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This case uses Uber Technologies Inc. to engage students in a serious conversation about how a firm both affects its stakeholders and is affected by its stakeholders as well as the role of strategic leadership in the amount of emphasis placed on ethical practices. Uber represents a visible high-growth startup that has received considerable positive and negative attention in the media; however, few people know of the extent of its aggressive management approach. Much of the publicity about Uber is both a direct consequence of and a direct consequence for stakeholder relationships. Students are asked to analyze Uber’s approach and offer suggestions for moving forward.

This case was created using secondary data sources. The issues for Uber that led the authors to write this case were not very flattering to Uber, and therefore, the authors decided to use secondary sources. Since Uber and many of its direct competitors were private companies, the authors collected as much financial data as the authors could from publicly available sources. Also, due to the contentious nature of some of the managerial tactics used within Uber, the use of secondary data sources was warranted.

This case was crafted with senior undergraduate students in strategic management as the primary audience, but is also relevant for MBA-level strategy courses as well. This case touches upon core content in the vast majority of undergraduate strategic management courses with a special emphasis on two concepts underrepresented in most strategic management textbooks, stakeholder theory and ethical decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to return to Stinchcombe’s original emphasis on emerging vs existing organizations by examining the cognitive legitimacy challenges aspiring entrepreneurs face vis-à-vis entrepreneurs with existing businesses.

The data collection included content analysis of profiles of an online crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending market leading to a sample of 507 business loan requests, 123 of which were requests to support new business ideas rather than existing businesses. Negative binomial regression was used to test hypotheses regarding whether aspiring entrepreneurs seeking convenience-based support for their new business ideas would be less successful than their counterpart entrepreneurs seeking support for their existing businesses.

The findings show that aspiring entrepreneurs received less convenience-based support for their new business ideas from key resource providers than their peer entrepreneurs asking for support for existing businesses. The findings also suggest that this liability of newer than newness may be able to be mitigated by reputational signals such as the creditworthiness of the entrepreneur making the request.

This study focuses on the original insights Stinchcombe introduced when he described the social conditions that produce the liability of newness. Moreover, this study offers explicit theory as to the key mechanisms that cause the liability of newness by focusing on an aspiring entrepreneur’s ability to secure convenience-based support and potential ways an aspiring entrepreneur may offset that liability.

Current theories of organization tend to discuss the management of change across networks in a grammar of instrumental reason, thereby offering legitimacy to the imperialism that emerges when groups come together in a shared‐change experience. However, by adopting principles of critical theory, the social research project initiated by a group of scholars known as the “Frankfurt School”, we may challenge this degradation of knowledge and its companion, human domination. A critical theory of interorganizational change reveals three forms of organizational imperialism: cultural domination, cultural imposition, and cultural fragmentation. From this perspective, we may understand the deleterious human, social and cultural consequences of organizational expansionism, and thereby initiate a dialogue for cultural emancipation, a more meaningful, culturally sensitive approach to change.

One of the most important, least-known documents of the American Revolution was a 25-page pamphlet published in Amsterdam early in 1787: An Explanatory Message Concerning the Funds by Pieter Stadnitski. ¹ Within a year of its publication Peter Stadnitski's Message quite literally revolutionized American sovereign finance. My paper will summarize in detail the report's content and analyze its arguments in light of Dutch archival materials including deeds, newspaper reports, and letters, as well as congressional records from American sources. It will describe what Dutch investors knew (and did not know) of the state of American public finance and American political landscape, and the Dutch financial community's view of the American future. Its essential argument is that thanks initially to Stadnitski's persuasive case and ultimately to the success of the trusts he pioneered, Dutch investment specialists came to see the American republic as a safe haven at a time that Dutch Republic's own future seemed increasingly perilous. If their dream of achieving a new Golden Age through trade and investment with the new nation ultimately proved illusory, the effects of Dutch capital in creating financial stability for the United States government and igniting the first peacetime economic expansion in American history were revolutionary indeed.

Organizational Development and Change (ODC) has been called to aid organizational greening goals. Carbon labeling of products by organizations is a common greening strategy. However, its effectiveness is dependent on supportive consumer behavior. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is used to explain actor choice in buying low carbon products (LCPs). Actual buying behavior of 873 subjects in China, a country new to carbon labeling, demonstrated that Declarative norms, Attitude, and Perceived behavioral control explained significant variance in actual buying behavior of LCPs. The TPB model may be better served by observing actual behavior versus behavioral intention. Revisions to the TPB model for diagnosis and interventions in behavioral change are indicated. ODC should revert to theoretically informed practice versus the increasing reliance on A-theoretical tools and techniques.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of program strategy on the implementation of the efficacy of a procurement set-aside program at the state level.

This study examines the impact of program implementation strategy across two administrations considering the most compelling alternative arguments for what drives agency purchasing through contracts with MBEs.

The results of mixed effects linear regression models on the procurement expenditures of 70 state agencies in Ohio from 2008-2015 show significantly higher rates of procurement expenditures with MBEs under the Kasich administration.

These results provide support for the argument that changes in program implementation strategy led to substantive increases in the use of MBEs by state agencies in Ohio.

We argue that in order to address the contemporary challenges that organizations and societies are facing, the field of organization development (OD) requires frameworks and skills to focus on the eco-system as the level of analysis. In a world that has become economically, socially, and technologically highly connected, approaches that foster the optimization of specific actors in the eco-system, such as individual corporations, result in sub-optimization of the sustainability of the natural and social system because there is insufficient offset to the ego-centric purposes of the focal organization. We discuss the need for OD to broaden focus to deal with technological advances that enable new ways of organizing at the eco-system level, and to deal with the challenges to sustainable development. Case examples from healthcare and the agri-foods industry illustrate the kinds of development approaches that are required for the development of healthy eco-systems. We do not suggest fundamental changes in the identity of the field of organizational development. In fact, we demonstrate the need to dig deeply into the open systems and socio-technical roots of the field, and to translate the traditional values and approaches of OD to continue to be relevant in today’s dynamic interdependent world.

This chapter applies arguments advanced by Drnevich and Shanley (this volume) to the strategic leadership literature – an area of work where such multi-level analyses seem likely to be particularly appropriate. In an analysis of the relationship between managerial capabilities and firm performance, this chapter breaks from tradition in the strategic leadership literature by examining the interaction between three levels of analysis. In doing so, this chapter identifies the conditions under which leadership can be a source of competitive advantage for a firm, when labor markets will allocate managerial talent imperfectly across competing firms, and when managers will and will not be able to appropriate the rents their specific managerial talents might generate.

This chapter presents a theory for developing an adaptive high commitment, high performance system of organizing, managing, and leading. It is a synthesis of my 50 years of action and field research presented in my books and articles. It operationalized and makes actionable the ideas of Lewin and systems theorists. Its features are three organizational outcomes that must be achieved simultaneously, features of the system that must be targeted for change, six silent barriers to change, a governance system for continuous learning, change in large complex systems, and elements of a system that needed to immunize it against ultimate destruction.