Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'AN ORGANIZATION'S ROLE'

This qualitative research study explored the characteristics, emergence, and engagement of people who occupy the role of the family champion in family-enterprise systems. The family champion is a next-generation leader who emerges from within the ownership group of a family-enterprise system and who works to develop the ownership, governance, and relational capabilities of the family-owners to support their goals of success. This study investigated the interdependent exchanges between individual family champions, the family-ownership group, and their family-enterprise systems. Much of the existing research on leadership within family-enterprises has focused on leadership for the business entity. This study focused specifically on leadership within the family-ownership group. Ownership of an enterprise by a family has long been cited as a strategic asset. A need exists for further understanding of the role and function of leadership within the family-owners.

This study explored the characteristics, emergence, and engagement of 14 primary family champions through semi-structured qualitative interviews. An additional eight supporting interviews were conducted with another family member who was familiar with the primary interviewee to provide a complimentary perspective. The research was discovery based and designed to explore the experiences of family champions. The extensive interviews were transcribed and analyzed utilizing grounded theory principles with the assistance of NVivo 10 qualitative analysis software.

This research revealed a rich interaction between the context of family-enterprise systems, the characteristics of family champions, and systemic shift points that created the awareness of the need for leadership. The family champions worked to develop the family-ownership group through a cycle of engagement, to produce an advanced family-enterprise system. Four main themes linked to issues in family-enterprises emerged: The systemic context of family-enterprises, the process of leadership emergence, how family champions operate as catalysts for change, and governance of both family and enterprise. The family champion is a visionary catalyst who brings new energy into the family system to support and develop the family-ownership advantage. This research makes a contribution to our understanding of the vital role of leadership within family-enterprises, and has significance for individual leaders, families who own a business, and professionals who work with these systems.

The purpose of this qualitative, basic interpretive study (Merriam, 2009) was to improve understanding of the role of transactive memory systems (TMS) in board groups as a way of leveraging their knowledge in the context of the chief executive officer (CEO) succession planning process. Sixteen participants were recruited who had served on a board of a $500 million-plus public company and had been involved in a CEO succession planning process within 5 years of the study. Within the participant group, a subset of six had all worked together, over the same time period, on the same CEO succession planning process from beginning to end. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and participant follow-up.

The study findings confirmed a relationship between structures and processes of TMS and CEO succession planning in the context of board groups. The data supported the presence of some but not all of the characteristics of TMS presented in Ren and Argote's (2011) metaanalysis and categorization of antecedents, components, and consequences of TMS. Specifically, TMS antecedents present in board groups included team-level inputs of task interdependence, goal interdependence, team familiarity, shared experiences, and communication. Specific dimensions of TMS components present within board groups included team knowledge stock and knowledge of who knows what. Three TMS behavioral indicators were present: knowledge specialization, task credibility, and task coordination to support knowledge sharing and updating. Finally, key dimensions of TMS consequences included team performance behaviors of team learning, creativity, and reflexivity.

Five conclusions were drawn from the study. (1) The TMS dimension of reliance on others' specialization serves to meet the challenges of bounded rationality in board groups. (2) High familiarity can enhance trust, but if overemphasized negatively affects the reliability of specialized expertise. (3) Personal respect and trust in the expertise of others affects receptivity to defer to others' specialized expertise. (4) A director's publicly known resume is the primary determinant of specialization. (5) Board structures (the knowledge stock of the group) and processes (transactive processes of encoding, storing, and accessing knowledge) facilitate the continual refinement of member-expertise associations and conscious development of knowledge sharing.

The study was designed to understand the role that the school leadership team (SLT) plays in fostering practices consistent with organizational learning. The study population included five administrators and eight teacher leaders in a large, comprehensive high school in a mid-Atlantic school district. A qualitative case study approach was employed, purposively selecting a site where the SLT members were intentionally involved in distributed leadership based on expertise. The findings indicated that SLT members engaged in four practices associated with improved teaching, all of which, past research suggests, are also aligned with organizational learning: providing feedback, engaging in collaborative decision-making, building positive relationships, and focusing on student results. Collaborative roles facilitated collegial discourse about teaching practices and built a culture of trust among members of the SLT. Collaborative structures supported common goals, values, and norms. Further, fostering a collaborative environment supported knowledge building and the development of shared ideas about teaching and learning. The school’s administration, including a strong collaborative principal, provided leadership and support for the work of the SLT throughout the study.

The only two certainties in life are death and more uncertainty—with change the only constant. Rapidly changing environments require speedier response. We do not know what the future holds. Crafting strategy when the future is unknown and unknowable is challenging. The increasing uncertainty and turbulence has seen the gradual replacement of forecasting with scenario planning. Unfortunately, we are still trapped in the Taylorist paradigm that there is always one optimal strategy for any company to pursue. The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 provided a dramatic demonstration of the risk inherent in any strategic plan that relies on a unidimensional view of the future.

Using this crisis as a Petri dish, this research examined how well scenario planning worked. As the objective of scenario-based strategy development is to improve organizational agility (defined as the speed with which firms sensed and responded to an organizational crisis), the research measured how agile these firms were, measured against an established timeline and a sense and respond model, the Puthenveetil Model.

This study used a qualitative longitudinal case study method using purposive sampling of 14 firms that used scenario planning in strategy development and examined their strategies during the crisis ex post facto, only to find that most firms did not anticipate the crisis. Of those that did, only two—General Electric and Herman Miller, firms steeped in the learning/organization development culture—responded during the pre-crisis period. A surprising finding was that in six of the 14 firms, headcounts increased during this period. As to why so many firms failed to anticipate this crisis, there were three possible explanations: (a) the Cassandra Syndrome, (b) blind confidence in probability, and (c) reactive approach to change. The Puthenveetil Model could be used by individuals and organizations to prepare for the challenges of the VUCA world by hedging against the inevitable surprises that lurk in the background. Uncertainty is not an ally of confidence. Confidence is needed for commitment. Scenario-based thinking should help decision makers think clearly, feel confident, and act decisively.

This is a grounded theory study of how scholar-practitioners simultaneously help clients generate results and create new knowledge. Through a set of 41 interviews, it examines the roles of scholar-practitioners in organization development and medical translational research, compares the strategies and tactics they use in each field, and considers how they renew themselves professionally and personally. It shows how these professionals perform varying combinations of three roles: research, teaching and applied field work. They have developed different work habits, ways of thinking and even ways of being than their colleagues who focus on just one of those areas in either field, and have a set of personal characteristics including being agile/adaptive, collaborative, holistic, passionate and wise, which empower their use of self in helping their clients or patients. It shows how strategies and tactics are employed in the translation of theory to practice and vice versa, which had not been done previously, and develops a new Knowledge-Results Circular Flow Model to connect all the aspects of their work with their clients to generate client-determined results and new knowledge in an ongoing iterative process. Last, but not least, it shows that scholar-practitioners in these two fields are much more similar than different, and can learn from each other to strengthen both the knowledge they generate via their research, and the client/patient results that are the focus of their work.

Managerial behavior often differs between individuals and situations. To understand this variation the manager’s own interpretation of the role, context and role behavior is especially important. In this thesis several managers’ subjective views and understandings of their role during an organizational change period were investigated in great detail. The organizational changes were assumed to put pressure on the managerial role, exposing adaptive and dynamic role aspect and thereby shed light on differences in behavior. The general purpose was to thoroughly investigate the concept of ‘subjective managerial role’ by two contrasting approaches. One was influenced by concepts and methods used in social constructivism and constructionism (Study 1-3), and the other was a rational/cognitive approach influenced by theories and methods used in cognitive psychology (Study 4-5). Multiple case studies with subjective reports from five managers during a period of sixteen months were chosen as the empirical base. In the constructivist approach three judges were used to interpret the managers’ verbal reports during the beginning of the change period, focusing on indications of ‘subjective role projects’. ‘Subjective role projects’ involved reflections on situations, actors, purposes/goals and action strategies, all within a time frame of the past, present and future. This qualitative content of the role was investigated, and support for the existence of subjective role projects was tested (Study 1). The variation between the managers’ subjective role projects and their general project strategies were explored (Study 2). The judgment and construction process pursued by the three judges was analyzed (Study 3). In the rational/cognitive approach the focus was on role problems. A control model was used to represent subjective role conflicts, on both group and individual levels. Difficult situations described by the managers were complemented with goals and actions strategies, and the managers rated conflicts between these role components, while thinking-aloud (Study 4). Role conflict patterns and dimensions were further analyzed using two quantitative data models (Study 5). Finally, the subjective role construct was compared with a contextual interpretation of the role, based on information from the organizational and social role context (Study 6). The results supported the basic components in both the project model and the control model of the subjective role, but the latter approach would benefit from a more elaborated stimulus sampling. In both approaches the differences between the managers were assessed, but in the constructivist approach it was difficult to separate variation stemming from managers from variation between judges. In the rational/cognitive approach the variation was restricted to conflicting aspects in a specific model. The control model features and the quantitative conflict data made it easier to estimate variance. A major conclusion was that the two approaches complemented each-other in their descriptions of the subjective role. The project model was adequate for investigating the first sense-making phases in the organizational change process, while the control model approach could describe role conflicts and problems, especially on individual levels. However, they both could fit within a framework of a subjective role process model. Using these two approaches in role analysis can provide more information on the subjective role processes of the role incumbent.