Strategic planning

Public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are facing many challenges
including state funding, competition, and maintaining the best possible
graduation rate. This study: (1) examined the strategic plans and strategic
planning processes to explore how, and to what extent, these tool are being used
to address these challenges; and (2) explored the extent to which continuous
process improvement is included in strategic planning efforts.
A qualitative research design employing a grounded theory approach was
used in this study. The researcher reviewed the perceptions of the participants
at each of four selected public institutions regarding strategic planning
processes, including their beliefs with regard to process improvement as a
component of the strategic planning process. Perceived facilitators and detractors of strategic planning and its implementation were also examined.
Finally, the researcher sought to design an improved model for strategic planning
in higher education that takes continuous process improvement into
consideration as a basic component of the approach to planning.
The dominant theme that emerged from the data analysis concerned state
funding, as performance-based funding offers an opportunity to acquire
additional funds. Graduation rate was identified as a core component of student
success. Competition from emerging sectors was not a specific topic of
discussion during the strategic planning processes.
Forty-one percent of participants indicated that some form of process
improvement structure exists at their institution, often related to accreditation
reviews and was outside of the strategic planning process. 53% of the
responses to the question, “What do you believe would be the impact of having
process improvement as an integral component in the strategic planning
process?” replied that it would be good or beneficial if it were carried out in a
meaningful manner. Twenty-nine percent of the 53% stated that process
improvement efforts are often performed for it’s own sake, and that including
process improvement in the strategic planning process should be done in a
manner that adds value to the strategic planning process and the institution.
Through the analysis of the approaches to strategic planning examined in
this study, the researcher offers a new strategic planning model for HEIs
grounded in the findings.

My work investigates the effects of founding conditions for organizational
founders on the eventual satisfaction founders have with the financial and social
outcomes of their organization. First, I introduce two new constructs, social salience and
economic salience, which represent the intended social or economic goals of the founder
for their organization when they found the new organization. I then utilize organizational
imprinting theory to argue that the social and economic salience, along with founders’
previous work experience, influence the structure of the new organization via the legal
form. I then argue that the legal form influences the specific capabilities that the
organization will acquire or create early in the organization’s life. Finally, I argue that the
capabilities established at founding will influence the eventual satisfaction founders currently have with their organizations’ social and financial outcomes as the capabilities
endure over time.
Based on a sample of 150 organizational founders that are still actively managing
their organizations, my results support the idea that founding conditions for individual
founders influence the capabilities that their organizations create or acquire. Further,
founders’ current level of satisfaction with the financial and social performance of their
organizations is significantly related to these capabilities. These results largely support
the process based model of imprinting effects on organizational outcomes, and suggest
that founders play a critical role in setting the original imprint of an organization that will
endure via organizational inertia, perhaps long after the imprint’s originally designed
purpose.

Aligning information technology (lT) strategy with business strategy has been one
of the top concerns of practitioners and scholars. Despite the documented positive effects
of strategic alignment on organizational success, only few organizations consider
themselves in alignment. Although numerous studies exist about IT-business alignment,
the empirical studies based on strong theories have been rare in the alignment literature.
This dissertation attempts to fulfill this gap by proposing and empirically validating a
comprehensive strategic alignment model. Drawing on prior literature, we identified five
antecedents of alignment; centralization, formalization , shared domain knowledge,
successful IT history and relationship management. We further hypothesized that the
effects of these antecedents are mediated by the drivers of alignment, which are conceptualized as the level of connection of lT and business planning and the level of
communication between IT and business managers. Furthermore, the proposed research
model investigated the moderating effects of goal commitment of business executives to
achieving and sustaining strategic alignment and environmental uncertainty. The results
showed that both drivers had significant effects on alignment, and the effect of
connection is about twice that of communications. Our findings also support for the
effects of all antecedents except centralization. Finally, we found partial support for the
effects of moderating variables. Overall, the main contribution of this dissertation is the
development and empirical validation of a comprehensive strategic alignment model with
considerations for antecedents and potential moderating effects, thus extending the
alignment literature by differentiating the effects of dimensions of environmental
uncertainty as well as introducing the goal commitment and IT unit structure constructs,
and providing prescriptive insight for managing IT-business strategic alignment.

This study provides an exploratory investigation of the link between Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR) and Firm Competitive Advantage. It poses two primary
research questions (1) What valuable and rare resource does the firm acquire through
CSR? and 2) How does the firm's approach to stakeholder management influence its
ability to protect and enhance the value of this resource? Corporate Social Reputation,
the perception of the firm by its internal and external stakeholders, is argued to be the
valuable and rare resource that CSR provides. By building positive stakeholder
relationships through CSR the firm is able to positively influence stakeholder assessment
and gain 'reputational capital'. The value of reputational capital lies in its ability to
promote operational efficiency and engender product differentiation, which independently as well as in tandem, grant firms superior performance over their
competitors.
Corporate Social Reputation is also expected to be positively influenced by the finn's
adoption of a 'network' approach to stakeholder management. Two specific network
attributes: extensiveness and consistency are argued to promote reputational capital
growth. Network Extensiveness is determined by the number and diversity of firmstakeholder
relationships, whereas Network Consistency is concerned with the variability
of firm behavior across its entire stakeholder network.
The hypothesized model was evaluated via a longitudinal study of one hundred
and fifty eight firms from multiple industries. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was
employed to assess path coefficients as well as the goodness of fit of the measurement
and structural models.
The results provide support for the positive influence of CSR on Corporate Social
Reputation, but no support for a significant relation between either Network
Extensiveness or Network Consistency and Corporate Social Reputation. Also, the results
indicate that Corporate Social Reputation directly, positively and significantly contributes
to a firm's ability to achieve and sustain a Competitive Advantage for both an internal
(Return on Assets) and external (Tobin's q) measure of firm financial performance.
Further, the findings suggest that the contribution of CSR to financial performance may
be indirect and facilitated through a step-wise process which requires the attainment of a
positive and superior Corporate Social Reputation before Competitive Advantage can be
achieved.

I investigate if all-equity firms are a heterogeneous group as it relates to agency costs and accounting quality. All-equity firms are a unique group of firms that choose a “corner solution” as their capital structure. Extant research, supported by well-established theories such as trade-off theory, free cash flow theory, and Jensen’s (1986) control hypothesis, generally conclude that agency conflicts motivate such structure. Research also supports the alternative argument that poor accounting quality makes debt so prohibitive that such firms are driven to this capital structure. I propose that an all-equity structure is not necessarily symptomatic of agency conflicts and poor accounting quality overall. I investigate if different motivations, within an all-equity setting, reflected by free cash flows and growth opportunities, result in different levels of agency cost and accounting quality. By anchoring on theories that link implicit costs of debt to free cash flow levels and growth opportunities, I hypothesize that free cash flows and growth opportunities are strongly linked to the justification or lack thereof for the pursuit of such strategy. I hypothesize and show that firms in the extremes of the free cash flow to growth rate spectrum exhibit significantly different levels of agency cost and accounting quality within the all-equity setting. These results support my main prediction that there exists agency costs and accounting quality differences within the all-equity setting which are associated with free cash flow levels and growth opportunities and that the pessimistic conclusions for pursuing an all-equity strategy reached by prior research should not be generalized to all such firms.

As the gap between the haves and have-nots widens, the call for reform in higher education in the United States intensifies. Policy actors, philanthropists, and academics from across the political spectrum work on various policy solutions, creating a policy environment that is complex and often contentious. Incrementalists claim that major policy reform is unlikely since unknown variables and inexplicable events can stall or dismantle policy initiatives. In such environments, policy entrepreneurs—those individuals who advocate for policy innovation, work for change, and help shape policy solutions from within and without government—try to break through the barriers of incremental politics. As important as this role is to the influencing and structuring of higher educational policy, it has not yet been explored. This study fills this gap in the extant literature by cataloging the characteristics and skills that enable higher education policy entrepreneurs at the state and national levels to persevere and accomplish sustainable and innovative higher education reforms over time.

This study attempted the answer to two primary questions: (a) Are strategic thinking skills possessed by college students prior to university matriculation related to their academic success in college, and (b) How does the predictive accuracy afforded by these skills compare to that from high school grade point average or standardized test scores?

In December 2009, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) approved enhanced proxy disclosure rules requiring companies to disclose the board’s leadership
structure and the board’s role in risk oversight. Apart from general business risks, boards
are increasingly interested in Information Technology (IT) risks as it affects all aspects of
the organization (PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC], 2013). Since the effectiveness of IT
risk management depends on senior managers’ actions, this dissertation attempts to
answer the question of whether the maturity of IT risk management practices (the extent
to which management performs particular activities to identify, assess, monitor and
respond to IT-related risks) in organizations depends on the Chief Information Office
(CIO) reporting structure and the board’s leadership structure.

Knowledge is a resource and an important asset that organizations leverage to attain their goals. In a competitive environment, efficient and effective transfer of knowledge within the firm is a strategic imperative. In each organization a system through which knowledge flows, arises by design and enactment. Like other resources, knowledge resources should flow to where they are needed, when they are needed. The flow of knowledge resources depends upon contextual characteristics of both the organization and the knowledge itself. This dissertation investigates characteristics that affect the internal flow of organizational knowledge between departments and types of employees. The study of knowledge transfer lies within the domain of knowledge management, linking strategy, organization theory and organizational cognition research. Effective knowledge management systems enhance strategy implementation and help maximize returns on organizational knowledge. These systems can offer the firm competitive advantage in speed and navigability. Knowledge management has broad theoretical scope. For this research, I draw upon theory concerning business policy and strategy (the resource-based view of the firm, competitive advantage, strategic orientation), organizational theory and cognition (bounded rationality, organizational knowledge, event management, sensemaking), information technology (media richness, communication technology) and epistemology (critical naturalism). I offer a testable model that describes how (a) departmental membership influences; (b) strategic orientation, locus of attention, communication media, sources of meaning and perceived knowledge impedance characteristics that affect; (c) knowledge discernment behavior to determine; (d) the performance of organizational knowledge transfer. The theory offers managers a somewhat rational approach to understanding and manipulating knowledge flows in order to alter the performance of knowledge assets in their firm.

This thesis presents a model designed to optimize the allocation of corporate resources required for the success of a product in the marketplace. The product development resources used in the model are: market research, applied research, product design, cost reduction and advertising. The key goals of this thesis are to provide industry with a usable tool: (1) Implement strategic plans through effective budgeting; (2) Optimize both short and long term profits; (3) Evaluate the impact of resource inter-dependencies; (4) Enable accountability that leads to goal achievement and checks unnecessary growth; (5) Remove much of the negative political and emotional variability; (6) Easily adapt to internal and external changes; (7) Output a specific allocation for each resource as a percentage of sales; (8) Output an estimate of future profitability. Genetic Algorithms are particularly well suited for this application because an exact optima is not required and the search space can be extremely large, complex, and non-linear.