This dissertation addresses two questions: How do employees become mobilized to initiate and drive change in organizations? How do managers draw on external and internal resources in introducing and sustaining change projects? I answer these questions using business process redesign (BPR) as a...

For a growing number of indications, combination therapies are becoming increasingly common due in part to their superior efficacy, as compared to monotherapies. In fact, in the case of infectious diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis, combination therapies are now the standard of care. With...

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which relates the risk of an individual security to its expected return, is frequently cited in investments textbooks and the academic literature as a centerpiece of modem finance theory. The main prediction of the CAPM is that investors are compensated in...

In this paper, I examine the ex post and ex ante benefits of conservatism to lenders and borrowers in the debt contracting process. First, I argue that conservatism benefits lenders ex post through a timely signal of default risk in the form of accelerated covenant violations by more...

The ability to innovate sits at the heart of an organization's ability to succeed in a competitive environment. An organization can innovate by improving existing products, services, or processes or by generating new products, services, or processes. Achieving successful, repeated organizational...

This dissertation consists of three essays on strategic and tactical issues in product design. The first essay presents a dynamic investment game in which firms that are initially identical develop assets which are specialized to different market segments. The model assumes there are increasing...

Human nature does not like change, and unfortunately, in some areas, changes must be made. From an economic standpoint, firms have to adapt to new technologies, the size of markets change constantly as a result of globalization, and customers' needs are never-ending and wide-ranging. In a word,...

Sustainability has become an important management issue as an increasing number of corporate executives realize their companies are facing a period of disruptive change. Moving away from whether to act or not, most companies are now focusing on how to implement sustainability into their...

My employer, Kirin Holding Company (Kirin), turned 100 years old in 2007. At the same year, Kirin changed its company structure into a holding company from Kirin Brewery Company Limited. As the former company name indicates, the beer business is Kirin's core business, generating over 70% of...

The worldwide telephone industry is in transition-from traditional telecom service provider to broadband service provider. NTT, Japan's leading telecom company, must establish a new source of revenue that will compensate for declining income from fixed-phone service. The company needs to...