Digital Commons Network^™

Three Essays On Market Dynamics: Counterfeits, Tipping Policies, And Probabilistic Promotions, Yongqin Lei

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I study the complexities of market dynamics through the lens of investigating counterfeit goods, online platforms' tipping policies, and probabilistic price promotions. This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the strategic interactions between companies and consumers, aiming to offer insights into solutions companies can make to both better protect consumers' rights and enhance their profits. In the first essay, I investigate the issue of counterfeits in online marketplaces, focusing on credence goods such as nutritional supplements whose quality is hard to ascertain. I analyze a two-stage competition between genuine sellers and counterfeiters. I show that counterfeiters may utilize fake …

Examining Corporate Litigation: Market Reactions, Resource Allocation, And Trial Outcomes, Nicole E. Makris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation aims to provide a preliminary examination of corporate litigation using a unique hand-collected sample of 262 corporate lawsuits involving 72 publicly-traded organizations listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The first set of studies explores how the market reacts when organizations go to court to resolve a lawsuit. Unlike previous U.S.-focused studies, no significant relation between abnormal market returns, the trial, and the subsequent court decision was found. These results suggest that the Canadian stock market, on average, does not perceive litigation as a significant event.

The second set of studies explores how financial resources, in-house litigation ability and …

Building A Platform For Advancing Women's Engagement In Sport, Swarali H. Patil

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Women are active participants in sport, as administrative leaders, coaches, and elite athletes, and it is important to understand and continue to advance their engagement and experiences in that realm. Women have made gains in leadership but their actual progress towards such roles continues to be slow-paced (Burton & Leberman, 2017), indicating that additional action is still needed. Further, women’s experiences in sport roles are critical to their performance in, and for the organization, and to their personal job satisfaction (Kanter, 1977, 1993). Yet, they may face several challenges in their work, that may reduce their autonomy in relation to …

Portfolio Optimization Analysis In The Family Of 4/2 Stochastic Volatility Models, Yuyang Cheng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over the last two decades, trading of financial derivatives has increased significantly along with richer and more complex behaviour/traits on the underlying assets. The need for more advanced models to capture traits and behaviour of risky assets is crucial. In this spirit, the state-of-the-art 4/2 stochastic volatility model was recently proposed by Grasselli in 2017 and has gained great attention ever since. The 4/2 model is a superposition of a Heston (1/2) component and a 3/2 component, which is shown to be able to eliminate the limitations of these two individual models, bringing the best out of each other. Based …

Three Essays On Irregular Entries To The End-Customer Market, Hamid Elahi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I study irregular entries to the end-customer market and the impact of such entries on suppliers, buyers, and customers. I am particularly interested in the irregularities of supplier encroachment and counterfeiting problems. This dissertation addresses these issues and proposes solutions in the form of three essays. In the first essay, I study a supply chain, consisting of a supplier and a buyer where the supplier can encroach on the end-customer market and keeps private information on its own production capacity. The supplier can decide on its capacity allocation and the buyer can order strategically, hoarding the supply capacity, to remove …

Essays On Market Design And Auctions, Mingshi Kang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis consists of three chapters that contribute to redistribution-driven market design and sponsored link auctions.

Chapter 2 and 3 (co-authored with Charles Zheng) study redistribution-driven market design with endogenous buyers and sellers. In Chapter 2, we consider a large market environment with each individual endowed with equal shares of a limited resources and allowed to buy or sell the shares. We characterize the interim (incentive-constrained) Pareto frontier subject to market clearance and budget balance, and find that at most two prices are needed to attain any (interim) Pareto optimum. Under robust conditions of the primitives, the Pareto optimal allocation …

Gendered Language And Entrepreneurial Joiners, Mihwa Seong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the impact of gendered language in start-up job advertisements on the perceived attractiveness of start-ups among individuals (‘joiners’) interested in working for new firms. While entrepreneurship research has established the prominent role of entrepreneurial joiners in start-ups and the importance of building a gender-diverse team, we know relatively less about how start-ups can attract more women joiners. This dissertation seeks to investigate whether women’s ratings of the attractiveness of joining start-ups increases significantly when start-ups use more feminine language in place of male-centric gendered language. Compared to men, I theorize that women are more sensitive to the …

Statistical Applications To The Management Of Intensive Care And Step-Down Units, Yawo Mamoua Kobara

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis proposes three contributing manuscripts related to patient flow management, server decision-making, and ventilation time in the intensive care and step-down units system.

First, a Markov decision process (MDP) model with a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to compare two patient flow policies: prioritizing premature step-down and prioritizing rejection of patients when the intensive care unit is congested. The optimal decisions were obtained under the two strategies. The simulation results based on these optimal decisions show that a premature step-down strategy contributes to higher congestion downstream. Counter-intuitively, premature step-down should be discouraged, and patient rejection or divergence actions should …

Application Of A Polynomial Affine Method In Dynamic Portfolio Choice, Yichen Zhu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis develops numerical approaches to attain optimal multi-period portfolio strategies in the context of advanced stochastic models within expected utility and mean-variance theories. Unlike common buy-and-hold portfolio strategies, dynamic asset allocation reflects the investment philosophy of a portfolio manager that benefits from the most recent market conditions to rebalance the portfolio accordingly. This enables managers to capture fleeting opportunities in the markets thereby enhancing the portfolio performance. However, the solvability of the dynamic asset allocation problem is often non-analytical, especially when considering a high-dimensional portfolio with advanced models mimicking practical asset's return. To overcome this issue, this thesis presents …

A Descriptive Analysis Of Sport Nationalism, Digital Media, And Fandom To Launch The Canadian Premier League, Farzan Mirzazadeh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In April 2019, the Canadian Premier League (CPL), a professional domestic soccer league, launched in Canada, making it the first top-tier league in North America to begin operations in the modern digital era. The CPL represents a unique and timely opportunity to examine how a new professional sports league cultivates ties with fan-consumers via sport nationalism, digital media, and fandom. As yet, there are very few academic works on the CPL, and there is also a paucity of scholarly publications on the launch of new professional sports leagues in the 21st century. For this study, two types of qualitative data …

Perspectives On Firm Strategies In The Non-Market Environment, Vittal Kartik Rao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The non-market environment, which includes “the rules of the game” that govern economic interactions in the market, plays a central role in the ability of firms to create economic value and to sustain competitive advantage. This dissertation focuses on firms’ interactions with different elements of the non-market environment and is comprised of three essays.

Essay 1 examines the conditions under which firms reach agreements with environmental activists in regulatory agency proceedings to mutually settle disputes. The chapter argues that actions of firms will be dictated by the features of the regulatory decision-making process and the heterogeneity in the attributes of …

Three Essays On Corporate Sustainability Language, Nahyun Kim

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation explores how public firms employ language in their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports to lengthen the horizons of their strategic decisions. The three essays included in my dissertation introduce and investigate the pursuit of temporal equilibrium in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis. Specifically, I compare the emphasis placed on the short versus long- future in the annual sustainability reports of public firms and derive three explanations for the increased emphasis of long-termism.

In Essay 1 (Chapter 2), I describe how firms seek and find temporal equilibrium after the Financial Crisis. Using topic modeling, I linguistically and …

Application Of Stochastic Control To Portfolio Optimization And Energy Finance, Junhe Chen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, we study two continuous-time optimal control problems. The first describes competition in the energy market and the second aims at robust portfolio decisions for commodity markets. Both problems are approached via solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) and HJB-Isaacs (HJBI) equations.

In the energy market problem, our target is to maximize profits from trading crude oil by determining optimal crude oil production. We determine the optimal crude oil production rate by constructing a differential game between two types of players: a single finite-reserve producer and multiple infinite-reserve producers. We extend the deterministic unbounded-production model and stochastic monopolistic game to …

Individual Differences And Social-Comparative Feedback, Kabir N. Daljeet

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of the overall program of research was to investigate whether there are individual differences that facilitate the acceptance of, or preferences for, social-comparative performance feedback. In doing so, we aimed to establish how individual differences could be leveraged to mitigate the negative reactions that some individuals experience in response to social-comparative feedback (Feeney, Goffin, & Schneider, 2016; Roch et al., 2007). Likewise, we sought to determine whether individual differences were associated with a preference for social-comparative feedback. The results of the first study (N = 255) advanced a novel experimental design and found that, with limited exception, …

Lean Supply Management In The Canadian Agri-Food Sector, Fernando Naranjo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines a novel conceptualization and operationalization of the lean supply management (LSM) construct and investigates its practical relevance for the Canadian agri-food sector. The thesis consists of three integrated essays, intended to advance the LSM scholarly theorization and managerial understanding. The first essay offers a systematic literature review to gain a better comprehension of the current state of research on LSM regarding its definition, practices, and frameworks, as well as context and contingencies related to its implementation. The second essay offers a conceptual development of the LSM construct presenting a new definition and a new contextual contingent model …

Portfolio Entrepreneurs In China: A Mixed Methods Study, Tianjiao Xu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Entrepreneurs who found and manage at least two businesses simultaneously are portfolio entrepreneurs. Portfolio entrepreneurs have been shown to run fast-growing businesses and contribute significantly to wealth creation. Extant literature has examined how portfolio entrepreneurs differ from entrepreneurs who only run one business at a time and found differences in their demographic backgrounds, human capital, cognition, and other dimensions. However, extant research has treated portfolio entrepreneurs as one homogeneous group, when in reality, there is considerable heterogeneity within this group of entrepreneurs. In this dissertation, I aim to discuss one important distinguishing factor among portfolio entrepreneurs, namely the existence of …

Organizing And Sustainable Development Between The Local And Global: The Case Of A Tibetan Enterprise, Haitao Yu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I investigate how place and space guide organizations towards sustainable development. The current paradigm for business organizing seeks economic efficiency, whereas a sustainable development paradigm requires businesses to accommodate the ecological, social, and economic principles between the local and global. Yet, as organizations are increasingly globalizing and virtualizing, they are becoming increasingly placeless. The loss of local connection to place is one of the primary reasons sustainable development is so elusive.

I am motivated to understand better organizations' role between the local and global on sustainable development. To answer the question, I collected qualitative data through conducting …

General Manager Succession In Multinational Enterprise Subsidiaries, Liang (Arthur) Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation, based on interviews with over 40 managers and longitudinal data from over 1,900 foreign subsidiaries, develops new insights regarding subsidiary general manager (GM) changes in multinational enterprises (MNEs).

Essay 1 addresses whether GM successions accelerate or decelerate the momentum for further GM change, and improve or disrupt subsidiary performance. I show that MNE managers learn from prior GM change in order to appoint a right candidate, thus improving subsidiary performance and decelerating the momentum for further succession. But the reduced marginal costs of making succession decisions increasingly render GM change more likely. The accumulated shocks ultimately translate into …

Essays On Entrepreneurial Joiners And How To Recruit Them, Seung Hoon Chung

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recruiting talent is arguably one of the most significant challenges facing entrepreneurs today. The ability to find and acquire high quality human resources is particularly critical for a start-up’s ability to survive and grow. However, start-ups are often disadvantaged in the labor market because they lack financial capital, reputation, and stability. While practitioners have repeatedly claimed that recruitment is one of the biggest challenges they face, little research has explored the question of how start-ups can better recruit employees. To understand how start-ups can better recruit employees, it is important to approach the question from both the employers’ and …

Refining Adaptation And Its Onset: Signals Of Financial Innovation That Trigger Strategic Attention In Financial Services, Andrew Sarta

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Organizational adaptation is one of the most important concepts in strategic management. Historical conceptions suggest that without it, organizations are likely to succumb to inertia in dynamic environments and with it, organizations are likely to thrive. Despite its rich scholarly history, organizational adaptation continues to lack clarity and is often conflated with market entry, performance, or survival. More importantly, managers do not have a meaningful way to determine whether their organization is well-adapted or maladapted. Knowing when organizations begin to adapt to their changing environments subsequently becomes a difficult question to answer. In this thesis, I develop much-needed clarity to …

Entrepreneurial Action By Métis And First Nations Entrepreneurs In Saskatchewan: Similarities And Differences With Established Notions Of Entrepreneurial Action, Ketan Goswami

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Entrepreneurial actions, i.e., activities like hiring, marketing, financing, hustling (even bribing!), etc., requisite for building small businesses are less studied than antecedent opportunity recognition processes. The two most common form of contexts in which entrepreneurial actions are studied are opportunity-driven (Silicon-Valley type) and necessity-driven (poverty contexts). While there is a fair amount of research on community-based and band-driven Indigenous entrepreneurship, less is known about entrepreneurial actions by individual self-employed Métis and First Nations entrepreneurs in Canada/ Turtle Island. Métis and First Nations entrepreneurs face a differential set of obstacles in their pursuit for economic self-determination compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. …

Ideas Worth Spreading? Adverse Effects Of Information Load In Online Communications, Amir Sepehri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What makes public addresses such as online talks successful vs. not? Across seven field and lab studies, I find that information overload hurts consumer adoption. The cause? Processing disfluency. Information overload makes a message more difficult to process, which in turn reduces liking and interest. The effect disappears among audience members with greater need for cognition, a personality trait marking a penchant for deep and broad information-processing. My empirical investigation concludes by documenting the counter-intuitiveness of the findings (i.e., how consumers mispredict which talks they actually (dis)like). From these results, I derive insights for (i) the psychology of adoption, and …

Reflections On Return To Sport, Rhys A. Desmond

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented community sport organizations with many complex challenges, but also unique opportunities to reflect and rethink their practices (Fullagar, 2020). This study presents an autoethnography of my experiences working as a Technical Leader for a community sport organization (CSO) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The research questions were: 1) What were the features of organizational capacity that were most important to the CSO’s effectiveness, survival and resilience during the pandemic? and 2) What were the capacity features that were most impactful to my own ability to carry out my role effectively within the club? Through the autoethnographic …

Essays On Information Asymmetry And Leakage, Jun Hyun (Joseph) Ryoo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Since the underlying qualities of products and firms are not readily apparent, information asymmetry exists at the heart of marketing. This dissertation investigates information asymmetry that is present specifically between: (1) firms and consumers, and (2) firms and investors. I advance our knowledge of how information asymmetry can be reduced in beneficial ways for the firm either by voluntary or involuntary means. This dissertation consists of two essays. In Essay 1, I examine involuntary information leakage in the movie industry. I find that spoilers, which prematurely resolve plot uncertainty for those who have yet to see the movie, can increase …

Organizing For- And In- The Digital Age: A Case Of The Indian Banking Industry, Mayur Prataprai Joshi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

For striving and thriving in the digital age, while firms are rushing to digitally transform their organizing practices as well as offerings, scholars are tasked with revisiting the assumptions of extant theories to unpack the phenomenon of organizing for- and in- the digital age. This thesis focuses on distinct facets of this phenomenon. In particular, I examine the firm strategies and work practices of practitioners in Indian banking and financial organizations (Essays 1, 2), as well as the work practices of academic researchers (Essay 3), as they engage with digital technologies.

The first essay elaborates on and tests the theory …

Community Of Entrepreneurs In Coworking Space, Nam Kyoon Kim

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation studies the novel phenomenon related to the social context of entrepreneurship—coworking space. Coworking spaces are known for creating a social community of entrepreneurial workforce—entrepreneurs, freelancers, contractors, remote workers, and others. The three essays that form this dissertation collectively highlight the entrepreneurial community in coworking spaces by proposing a novel typology of coworking space based on community, discovering the community building process, and analyzing user reviews of coworking spaces.

The first essay contributes to the literature on coworking space by creating novel ideal types of coworking spaces. Based on interviews conducted and archival data from 16 coworking spaces, this …

Optimal Policies On Managing Drug Supply And Patient Access To Drugs, Hongmei Sun

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Health care decision-makers face several uncertainties regarding pharmaceutical products. For new and expensive drugs, the performance outside of clinical trials could be uncertain. For old and low-profit pharmaceutical products, the supply could be uncertain, causing drug shortages. In three essays, I study mitigating strategies to deal with different types of uncertainties associated with pharmaceutical products.

In the first essay, I compare two types of pharmaceutical reimbursement contracts to mitigate the uncertainties associated with new and expensive drugs. I construct a game-theoretic model to analyze the interactions between a pharmaceutical manufacturer and a payer. The payer’s reimbursement of a drug is …

Is Responsible Leadership Possible? Exploring The Experiences Of Business Leaders, Educators, And Scholars, Kanina Blanchard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study addresses a simple yet complex question: How can leaders come to make more responsible decisions within today’s highly economized context? Using narrative inquiry, I explore the stories which leaders in academia, business, and education tell about their experiences at what I call the point of impingement—the point where, as leaders, they must make decisions while facing conflicting and opposing norms and values. Underpinning the inquiry is Kempster and Carroll’s (2016) conceptualization of responsibility in leadership, and their argument that transformation toward a future in which responsible leaders address societal, ecological, and humanitarian challenges requires exploration of lived experience. …

Barriers To Senior Leadership Positions For Women In Sport Management: Perceptions Of Undergraduate Students And Insights From Their Professors, Erika L. Gray

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A number of researchers have investigated the barriers that women often face in attempting to reach the senior leadership levels in sport management organizations (Acosta & Carpenter, 2014; Burton, Grappendorf & Henderson, 2011; Forsyth, Jones, Duval, & Bambridge, 2019; Kane & LaVoi, 2018; LaVoi & Dutove, 2012). This research extended the work of Hancock, Darvin, and Walker (2018) and focused on aspiring sport leaders at a different stage in their careers, specifically when they were in the senior years of their undergraduate programs. The researcher used the Career Pathways Survey instrument (P. Smith, Crittenden, & Caputi, 2012) to produce interval …

A Study Of Job Satisfaction And Turnover Intention Among Acute Care Nurses Working In Rural And Urban Settings, Yasin Yasin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In Canada, a close look at the nursing workforce shows a decline due to limited supply and increasing demand resulting in a looming shortage in the near future. Retaining nurses’ is a key strategy to overcome the shortage by limiting nurses’ turnover. Nurses’ job dissatisfaction is the most significant predictor of turnover intention and is associated with undesired outcomes such as nurses’ absenteeism, burnout, low service quality, and patient dissatisfaction. The differences in factors affecting job satisfaction between rural and urban nurses have not been fully studied. This study aimed to identify the differences and similarities in the extrinsic and …