Welcome to the Radboud Educational Repository
Here, Radboud University presents publications written by its students, including theses from its bachelor’s and master’s programmes, papers by students of the Radboud Honours Academy, and contributions to various Radboud journals.
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Item Setting Women Up for Success: How Career Patterns Influence Women CEOs’ Tenure(2025-07-17)Despite growing efforts towards gender equality, women remain significantly underrepresented in senior management positions, accounting for just 8.5% of CEOs in the European Union. This thesis investigates how organisational mobility influences the tenure of women CEOs, offering a gender-specific perspective on career success. Building on boundaryless career theory, two hypotheses are developed and tested using data from 295 women CEOs in publicly listed EU firms appointed between 2010 and 2020. The findings reveal a negative relationship between organisational mobility and CEO tenure. While mobility may be an important strategy for overcoming structural barriers and accessing leadership roles, it appears to undermine long-term success. Additionally, the percentage of women on the boards does not significantly influence this relationship. These results challenge assumptions about the benefits of boundaryless careers for women and point to the value of internal networks, firm-specific experience and supportive institutional environments. The study concludes with practical suggestions for leadership development and organisational support that help women not just reach but stay in CEO positions.Item Creativity and working from home: a necessary condition analysis(2025-07-08)Individual creativity of employees is a key driver of organizational innovation, competitive advantage, and long-term performance and survival. While numerous studies have examined various antecedents that enhance the individual creativity of employees, non have researched whether these antecedents are truly necessary for creativity to occur. This study applies Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) to investigate whether four commonly cited antecedents – openness to experience, job autonomy, open network and transformational leadership – function as non-compensable prerequisites for high levels of individual creativity. Additionally, this study takes the extent of remote work into account, as this might alter the necessity of the antecedents. An online survey was distributed among employees of a software company and the Public Prosecution Service, resulting in 56 respondents. The findings reveal that perceived job autonomy is the only necessary condition for the entire dataset; without a minimum degree of perceived job autonomy, high levels of individual creativity cannot be achieved. In contrast, other antecedents were not found to be necessary, except for perceived job autonomy when working 0-25% from home, and open network when working 50-75% from home. These results highlight the context-dependent nature of necessity and identify fundamental bottlenecks of individual creativity. Methodologically, this study demonstrates the added value of NCA as an analytical approach, enabling researchers to distinguish between merely supportive and necessary factorsItem Spatial System Dynamics: Building an Operational Crowd Management Model(2025-07-17)Crowd events present unique and dynamic management challenges that demand real-time and operational support tools. This research investigates the feasibility of using spatial system dynamics (SD) to build an operational and real-time model for crowd management. A spatial SD model was developed and tested for the Vierdaagsefeesten (4DF) in the Netherlands by translating crowd management theory to SD and adding an element of spatial complexity. The model simulated key behaviour both at the macroscopic level of an event, and within parts of the event. Performance testing with the model explored trade-offs between spatial, temporal, and operational complexity. Although the model itself remains a proof of concept, the work stands as a practical guide for building integrative, operational, and real-time models using spatial SD.Item Financial Flexibility at Work: The Impact of Earned Wage Access on Job Satisfaction and Trust via Financial Well-Being(2026-01-12)Financial stress remains a concern for a substantial share of Dutch employees, prompting organizations to explore HR practices that support workers’ financial well-being (FWB). Earned Wage Access (EWA) allows employees to access part of their earned wages before payday and has been linked to reduced financial pressure and improved work outcomes in U.S. studies. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Perceived Organizational Support (POS), this study examines how EWA relates to employees’ FWB, job satisfaction (JS), and trust in their employer (TR) in the Netherlands, and whether FWB mediates these relationships. A cross-sectional survey of 115 users of the CashOut application showed that EWA is positively associated with JS and TR, and that FWB is positively related to both outcomes. However, EWA does not significantly predict FWB, and no mediation effects were found. Overall, the findings indicate that EWA functions more as a relational signal of employer support than as a financial tool. This perspective can help organizations position EWA within supportive HR strategies and provides a foundation for future research in European labor markets.Item Learning from the Past: How Prior Merger Experiences Shape Cultural Integration in Subsequent M&As(2026-02-02)This study investigates how prior merger and acquisition (M&A) experiences shape cultural integration in subsequent transactions. While cultural misalignment is a primary cause of M&A failure, existing literature often overlooks how firms learn from these challenges across sequential events. Utilising a qualitative single-case study of a Dutch personal injury law firm, this thesis explores two sequential events: an initial turbulent merger in 2016 (M&A 1) and a management buy-out combined with an acquisition in 2025 (M&A 2). The study employs the Dynamic Capabilities Framework (Sensing, Seizing, Transforming) to analyse the organisational learning process. Findings reveal that the firm developed a Cultural Integration Dynamic Capability by engaging in double-loop learning, critically reflecting on past failures. Key results show that the organisation shifted from a rigid, coercive assimilation approach to a proactive strategy focused on operational autonomy (carving out HR and IT), employee-centric communication, and strategic non-harmonisation of employment terms. The research concludes that hard-won tacit knowledge from past failures can be transformed into institutionalised routines.
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