube; Kozinets, Robert
In my research I explore how a new market category is created in an existing market. I contribute to existing research in marketing by developing a novel framework that conceptualizes markets as constituted of three levels, and by explaining the contribution of each level to the creation of a new market category. My findings emerge from a qualitative inquiry of the creation of the category of Electronic Dance Music (EDM). I find that each level contributes differently to the creation of a mainstream cultural category. Local innovation networks (or LINs) unite consumers and producers and provide unique elements that facilitate the creation of new cultural products by consumers. Niches serve as a bridge between these local networks and a mainstream market. Niche actors contribute to the creation of a boundary infrastructure that supports the transfer, translation, and transformation of the knowledge associated with an innovative cultural product. This, in turn, facilitates the movement of an innovative cultural product from a local network to a mainstream market. Mainstream actors diffuse elements of the innovative cultural product and open what Bourdieu calls a space of possibles. Niche entrepreneurs and peripheral mainstream actors seize the opportunity to engineer a new cultural category. I discuss the theoretical implications of this research in regard to the conceptualization of markets as uni-level vs. multi-level, and the conceptualization of market creation from a categorization perspective. I provide strategic recommendations to facilitate the movement of a product from a niche to a mainstream market (i.e., selling out). I also provide managerial recommendations based on the use of boundary objects as instruments of power.
Open Access
Radical Institutional Innovation: A Multilevel Framework
(2016-09-20) Basir, Nada; Auster, Ellen R.
Prior research explores how knowledge brokers can bring about technological innovation and the structural and network features of brokers, yet little attention focuses on how these micro-level broker relations and processes can have significant macro-level consequences. This dissertation begins to fill this gap by examining the role of brokers in creating radical institutional innovation. Drawing on research in innovation and institutional field emergence, I explore how entrepreneurs create institutional building blocks through brokering and diffusing knowledge, resources and capabilities in an emerging field. More specifically, I employ an ethnographic approach that uses semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival data over a 2-year period to examine Libyas rapid emergence of civil society after the fall of a dictator regime. A multi-level process framework emerging from the findings highlights the important role institutional brokers, actors embedded in both established institutions and in the emerging institutional field, play in bringing about radical institutional innovation. These institutional brokers do more than link organizations and individuals; they also transform ideas as they are ideally positioned to receive new and previously uncombined ideas. The framework developed illustrates the dynamics and mechanisms by which these institutional brokers bring about innovation and how their social position mediates their relation to the environment in which they are embedded, and drives their access to the resources and capabilities that support innovation. The findings supplement the rather static portrait of the role of knowledge brokers with a more in-depth understanding of the innovation process these individuals and organizations participate in as they create radical institutional innovation. The framework also extends current views of institutional field emergence by revealing the important, but often missed dynamics of bottom-up strategic action and institutional brokerage as critical drivers of institutional emergence.
Open Access
Technology Metaphors at the Base of the Pyramid
(2016-09-20) Bhattacharyya, Arundhati; Belk, Russell W.
Much of the technology consumption literature is predominantly situated in the context of the relatively free individual. It also assumes that the adopted technology is owned, or easily accessible by the consumer. This dissertation foregrounds the overlooked invisible world of technologies (Edgerton 2007. p xi), heeding the call to shift attention from the the spectacular to the mundane, the masculine to the feminine, the rich to the poor" (ibid. p. xiv). It highlights technology consumption under the unfreedom of resource constraints and that of entanglements created by desire. The dissertation uses a metaphorical approach in examining technology experiences among the poor in India. Metaphors are known to shape perceptions and understandings of consumption objects. They also inform and guide consumption. Specifically, technology metaphors have implications for how human beings (e.g., technology service providers or power brokers of other sorts) are perceived, and thereby, what expectations (realistic or unrealistic) we might have of these human beings. A year-long phenomenological investigation of the technology metaphors explicitly or implicitly held by the under-represented poor, surfaced commonly overlooked non-dominant metaphors The study reveals that among the involuntarily poor, technology is perceived according to the varying inflections of its effects through the forbiddances set by those controlling allocative resources that affect poor consumers access to or consumption of technology. Contrastingly, technology perceptions among those who are voluntarily poor, mostly stem from how strongly the tug of desire is perceived to exist in the particular consumption object versus in the need for self-realization. These findings augment and challenge existing theories of technology perceptions by widening the scope of the theorizing lens that has so far focussed on the affluent First World consumer and product attributes microcosm. This broadened view introduces the overlooked role of class-based societal domination in considering involuntarily poor consumers technology perceptions (and thereby their adoption and consumption decisions). In contrast to the involuntarily poor, where objects and dominant others have primary agency over the self, the findings among the voluntarily poor extend our understandings of human entanglement with objects by revealing methods of humans gaining primary agency over objects.
Open Access
Trade Associations and the Strategic Framing of Change in Contested Issue Organizational Fields: The Evolution of Sustainability in the Canadian Mining Industry, 1993-2013
(2016-09-20) Buchanan, Sean Christopher; Oliver, Christine E.
This dissertation examines the role of intermediary organizations in processes of change in organizational fields defined by contested issues. Drawing from a 20 year longitudinal study of the evolution of sustainability in Canadian Mining, I demonstrate how trade associationswhich occupy an intermediary position between incumbents and challengers in a fieldengage in the strategic framing of field-level change through interactions with both internal (incumbent) and external (challenger) audiences. Using a variety of data sources including 102 interviews with key actors in the field and the complete internal archives of the national mining trade association between 1993 and 2013, I demonstrate the key role of bridging work in the establishment and reinforcement of strategic frames. The model I present describes the process whereby internal and external contestation reveals conceptual divides which triggers bridging work on the part of intermediary organizations. I also demonstrate how once changes are introduced to the field, contradictions in strategic frames may emerge which triggers subsequent contestation and bridging work. In addition to this qualitative study, I also develop a conceptual framework which aims to enhance our understanding of when and why TAs are likely to play an active role in field-level change. I argue that playing an active role in field-level change on the part of trade associations hinges on the need for collective action by incumbents and the degree to which a trade association has autonomy from and control over its members. I discuss the contributions of my dissertation for research on the strategic framing of field-level change, intermediary organizations in organizational fields, and research on trade associations more generally.
Open Access
CSR, Big Data, and Accounting: Firms' Use of Social Media for CSR-Focused Reporting, Accountability, and Reputation Gain
(2016-11-25) Saxton, Gregory Douglas; Neu, Dean
The rise of Big Data, particularly social media, is engendering considerable disruptions in the ways in which firms and stakeholders communicate about firm-relevant issues. The effect of social media appears to be particularly strong in the domain of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This thesis presents three empirical studies on Fortune 200 firms use of social media to engage in CSR-related activities. All three studies rely on original 2014 data related to the 42 CSR-focused Twitter accounts maintained by the US-based Fortune 200 companies comprising 18,722 firm messages and 163,402 messages sent by members of the public. This thesis first examines the outcomes of firms social media-based CSR engagement, building a theoretical argument about the reputational benefits, or reputational capital, acquired by firms through the messages they send on social media. It then turns to an investigation of the publics discussion of the companies CSR activities; this second study relies on inductive analyses to build insights into the nature of the firm-centered CSR messages sent by members of the public, the nature of firms reactions to these public messages, and the relationship between the two. The third and final study refines and then empirically tests the causal model developed in the second study. Collectively, these three studies shed light on the nature of the micro-reporting and micro-accountability behaviors that appear to characterize firms CSR efforts on social media sites. The thesis concludes with a summary of the implications of these new behaviors for the accounting and CSR literatures.
Open Access
Essays on International Corporate Finance
(2016-11-25) Kang, Jisok; Kee-Hong Bae, Kee-Hong
The first chapter examines whether and how concentrated stock markets dominated by a small number of large firms affect economic growth. Using data from 47 countries worldwide relating to the period 19892013, I show that a countrys stock market concentration is negatively related to capital allocation efficiency, which results in sluggish IPO activity, innovation, and economic growth. These findings suggest that the structure of a concentrated stock market indicates insufficient funds for emerging, innovative firms; discourages entrepreneurship; and is ultimately detrimental to economic growth. In the second chapter, we challenge the finding of Weld, Michaely, Thaler, and Benartzi (2009). They find that the average nominal price of stocks listed on New York Stock Exchange and American Stock Exchange has been approximately $25 since the Great Depression and that this nominal price fixation is primarily a U.S. or North American phenomenon. Using a larger data set from 38 countries, we show that the nominal share prices of most stocks in every country are meanreverting and their best predictor is the beginning of sample period nominal stock prices. We demonstrate that corporate actions maintain these nominal stock price anchors. The third chapter investigates the executive pay gap between public and private firms. We find that the executive pay gap escalates when there is less supply in potential competent executives, when shareholders power is stronger, and when a stricter rule on monitoring and disclosure is enacted. These findings largely support the view of the competitive executive labor market hypothesis that executive compensation is determined by market forces and increases when executives bear additional risk. The findings are inconsistent with the argument of the entrenchment hypothesis.
Open Access
The Internationalization of Emerging Economy Firms: The Impact of Corporate Governance and Political Connections
(2016-11-25) Wang, Zhennan; Pan, Yigang
This dissertation consists of two chapters on the internationalization of emerging economy firms. I examine the influence of the firms corporate governance and political connections on the firms internationalization behavior, as these factors reflect the special institutional environment of emerging economies. In the first chapter I analyze the influence of a firms corporate governance on its selection of host countries. Building on agency theory, I propose that in emerging markets, the governance structure of the firm modifies the usual prediction that favorable host-country institutions attract foreign direct investment, because the emerging country conditions lead to firm heterogeneity in risk preferences and agency problems. Hence, comparing family-controlled and state-controlled firms in emerging economies, I hypothesize that family-controlled firms with CEO duality or a higher proportion of independent directors on the board are more likely to invest in countries with higher institutional quality, while state-controlled firms with such characteristics are less likely to do so. These hypotheses are supported by the data on foreign market entries by Chinas public listed firms in 2004-2013. In the second chapter I introduce the upper echelons perspective to study the impact of top managers political connections on the firms degree of internationalization. I differentiate between two types of political connections by the top manager: executive connections established through current or past working experience in the executive branch of the government, and legislative connections established through current or past representational appointments in the legislative branch of the government. After comparing the three mechanisms (resources, costs, and personal values) through which top managers political connections can influence the firms degree of internationalization, I propose that top managers executive connections facilitate the firms internationalization, while legislative connections hinder the firms internationalization. The impact of top managers executive and legislative connections is weakened by state ownership. Furthermore, I propose that CEO duality strengthens the effects of top managers political connections on the firms degree of internationalization. I find empirical support for my theories based on a dataset of 100 publicly traded Chinese firms over the 2004-2013 period.
Open Access
Three Essays on Finance, Culture and Investor Behavior
(2017-07-27) Simard, Andreanne Tremblay; Dong, Ming
This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the effects of corporate culture and investor psychology on corporate decisions and financial markets. The first essay focuses on the role of corporate culture in acquisitions, whereas the last two essays investigate deviations from market efficiency. The first essay uses textual analysis of firms annual reports to develop an estimate of the differences in corporate cultures of the combining firms, and finds that greater cultural differences between the firms lead to higher synergistic gains, but only when the acquirer has a stronger culture than its target. The synergy gains concentrate among deals where the acquirers values are not antagonistic to the targets. Further analysis of profitability and productivity (measured as earnings per employee) around the acquisition transaction corroborates these findings. Overall, the evidence suggests that differences in corporate culture are an important driver of announcement returns in mergers and acquisitions. The second essay investigates whether stock misvaluation drives industry-level merger waves by examining intra-wave patterns in acquirers valuation levels in a sample of acquisitions during 1981-2010. The essay contrasts two types of merger waves: stock waves defined on pure stock acquisitions, and cash waves formed on pure cash offers. Consistent with the misvaluation hypothesis, the essay finds that the occurrence of stock merger waves is tightly associated with industry stock valuation, and bidder stock valuation is negatively associated with long-run abnormal returns, especially so during waves of stock mergers. In contrast, there is little evidence of such patterns using the cash wave definition. The third essay investigates the effects of sunshine, wind, rain, snow, and temperature on daily index returns of 49 countries from 1973 to 2012. The paper finds pervasive weather effects that vary across temperature regions (cold, hot, and mild) and months. A hedge strategy that exploits the return predictability of daily weather generates up to 25% (11.8%) annualized out-of-sample gross (net) profits during 1993-2012. The systematic patterns of weather effects together with the relationship between their strength and timing and individuals seasonal propensity to spend time outdoors, suggest a plausible mechanism through which weather-induced mood influences index returns.