Starling D Hunter | Duke University (original) (raw)

Papers by Starling D Hunter

Journal of organization design, Jul 3, 2020

Academy of Management Journal, Sep 1, 1964

... HAK CHONG LEE State University of New York at Albany ... forces and their skills before (1955... more ... HAK CHONG LEE State University of New York at Albany ... forces and their skills before (1955) and after (1962) the computer installation.7 Detailed descriptions of all jobs in the affected departments were made in order to properly classify each job into the mana-gerial or the ...

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Mar 5, 2004

© 2003 by David Spitz, Starling Hunter. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to excee... more © 2003 by David Spitz, Starling Hunter. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission, provided that full credit including © notice is given to the source. ... This paper also can be downloaded without charge ...

International Journal of Social Science Studies, 2016

Studies in Media and Communication, Jul 20, 2021

Journal of Screenwriting, Jun 1, 2016

Journal of organization design, Aug 28, 2015

This paper employs social network analysis to explain variation in the pricing of 846 banner adve... more This paper employs social network analysis to explain variation in the pricing of 846 banner advertisements appearing in a community formed by 89 "Liberal" and 84 "Conservative" weblogs. As predicted, weblogs that bridge "structural holes" between otherwise disconnected segments of the community command significantly higher prices for their advertisements. Also as predicted, the price of banner ads increases with the number of impressions received, with the size of the ad, when the ad is located higher on the page, and when fewer other ads appear.

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Series. International journal of tv serial narratives, 2019

Textual and content data were extracted from the pilot episode scripts of 183 new, dramatic telev... more Textual and content data were extracted from the pilot episode scripts of 183 new, dramatic television series and used to predict the 18-49 demo ratings for the first five episodes of each series’ first season. As expected, the originality of a series’ premise, the track record of success of the its creator(s), and the cognitive complexity of its pilot episode script each explain a statistically significant proportion of the variance in the Nielsen ratings over the first five episodes.

Advances in Journalism and Communication, 2017

Business and Management Studies, 2017

In this study we develop an empirical model to explain failure rates of new television series. Sp... more In this study we develop an empirical model to explain failure rates of new television series. Specifically, we test the ability of three factors to predict the success of new dramatic series appearing on 31 cable networks over the last 10 years. Those factors are the originality of the story, the track record of its creator(s), and the cognitive complexity of its pilot episode script—all of which are known well in advance of a network’s decision to greenlight a new series. As predicted, we find that all three variables—both individually and in combination—strongly predict the success rate of new dramatic series in their first two seasons.

Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Social Dynamics and Personal Attributes in Social Media, 2014

Information and Organization Design Series, 1998

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the feasibility of using publicly-available information,... more The purpose of this chapter is to assess the feasibility of using publicly-available information, rather than inside or first-hand knowledge, for strategic organizational diagnosis and design. The chapter provides a detailed example of how business and popular press accounts on the leading U.S. biomedical firm, Medtronic, were identified, collected, analyzed, and transformed into inputs for the Organizational Consultant (OrgCon).

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2015

Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2014

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005

Journal of organization design, Jul 3, 2020

Academy of Management Journal, Sep 1, 1964

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Mar 5, 2004

International Journal of Social Science Studies, 2016

Studies in Media and Communication, Jul 20, 2021

Journal of Screenwriting, Jun 1, 2016

Journal of organization design, Aug 28, 2015

This paper also can be downloaded without charge from the

Series. International journal of tv serial narratives, 2019

Advances in Journalism and Communication, 2017

Business and Management Studies, 2017

Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Social Dynamics and Personal Attributes in Social Media, 2014

Information and Organization Design Series, 1998

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2015

Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2014

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005

Formal and informal organization structure have been described as “opposing poles of a duality”—o... more Formal and informal organization structure have been described as “opposing poles of a duality”—one which has yet to be fully resolved. The aim of this paper is to detail an approach to treating both structures in a comparable way, an approach that explicitly recognizes core and underlying commonalties. Two distinct analytical strategies are employed to this end. The first involves a detailed comparison and contrast of selected and relevant structural dimensions drawn from the two research streams. The second strategy involves the application of these dimensions to the study of network graphs of both the formal and informal structures of the same organization at the same point in time.

Journal of Organization Design, vol. 4, no. 2, Aug 2015

Much of the literature linking organizational design to performance falls into two broad streams.... more Much of the literature linking organizational design to performance falls into two broad streams. One conceptualizes structure bureaucratically, i.e. in terms of a hierarchical pattern of authority or reporting relationships, as well as the degree of standardization, formalization, specialization, etc. The impact of structure and other elements of design on performance is most typically contingent upon other factors such as strategy, task characteristics, and environmental conditions. The other stream conceives of structure more informally, i.e. as a network of interpersonal and intra-organizational relationships. Properties of informal structure are typically shown to have a more direct (less contingent) impact on organizational performance. Despite these rather pronounced differences, considerable overlap and complementarity exists between the two streams. Little of it has been systematically examined, however. In this paper I compare and contrast a pair of exemplars from each stream—the information-processing perspective and the social network perspective—with respect to their conceptualizations of organization design and its relationship to performance. The paper concludes with several specific recommendations for future research combining the two approaches.

This study uses previous theory developed in the IT implementation literature and the information... more This study uses previous theory developed in the IT implementation literature and the information processing view of the firm to empirically investigate the impact of IT investments and several contextual variables on the volatility of future earnings. We use InformationWeek 500 data on IT spending from 1992–1997 to find evidence that IT investments increase the volatility of future earnings but that this impact is highly contingent upon three firm level contextual factors—sales growth, unrelated diversification, and size. These factors can lead to conditions in which IT increases or reduces
earnings volatility. Taken together, these results may help explain what has recently been termed the“new productivity paradox,”i.e., the apparent under-investment in information technology despite evidence of highly positive returns for doing so, and suggests settings where managers may be under- or over-discounting returns on IT investments.

Chapter 11 of Burton & Obel (1998): Strategic Organizational Diagnosis & Design--Developing Theor... more Chapter 11 of Burton & Obel (1998): Strategic Organizational Diagnosis & Design--Developing Theory for Application

Abstract In the 5 years since its inception, some interpretations of the software program known a... more Abstract In the 5 years since its inception, some interpretations of the software program known as Napster have been inscribed into laws, business plans, and purchasing decisions while others have been pushed to the fringes. This article examines how and why certain assumptions about Napster have gained greater currency while others have not.

Abstract: This paper compares the mean and variance of cumulative abnormal returns following anno... more Abstract: This paper compares the mean and variance of cumulative abnormal returns following announcements of two types of information technology (IT) investments: those which entail the" exploitation" of firm's current capabilities vs. those which involve the exploration of new capabilities. The paper addresses two understudied questions in research on the contribution of IT to firm performance: the contingent nature of those contributions and the impact on risk (or variance), as well as on return (mean).

Abstract: This study presents the results of an empirical test of two hypotheses concerning the q... more Abstract: This study presents the results of an empirical test of two hypotheses concerning the quality of a group of data processing patents on methods of doing business. The hypotheses are motivated by two frequently voiced criticisms of these patents: that their scope is overly broad and that they cite too little" prior art"(the extant body of knowledge or the array of prior solutions to the problem which the patented invention purports to solve).

On the Feasibility of Improving Patent Quality One Technology at a Time: The Case of Business Met... more On the Feasibility of Improving Patent Quality One Technology at a Time: The Case of Business Methods By John R. Allison? and Starling D'. Hunter* Table of Contents i. introduction 730 ii. research methods and data 739 A. Our Data Set 739 B. Categorization of Patent and Nonpatent Prior Art References 741 III. ANALYTICAL METHODS 744 A. Control Variables 744 1. Examiner experience effects 744 2. Foreign Inventor Effects 745 B. Statistical Techniques 746 IV. RESULTS 748 A. Number of US, Foreign, and Total Nonpatent Prior Art References 748 B.

This paper employs social network analysis to explain variation in the pricing of 846 banner adve... more This paper employs social network analysis to explain variation in the pricing of 846 banner advertisements appearing in a community formed by eighty-nine “liberal” and eighty-four “conservative” Weblogs. As predicted, Weblogs that bridge “structural holes” between otherwise disconnected segments of the community command significantly higher prices for their advertisements.

Technology and Investment

This paper examines the impact of social capital on advertising performance in an online social n... more This paper examines the impact of social capital on advertising performance in an online social network. Specifically,
we show that a widely-employed measure of social capital—network constraint—explains variation in the number of
click-throughs received by 5986 banner advertisements appearing on 25 Twitter-related websites. As predicted, banner
advertisements receive significantly more clicks when placed on websites that bridge structural holes, i.e. bridge other-
wise disconnected segments of the network.

European Journal of Information Systems, 19 (6), 689-703, Jul 13, 2010

In the last few decades, several studies have found the same technology implemented in highly sim... more In the last few decades, several studies have found the same technology implemented in highly similar organizational settings to be associated with very different consequences for structure and process. The seminal study in this stream of research is Barley's (1986) Technology as an Occasion for Structuring, which reported that two similarly composed radiology departments implemented the same technology (computerized tomography scanners), yet experienced very different structural outcomes. In this paper I re-analyze the original study's data under three different statistical assumptions. First, I performed an arcsine transformation on the dependent variable where the original study used the raw probabilities. Second, I specified a power regression model in which the original study employed a linear regression. Finally, I user fewer dummy variables in the ‘combined’ regression models to determine the distinct phases through which the two hospitals evolved. Taken together, these assumptions produce very different results from the original study. Specifically they indicate that the radiology departments did not decentralize at different rates and did not do so over a different number of distinct phases. From my analysis come three specific recommendations for research investigating the consequences of information technology in similarly constituted organizations: (1) exchange the default assumption of homogeneity of outcomes with one of heterogeneity; (2) explicitly account for both the observable properties of technology and the context of its use; and (3) state clearly and a priori the standard used to classify structural and organizational outcomes as ‘different’.

A case study for organizational behavior based on the "Contemporary American Poultry" episode of ... more A case study for organizational behavior based on the "Contemporary American Poultry" episode of the first season of Community.

This document contains (a) a summary of the series (b) descriptions of the characters (c) an episode recap and (d) three discussion questions suitable for classroom use in undergraduate courses such as organizational behavior and principles of management.