While there has been a growing body of research on workplace dignity, the majority of studies tend to focus on how dignity is experienced by organizational members, paying considerably less attention to consequences for organizations. In this study, we explore the influence of workplace dignity on employee work behaviors that affect organizational performance. Framing our inquiry with Sharon Bolton’s yet-untested multidimensional theory of dignity, we analyze Randy Hodson’s content-coded ethnographic data to reveal that increases in workplace dignity tend to predict increases in employee engagement, yet have mixed effects on counterproductive workplace behaviors. Following a post-hoc ethnographic reimmersion, we identify the critical role of safe and secure working conditions in enabling and constraining employees’ ability to redress or resist workplace indignities with counterproductive workplace behaviors.

Research problem: Entrepreneurial passion has been shown to play an important role in venture success and therefore in investors' funding decisions. However, it is unknown whether the passion entrepreneurs personally feel or experience can be accurately assessed by investors during a venture pitch. Research questions: (1) To what extent does entrepreneurs' personal passion align with investors' perceived passion? (2) To what cues do investors attend when assessing entrepreneurs' passion? Literature review: Integrating theory and research in entrepreneurship communication and entrepreneurial passion within the context of venture pitching, we explain that during venture pitches, investors make judgments about entrepreneurs' passion that have consequences for their investment decisions. However, they can attend to only those cues that entrepreneurs outwardly display. As a result, they may not be assessing the passion entrepreneurs personally feel or experience. Methodology: We used a sequential explanatory mixed methods research design. For our data collection, we surveyed 40 student entrepreneurs, video-recorded their venture pitches, and facilitated focus groups with 16 investors who viewed the videos and ranked, rated, and discussed their perceptions of entrepreneurs' passion. We conducted statistical analyses to assess the extent to which entrepreneurs' personal passion and investors' perceived passion aligned. We then performed an inductive analysis of critical cases to identify specific cues that investors attributed to passion or lack thereof. Results and conclusions: We revealed that there was a large misalignment between entrepreneurs' personal passion and investors' perceived passion. Our critical case analysis revealed that entrepreneurs' weak or strong presentation skills led investors either to underestimate or overestimate, respectively, perceptions of entrepreneurs' passion. We suggest that entrepreneurs should develop specific presentation skills and rhetorical strategies for displaying their passion, yet at the same time, investors should be wary of attending too closely to presentation skills when assessing passion.

Advances in digital manufacturing technologies have not only altered R&D processes for new product development (NPD), but they have also opened new possibilities for user innovators to engage in traditionally closed innovation processes. However, incorporating external sources of user innovation—through design challenges or crowdsourcing, for example—can introduce competing logics into exploratory innovation processes. Using the lens of complexity, we conduct an ethnographic study of the competing logics at work in the NPD processes of a corporate makerspace launched by a large firm in the consumer appliances industry. The makerspace was founded with a hybrid logic, intended to combine the community logic of makers with the corporate logic of the parent organization. We analyze the conflicts that arose between logics and how the hybrid logic evolved through four iterations of the NPD process. We identify how managing multiple logics led to structural and identity changes, and we explain how two mechanisms—structural bridging and stakeholder identity linking—enabled the makerspace to innovate with a hybrid logic and overcome the constraints of a dominant logic on the NPD process. The results offer insights into dynamic organizational responses to complexity, how new business initiatives can be structured to act as exploratory units for corporate parents, and how corporate makerspaces can help incorporate external sources of innovation.

Throughout my Ph.D., I received support and encouragement from many. Although only a few are mentioned here by name, I am sincerely grateful for each. I would like to thank Dr. Ryan Quinn, my chair. I learned more from you than I can possibly articulate. Thank you for your patience, encouragement, time, and willingness to see me through this process. Dr. Kristen Lucas, thank you for introducing me to and instructing me in qualitative research, giving me the opportunity to engage in research as an MBA student, and for encouraging me in so many ways. Dr. Robert Garrett, thank you for always being available to answer questions, provide advice, and reassure. And Dr. Howard Aldrich, thank you for your encouragement to conduct a dissertation on this topic, invaluable insights, and for exposing me to institutional theory. I am grateful to Dr. Jim Fiet who has invested so much in me and in the doctoral program. I would also like to thank the School of Graduate and Interdisciplinary Studies, the College of Business, and the Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship. To all the staff and faculty who have made this journey achievable, thank you! This dissertation would not have been possible without the cooperation, kindness, and time of all those at MakerHub. I would like to thank the management team for allowing me to conduct my dissertation there in the first place. Also, I would like to thank those who were always willing to answer questions, offer information, and provide context around actions and behaviors, particularly Bob, Ray, and Jean. iv This Ph.D. would not have happened without the encouragement of my family, particularly my mom and dad as well as the support of my in-laws, Tim and Judy Grogan. Lastly, I am grateful for the love of my wife, Claire, and our children, Jack and Ann.

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