Browsing by Subject "Experience"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Alliance re-formation: uncertainty, inexperience, complexity and termination experience in the thoroughbred horse industry, 2005-2010
    (2013-02) Fudge, Darcy Kathryn
    My dissertation investigates the effects of alliance termination conditions on alliance re-formation by the former partners. While the existing literature assumes that an alliance forms after termination in the same way as it formed initially, I treat termination as the beginning of a process rather than as an independent event. I argue that alliance re-formation is distinct from alliance formation due to the attributions the former partners develop concerning their prior termination. Alliance terminations are often ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretations. I identify typical alliance termination antecedents, such as primary uncertainty, task inexperience and complexity, as important conditions under which the termination occurs that counter intuitively facilitate alliance re-formation. These factors frame the termination as a positive attribution, based upon incidents which are exogenous, uncontrollable and rare. Further, I find greater alliance termination experience enhances alliance re-formation, allowing firms to adjust expectations from alliance terminations. I test these ideas on a longitudinal sample of 2,256 terminated alliances that include alliance re-formations in the Thoroughbred horse industry, where alliance partners breed and co-own horses to sell at auction. Using this unique data set to account for the fit and the performance of the terminated alliances, I find support for my hypotheses for primary uncertainty and termination experience. My dissertation makes a number of important theoretical contributions by showing that alliance re-formation has a set of antecedents distinct from factors informing initial formation, and that termination experience is an important antecedent to the trust and the re-creation of trust. These findings have valuable practical implications for strategic management and organizational practitioners.
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    Consumer Embeddedness and Motivations for Farmers Market Patronage: A Qualitative Study
    (2019-07) Norton, Alanna
    The rise in popularity of farmers markets in the United States reflects consumers’ negative response to more traditional food distribution systems. Farmers markets provide consumers with a more local and often more personal food purchasing experience. This paper examines consumer motivations to attend farmers markets in Minnesota using the concept of embeddedness. Values of social embeddedness, spatial embeddedness, and natural embeddedness are used as a framework to analyze the range of non-economic motivations and values sought by patrons of farmers markets. This work contributes to existing literature on non-economic motivations to patronize farmers markets and support local food systems.
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    Entrepreneurial Teams' Human Capital: From Its Formation To Its Impact On The Performance Of Technological New Ventures
    (2015-06) Honore, Florence
    Startups' human capital, especially founding teams' pre-entry experience, has long been studied as a determinant of their performance. However, little is known on the complementarities between the different pre-entry experiences and on the influence of these pre-entry experiences on startups' performance and on startups' acquisition of new human capital. My dissertation fills this gap with two essays. In my first essay, I show that two types of pre-entry experiences, target industry experience and experience outside the target industry, are complementary when one is shared across the founding team members and the other is embodied within team members who worked in multiple firms. In my second essay, I show that pre-entry experience makes potential hires more attractive to startups. However, startups appear more attractive to these potential hires if they can signal productivity and growth potential rather than prior experiences. I also find that gender affects the selection of the potential hires and their earnings suggesting the existence of disparities in the startup environment. By using interactions between different experiences, in and outside the target industry, and between different levels of analysis, the team and the individuals, my dissertation enriches our understanding of startups' human capital and its effects on performance and acquisition of talent.
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    What Does Trust Have to Do with It? The Lived Experiences Of Parents Within the IEP Process: A Phenomenological Study
    (2018-04) Grocke, Adrea
    The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of parents involved in the IEP process. More specifically, the study explored how parents in the IEP process experience trust in their relationship with educational professionals. The two research questions addressed in this study were: What is the lived experience of parents involved in the IEP process? and How do parents in the IEP process experience trust? Data were collected through 90-minute semi-structured individual interviews with ten parents engaged in the IEP process. Participants in the study were parents of one or more children with an IEP, from school districts within a mid-sized city in the northern Midwest. For the purposes of this study “parent” refers to the adult who assumes parental roles and responsibilities for the child and has legal guardianship. In choosing the participants, convenience sampling was applied to identify the participants (Saunders, Lewis, Thornhill, 2012). Due to the convenience sampling, the homogeneity of the participants was a limitation of this study. The phenomenon focused on was trust as parents described their experiences in the IEP process. The analysis of the parents’ stories, reveals and verifies the significance of trust within the IEP process. In addition, the data analysis included a demographic questionnaire. Three overarching themes emerged in the analysis of the parent interviews that were integral to participants’ experiencing trust within the IEP process. The three themes consistent among the parents were communication, parent-teacher partnerships, and meeting the needs of their child.