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This dissertation is about the in/stability over time of a contract-based inter-organizational relationship (IOR) which existed mostly under conditions of government monopsony (MG). The MG consisted of the institutional arrangements between the NHS and Higher Education sectors in England for the provision of education for the NHS non-medical professional workforce. The IOR was between the NHS education buyer (the ‘GM’) and Middlesex University (MU). An agent-centred historical institutionalism was used as the overall approach in the inquiry. The main components of the approach were resource dependence theory, concepts of historical dependence, and events in the IOR and its institutional and organizational environments. A multi-dimensional concept of IOR in/stability from the standpoints of the GM and MU which was grounded in the practices of the IOR was constructed. The inquiry traced the origins and subsequent development of the MG and the in/stability of the IOR over an 18 year period, 1995 - 2013. The main findings of the inquiry were: (1) The IOR originated in, and continued to exist mostly under conditions of MG (2) The IOR became less stable over time from the standpoint of MU; reductions in IOR stability occurred in dimensions of risk relating to the future performance of the IOR (3) Instability and threatened instability in the IOR were brought about mostly by the exercise of power by the GM and by the power dependence responses of MU. The thesis developed in the dissertation is that instability and threatened instability in the IOR were due mostly to a power imbalance in the IOR, in favour of the GM, between the GM and MU. The source of that power imbalance was a combination of: • The resource dependency of MU on the IOR • The conditions of MG and bilateral monopoly under which the IOR existed. The dissertation is concluded with a critique of MG as a technique for public sector management. Recommendations are made for new NHS-HE inter-sector and IOR arrangements to be established which take account of power imbalances and relations of mutual dependence between stakeholders. Recommendations for further research are also made.

As China has become one of the largest economic entities in the world, many studies focus on corporate governance in China. In 2001, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) transplanted the outside director mechanism from the United States and the United Kingdom. CSRC hoped that outside directors could play a control role to monitor the behaviours of controlling shareholders, protecting the interests of minority shareholders. However, since it was established, the Chinese outside director mechanism has played an unsatisfactory control role because they are not truly independent of the controlling shareholders. In contrast, many Chinese outside directors use their Guanxi connections (a particular kind of social connections in China) to play a resource acquisition role very well. Based on the theories of the firm, the resource dependence theory, studies of Guanxi and the path dependence theory, this thesis finds that when Chinese outside directors use their Guanxi connections to play their resource acquisition role, their independence and fiduciary duties required by CSRC is compromised.

My dissertation covered issues relevant to the impact of international student enrollment on the finances of U.S. public universities and examines the increasing numbers of international students at those institutions between 2003 and 2018. All three studies utilized fixed-effects panel regression technique that is a perfect fit for an examination of questions around student enrollments. I used data from IPEDS, U.S. News and World report, 2009 Barron’s Competitiveness Index U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Conference of State Legislatures. In the first chapter, I explored how first-time international undergraduate enrollment contributes to the growth of net-tuition revenue at public research universities. The results showed that the magnitude of the relationship was small, suggesting that prestige-seeking and not financial rationale has been the major reason to recruit students from abroad. In the second chapter, I looked at the extent to which state support explains first-time international undergraduate enrollment patterns at public research universities. My analysis confirmed that international enrollment is an important channel through which selective public research universities buffer declines in state funding. In the third chapter, I looked at whether international student enrollment can affect access for domestic minority students in full-time MBA programs at public universities. This study showed that international enrollments do not reduce access for domestic minority students.

This dissertation examines how firms strategically respond to failures and the role of stakeholders in these responses. I propose that learning from stakeholder cues results in substantive behavioral changes which not only exceed stakeholders’ immediate expectations but also enable firms to avoid failures. Such failure-learning is contingent on whether failures are experienced directly or indirectly, and the degree of stakeholder involvement. Through two essays, I explore these ideas in novel and increasingly prevalent failure settings. In the first essay, I show that even without active direction by regulators, firms experiencing technological failures in the form of data breaches go beyond mandatory disclosure and strategically renew themselves through divestitures and top management turnover. Drawing on the failure-learning and strategic renewal literatures, I argue that technological failures occur possibly due to dysfunctional organizational and technical routines which stricken firms interpret broadly as problems of organizing. I test my hypotheses on unrelated subsidiary divestitures and Chief Technology Officer turnover undertaken by 6269 U.S. publicly traded firms of which 149 firms experienced data breaches during the period 2005- 2016. I find that firms’ size and diversification increase their vulnerability to failures. While firms respond through divestitures and management turnover, only divestitures reduce the recurrence of failures. Firms’ responses are also independent of regulatory stringency. In the second essay, I invoke resource dependence and institutional arguments and examine how social divestments, which represent a breakdown (failure) in the relationship between a prominent institutional investor and a targeted firm, affect the social responsibility behaviors of the remaining portfolio firms. I argue that social divestments signal the potential for resource withdrawal and delegitimization. Accordingly, remaining portfolio firms incorporate their vicarious learning by improving their ESG practices. I test my hypotheses within the context of social divestments by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and changes in the ESG ratings of its U.S.-based portfolio firms over the period 1998-2011. I find that while larger equity holdings representing greater resource leverage enhances the positive effect of divestment of peers, complementary voice-based activism that exerts institutional pressures on portfolio firms is more effective in combination with the divestment tactic.

Urban public-private collaborations promoting large-scale tourist events are increasingly common. The incentive to collaborate, for urban policy-makers, is the perception of the opportunity for economic development, and yet little is known about factors contributing to the sustainability of such urban cross-sector collaborations. The dissertation accomplishes three objectives. First, it combines resource dependence theory (RDT) and goal congruence theory (GCT) to extend our understanding of how collaborating organizations align their respective organizational goals and manage their interdependencies in complex, urban, inter-sectoral, environments. This is accomplished through use of complementary factors from each theory. Second, using qualitative methods, the research applies RDT and GCT to a level of government where the academic literature addressing the applicability of the theories is scarce. Third, a replicable, literature based, framework is developed that furthers our understanding of goal alignment and goal congruence in urban cross-sector collaborations. The research has practical applications, in that the framework may be used by urban policy practitioners to guide their evaluations of potential collaborators and proposals.

The purpose of this study was to examine perceptions of Texas Adult Protective Services (APS) case managers (CM) in regard to their relationships with the law enforcement community and area courts. The sample consisted of 138 Texas APS CMs. The survey measured respondents' perceived strengths and weaknesses of their relationships with both the law enforcement community and with area courts. Items also included respondents' interest in receiving additional training and their perceptions of level of job-readiness of newly hired APS CMs. Data were analyzed quantitatively using SAS. Findings of the survey revealed high ratings of perceived teamwork on the part of the CM are associated with high relationship ratings with both area courts and law enforcement. Findings also revealed that high ratings of perceived autonomy on the part of the CM are associated with lower relationship ratings with law enforcement personnel but not with area courts.

Fundamental to health care supply chain management is the need to acknowledge that not everyone enjoys the same opportunities to access quality health care. Chronic conditions, which require ongoing access to primary care, are a leading cause of disparities in health. Ironically, even with major causes of chronic diseases well known and understood, vulnerability and impact are particularly associated with inadequate access to health care and treatment. This `gap' between the supply of and demand for quality health care demands major progress in preventing or delaying illness and death by crafting inexpensive and cost-effective interventions that take advantage of the scientific knowledge available. As an integral part of the health care supply chain, primary care not only helps prevent illness and death, but also serves as a point of first contact to reduce the difficulty in accessing needed health services. It is in the context of primary care where a large majority of health care needs and the management of health related problems can be addressed before they become acute enough to require hospitalization or emergency services. Yet, variation in primary care delivery associated with race, socioeconomic status, and other factors not attributable to clinical manifestations are prevalent which leads to inefficiencies and additional costs across the health care supply chain and further contributes to longstanding disparities in health status and outcomes. With the population of the United States continuing to grow and become increasingly diverse, both governmental and professional entities have taken special interest in identifying interventions that can help eliminate disparities in care. Health information technology has been regarded as a critical component in reducing disparities in care delivery by improving the awareness of both care-givers and patients through timely availability of information for the management of chronic disease conditions. The extant literature that addresses disparities due to socioeconomic class argues that care for socioeconomically disadvantaged patients is under-resourced and often lower in quality. Therefore, the unique characteristics of under-resourced settings due to both the patient population they serve as well as the communities where they operate should be considered when assessing the impact of health information technology on care delivery. The objective of the dissertation is to develop a framework that can begin to inform both academe and practice on how technology-enabled interventions in the supply chain for primary care can address the `gap' between the supply and demand of high quality and cost effective health care for chronic diseases. Using clinic level data of 400+ clinics from the Midwest, we develop and empirically test an actionable framework that considers various primary care and environmental characteristics that can enable the delivery of high quality care for chronic diseases, especially in regions with heterogeneous patient populations. The disease contexts for the dissertation, diabetes and depression, are disease conditions which afflict lower socioeconomic status and underserved patient populations and impose significant financial burden on a health care system. In the dissertation we describe the health care supply chain for chronic care and highlight issues of health disparities due to socioeconomic stratification. We then empirically examine the relationship between IT leveraging competence and disparities in high quality diabetes care due to differences in community and individual enabling resources in primary care settings. In particular, we highlight the promise and difficulties that information technology has on improving the quality of health care in primary care settings while at the same time addressing disparities in the delivery of care. Our results suggest that leveraging higher order IT capabilities may potentially increase disparities due to differences in resources that enable access to quality health care. Building on these results, we empirically examine the relationship between IT leveraging competence and affordable access to high quality care. We find that making care more affordable through the leveraging of IT can serve as an effective mechanism for reducing disparities by increasing access to high quality care for those who are more socioeconomically disadvantaged. Shifting our attention to behavioral health, we empirically evaluate behavioral health care for patients receiving treatment for depression through the supply chain for primary care. We place the health care supply chain in the broader community environment and center our attention on the impact of IT-enabled, evidence-based, and affordable primary care as mechanisms that can enable the integration of behavioral and physical care to improve behavioral health. Consistent with these arguments we find that improvements in short and long term depression outcomes are associated with primary care settings that leverage IT in conjunction with evidence-based practices. Further, we find that the effect of affordability becomes more prominent for the more socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. In addition, both physical and social characteristics of the community environment are associated with improvements in short and long term depression outcomes. By drawing from the established knowledge base in medical sociology, epidemiology, health policy, and health care management, the major contributions of this dissertation lie at the intersection of operations and supply chain management, quality management, and management of information systems by advancing the theory and practice of health care supply chain design for delivering high quality care for chronic diseases to a heterogeneous patient population. In particular, we highlight the significant challenges and complex problems in considering technology-enabled interventions in the supply chain for primary care in order to improve the quality of health care while at the same time addressing disparities in the delivery of care.

Purpose: This study describes hospital revenue for direct participation in the safety net--treating the poor--from 2006 through 2008 and associations with environmental and organizational factors of theoretical interest. Background and Significance: During the past 40 years U.S. hospital care has decentralized and grown increasingly competitive. Vague or overly detailed hospital regulations provide no specific goals regarding care for the poor. Studies have documented concentration of hospital safety net care, and a need for new outcome measures. This study uses hospital safety net revenue to measure theoretically responsive behavior by hospitals to serve poor populations. Design and Analysis: This research includes secondary analysis of hospital safety net revenues from OSHPD's Hospital Annual Financial Report Data, 2004 through 2005, and 2006 through 2008. Safety net revenues were compared as organizational and market shares. Hospital isomorphism toward low shares prompted the use of logistic regression to test the effect of factors on the odds of participation above an equal distribution.Key Findings: The 70 hospitals with high safety-net revenue as both organizational and market shares accounted for $7.7 billion of $11.5 billion in total safety net revenue. These hospitals were positively associated with concentrated markets, clinical teaching, larger size, less medically complex patients, and city/county or nonprofit ownership. Hospitals with high safety net revenue as market share only earned $1.1 billion of total safety net revenue. These facilities were positively associated with location in a concentrated market, increased size, nonprofit ownership, and system affiliation. Hospitals with high safety net revenue as organizational share only earned $1 billion of total safety-net revenue. This group was more likely than the others to be located in a more competitive county, independently operated by investors or a public district, smaller and treating less medically complicated patients. Implications: Regulators should work to encourage hospital safety net participation and better distribute the burden of low margin hospital care. Additional research is needed on hospital ownership, access, and quality, especially regarding patient acuity.

Using a qualitative multiple case study methodology, this study explores the relationship between government funding and INGO autonomy in three INGOs through resource dependence and tool choice frameworks. Adapting Verhoest, Peters et al.'s (2004) conceptualization of organizational autonomy as the extent of an organization's decision making capacity in matters concerning agency operations and human resource and financial management; this research regards the authors second definition of financial, structural, legal, and interventional constraints not as types of autonomy per se, but as the mechanisms through which INGOs' actual use of their decision making competencies is constrained. The findings in this research suggest that relative to other funding sources, government funding disproportionately impacts INGOs' operational and managerial autonomy. This is largely accomplished through various ex ante and ex post constraints such as, rules and regulations on inputs allocation and use, performance controls and evaluation requirements attached to government funding. This research also finds that the tool of choice used by government to finance INGO activities also steer, direct and influence INGO grantees' decisions thus positioning INGOs to incorporate government policy interests, preferences and priorities. However, INGOs can exercise their autonomy through various strategies ranging from program design, contract negotiation, and participation in advisory groups.

Understanding the composition and distribution of the revenue of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) is key to understanding NPOs themselves. This research uses revenue data for 87,127 charitable NPOs to draw three main conclusions. First, revenue structures of NPOs vary widely by subsector and organizational size, with many NPOs demonstrating revenue structures that might be considered uncharacteristic of the nonprofit sector. Second, despite the concerns of many nonprofit scholars, heavy dependence on either government funding or charitable contributions is atypical of NPOs. And third, nonprofit revenue is highly concentrated in relatively few NPOs. The description of revenue expands to examine the relationship between two important sources of revenue, charitable contributions and government subsidies. Nonprofit scholars have long theorized that government funding diminishes charitable giving. This research finds that the effect of subsidy on charity varies substantially among the nonprofit subsectors, but, contrary to widely accepted theory, these effects are more often positive than negative: More than half of government funding of the nonprofit subsectors appears to spur an increase in charitable giving, whereas only 6 percent of government funding is associated with decreased giving. This research suggests that effects of subsidy on charity are less likely due to the decisions of donors than to the decisions of NPOs themselves. These findings assuage some concerns about the future of the nonprofit sector but substantiate others. As government increasingly relies on NPOs to deliver government-funded services, it appears unlikely that NPOs will suffer decreases in charitable giving, and government funding may even enable NPOs to increase revenue from charitable giving. But marginal changes in charitable giving will not mitigate what many see as a distressing move away from reliance on charity toward generating fees for services and generally becoming more business-like. Whether these findings represent a nonprofit sector betraying its charitable roots, diluting its power to effect social change by "corporatizing," emphasizing service delivery at the expense of advocacy, or becoming more efficient, financially stable, and responsive to market demands remains a matter of debate, but debate better informed by the understanding of nonprofit revenue provided by this research.

Several competing models have been developed to explain the function of corporate boards. Two of these models are diametrically opposed regarding the board's role in the strategic management process. Management Control proposes that the board of directors is a rubber stamp for management, and plays a minor role in strategic management, while Resource Dependence asserts that the board is a tool used to manage environmental uncertainty. A structural model is developed in this study to determine whether corporate boards respond to different types of environmental uncertainty, using sample data from 280 Australian public listed companies in eight industry groups. Prior to this analysis, board structure and corporate interlocks data is presented for a sample of 725 Australian public listed companies in fifteen industry groups.