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Remembering To Remember And The Consequences Of Forgetting: The Role Of Prospective Memory In Consumer Intentions, Eyad M. Youssef

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Picking up your dry cleaning after work, returning library books before the due date, picking up a friend at the airport; all of these tasks have one underlying feature that links them together. The tasks cannot be completed when the initial intention is formed. Prospective memory can be defined as remembering to remember (Winograd, 1988). It can also be defined as either remembering to do something at a particular moment in the future or as the timely execution of a previously formed intention (Kvavilashvili and Ellis, 1996). Remembering to do things (prospective memory) is just as much a use of …

Emotional Intelligence And Its Potential In Engineering Management, Jesse Ray Toepfer

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Assuming that the modern connotation of Emotional Intelligence (El) took shape with Wayne Leon Payne's 1986 dissertation, A Study of Emotion: Developing Emotional Intelligence, Self-Integration, Relating to Fear, Pain, and Desire, EI is nearing its thirtieth birthday. Relatively speaking, EI is still very young, and there are a handful of researchers who are still trying to explore and define El. Significant efforts have been made to develop the concept of EI, and the ramifications of EI on an individual's professional performance.

Often more technical and exacting in nature, the field of engineering management exhibits many aspects that are unique relative …

Awareness Of Cotton Among Generation Y, Keidra Hatchett, Nichole Williams

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

The purpose of this study was to determine the awareness and use of cotton in fabric and clothing by Generation Y (college students 18-15) for enhanced product marketing.

The Effect Of The Governance Environment On International Business: Three Essays, Jun Wu

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

We examine how governance environment affects business activities across countries. Using an updated framework of governance environments, we classify countries into three groups based on their dominant modes of governance: (1) rule-based (strong rule of law), (2) relation-based (weak rule of law and strong informal network based on private relations), and (3) neither-based (absence of both public rules and private network). We then examine how different governance types affect trade patterns and foreign investment flows. Chapter 2 theoretically proposes that the governance environment of a society plays a significant role in influencing international trade and foreign investment across countries. Chapter …

Two Essays On Investor Sentiment And The Profitability Of Contrarian And Momentum Strategies, Changmei Zhang

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation, by employing different trading strategies, addresses the trading profitability issue in a broad scope of different markets.

In the equity market, I construct a group of BUY-SELL portfolios based on prior stock returns, and find that contrarian and momentum strategies are both significantly profitable. Investor sentiment, in addition to firm-specific risks, provides behavioral explanations to the profitability. Three popular sentiment measures are used for the purpose of study: two reduced-formed sentiment indexes that are constructed by Baker and Wurgler (2006) and the survey-based University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. Several interesting findings are revealed: (1) extreme sentiment levels …

A Re-Examination Of Stock Repurchase In Usa, Hua Yang

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Since the adoption of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 10b-18 Safe Harbor for Issuer Repurchases in 1982, stock repurchases have been growing explosively. Extant literature has shed some light on the motivation behind companies' repurchase activities. The most popular beliefs include signaling undervaluation (Dann 1981, Vermaele 1981, Comment and Jarrell 1991), reducing free cash flow (Guay and Harford 2000, Jagannathan, Stephens and Weisbach 2000, Grullon and Michaely 2004), raising leverage ratio (Hovakimian, Opler and Titman 2001) and increasing earnings (Bens, Nagar, Skinner and Wong 2003).

Motivated by Stephens and Weisbach's (1998) research which found that companies on average …

What Is Influencing Financially-Driven Shareholder Activism In The Us And Uk—Principal-Agent Or Principal-Principal Problems?, Maureen I. Muller-Kahle

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Shareholder activism is a response to corporate underperformance by one or more shareholders of the corporation. Classic agency theory suggests that shareholder activism is a mechanism to curb principal-agent problems in the firm. However, the principal-principal perspective suggests that shareholder activism is a mechanism for dominant shareholders to extract resources from the firm. This dissertation extends the current research by developing and testing competing hypotheses to examine the antecedents of financially driven shareholder activism in the United States and the United Kingdom. The extant literature on financially driven shareholder activism (FDSA) is reviewed, research gaps in the literature identified and …

How To Improve Project Management For Agile Federation Development, Priyanka Kotikalpudi

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Developing a simulation federation out of a variety of heterogeneous simulation solutions is a complex task requiring very effective project management support in order to accomplish the common objectives and goals of this M&S federation. This thesis study conducts a detailed survey of available literature to identify the project management methods that can be extended to be applied to manage the development of simulation systems. The literature review led to the following two main results: (a) in general, there is insufficient literature dealing with M&S challenges for project management, (b) in particular, the two challenges of often changing requirements leading …

Three Essays On Cross-Listing, Liu Wang

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation examines the role of cross-listing in shaping corporate earnings quality, stock price informativeness, and firm valuation, as well as its impact on a listing firm's home country information asymmetry and stock misvaluation.

The first essay addresses the information asymmetry between Chinese local A-share and foreign B-share markets and its impact on the B-share discount puzzle. In contrast with the widespread belief that domestic investors are better informed than foreign investors, this study indicates that foreign investors actually possess more value-relevant, firm-specific information in an emerging market such as China, where information transparency and investor protection are relatively weak. …

Utilizing Knowledge Transfer To Promote Management Of Countervailing Risks In Value Stream Analysis, Jeffery A. Temple

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Organizations are frequently faced with the challenges of modifying and streamlining their processes by utilizing the latest process improvement techniques such as Lean Thinking. They use these techniques to allow them to better perform their organizational purposes through the elimination of waste and non-value added steps. Personnel performing these modifications need to account for potential outcomes and risks when streamlining processes. An association of knowledge transfer and experience to the identification and handling of these countervailing or alternative risks when performing Lean Thinking value stream analysis is investigated. The elements of risk management, Lean Thinking and knowledge transfer are described. …

The Effects Of Emotions On Strategic Decision-Making: A China-U.S. Cross-Cultural Experimental Study, Weichu Xu

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation examines how two different emotions—pride and guilt—experienced by managers influence their strategic decision-making. Four different aspects of strategic decisions are investigated: risk, comprehensiveness, speed, and resource commitment. The dissertation also investigates how culture moderates the relationship between emotions and different aspects of the strategic decision-making process.

The hypotheses of this study were tested using a 2 x 2 experimental design with two emotions (guilt and pride) and two cultures (U.S. and China). The experimental design used scenarios to elicit these two emotions. Next, PANAS-X scale was used to check the effectiveness of emotion manipulation. Finally, respondents were asked …