Using sociological institutionalism the three articles constituting this dissertation scrutinize the relationship between organizations and their (social) environment at different levels of analysis and in the context of specific research questions. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in...

This project extends work toward building strategies to improve the status of technical communication by arguing that shifts in product development processes, such as the current shift in software development from waterfall to iterative methods, open gaps for technical communicators to take...

This project's broad goal is to articulate the dominant discourses and materialities of entrepreneurial work in order to understand how these intersections of these work processes enable and constrain young adults' career choices. Using a theoretical framework that included the communicative...

The ability of organizations to adapt to environmental change has been a central question oforganization theory since the origins of the field, but fundamental theoretical confusion remains:Organizational scholars see widely divergent patterns, running the gamut from neo-classicaleconomists who...

Organizational failure is an incomplete process because routines and norms persist through employee careers. Qualitative interviews with former employees from four newspapers and two investment banks, all of which are bankrupt or disbanded, demonstrate ongoing utilization of routines and ongoing...

This dissertation develops and tests a conceptual model to examine how organizations respond to social and political events that can significantly affect operations. The model incorporates concepts from resource dependence and institutional theories, which posit that a firm will develop a range...

This qualitative research study examines the organizational practices that are used in companies that have been able to sustain innovation as part of their business strategy. Currently there is a gap in the literature regarding what organizational practices support innovation. This study...

The span of control is the most discussed single concept in classical and modern management theory. In specifying conditions for organizational effectiveness, the span of control has generally been regarded as a critical factor. Existing research work has focused mainly on qualitative methods to...

The span of control is the most discussed single concept in classical and modern management theory. In specifying conditions for organizational effectiveness, the span of control has generally been regarded as a critical factor. Existing research work has focused mainly on qualitative methods to...

This paper analyzes the founding rate of bioengineering departments in the United States. It takes the density dependence model from organizational ecology literature as the starting point of the analysis. This model predicts that founding rates of organizational populations are driven by...