Essays on leadership and workforce dynamics in operations
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
This dissertation examines how leadership composition, operational governance mechanisms, and workforce dynamics jointly shape the design and performance of organizational operating systems. Across three essays, I advance a people-centric perspective on operations management: operational systems are not purely technical infrastructures but are shaped by the individuals who design, govern, and participate in them. The first essay studies how board gender representation influences environmental innovation through internal operational mechanisms. Using panel data on U.S. public firms, I show that board female representation increases environmental innovation primarily when women constitute a majority of the workforce. The mechanism operates through the adoption of environmental management systems (EMS), which embed environmental monitoring and performance evaluation into operational routines. While gender-diverse boards are more likely to adopt EMS, these systems translate into innovation mainly in female-majority workforces, where employees appear more responsive to governance signals emphasizing environmental priorities. The second essay examines responsible supplier governance in supply-chain operations. I document that the presence of a female Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSCO) strengthens supplier monitoring systems and increases the likelihood that firms terminate noncompliant suppliers. This enforcement effect is amplified when sustainability performance is embedded in executive compensation, highlighting how leadership authority and incentive alignment jointly influence operational control systems within supply networks. The third essay investigates workforce instability as an operational risk. I conceptualize “talent drain” as reductions in employee inflow or increases in voluntary outflow and examine how capital markets respond to signals of workforce instability. Leveraging the arrival of initial Glassdoor reviews as an information shock, I show that investors reprice firms’ risk exposure when employee sentiment becomes publicly observable. I further construct text-based talent drain indices using machine learning techniques that provide incremental predictive power for future workforce attrition. Together, these essays demonstrate how leadership characteristics, governance structures, and workforce sentiment shape operational systems, with important implications for innovation, supply-chain governance, and organizational risk.
Description
2026
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International