Digital Commons Network^™

Influence Of Alumni Affinity Groups On Alumni Engagement And Alumni Giving, Gary R. Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A student’s college experience lasts only a finite amount of time, but their role as alumni lasts for a lifetime. Alumni play an important role in higher education. The future financial success of a college or university is largely based on involvement and financial support by the school’s alumni. The purpose of this research was to learn about the role alumni affinity groups play in engaging alumni with the school and if they have the ability to impact alumni giving.

The dissertation data was collected using a qualitative methods research approach. Alumni data was gathered from two public universities from …

Closing America’S Retirement Savings Gap: Nudging Small Business Owners To Adopt Workplace Retirement Plans, Peter W. Kirtland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Small businesses, with 50 or fewer employees, rarely offer workplace retirement plans. The lack of effective retirement plan options leads to employee stress, financial strain, and social instabilities. The purpose of this research is to study why small business owners make poor decisions about workplace retirement plans. The study evaluates the information supply chain and determines that financial advisors are a critical information delivery mechanism. However, they do not take the time to discuss the various retirement plan options available with the small business owners which leads to lack of plan adoption.

Elaborated Action Design Research (eADR) research methods are …

Introducing A Mobile Health Care Platform In An Underserved Rural Population: Reducing Assimilations Gaps On Adoption And Use Via Nudges, Joseph Hodges

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rural communities are often overlooked when it comes to offering cutting edge consumer healthcare technologies. Mobile applications usually exclude populations in rural demographics due to the infrastructure requirements and available technology in the region. The population studied is a low income rural health plan in southwest Georgia. They are uniquely considered as they have the highest healthcare costs in the U.S. and are compared to healthcare costs among higher income populations like Vail, Colorado. Innovations, such as mobile healthcare applications, have the capacity to offset some of these costs, but even if adoption occurs, this does not guarantee use will …

Disciplinary D/Discourses: Navigating And Negotiating Disciplinary Paradigms, Michael R. P. Bailey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past twenty-five years, in the United States, zero-tolerance policies that were initially implemented to deter gun violence and drugs in schools have expanded to include a wide range of discretionary offenses such as disrespect and defiance. As a result, many students have been denied access to educational opportunities, been excluded from their peers, and had their lives irrevocably changed due to systemic sanctioning of exclusionary practices. Educators, who are caught between competing societal demands, job expectations, and ethical beliefs about their profession are tasked with balancing the instructional and interactional components of their work in an attempt to …

Understanding Employee Engagement: An Examination Of Millennial Employees And Perceived Human Resource Management Practices, Danielle J. Clark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Actively disengaged employees cost the United States an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity per year. When employees are engaged, organizations experience less turnover, fewer safety incidents, and increased profitability. An important employee segment is Millennials, who are predicted to comprise as much as 75% of the workforce by 2025.

This three-article dissertation examines employee engagement, focusing on how Millennials experience employee engagement and the impact of perceived human resource management (HRM) practices on employee engagement. The first article is a generational workplace engagement paper focused on Millennials. It introduces a variety of academic and practitioner information …

Playing Darts In The Dark: How Are Chamber Of Commerce Leaders Aligned For Greater Effectiveness?, Robert J. Rohrlack Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper researched what the United States chamber of commerce paid Executives and the volunteer Chairpersons identified as the factors influencing their chamber for effectiveness. There has been little research on chambers of commerce in the U.S. This study adds to the small amount of research available, working to establish baseline information for research to continue this ubiquitous industry. We conducted 24 interviews, 12 paid Executives, and 12 volunteer Chairpersons at chambers of commerce in 11 states. They were asked to identify factors that make their chamber more effective or inhibit their chamber from being effective. The interviews were coded, …

The Potential Impact Radius Of A Natural Gas Transmission Line And Real Estate Valuations: A Behavioral Analysis, Charles M. Hilterbrand Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study intended to address the question, “How would a purchase price be impacted if a seller provided buyers a notice that the residential property that has been listed for sale is located within a Potential Impact Radius (PIR) of a natural gas transmission line?” Does the notice of the location affect the purchase value a buyer is willing to offer for a residential property? Does the perceived risk associated with PIR affect the amount a potential buyer would offer?

To address these questions, a Qualtrics survey that included three video tour treatments of a residential property was sent to …

Detecting Digitally Forged Faces In Online Videos, Neilesh Sambhu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We use Rossler’s FaceForensics dataset of 1004 online videos and their corresponding forged counterparts [1] to investigate the ability to distinguish digitally forged facial images from original images automatically with deep learning. The proposed convolutional neural network is much smaller than the current state-of-the-art solutions. Nevertheless, the network maintains a high level of accuracy (99.6%), all while using the entire FaceForensics dataset and not including any temporal information. We implement majority voting and show the impact on accuracy (99.67%), where only 1 video of 300 is misclassified. We examine why the model misclassified this one video. In terms of tuning …

Prioritizing Strategic Cyberspace Lethality, Andrew J. Schoka

Military Cyber Affairs

The primary concern of United States national security policy, as detailed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, has shifted from asymmetrical counter-insurgency operations to countering inter-state strategic competition by rogue regimes and revisionist powers. This doctrinal shift has prompted an increased emphasis on military lethality, particularly in strategic-level cyberspace operations intended to counter open challenges to the global security environment and United States preeminence. Drawing from the theory of constraints in industrial engineering and Bayesian search theory in operations research, this paper identifies the key organizational constraints that hinder the lethality of the Department of Defense’s strategic-level cyberspace operations units …

Controlling Turnover In An Inside Sales Organization: What Are The Contributing Factors, Dennis H. Kimerer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The turnover rate for inside sales team, particularly in Central Florida, is exceedingly high. I have experienced this negative scenario managing inside sales teams for two major Telecom companies over the past 11 years, having as many as 40% of the salesforce resign within 30 days. Organizational costs to hire a new salesperson can be as high as 300% of the replaced employee’s salary and take as long as eight months to reach full productivity. The purpose of this research is to determine the internal and external factors that impact a salesperson’s propensity to leave a company. This qualitative research …

Phenomenological Study Of Toxic Leadership In The U.S. Military, Anthony L. Hinen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current literature shows toxic leadership is surprisingly more prevalent than previously believed. This subset of organizational leadership studies revolves around leadership styles that poison the employee, the organization, or both. This study captures a common phenomenon for toxic leadership (symptoms) useful for diagnosing or addressing toxic leadership in organizations. My goal is to better understand toxic leadership to inform potential mitigation techniques that are applicable to business and military environments. My research suggests toxic leadership exists because senior leaders, those leaders above the toxic leader, allow it to exist, either unwittingly or knowingly. Furthermore, leaders can create toxic environments …

The Complexity Of Governance And Internal Audit Independence, Lily Bi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Independence is a critical foundation of all internal audit functions and internal audit services. The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) sets The International Standards for Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, which requires that internal audit functions maintain independence, and chief audit executives functionally report to the “board.” The term “board” is interpreted differently in different countries due to the country’s governance models. The diverse corporate governance models create different board structures and the CAE’s reporting relationship with the board. Additionally, the lack of regulatory mandate about internal audit created a reality that internal audit functions are positioned differently depending on …

The Financial And Nonfinancial Performance Measures That Drive Utility Abandonments And Transfers In The State Of Florida, Daniel Acheampong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The down trending of investor-owned water and wastewater utilities and the continuous increase in utility abandonments and transfers within the regulatory environment motivated the study of investor-owned utilities, using samples from the state of Florida. The study determined the financial and nonfinancial drivers of utility andandonments and transfers. Using the NRRI and Acheampong et al. improved financial ratios, used in utility viability studies (liquidity ratio, leverage ratio, debt to equity ratio, profit trend ratio, growth and efficiency ratio, efficiency ratio, and the profitability ratio), the study identified sixteen nonfinancial performance measures under four categories (output measure, quality measures, owners’ equity …

Exploring The Disconnects Between Cpa Firms And Millennials As It Relates To Tax Preparation, Dustin Micah Grant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Small Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firms are facing a demographic market shift as baby boomers leave the workforce and are replaced by millennials. Today, small CPA firms rely on tax services from baby boomers and older clients for the majority of revenue, but millennials now represent the largest percentage of the workforce. This growing disconnect suggests a potential issue for small CPA firms. The following research explores the issues and opinions of millennial-aged tax filers and partners in small CPA firms on compiling and filing individual federal income tax returns in the United States.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with both …

Proceedings Of The Global Conference On Business And Economics: Volume 2, Cihan Cobanoglu, Muhittin Cavusoglu, Abdulkadir Corbaci

University of South Florida (USF) - M3 Publishing

This is the second volume of the Global Conference on Business and Economics Proceedings Series.

ISSN: 2641-502X

Advances In Global Business And Economics: Volume 2, Cihan Cobanoglu, Muhittin Cavusoglu, Abdulkadir Corbaci

University of South Florida (USF) - M3 Publishing

This is the second volume of the Advances in Global Business and Economics Book Series. This volume has the following parts:

• Part 1: Accounting
• Part 2: Consumer Behavior
• Part 3: Corporate Finance & Governance
• Part 4: Economics
• Part 5: Education & Training
• Part 6: Environmental Issues/Sustainability & Green Tourism
• Part 7: Finance & Banking
• Part 8: Food and Beverage Management
• Part 9: Hospitality & Tourism/Smart Tourism
• Part 10: Human Resource Management
• Part 11: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
• Part 12: International Trade
• Part 13: Leisure Management
• Part 14: Management
• Part 15: Social Science Studies
• Part 16: Technology/E-Business/Social Media

ISBN: 978-1-7321275-5-5

From C++ To Conscientiousness: Modeling The Psychosocial Characteristics Influencing Cybersecurity Personnel Performance, Rachel C. Dreibelbis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current study drew upon several theoretical frameworks of cybersecurity performance to evaluate distal and proximal individual attributes that may predict cyber performance in a variety of cybersecurity work roles. The proposed models in this study predicted that cognitive ability, personality (conscientiousness and openness to experience), and motivational factors like learning orientation would work through proximal attributes like technical knowledge, communication, and problem solving to influence performance. Hypotheses were tested using 139 employee responses to predictor variables and performance ratings from their supervisors across two industries and several cybersecurity work roles. Correlational analyses and path models supported that several individual …

What Fortune 500 Companies Want: Recruiting In China, Eugene P. Kim, Katherine Bruehler

Journal of Global Business Insights

The growth of Fortune 500 companies in China has its complementary challenge in managing human resources. In this study, we describe the skill sets, language fluency, educational credentials, job experience, and other key job qualifications that are solicited on Fortune 500 Companies’ LinkedIn advertisements in China. The characteristics that were most represented in the job advertisements in our sample of 111 US Fortune 500 companies in China were from companies ranked 201-500 (39.6%), in secondary sectors (57.7%), in Tier 1 cities (91.9%) offering lower management positions (47.8%) requiring a bachelor’s degree (55.9%) and English fluency (55.0%) with 6-10 years of …

Tourism Taxes In Italy: A Sustainable Perspective, Lucia Rotaris, Marta Carrozzo

Journal of Global Business Insights

In Italy, a tourism tax was introduced in 2011, since then it has been adopted in most of the Italian provincial capitals and tourist cities. This tax can mitigate the negative externalities caused by tourists; however, it should be carefully planned both in terms of the amount of money to be levied and in terms of the uses to be financed with the tax revenues, it could, otherwise, negatively impact the tourism sector, decreasing—rather than increasing— the social welfare. The aim of this paper is to assess the acceptability of such a tax and to examine how the tax should …

The Impact Of Burnout On Organizational Commitment: A Study Of Public Sector Employees In Turkey, Mehmet Sarisik, Erhan Bogan, Burhanettin Zengin, Bekir Bora Dedeoglu

Journal of Global Business Insights

This study investigates the relationship between burnout and organizational commitment. It tests the relationship using a sample of 700 public officers in Istanbul by using structural equation modeling. The model tested via partial least squares method via SmartPls software. Results have shown that employees’ burnout are negatively related to organizational commitment. Specifically, while emotional exhaustion is negatively related to commitment, personal accomplishment contributes positively to commitment. The experience of depersonalization has no significant relationship with all three dimensions of commitment. Findings discussed and some practical implications offered to practitioners as well as some future directions to researchers.

Case Study: Tourism In Traditional Brazilian Quilombo Communities – From Theory Into Practice, Carolin Lusby, Thais Pinheiro

Journal of Global Business Insights

This case study discusses an initiative to aid a traditional Quilombo community in the State of Rio de Janeiro through community-based tourism (CBT). Through the Young Leaders of Americas program, a US Department of State funded initiative, the authors worked together in Brazil and the United States to increase visibility, linkages and awareness of this CBT project. The paper highlights how research in the field influenced what specific steps would be taken in practice to increase the benefits of tourism for the community. CBT as a concept is briefly discussed, and a background of Quilombos in Brazil is given.

Partner Rotation Or Extended Rotations? The Effect Of Confirmation Bias And Motivated Reasoning Bias On Objectivity And Independence: A Framework, Lei Dong, Robert Sarikas, Arsen Djatej

Journal of Global Business Insights

We propose a two-dimensional audit rotation framework on auditors’ rotation that contributes to the discussion on the potential impact of alternatives to strengthen and maintain unbiased attitude, objectivity, and independence. According to the conceptual outlines of this framework, auditors’ objectivity and independence might be enhanced by dealing with confirmation bias and motivated reasoning bias. In this study, we outline and propose potential academic inquiries that could be addressed and tested under this framework. We draw upon research on accounting, auditing, psychology, and economics to discuss the potential consequences of different audit rotation alternates on auditors’ objectivity and independency. A …

Youtube Advertising Value And Its Effects On Purchase Intention, Duygu Firat

Journal of Global Business Insights

This study investigated the factors that affect the YouTube advertising value and its effect on purchasing intention. The data were gathered through a 52-item questionnaire administered to YouTube users (n = 420). Multiple regression analysis determined the effect of the factors on YouTube advertising value, and simple regression analysis determined the effect of its value on purchasing intention and ANOVA test was run to determine the differences of demographic groups via YouTube ads value. The findings indicated that informativeness and entertainment and trendiness had a positive effect on YouTube advertising value; however, irritation had a negative effect. In addition, …

Dorsey Multi-Function Process Map™ An Informing Tool To Transition Small Business To Evidence-Based Decision-Making, Carla Dorsey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In small businesses, underperformance and lack of growth can be the results of poor decision-making based on gut-feel rather than data or evidence. The result is often ad-hoc business processes that do not evolve into efficient organizational routines. Evidence (data)- based decision making (EDM) has proved effective for large firms. This study tests the use of EDM in small businesses by applying an organizational mapping tool called the Dorsey Multi- Function Process Map™ (DMPM), a descriptive visual analytic, as a way to help small businesses transition from gut-feel to data-based decisions.

We tested the DMPM on seven diverse small businesses …

Graphicacy For Numeracy: Review Of Fundamentals Of Data Visualization: A Primer On Making Informative And Compelling Figures By Claus O. Wilke (2019), Christy M. Bebeau

Numeracy

Wilke, Claus O. 2019. Fundamentals of Data Visualization: A Primer on Making Informative and Compelling Figures. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.). 390 pp. ISBN 978-1-492-03108-6. First edition. First release: 03-15-2019.

Claus O. Wilke has authored an excellent reference about producing and understanding static figures, figures used online, in print, and for presentations. His book is neither a statistics nor programming text, but familiarity with basic statistical concepts is helpful. Written in three parts, the book presents both the math and artistic design aspects of telling a story through figures. Wilke makes extensive use of examples, labels them good, bad, …

Womenpreneurs In A Digital Environment: Utilizing Instagram To Build A Personal Brand, Michelle N. Nuñez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Personal branding on social media is a growing and expanding field. The present research works to uncover the processes and practices of womenpreneurs and the ways in which they utilize social media, specifically Instagram, to build and maintain their personal brands. Grounded theory is used to underpin the research and provide a basis of which the study is conducted. The review of literature provides the context necessary to support the methods of a content analysis and semi-structured interviews. There is a gap in research as it pertains to the conceptualization of personal branding practices on Instagram and the present study …

Relationship Management Communications By Nhl Teams On Twitter, Kelsey M. Baker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The sports industry is massive, bolstered by its relationship with media. A recent development in the sport industry is the advent of social media, which offers the potential for two-way communication between sports organizations and their relevant stakeholders. Relationship management theory helps cultivate an understanding of social media as a vehicle for value creation for an organization and its stakeholders. This thesis is a content analysis of relationship communications strategies on Twitter using the accounts of five National Hockey League teams.

This study builds upon existing literature by identifying stakeholder groups targeted on Twitter by NHL teams, defining subcategories in …

Cooperation In Community Colleges, Frederic S. Gore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the mounting pressures on institutions of higher education to do more with limited resources, the opportunity to collaborate with other colleges has emerged as a viable tool to create efficiencies and obtain valuable knowledge otherwise unattainable by an institution, even if that collaboration takes place with a competing institution. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are critical to managing student information and college operations, but can be challenging for colleges to implement. Consortia present a unique solution to colleges to address gaps in their expertise and skills needed to achieve a successful ERP implementation. This study explores the factors that …

Essays On Time Series And Machine Learning Techniques For Risk Management, Michael Kotarinos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Capital Asset Pricing Model combined with the Sharpe ratio is a standard method for choosing assets for selection in a portfolio. However, this method has many structural issues and was designed for a time when high dimensional computing was in its infancy. An alternative to these methods using a mix of Multi-Level Time Series Clustering, the MACBETH algorithm and traditional time series techniques was constructed that minimized data loss and allow for customized portfolio construction for investors with different risk profiles and specialized investment needs. It was shown that these methods are adaptable to cloud computing environments and allow …

Two Essays On The Impact Of Cybersecurity Risk Management Examinations On Investor Perceptions And Decisions, Rebecca R. Perols

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) recently adopted cybersecurity risk management examination on investor perceptions and decisions. The dissertation implements a two-essay approach.

Essay 1 examines the effect of voluntary disclosures of joint or separate provisioning of cybersecurity risk management examinations on investor perceptions and decisions, and whether these effects differ when a subsequent cybersecurity incident occurs. Conducting a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment, I find that the negative signal of a subsequent cybersecurity incident reverses investors’ positive perceptions of auditor competence and increases investors’ sensitivity to …