Business Commons^™

Financial Self-Efficacy Among Puerto Rican Women In The United States: An Ethnographic Action-Based Research Study, Melinda Jimenez Perez

Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this ethnographic action research study was to better understand the financial self-efficacy of Puerto Rican women in the United States. There is a gap in the literature in identifying the relationship between middle-class Puerto Rican women and financial literacy. In a pilot study, four major findings emerged from the survey about Puerto Rican women and their relationship with finances: (a) as children, mothers taught them to save, and as adults, they rely on the male figures in their families; (b) the traditional education systems did not provide financial education; (c) the childhood culture of poverty and scarcity …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Hispanic Restaurants In South-Central Texas: A Qualitative Study, Javier Apolinar

Theses & Dissertations

Research Focus. The COVID-19 pandemic generated a major crisis for the restaurant industry in 2020 and 2021. The nationwide shutdown resulted in widespread restrictions on social gatherings, significantly impacting this industry. Hispanic businesses were not immune to this crisis, and its impact had profound effects on small businesses.

Most of the research in this field has primarily concentrated on small businesses and entrepreneurship under favorable circumstances, highlighting factors such as entrepreneurial drive, maximizing profits, taking risks, developing ideas, and promoting fair competition. Consequently, the current body of research is insufficient and fails to address the specific experiences of minority small …

Where Are All The Latinas In Information Technology? Understanding And Engaging "La Fuerza Potente" Of A Powerful Demographic, Diana Orozco

Theses & Dissertations

This study was inspired while I was researching other studies on employee motivational factors for non-profit organizations. I stumbled across the employment factors of Latinas in IT. This led me down a path of researching numbers, facts, organizational campaigns, and employment statistics. Latinas represent only 1% of the IT workforce, despite educational and organizational hiring campaigns and efforts. This led me to further inquire: What are the obstacles, what are the motivators, what is the solution and finally how would the resolutions be implemented? With many qualitative and quantitative studies that identify the deficiency, there has been little done to …

Testimonios Of Latinas In The Federal Government Senior Executive Service: Honoring Women Who Excel In Public Service, Amarylis Lopez

Theses & Dissertations

The Senior Executive Service (SES) is the highest tier of executive management and leadership in the federal government. The Latino/a population has significantly increased in the past three decades with no corresponding increase in the federal workforce and the number of Latinos/as serving in the SES remains low. As Latinos/as in the SES are largely underrepresented, their ability to influence federal policies is significantly undermined. The purpose of this study is to explore the testimonios (testimonies) of Latinas in the SES to better understand their experiences while navigating entry into the SES and maintaining their respective positions.

This study used …

Medicare Shared Savings Performance: Three-Year Pandemic Analysis, Bryan Adams

Theses & Dissertations

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid's (CMS) Office of Actuary predicts that U.S. national health expenditures will surpass U.S. gross domestic product per capita by 1.1% annually until 2028, totaling $6.2 trillion in healthcare spending. A significant portion of this spending, 36%, is attributed to Medicare and Medicaid. To address this issue, CMS has implemented the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) to assist Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in reducing healthcare costs and improving the quality of care for beneficiaries. The main objectives of this dissertation are twofold. Firstly, it aims to investigate the relationship between various factors, such as quality …

Ceo Characteristics And Compensation In Fortune 100 Companies, Adam C. Carroll

Theses & Dissertations

The existing literature on CEO compensation places heavy emphasis on the interrelationships between educational background and personal experiences of a CEO and how it affects a firm’s performance and, in-turn, how the firm’s performance impacts the CEO compensation. However, there is sparse research on the direct impact that socio-demographic factors and other variables have on CEO compensation. This dissertation’s aim is to identify if socio-demographic factors play a role in how a firm compensates its CEOs by using information gathered from the CEOs of the top Fortune 100 companies.

Given the non-random and limited sample, the primary research methods in …

U.S. Army Physician Assistant Retention: A Latent Class Analysis, Robert Greener

Theses & Dissertations

Introduction: Retaining employees is crucial to the success of organizations. While significant effort has been made to model employee retention, models have been unable to significantly predict retention. The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional study was to develop an improved employee retention model which could be used as a practical guide to improve employee retention. Materials and Methods: The study analyzed a survey created, implemented, and collected by the Statistical Cell at the U.S. Army Center of Excellence. In September of 2020, all 864 active-duty PAs were sent a link to the survey and 290 completed the survey, …

The Effect Of Faculty Leadership Style On The Results Of Student Evaluation Of Teachers, Sadeq Sohrabie

Theses & Dissertations

Higher education administrations use Student Evaluation of Teacher (SET) frequently as a performance metric for instructors and professors. Many decisions are being at least partially made based on SET results such as recruiting, retention, and promotion decisions. SET has been subject of many studies but just recently leadership style is being studied as a factor affecting SET. Research shows instructors’ transformational leadership in classrooms can lead to more effective and efficient classrooms, which in turn yields higher student satisfaction and academic gains. In this Study, the relationship between SET and transformational/transactional leadership style has been examined using structural equation modeling. …

Understanding Employee Engagement: A Mixed-Methods Study, Joren M. Scharn

Theses & Dissertations

For over 4 decades businesses around the world have been conducting employee satisfaction surveys at regular intervals and this surfaced a strong positive relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and overall company performance. In recent years however, academics and researchers have reopened the debate on whether employee or job satisfaction metrics are in fact reliable indicators of productivity, suggesting that employee engagement has a far stronger correlation to productivity. This study addresses two interrelated problems that are associated with a practice that is common in working environments all over the world. According to literature, it is generally accepted that (a) …

The Role Of Mentoring In The Development Of Minority Faculty In The Texas State Higher Education System, James Onyeneke

Theses & Dissertations

Research Focus. The purpose of this study was to explore the role that mentoring played in the professional development of minority faculty in the Texas State higher education system.

Research Methods. A phenomenological qualitative research design was employed for this study. Data was collected using open ended in-depth interviews with eight minority faculty purposefully selected from across the Texas State institutions of higher learning.

Research Results/Findings. Minority faculty in the Texas State higher education system often experienced cultural taxation, marginalization, discrimination, isolation, and lack of mentoring. The study indicated that mentorship boots minority faculty support, retention, promotion, empowerment, trust, accountability, …

The Impact Of Culture On Hispanic Entrepreneurs As Mediated By Motivation, Challenge, And Success, Valerie V. Ballesteros

Theses & Dissertations

In the modern economic environment, demographic shifts in U.S. population resulting from changing immigration, changing economic policies and environments, and growing socioeconomic disparity, scholarly research examining the business behavior of specific groups and the impact of behavior on the broader marketplace is valuable and necessary. Hispanic entrepreneurs, when compared to both minority and non-minority business-owners, started and flourished in successful business ownership at a greater growth rate than any other group (Davila, Mora, & Zeitlin, 2014). Since the beginning of the 21st century, Hispanic entrepreneurs have become a measurable economic force. The cultural experience of the Hispanic entrepreneur is important …

Managing Sales And Product Returns Under The Word-Of-Mouth Effect : Pricing, Quality, And Restocking Fee Decisions, Sun Yuen Hui

Theses & Dissertations

This paper considers a two-echelon supply chain involving a manufacturer and a retailer who make their pricing, quality, and restocking fee decisions under the word-of-mouth (WOM) effect. To investigate the decision-making problem for the sales and product returns, we construct a leader-follower game model in which the manufacturer first determines his quality effort and the wholesale price and the retailer then decides on her retail price and the restocking fee. Our results show that the wholesale and retail prices under no WOM effect are smaller than those when the WOM effect exists; and, as the WOM has a higher impact …

A Simulation Experimental Study On The Utility Of Pay Changes, Liu Ye

Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, we conduct an experimental simulation of 131 students from a university in Hong Kong and investigate the relationship between pay changes and the perceived values (i.e., utility). Applying traditional psychophysical methods, we measure the utility of pay changes (i.e., pay raises and pay cuts) of different sizes by individual responses (i.e., happiness/unhappiness). Drawing on utility theory and expectancy theory, we examine the function that best fits this relationship by considering common function forms including linear, quadratic, logarithmic, and power functions. Using regression techniques, we find that a quadratic function best fits the data, and the utility function …

The Mediating Role Of Representational Predicaments : Between Autocratic Leadership And Subordinates’ Workplace Behaviors, Nan Wang

Theses & Dissertations

A representational predicament for an employee is a negative experience in which that employee believes that a key authority, such as his/her supervisor, has unfavorable perceptions about himself/herself caused by misconception, bias, or ignorance. That implies he/she is experiencing injustice at the workplace. Drawing for underlying explanations on the theories of interactional justice and equity, this study examines, through quantitative and qualitative methods, how autocratic leadership influences subordinates’ representational predicaments and in turn adversely affects subordinates’ behaviors in the workplace. The model developed in this thesis proposes that a subordinate is likely to have a stronger experience of representational predicaments …

Personal Decision Factors Considered By Information Technology Executives: Their Impacts On Business Intentions And Consequent Cloud Computing Services Adoption Rates, Marcus Lee Smith Jr

Theses & Dissertations

During its infancy, the cloud computing industry was the province largely of small and medium-sized business customers. Despite their size, these companies required a professionally run, yet economical information technology (IT) operation. These customers used a total value strategy whereby they avoided paying for essential, yet underutilized, resources (e.g., full-time IT personnel and computing equipment with excess capacity) by outsourcing most, if not all, of their entire IT function. Since that time, the cloud industry has expanded the breadth of its service offerings greatly and the economies of scale have reduced the unit price point. In addition, research suggests other …

Blended Learning: Institutional Frameworks For Adoption And Implementation, Anida Duarte

Theses & Dissertations

Blended Learning in education is the future for higher education. The rapid changes in technology combined with a demand for a more agile environment is transforming the traditional classroom and challenging learning models. Higher education has been adapting by moving classroom time into purely online environments. However, the literature suggests the new wave of learning is extracting the best practices from traditional and online models and infusing them into a blended environment. The agility and use of technology allows the non-traditional student to balance a professional career and life demands while still gaining the benefits of face-to-face time in the …

An Improved Model For Trust-Aware Recommender Systems Based On Multi-Faceted Trust, Peihu Zhu

Theses & Dissertations

As customers enjoy the convenience of online shopping today, they face the problem of selecting from hundreds of thousands of products. Recommender systems, which make recommendations by matching products to customers based on the features of the products and the purchasing history of customers, are increasingly being incorporated into e-commerce websites. Collaborative filtering is a major approach to design algorithms for these systems. Much research has been directed toward enhancing the performance of recommender systems by considering various psychological and behavioural factors affecting the behaviour of users, e.g. trust and emotion.

While e-commerce firms are keen to exploit information on …

Breaking Television News: Is Social Media Coverage You Can Count On?, Eileen Canosa Teves

Theses & Dissertations

This mixed methods study explored how 10 television journalists and photojournalists handled social media’s integration and its impact on television news. A quantitative survey modeled after Moore and Benbasat’s (1991) instrument using the Diffusion of Innovations theory as a foundation measured how participants adopted social media in newsgathering and dissemination. Through qualitative one-on-one interviews, data revealed that participants believed social media was advantageous in collecting and reporting television news. Television journalists were able to locate sources, experts, and visual images. Social media allowed participants to report live from the scene and deliver news quickly. The innovation enabled participants to connect …

Ethical Leadership In Social Enterprises : Multilevel Investigation Of Its Influence On Team And Individual Prosocial Voice, Pok Man Tang

Theses & Dissertations

This research paper seeks to draw on social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) as an overarching framework to examine how unit managers’ ethical leadership style affects the team and individual prosocial voice behaviors in the context of social enterprises in Hong Kong.

Ethical leadership has been found to be conducive to both desirable team and individual employee behaviors. However, scholarly understanding of the multi-level effects of ethical leadership and the underlying mechanisms involved is rather limited. Moreover, previous research has directed attention almost exclusively to the influence of ethical leadership in the context of commercial organizations. This narrow stance has curiously …

Perspectives Of Hispanic Men Who Overcame The Odds To Become Senior Leaders, Esequiel Jose Mora

Theses & Dissertations

Driven by the rapid growth of the Hispanic population in the United States, ethnic minorities will become the new majority group in the next 30 to 40 years. Yet, despite the substantial increase of Hispanics in this country, they remain underrepresented in senior leadership positions. This dissertation explored the perspectives of Hispanic male leaders to determine how they overcame barriers to successfully reach the senior leader levels. This topic is important for two reasons: (a) as U.S. businesses expand globally, they will need diverse leaders who can understand and relate to various cultures, and (b) with the increasing purchasing power …

Designing Multi-Target Salesforce Incentive Contract, Wenxin Huang

Theses & Dissertations

Multi-target incentive contracts are widely observed in practice to stimulate salesforce effort. However, little is known about their effectiveness and the issues involved in designing them. In this thesis, we investigate the incentive contracting problem between a manufacturer and an agent when the realized sales of a product are affected by both the agent's selling effort and the type of the agent. The agent's type is uncertain to the manufacturer, whereas the agent can observe the actual type when exerting her selling effort. Again, this is unobservable by the manufacturer. For contract design problem, we develop a principal-agent model with …

Information Leakage And Stackelberg Leadership In Cournot Competition, Huajiang Luo

Theses & Dissertations

In duopoly Cournot competition with sequential moves, it is well known that each player prefers Stackelberg leadership without demand uncertainty. We study the same game when the demand is uncertain, and firms possess some private information about the uncertain demand. There are two effects of private information in this game. First, when the Stackelberg leader moves first, its private information is leaked to, or inferred by the Stackelberg follower via the output quantity. Hence, the Stackelberg follower makes decision based on more accurate information than the leader. Second, the leader incurs a cost to signal its information to the follower, …

Joint Lead Time And Price Quotation : Dynamic Or Static?, Guo Zhang

Theses & Dissertations

Intuitively, quoting dynamic lead time and price to customers based on real-time system state provides more efficient capacity utilization and increases revenue compared with quoting static lead time and price. However, dynamic quotation may require higher operational costs for the firm and it is often inconvenient to customers. This study aims to compare dynamic and static lead time and price quotations under fixed capacity and different potential demand rates. We hypothesize that there exists a potential demand rate under which the additional costs of dynamic quotation and the additional profit from dynamic quotation are equal. Thus static quotation may yield …

Effects Of Goal Interdependence On Help-Seeking Through Knowledge Sharing And Knowledge Hiding : The Moderating Roles Of Reciprocity Beliefs, Yuen Lam, Fanny Bavik

Theses & Dissertations

The effects of goal interdependence on employees’ performance outcomes have been well documented in the literature. Yet, the relationship between goal interdependence and employees’ proactive behaviors remains largely unexplored. Integrating the theory of cooperation and competition with the employee proactivity literature, this study investigates how cooperative goal interdependence and competitive goal interdependence respectively influence employee knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding, and in turn shape their propensity to seek help from coworkers. It further examines reciprocity beliefs as an individual factor in affecting the indirect effect of goal interdependence on help seeking. Specifically, positive reciprocity belief is hypothesized to moderate the …

Ethics Of Thailand's Tourism Industry, Ganjanaporn Lertpipat Luther

Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate how ethical sales behavior related to the likelihood of tourists to return to Thailand. The Ethical Tourism Industry survey used was adapted from previous studies found in the literature. The sample of 300 participants was drawn from international tourists who travelled in the North, Central, and South regions of Thailand. Tests of correlation used Pearson, logistic regression, and linear regression to analyze the research questions in this study. An analysis found that most tourists who were revisiting Thailand were male, and 49% of tourists came from Europe and Africa for leisure purposes. …

Financial Fraud Detection By Using Grammar-Based Multiobjective Genetic Programming With Ensemble Learning, Haibing Li

Theses & Dissertations

Financial fraud is a criminal act, which violates the law, rules or policy to gain unauthorized financial benefit. As an increasingly serious problem, it has attracted a lot of concerns. The major consequences are loss of billions of dollars each year, investor confidence and corporate reputation. Therefore, a study area called Financial Fraud Detection (FFD) is obligatory, in order to prevent the destructive results caused by financial fraud. In general, traditional modeling approaches are applied and based on pre-defined hypothesis testing of causes and effects for FFD problems. In addition, the evaluation criteria are often based on variable significance level …

Consequences Of Destructive Leadership Through The Experiences Of Millennial Followers, Rhonda M. Martin

Theses & Dissertations

Destructive leadership has serious detrimental effects on organizations and their employees. Today U.S. companies are spending an estimated $23 billion annually on healthcare costs (e.g. chronic absenteeism, high turnover, and dissatisfaction) resulting from the negative impacts of destructive leaders (Tepper, Duffy, Henle, & Lambert, 2006). This emerging theory was worthy of additional research because of the adverse effects it has on the personal and professional lives of followers. According to Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser (2007), the success of a destructive leader depends on susceptible followers (Millennials) and a conducive environment, which creates a toxic triangle. In 2009, Trickey & Hyde …

Competitive Market Research And Product Design, Haixiu Wang

Theses & Dissertations

To learn the uncertainty of customer preference on the attribute of new product, usually a firm needs to do market research. Developing a product on an attribute which is less preferred by customer may lead to a failure. In addition, a firm used to take efforts to design the product. In recent years, we observed a new business model in which the firm does not take effort to design new product, nor does she do market research by herself. She provides rewards to attract outside designers to design new product. Some designers may take effort and design products based on …

Buyer Beware : Consumer Response To Manipulations Of Online Product Reviews, Mengzhou Zhuang

Theses & Dissertations

Online product reviews have become an important and influential source of information for consumers. Firms often manipulate online product reviews to influence consumer perceptions about the product, making it a research topic of urgent need for theory development and empirical investigation. In this thesis, we examine how consumers perceive and respond to the three commonly used manipulation tactics. Firstly, an exploratory pre-study via in-depth interviews with online shoppers indicates that consumers commonly have the knowledge for online review manipulations as well as for detecting them. In the first study, a survey was used to investigate the three popular manipulation tactics …

Open-Minded Discussion In Interdepartmental Collaboration : Contribution Of Goal Interdependence And Social Motives, Jiewei, Antonia Lu

Theses & Dissertations

Combining theories of social motives, goal interdependence, and conflict management, this study theorized a model in which interdepartmental goal interdependence affects conflict outcomes between different departments through open-minded discussion dynamics adopted by employees from different departments in the organization. This study also proposes that social motives moderate the link between inter-departmental goal interdependence and open-minded discussion.

A sample of 133 employees from different business organizations in China were interviewed to recall a critical incident when they had a conflict with their coworker from different departments. SEM results and other analysis results support the hypotheses that cooperative interdepartmental goal interdependence and …