Date of Award

2010-01-01

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

International Business

Advisor(s)

Lance E. Brouthers

Second Advisor

John Hadjimarcou

Abstract

In response to recently increased environmental dynamism and uncertainty, organizations have tried to become more flexible by changing traditional organizational forms and creating new ones. The new forms in turn create new areas of research to emerge. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine one such new organizational form, the formation of strategic committees (SCs) within companies. Extending liabilities of newness and upper echelons theories, I examine three primary questions in three essays: (1) is it possible to accurately predict which firms have SCs and do these firms outperform firms without SCs; (2) in what type of industries are SCs beneficial to firm performance; and (3) what SC characteristics lead to better firm performance? Analyses of a comprehensive set of data on international firms with SCs show that environmental factors can be used to identify firms with SCs, SCs are beneficial to firm performance in mature, non-hypercompetitive and flat experience industries, and SCs with greater tenure and educational heterogeneity will have better performance and performance stability, respectively. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of my study for strategy research on liabilities of newness and upper echelons.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

103 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Jason Patrick McNicol

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