Date of Conferral
2022
Degree
Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)
School
Business Administration
Advisor
Marilyn Simon
Abstract
The difficulty that leaders in the wine industry have in rapidly responding to cyber threats to secure sensitive information and intellectual property while undertaking a merger can have a direct economic cost and disrupt the merger. Grounded in Habermas’s systems theory, the purpose of this single case study was to examine strategies used to mitigate the risk from cyberattacks during a merger. The participants were five business leaders in a wine company in Northern California. Data were collected using semistructured interviews, company documentation, and publicly available documents. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: protection of data integrity, formal and informal communication/feedback methods, training, and establishing cybersecurity frameworks to increase security. A key recommendation is for business leaders to fully understand where data reside and who is managing data to ensure that cybersecurity control measures are working. Implications for positive social change include the potential for business leaders to build prevention strategies that can lower the risk of a data breach during a merger to provide better safeguards to protect the privacy of customers’ information and preserve companies’ sensitive information and intellectual property. These change initiatives can positively impact customer satisfaction and help promote job growth within the community.
Recommended Citation
Durham, Denise, "Leadership Strategies to Reduce Cyberattacks During a Merger" (2022). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 13321.
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/13321
