Ph.D. - International Management

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    THE MEANING OF GENEROSITY: A SUBJECTIVE CULTURE STUDY IN INDIA
    ( 2020) Narayanan, Anand Chandrasekar Chandrasekar ; BHAWUK, DHARM P S ; International Management
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    The Role of Rivals in the Foreign Divestments of International Healthcare Systems.
    ( 2018-05) Hildebrand, Charlotte L. ; International Management
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    Two Essays in Asset Pricing
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [December 2015], 2015-12) Vo, Hong
    This research examines two matters in asset pricing in two essays. The first essay investigates the impact of firm size on return reversals using weekly returns from January 1980 to December 2013. Return reversals are greater for the largest size quintile than for the smallest size quintile in the first half of the sample period. However, the firm size effect on return reversals disappears in the second half sample. Return reversals during the up market period are significantly stronger than during the down market period for all stocks. The reversal difference between the largest and smallest size quintiles is also highly significant in the up market. Further analysis shows that a high institutional demand, mainly from the small stakeholders, for large-firm stocks results in high demand for immediacy as well as strong return reversals for these stocks in the first half sample. After institutions shifted their preferences to stocks of smaller firms since the mid-1990s, return reversals for large-firm stocks became insignificantly different from small-firm stocks in the second half of the sample period. The second essay explores the geographic dimension of the momentum effect. Using the data of the U.S. firms over a 34-year period from 1980 to 2013, the study shows that stocks in urban areas have stronger momentum effect than those in nonurban/rural areas. The result remains robust after controlling for stock and firm characteristics that are documented to affect momentum in previous studies together with time-varying state characteristics. Further analysis shows that geographic momentum concentrates in up markets. The geographic momentum in this study can be explained by two causes. First, the overreaction of risk-averse individual investors to bad news is stronger in nonurban/rural areas than in urban areas. The other is that some types of institutional investors trade on urban winners more strongly than winners in other areas.
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    Love in Translation: The Co-Creation of Valentine's Day as a Market-Mediating Ritual
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [May 2015], 2015-05) Nariswari, Angeline
    The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how market rituals spread within and between distinct cultural contexts, and how this process occurs in value co-creating service ecosystems. By integrating service-dominant (S-D) logic and the markets-as-practice framework, this study traces key micro, meso, as well as macro-level market practices to explore the systemic and collaborative aspects of market creation. The research project contributes to marketing scholarship by proposing a fractal model of market co-creation, which offers an alternative way of understanding markets that shifts away from a diffusion of goods perspective to a translation of practice approach. This study contributes to early efforts to conduct empirical work inspired by the S-D logic perspective. Specifically, the study explores the contested practice of Valentine’s Day in the emerging market of Indonesia as a means to investigate the dynamic multi-level processes of practice translation and institutionalization.
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    Return and report : the role of leadership and performance measurement systems in employee engagement
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [May 2013], 2013-05) Staheli, Nathan
    This dissertation integrates theories in accounting and organizational behavior to address the important issue of motivation and performance management. Specifically, the research draws on elements of agency theory, leadership theory, contingency theory, employee engagement and motivation, and management control and performance measurement system (PMS) literature. This study examines the effect the more comprehensive PMS has on employee engagement. In addition, it examines the role that contextual factors, such as leadership style and organizational structure, have on the use of comprehensive PMS as it relates to employee engagement. A major premise behind the development of more comprehensive PMS is that they can help to improve productivity. Agency Theory, integrated with organizational behavior theories, suggests that a heightened level of organizational justice obtained through more comprehensive PMS, provides the mechanisms through which employees are motivated (Burney, Henle, & Widener, 2009), and the agency problem is mitigated and employee performance is improved. Data collected from a survey of 312 employees are used to test the SEM model. Results from the structural model tested indicate that transformational leadership is directly related to employee engagement. In addition more comprehensive PMS leads directly to a higher level of engagement. This study provides evidence that the employee's supervisor's leadership characteristics play an important role in cultivating the engagement of employees and also offers evidence that more comprehensive PMS result in the more heightened engagement of an employee. Alternative title: Return & report : the role of leadership and performance measurement systems in employee engagement
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    International diversification and professional service firms
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [May 2011], 2011-05) Powell, Kristan Skylar
    This research considers factors related to the propensity of professional service firms to open foreign offices, and explores relationships between patterns in international diversification and firm performance. This is one of the first studies to consider how a firm's home location relates to patterns in diversification, and also contributes by relating specific strategic motives to operational definitions, and theorized links between diversification and performance. The results suggest that firm prestige, or status, is positively related to the ratio of foreign to total offices maintained, and home location is associated with patterns in diversification. Additionally, results suggest that international diversification to exploit existing firm resources, or diversification to pursue and develop new resources, are both associated with positive performance. However, the results also suggest that the simultaneous pursuit of both types of diversification may be associated with negative performance.
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    Reputation incongruence and preference of stakeholders : case of MBA programs
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [May 2013], 2013-05) Park, Jin Suk
    I examine the effect of an organization's multi-dimensional reputation on the external stakeholders' preference for an organization in the notions of reputation incongruence. I propose that an organization's incongruent reputation, or large variations among the reputations of each dimension, can be an unfavorable signal to its stakeholders based on theoretical ideas that claim reputation incongruence induces the ambiguity and risk of an organization perceived by stakeholders. I also investigate the moderating effect of reputation incongruence by positing that this incongruence may nullify the influences of reputation dimensions on the preferences of stakeholders. These propositions about reputation incongruence is empirically examined in the context of MBA programs of the global business schools which have three dimensions of reputation--career development, globalization, and research performance.
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    Social dynamics within electronic networks of practice
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [May 2013], 2013-05) Mattson, Thomas
    Electronic networks of practice (eNoP) are special types of electronic social structures focused on discussing domain-specific problems related to a skill-based craft or profession in question and answer style forums. eNoP have implemented peer-to-peer feedback systems in order to motivate future contributions and to distinguish contribution quality. However, there is a lack of empirical data or a set of theoretical perspectives in the literature to evaluate their effectiveness against these claims. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop and empirically test two related theoretical perspectives concerning voting practices within these systems and the usefulness that these systems have in terms of promoting future contributions. I do this by performing two independent (but related) empirical studies. In the first study, I qualitatively demonstrate that the off-topic forums within eNoP have the potential to be virtual third places, special types of informal gathering places. I then quantitatively demonstrate that members who have greater affective place attachment to the third place portions of the network and members who make identity claims with the eNoP through their third place participation have a higher propensity of contributing a positively rated practice-related contribution and a lower propensity of becoming inactive on the practice side of the eNoP. I further demonstrate empirically that the usefulness of the peer-to-peer feedback system in terms of promoting future practice-related contributions is qualified by third place participation, most notably site level identity claims made by third place participants. I argue that this is the case, because status attainment and maintenance in a place of emotional and psychological significance is more important than status attainment and maintenance in 'just another' knowledge sharing eNoP. In the second study, I utilize a cultural sociology perspective drawing primarily from Bourdieu's integrated social theory (fields, forms of capital and habitus) and Eliasoph and Lichterman's concept of culture in interaction in order to explain voting practices within peer-to-peer feedback systems. In this study, I argue that a vote is a complex social and cultural phenomenon that is based on more than the quality of the post. I demonstrate empirically that the lower the social class of the giver and receiver of feedback, the greater the differences in professional habitus between the giver and the receiver of feedback, and members who violate the group style have a higher propensity of receiving negative votes (as opposed to positive votes). My results further reveal that the effect of small professional habitus differences is amplified in the presence of a group style violation, specifically group bond violations. These results hold even after controlling for the quality of the post and previous interaction histories between dyadic pairs of members. This dissertation advances the knowledge of social dynamics within eNoP by complementing existing eNoP literature, which explains interactions and knowledge contributions largely in terms of networking constructs such as network centrality and network density using market-based ties and traditional resource exchange perspectives. My research demonstrates that eNoP are much broader than resource exchange systems and may be more appropriately conceptualized as social and cultural systems. Concepts of place, social stratification, habitus, and cultural in interaction provide eNoP researchers an enhanced theoretical toolkit for explaining and predicting the social interactions within these electronic social structures. This dissertation also has practical ramifications for eNoP site designers and the designers of peer-to-peer feedback systems more generally.
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    Venture capital risk in transitional economies : evidence from China
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [December 2010], 2010-12) Chen, Charles Xiao Liang
    In China, guanxi is a particular kind of interpersonal relationship or connection that serves as a form of social currency that can secure resources and benefits in business contexts. In the venture capital market in China, some have suggested that venture capitalists (VCs) use guanxi as a mechanism for addressing institutional risks. This study examines how VCs respond to institutional risks in China using appropriate guanxi networks, which in turn have a direct and indirect influence on VC investment performance. I propose an integrative framework that both delineates the direct effects of guanxi networks on firm performance and indicates how they are moderated by environmental turbulence and mediated by response capabilities, interlocking directorates varying in density and multiplicity, and syndications such as affiliated projects and affiliated funds. A group of 222 venture capital firms in China were surveyed. This study identifies a significant link between guanxi and VC firm performance but also demonstrates that this link is reduced by environmental turbulence. The mediators identified here also have a significant influence on the relationship between guanxi and VC performance.
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    Privatization and insider incentives : an international test of earnings management in public offerings of state-owned enterprises
    ([Honolulu] : [University of Hawaii at Manoa], [August 2011], 2011-08) Nguyen, Anh Thuc
    Massive privatization programs over the last two decades have created an unprecedented surge in share issues on stock markets worldwide. Privatization is applauded for enhancing efficiency of state-owned firms, as evidenced by financial and operational improvements of these firms after being sold to the private sector. The current study looks into the possibility that such improvements are confounded by managerial opportunistic behaviors during the privatization process. Discretionary accruals over a three year period around share issue of 63 privatized public offerings during the 1990s and 2000s have been examined against those of non-privatized firms and in relation to offering prices as well as post-privatization performance. Results show that discretionary accruals of privatized firms are negative during the year prior to privatization. Offering prices are influenced by pre-issue earnings management, upholding the suspicion of possible managerial manipulation to opportunistically lower prices. Interestingly, preprivatization discretionary accruals are found to be negatively related to postprivatization performance, suggesting that the reversal impact of pre-privatization accounting choices contribute to recorded financial improvements after state assets are sold. In addition, pre-issue accounting choices introduce noise to earnings and impair the value relevance of reported incomes on stock return in the aftermarket. In conclusion, the study provides evidence of management's opportunistic behavior during state ownership transfer and that the documented success of privatization is inflated by such behavior.