Entrepreneurship and Management Theses and Dissertations (UMKC)
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The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Management. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Kansas City. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Item The Systemic Risk of Consolidation in the Cloud Computing Industry(2021) Cotton, Andrew D.; Sturgeon, James I.The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of consolidation within the cloud computing industry related to the reliability and availability of computing resources. This dissertation begins by assessing the scale and scope of the cloud computing industry leader, Amazon Web Services. Included in this assessment are a collection of case studies that reveal some of the unique transactions between actors in this industry. The next section uses a bowtie analysis to frame for discussion the key risks related to cloud computing. This framework is used to analyze how the economic risks of compromise and unavailability have changed with a shift from on premise computing to cloud computing. A normative systems analysis examines the policy considerations for addressing the consolidation in the cloud computing industry, and the social fabric matrix is applied to discuss the unique deliveries among processing institutions and between processing institutions and authorizing institutions. On the basis of the normative systems analysis, several policy implications are examined, including the extent to which government spending reinforces consolidation of power and risk within the cloud computing industry.Item An analysis of the decision to formally register a new venture in Sub-Saharan Africa(2021) Coffman, Chad David; Hornsby, Jeffrey S. (Jeffrey Scott), 1959-This dissertation considers the factors that influence the decision to formally register a new venture, by nascent entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding these factors is important because registration is the inflection point where entrepreneurs move from the informal to the formal economy. Registered businesses are more likely to pay taxes, hire employees, access capital for growth, and participate in other activities that contribute to economic development. In Study 1, I use a grounded theory development approach and conduct a series of interviews with entrepreneurs and institutional actors in Ghana and Ivory Coast, to identify factors that influence the registration decision. In Study 2, I develop a model from Study 1, and use a survey design to evaluate the efficacy of the model. Both studies use three samples, two from the Nafana ethnic group, with one sample from Ghana and the other sample from the Ivory Coast, and one from the Bono ethnic group in Ghana.Item An attention-based view on environmental exigencies and opportunity valuation(2021) Thapa, Nischal; Anderson, Brian S.Attention-based view of the firm (ABV) combines structural components of the task environment with cognitive components of the decision-maker, developing a comprehensive perspective of strategic behavior. ABV suggests strategic behavior is an outcome of a decision maker's rationalization of the firm's operating environment. The attention-based view of the firm suggests that noticed change in a firm's operating environment leads to a corresponding change in firm behavior. Additionally, whether decision-makers rely on intuition or deliberate reasoning to construe the change influences the relationship between 'noticing an environmental change' and 'change in opportunity valuation. This dissertation builds on Shepherd et al.'s (2017) attentional model and develops a theoretical framework that identifies the antecedents of change in opportunity valuation. This dissertation hypothesizes that i) noticing environmental change mediates the relationship between change in environmental exigencies and change in opportunity valuation, and ii) cognition of decision-makers moderates the mediating effect. With the aid of a double randomized experimental design and data collected through Amazon M-Turk, the findings from this dissertation support the hypothesis that noticing environmental change mediates the relationship between change in environmental exigencies and change in opportunity valuation. However, findings related to the second hypothesis were inconsistent. This dissertation extends the literature on the attention-based view, environmental exigencies, cognition, and opportunities. Furthermore, limited research within the entrepreneurship domain has applied an experimental approach to a complex moderated-mediation model; this dissertation also makes a methodological contribution by exhibiting an approach to testing a moderated-mediation model using an experimental approach.Item CEO narcissism and strategic entrepreneurial behaviors: the moderating role of industry environment(2021) Shah, Puspa; Anderson, Brian S.The role of firm-level entrepreneurial behavior in explaining firm performance is well established in the entrepreneurship literature. Scholars can capture firm-level entrepreneurial behavior employing strategic entrepreneurial behavior (SEB) that embodies innovativeness and proactiveness of firms as its dimensions. SEB constitutes one of the strategic outcomes of firms, and Upper echelon theory argues that executives’ characteristics and experience explain strategic actions. This dissertation draws from Upper echelon theory and argues that the psychological attributes of CEOs influence SEB. This dissertation focuses on CEO Narcissism, the escalated self-importance among CEOs. Narcissists seek constant attention and admiration and emphasize personal goals over organizational goals. Therefore, this dissertation argues that while striving to achieve admiration, narcissistic CEOs commit a vast amount of resources in projects entailing innovations and new markets, as they are likely to garner accolades from such projects. Therefore, firms with narcissistic CEOs are likely to exhibit higher SEB than other firms. Though CEOs perform a prominent role in explaining SEB, firm-level entrepreneurship research remains incomplete if researchers ignore the environmental externalities. Therefore, we examine the contingency role of the industry environment on the relationship between CEO narcissism and SEB. Narcissists inherently love to stand out in the crowd, and therefore narcissistic CEOs push their firms to become more entrepreneurial than other firms. However, when the environment shifts from munificent to hostile, while other CEOs curb the entrepreneurial behaviors of their firms, narcissistic CEOs find higher incentives to push their firms to become more entrepreneurial. If they succeed at growing their firms during a hostile environment, stakeholders will likely celebrate them as heroes. In addition, narcissists believe they retain higher control over their surroundings. Therefore, environmental hostility moderates the relationship between CEO narcissism and SEB such that the relationship is stronger in a hostile environment. This dissertation conducts two separate studies to test its hypotheses. Both studies render consistent findings suggesting that, contrary to the hypotheses, (1) CEO narcissism deters SEB and (2) environmental hostility does not moderate the relationship between CEO narcissism and SEB. In other words, firms with narcissistic CEOs exhibit lower SEB, and this relationship remains unaltered with conditions of the environment.Item Emerging Methods for Use of Real-World Clinical Data for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research(2021) Provance, Jeremy Burton; Smolderen, Kim G.; Spertus, John A.The purpose of this dissertation is to describe methods for use of real-world data resources to study quality of care and outcomes for patients with critical limb ischemia. We used the Cerner Health Facts de-identified EHR database to 1) exclude patient records except those with critical limb ischemia from clinical sites in the Health Facts database, 2) document variability in patient outcomes after critical limb ischemia care, and 3) document variability in evidence-based medical therapy for the treatment of critical limb ischemia. We derived a data mart from the Health Facts database and identified 31,490 unique patients seen in 79,359 unique encounters at 233 unique clinical sites in the Health Facts database between 2010 and 2017. Of these, 20,204 encounters included endovascular peripheral vascular intervention. Within 30 days of the intervention, 2.8% of patient encounters resulted in a major amputation. We documented the association of modifiable patient factors with 30-day amputation and significant variation in 30-day amputation rates at the clinical site level. In addition to procedural quality outcomes, we examined rates of guideline directed medical therapy—medications indicated to reduce risk of adverse outcomes in all patients with critical limb ischemia. Only 27.2% of patient encounters documented complete medical therapy while 72.4% documented some component of therapy. As with 30-day amputation outcomes, rates of the medical therapy quality metric varied widely between sites with a median rate of 38.2% and interquartile range of 16.3-60.1%. This work demonstrates the use of a national, EHR database for cardiovascular outcomes research. We documented 30-day amputation outcomes after peripheral vascular intervention--a metric of CLI treatment outcomes. We also documented quality of care—guideline directed medical therapy—surrounding an inpatient encounter for CLI. We documented site variability for both treatment outcomes and quality of care to inform future quality improvement work in the treatment of CLI nationally.