PhD theses

• Director: Dr Joan Manel Batista, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: October 19th, 2022

Abstract: 
Although virtual environments were not new to some organizations, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, almost every industry on the globe began employing them. Given that many organizations and employees will work remotely permanently (or at least to some extent) in the future, one of the most significant challenges organizations will face is facilitating individual and team performance in virtual environments. Virtual environments may enable organizations to maximize their human capital and enhance their knowledge, resources, collaboration, and creativity to meet their stakeholder’s demands. Nevertheless, when team members rely on technology-mediated communications, they encounter additional challenges that impact collaboration and performance. Thus, it is critical to understand the aspects that contribute to individual and team collaboration in virtual environments. The main purpose of this thesis is thus to advance research on virtual collaboration. More specifically, this thesis addresses the following overarching research question: What factors promote effective collaboration in a virtual context? To address this question, this thesis is divided into six chapters, of which the main part is a compendium of three essays (Chapters 2, 3, and 4). The first chapter of the thesis is the general introduction. The second chapter focuses on individual-level factors that enable the effectiveness of virtual collaboration (gender and situational judgment). The third chapter focuses on team-level factors that promote virtual collaboration effectiveness (team virtual communication behaviors and team information sharing). The fourth chapter focuses on dyadic-level factors that promote effective virtual collaboration (interpersonal expectations and forgiveness for lengthy response times). Finally, the fifth chapter presents the general conclusions, limitations, and future research directions. This thesis contributes to the literature on collaboration in virtual environments by examining understudied contemporary phenomena at different levels of analysis (e.g., gender, traditional face-to-face student teams, and unresponsiveness effects) from various theoretical and methodological perspectives. Overall, this thesis provides insights helpful to individuals and teams working in virtual environments.

• Director: Dr Jan Brinckmann, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: December 13th, 2022

Abstract:
Business incubators and accelerators have become popular players in the modern entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, they are a group of heterogeneous organizations whose effectiveness in enhancing the performance of new firms by providing resources has not been demonstrated. The current literature on this subject is fragmented and based on contradictory empirical findings. Moreover, these support organizations have yet to be exhaustively examined for how they influence a new venture’s success. This doctoral thesis synthesizes the extant quantitative literature on the effects of incubators and accelerators on firms’ performance, showing the divergent effects of these support organizations on different prominent firms’ performance dimensions. Furthermore, this thesis accounts for incubators and accelerators heterogeneity to shed further light on significant factors that impact the extent to which new firms acquire resources and improve their performance through incubators and accelerators. Lastly, this thesis hypothesizes and tests an additional function that accelerators play in the early phases of a venture’s resource acquisition, in addition to providing resources directly to the firm. Overall, this doctoral thesis aims to leverage a resource-based perspective and its interrelations with resource dependency and signaling theories to understand how incubators and accelerators impact a venture’s performance. The major arguments are anchored on both theory and empirical evidence, resulting in a strategy well-suited to make substantial contributions to the study of incubators and accelerators.

• Director: Dr Daniela Noethen, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: February 22nd

Abstract:
Expatriaciones con familias divididas (SFE) son un fenómeno creciente en el que el expatriado se traslada solo y trabaja en el extranjero de largo plazo mientras su familia se queda en casa. Informes recientes afirman que el veintisiete por ciento de los candidatos casados o en pareja para expatriaciones de largo plazo eligen irse solos. En esta tesis, realizamos un estudio exploratorio involucrando a múltiples miembros de la familia y representantes de la organización. Investigamos veintidós casos de SFEs aplicando la metodología de estudio de casos múltiples para la construcción de teoría. En este trabajo, examinamos las características de las familias que participan en SFEs, las características de los SFEs, su gestión por parte de las organizaciones, y la motivación de las familias y las organizaciones para participar en y apoyar los SFEs. Este estudio utiliza la teoría de autodeterminación y la teoría de motivación de acercamiento y evasión para revelar mecanismos que expliquen la perseverancia y el desempeño de la familia expatriada mientras están en los SFEs. Nuestro análisis resultó en un conjunto de proposiciones que sientan las bases para una teoría específica de los SFEs. Las recomendaciones para la política y la práctica pueden ayudar a las familias a asegurar su bienestar y relaciones durante el SFE, y asistir a organizaciones a minimizar el riesgo de fracaso en la expatriación y maximizar los resultados laborales del expatriado.

• Director: Dr Daniel Arenas, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: March 31st, 2023

Abstract:
Community groups and community-based enterprises have been frequently discussed in studies of organization, management and entrepreneurship. They are considered to represent an alternative way of organizing and pursuing economic, social and cultural goals, as well as to embody an institutional logic, also known as the community logic. In the era of globalization and societal transformations, however, it should not be taken for granted that such groups and enterprises do not face tensions and are committed to a single institutional logic. This thesis problematizes this implicit assumption and explores the following: how do community groups and community-based enterprises organize and relate to the community logic and other institutional logics? After a brief introductory chapter, the second chapter conducts a literature review on communities and unpacks the organizing principles of diverse types of communities. The third chapter reveals the role of materiality in institutional processes and how local community actors attempt to maintain institutions across generations. The fourth one delves into a community-based enterprise and analyzes how it responds to institutional complexity and secures the commitment of local community members to the common endeavor. Taken together, the three main chapters show that community groups and community-based enterprises are heavily involved in institutional processes and find innovative ways to navigate institutional complexity and work towards institutional maintenance, but also develop logic variants and change. An institutional perspective on communities provides implications for community organizing and entrepreneurship, community-organization relationships, and organization theory more broadly.

• Director: Dr Marc Esteve, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: July 12th, 2023

Abstract:
In 2018, when this PhD was started, the United States and United Kingdom were leading the way in the West by taking proactive steps towards AI adoption, especially at the local and regional levels of government through the creation of offices of data analytics and collaborative partnerships with universities. This context was chosen in particular because it provided a fertile base for access to qualitative data surrounding the experiences of leaders and managers engaged in collaborative activity, within a topic area that contained little understanding or empirical evidence. As such, one of the main intentions of this thesis was to illuminate the human side of how upper level management and leadership navigates dynamics surrounding trust building, culture change, power, and technical capacity in the nascent stage of AI adoption. By doing so, this thesis helped to decipher differences and similarities amongst this current technological transformation for government and those of the past efforts in several ways. First, it uses the organizational theory lens to provide a strategic roadmap that highlights the potential organizational forms for AI based collaboration with government. Furthermore, essay one incorporates a systematic review of the literature on interorganizational collaboration and major reports on AI and government in order to apply lessons for how to overcome challenges of adoption. Second, this thesis uses the organizational behavior lens to consider how leadership and upper management within these identified organizational forms respond to challenges in reality, by first conducting a comparative case study and finally through an interview based qualitative study. Thus, essay two focuses on the emergent challenges that arose during a multi-year partnership between a major research university and two county council in the U.K. and the organizational routines that were created as a response. Finally, the third essay provides management strategies for navigating challenges in other types of AI collaboration.

• Director: Dr Lisa Hehenberger, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: July 26th, 2023

Abstract:
Organizational paradoxes pervade grand challenges. Complex social problems are full of many persistent interdependent contradictions that are intertwined in different ways. Understanding how paradoxes relate to one another and unfold over time depending on actors’ responses is key to harnessing their generative potential. This understanding starts with the ontological assumptions from which we unpack paradoxes. Rather than being exclusive, different ontological understandings of paradox shed light on different aspects of the phenomenon. Accordingly, in this dissertation I put the focus on different instances of intertwined paradoxes in the context of grand challenges, unpacking them from different ontological perspectives. This dissertation consists of three studies: (1) A conceptual exploration of the dynamics of paradox across construal levels; in this study we bring together dynamic equilibrium and dialectics by introducing the distinction between abstract and concrete paradoxes, the interplay of which we unpack through a morphogenetic framework grounded in a critical realist ontology; (2) A qualitative study of social impact bonds across Europe to explain how institutional entrepreneurs work on the sociomaterial context to knot several paradoxes together and articulate responses to grand challenges; in this study we unpack paradoxical knots from a quantum ontology, highlighting their sociomateriality, and (3) A qualitative study of two organizations in the Spanish housing sector that need to balance commercial and social demands to explain how people morally respond to paradoxes; in this study we unpack the moral dimension of paradox by highlighting its nested nature from a constitutive ontology. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of (a) the ontology of paradox, as well as (b) the character of knotted, nested, and abstract and concrete paradoxes.

• Director: Dr Ignasi Martí, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: July 27th, 2023

Abstract:
The use of information communication technologies by marginalized and oppressed groups has been gaining increasing relevance over the past decade. The dual benefit of being an open platform that is autonomous from the grip of powerholders makes them favorable alternative organizational tools for the disempowered. Virtual spaces online are traditionally understood to be a place of refuge for the oppressed and marginalized. However, the same open accessibility of such online spaces that attracts members of oppressed groups additionally makes them identifiable to powerholders. Yet, despite the continuous exposure to repression, dissent continues to be expressed online by members of oppressed groups. This thesis conducts an extensive study that analyzes in-depth how agents manage to persist in utilizing virtual space in order to contest authority, and ultimately organize for collective action and mobilize resistance in contexts of extreme political repression. Ethnographic methods were employed both virtually and physically, and were additionally supported with qualitative materials through interviews. Theoretical concepts from the literatures on organization studies concerning space, resistance, and digitalization are both drawn from and contributed to. This thesis contributes to these literatures by introducing the concept of infrapolitical cyberculture, conceptualizing how everyday politics have transcended to virtual spaces as a prefigurative resistance mechanism, and making the case on how virtual space is an essential tool for the disempowered to be able to spatially-organize the emergence of resistance. Ultimately, knowledge is generated through a greater understanding on the precise use of information communication technologies as alternative spatial-organizational tools to the disempowered.

• Director: Dr Ignasi Martí, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: July 28th, 2023

Abstract:
Amidst a time of crisis and social inequality, different segments of society find themselves wanting, hoping and working towards the conviction that things could and should be otherwise. This persistent desire for social change brings about the question of the role of its agents, and the work that they do. To address this, I employ the social-symbolic work perspective, which integrates various forms of work as part of the broader issue of organizational life and apply it to the contexts of service-learning and collective action. This thesis begins with a systemic literature review of service-learning in management education. In my assessment of the field, I provide a characterization of the pedagogy’s transformative capacity to drive social change through the students who undertake it. In the second chapter, I give focus to the identity work of future agents of change as they experience an international service-learning program. I conducted participant observation and in-depth interviews with business school students in Spain who worked with social enterprises and NGOs in Latin America as part of the university’s service-learning program. The third chapter of this thesis situates social-symbolic work in the context of collective action. Through a virtual ethnography, I identify strategies of a volunteer group of young professionals in the Philippines in mobilizing to demand accountability from the government during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through these two empirical papers spanning across the individual, organizational, and institutional levels, I apply the theoretical perspective of social-symbolic work towards social change by illustrating how agents of change develop and commit to their causes, beyond traditional social movements and activist identities. Overall, my research contributes to both management education and organization theory towards a better understanding of how agents of change engage in social-symbolic work.

• Director: Dr David Murillo, Esade - Universitat Ramon Llull
• Date of defense: August 28th, 2023

Abstract:
Digitalization and its related datafication processes have become an important line of inquiry in organizational research. This is owed to the fact digital technologies are becoming ubiquitous in the social sphere, and have a profound impact on shaping organizations, fields, and society alike. Recent literature is also problematizing the dark side of digitalization, which contributes to the growing power of corporations while subjecting citizens to disempowering positions. In acknowledging its growing influence across society, this thesis seeks to uncover the role of societal actors in both organizing and resisting the power of digitalization by exploring the following: how are relations of power and resistance organized between business, state, and citizens in relation to digitalization? After briefly making the case for such investigation in the introductory chapter, the second chapter undertakes a qualitative content analysis to uncover how resistance is organized against the datafication practices of corporations, as well as the efficacy of such challenges. The third chapter explores the role of the state in protecting citizens’ online privacy through regulatory measures. The fourth chapter adopts a historical case study analysis to present a different side of the state, one which acts in tandem with economic actors and tech elites to promote digitalization in society. Taken together, this thesis reveals insights regarding how organized resistance and state action can both challenge and sustain the power of private corporations’ datafication practices. Furthermore, the socially constructed nature of organizing digitalization is highlighted as an active site of persuasion and contestations between the involved actors.

• Directors: Dr Josep Maria Castellà Andreu y Dr Elia Marzal Yetano
• Date of defense: March 9th, 2023

Abstract:
This dissertation studies the limits on State power in the thought of Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez, two prominent theologians who belonged to the School of Salamanca. More precisely, it explores how, mostly by means of Natural law and the common good, they attempt to build a normative framework that limits the scope of lawful government action, and put forward mechanisms to redress potential violations thereof. They do so, firstly, by placing political power within the framework of Natural law, thereby endowing it with a concrete end –the common good– and a set of obligatory limits, beyond which State action becomes unlawful. Moreover, they hold that such power belongs in the first instance to the members of the community as a whole, who may establish whichever political system they find most suitable, in sharp contrast with the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Secondly, by advocating for the indirect power of the Church in temporal matters, which gives the Pope the right to amend or to leave without effect State norms and acts he finds detrimental to the salvation of souls. This contributes to the safeguard of religious orthodoxy, but also to the defence of Natural law against potential infringements thereof by the State. Thirdly, by acknowledging the existence of substantive limits on State power derived from Natural law. One of such limits may be found in the common good, understood as the proper end of the political community. Governments have a wide margin of discretion in determining how to pursue it, but, at the same time, any norms or acts that may be detrimental to it, or that seek to satisfy particular interests in its stead, are null and void. Natural law also imposes upon the State the duty to respect goods such as life, liberty and –to some extent– property. Fourthly, by subjecting the prince to the rule of law and by advocating for non-institutional mechanisms to redress abuses of power. While Vitoria and Suárez accept that power may be placed entirely in the hands of a single subject –as long as Natural law is upheld and the common good provided for–, they also insist that whoever is entrusted with it must act according to the law. They also declare that it its licit to disobey unjust laws and, under certain circumstances, to depose the tyrant. In conclusion, Vitoria and Suárez connect with the constitutionalist tradition that seeks to set normative limits on political power, but they do so not by distributing it among a wide array of institutions, but by appealing to Natural law and to the notion of the common good.

• Director: Dra. Rebeca Carpi Martín
• Date of defense: June 6th, 2023

Abstract:
Debt is a legal, economic, and social instrument that allows access to goods and services whose acquisition, with own resources, would be more difficult or even impossible. However, if it reaches excessive levels, it can become a danger, and lead to over-indebtedness. This situation affects not only the individuals affected, but also society in general, since financial stability may be put at risk. Our legal system has incorporated, in the field of bankruptcy, the exoneration of unsatisfied liabilities as a solution to the over-indebtedness of individuals, and, specifically, of consumers. Debt release can have a certain preventive effect on over-indebtedness, by promoting a greater degree of responsibility and prudence for lenders, when granting credit, since the lending financial institution is involved in the risk of not collecting their credit. This fact should encourage responsible lending. However, to enhance this effect, it is concluded that some technical legislative defects in this regulation could be purged. For example, an evaluative concept could be articulated, instead of the normative concept, of the good faith of the debtor. In this way, access to the exoneration would only be given to the honest but unfortunate debtor. Taking into account that Law on consumer credit and real estate credit contracts, in the event of infringement of the obligations of the responsible loan (duty of information and solvency evaluation of the borrower), only provides for administrative sanctions, which have not been demonstrated be sufficiently deterrent to irresponsible concessions, it is considered necessary to introduce private law consequences for the defaulting lender. Such consequences may consist, in the bankruptcy sphere, in a subordination of the debt arising from that irresponsible concession and even in the possibility of its exoneration. These bankruptcy consequences could be complemented with the imposition of administrative fines, but also with others in the field of civil law. It is proposed to introduce in our legal system, in the event of breaches of the obligations derived from a responsible concession, a specific case of rescission, which would act in the event of the infringement of the obligation to assess the solvency of the borrower, being able to articulate, as a consequence, the maintenance of the validity of the contract, but with the effect of depriving the lender of the collection of remunerative and default interest, due to the damage caused, or even, in the most serious cases, with the loss of part of the capital, as is the case in other neighbouring countries. This solution would make it possible to avoid the undesirable effects, for the consumer, of solutions such as nullity, voidability or contractual resolution, which attack the validity of the contract and imply the restitution of benefits. To articulate an effective sanctioning system, it is necessary to provide lenders with tools for the correct and complete evaluation of borrowers' solvency. This requires specifying the elements that must be considered in the solvency evaluation and the weight that each of them must have to determine a positive or negative result of said evaluation, to act accordingly. But it also requires delving into the sources of information available to lenders. Regarding these sources, positive solvency files are essential tools for reporting the debt ratio of debtors and providing a more complete picture of the consumer's situation, ability, and willingness to repay. To the extent that they represent an incentive for good behaviour by the debtor, as they are the mirror of their financial reputation, they are necessary for the granting of responsible financing. In the same way, financial education from an early age is necessary so that the consumer knows the risks to which he is exposed when he gets into debt. The regulation of solvency files would encourage the need for this financial education on the part of the consumer. Currently, negative solvency files predominate for which the consent of the affected party is not required. The stumbling block referred to in not regulating positive files is the possible infringements and interference with the privacy and intimacy of those affected that could occur, as well as the data protection regulations that prevent this data from flowing in an agile manner by requiring the prior consent of the affected party. It is necessary to expressly introduce in the LOPDGG a legitimizing title for the treatment of this data to make the private protection of the consumer compatible with the necessary transparency in the credit market to achieve the stability of the financial system. This title should allow access to private SICs with positive solvency files, in the same way that access is allowed to the CIRBE, to homogenize in the Member States the databases to which they resort to assess solvency and promote a single credit market. In addition, the obligation to use these files should be extended to all lenders and entities that mediate financing, including FinTech and, specifically, crowdfunding platforms. The technological environment in which we live and the lack of regulation of positive files contributes to lenders of all kinds using alternative data to assess the solvency of borrowers. This data entails risks in its treatment derived from the use of artificial intelligence mechanisms, which is why a harmonized regulation is required, from the European Union, to regulate this data as a source of information and to regulate responsible lending in all its aspects, to standardize existing regulations that are dispersed and prevent consumer over-indebtedness.

• Directors: Dr Jordi Bonet Pérez y Dr Caterina García Segura
• Date of defense: May 24th, 2023

Abstract:
The object of this Doctoral Thesis is the study of the interrelation between the Age of Discovery, European Imperialism and the emergence of modern transnational corporations. The research proposes a new interpretation of this interrelation and explores some of its effects in the present. Among its objectives lies a nuclear question: to determine to what extent, and with what consequences for the present, three variables influenced the European imperial rise: the will to satisfy consumer demand, the exercise of violence and the granting of commercial privileges. For this, it is necessary, on the one hand, to identify the combination of minimum essential causes that determined the emergence of the Age of Discovery and the apogee of European imperialism and, on the other, to elucidate the factors and conditions that led to the appearance and rise of the first trading corporations with a global reach and their influence on the background of some of today's fragile states. The research proceeds at two levels. One is chronological-narrative, historiographical; the other is conceptual and analyzes the evolution and interdependence of the three abovesaid variables during the period considered. It is structured in three parts. The first, Consumption and Empire, explores the background and the emergence of the Age of Discovery and European imperial construction, evaluating the relevance of the trade-violence binomial as a means to satisfy the growing demand for consumption in Western Europe. The second part, Genealogy and taxonomy of commercial privileges, analyzes and relates the third variable, commercial privileges, with the consumption-violence binomial, the axis of the first. The third part focuses on the study of the Congo case and analyzes the main political and economic actors that have concurred in the exploitation of its natural resources and their relationship with the variables considered. The thesis reaches conclusions that allow to contribute with a new academic proposal to the interpretation of the research object, being two main ones. On the one hand, that the most important explanatory variable of both the Age of Discovery and the rise of European imperialism was the satisfaction of consumer demand, and that its effectiveness would have been impossible without the premeditated and systematic participation of violence and use of commercial privileges. On the other, that the first English and Dutch transnational companies were, originally, a political and instrumental means to compete on a global scale with the Iberian empires, especially through the delegation of functions and the attribution of State powers and prerrogatives.