The Cognitive and RElational Drivers of Organizational Action and Innovation: A Study of Economic Development Organizations in a Persistently Distressed Region

This study will investigate the interrelationships between management team characteristics, organizational ego network characteristics and organizational action and performance among the population of economic development organizations (EDOs) operating in the economically distressed regional of Kentucky Appalachia. In order to do so, a theorectical framework is proposed to test models addressing the three following research questions: How do management team characteristics relate to organizational ego networks? How do organizational ego network characteristics related to organizatioinal outcomes? How does team process mediate the relationship between organizational ego network charactertistics and organizational outcomes? These questions will be investigated with an interdisciplinary, multi-method approrach to both data collection and analysis. Ethnographic interviews at the beginning and end of the study, surveys at two time points and archival data will all be utilized to shed light on the given reserach questions.