Business Commons^™

Three Essays On Online Customer Reviews In Business And Healthcare, Cong Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

As e-commerce platforms keep growing in popularity, online customer reviews, which represent users’ evaluation of products or services, have become a crucial information source in consumer decision-making. Online reviews have proven to have a major impact on various critical aspects of a business, such as reputation, sales, and product returns. The goal of the three-essay dissertation is to investigate the influential antecedents and consequents of online customer reviews in business and healthcare. Essay I explores the effects of product exposure time on review content and review helpfulness. We find that the descriptions of utilitarian attributes in a review increase with …

Investor Reaction To Exploration Versus Exploitation Using An Asorptive Capacity Lens, Kevin Walsh

Theses and Dissertations

In his seminal work, March (1991) points to innovation as a key to a firm’s survival. In this dissertation proposal, I seek to build on March’s research by leveraging his construct of balancing a focus on improving existing capabilities (“exploitation”) while simultaneously creating new competencies (“exploration”). These two approaches to innovation are often viewed as requiring a firm to leverage very different skills. Not only are there differing skills, but the level of risk and potential reward also vary based on a firm’s decision to focus on exploration versus exploitation. The reaction of investors to this dichotomy is the focus …

Two Essays On Leveraging Analytics To Improve Healthcare, Deepika Gopukumar

Theses and Dissertations

The healthcare cost has continued to increase over the past few years despite various policies, efforts, and initiatives taken by the government. It is still projected to grow over the next few years by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Readmissions have been a major contributor to the increase in costs and have always been a contributing factor. To get a perspective, considering the fact that at least 9% of individuals who had COVID-19 were likely to get readmitted shortly, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 response team, along with …

Two Essays On Distribution, Fulfillment And Pricing Decisions For Retailers With E-Commerce Channel, Khosro Pichka

Theses and Dissertations

E-commerce has grown rapidly in the past decade. In 2015, e-commerce was accounted for 7.2 percent of all retail sales in the U.S., which is massively higher than 0.2 percent in 1998 (U.S. Department of Commerce 2017). Worldwide e-commerce sales also show the same trend and reached $2.356 trillion in 2018 and are expected to grow steadily (Statista 2017). This trend has impacted major areas of operations management including supply chain management and revenue management. Today, e-commerce companies cannot satisfy their customers’ demand using traditional distribution systems. Therefore, retailers with e-commerce channels (e-tailers), cooperate with third party logistic service providers …

Two Essays On The Chinese Ceos In The National People's Congress (Npc), Xiaoyu Yang

Theses and Dissertations

Existing studies suggest that firms actively seek to “create” their environment by trying to shape government regulations to produce a more favorable environment. The ultimate way to link a Chinese firm to the government is to elect its business leader as a member of the National People’s Congress (NPC). In Essay 1, the effects of corporate political strategies on firm performance and strategic change will be explained through the lens of Chinese CEOs’ political appointments, especially their behavior regarding legislation in the Congress. Drawing on a sample of 365 Chinese CEOs in the NPC over a period of seven years, …

Three Essays On Diversity-Performance Relationship From A Positive Psychology Lens, Manpreet Kaur

Theses and Dissertations

Workplace diversity is an incessant notion in today’s world. Scholars have examined different aspects of diversity (e.g. demographic, cultural, and informational) in context of varying processes and outcomes (e.g. satisfaction, innovation, creativity, and performance). Diversity has been proposed as a double-edged sword, but the overall effects of diversity have been inconclusive, necessitating the investigation of more contextual variables. Efforts have been made to focus on this paucity of diversity research, however, the emphasis has been on objective variables and the positive characteristics of an individual or a team are neglected.

Thus, the purpose of this three-essay dissertation is to address …

Three Essays On Trust Mining In Online Social Networks, Gelareh Towhidi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research consists of three essays on studying trust in online social networks. Trust plays a critical role in online social relationships, because of the high levels of risk and uncertainty involved. Guided by relevant social science and computational graph theories, I develop conceptual and predictive models to gain insights into trusting behaviors in online social relationships.

In the first essay, I propose a conceptual model of trust formation in online social networks. This is the first study that integrates the existing graph-based view of trust formation in social networks with socio-psychological theories of trust to provide a richer …

Strategic Nurse Allocation Policies Under Dynamic Patient Demand, Osman Tuncay Aydas

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

STRATEGIC NURSE ALLOCATION POLICIES UNDER DYNAMIC PATIENT DEMAND

by Osman T. Aydas

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2017

Under the Supervision of Professor Anthony D. Ross

Several studies have shown a strong association between nurse staffing and patient outcomes. When a nursing unit is chronically short-staffed, nurses must maintain an intense pace to ensure that patients receive timely care. Over time this can result in nurse burnout, as well as dissatisfied patients and even medical errors. Improved accuracy in the allocation of nursing staff can mitigate these operational risks and improve patient outcomes. Nursing care is identified as the single …

Three Essays On Friend Recommendation Systems For Online Social Networks, Jiaxi Luo

Theses and Dissertations

Social networking sites (SNSs) first appeared in the mid-90s. In recent years, however, Web 2.0 technologies have made modern SNSs increasingly popular and easier to use, and social networking has expanded explosively across the web. This brought a massive number of new users. Two of the most popular SNSs, Facebook and Twitter, have reached one billion users and exceeded half billion users, respectively.

Too many new users may cause the cold start problem. Users sign up on a SNS and discover they do not have any friends. Normally, SNSs solve this problem by recommending potential friends. The current major methods …

Three Essays On Work-Nonwork Balance, Min Wan

Theses and Dissertations

Achieving balance between work and nonwork lives is important for individuals and organizations as it may generate various desirable outcomes, such as high role performance, positive role attitudes, and psychological and physiological well-being. However, scholars and practitioners have not reached a common understanding of the content and process of work-nonwork balance. A variety of work-nonwork balance definitions, theories, and measures, as well as numerous correlates, have emerged in this area. In addition, a majority of the studies focused on this topic have theorized work-nonwork balance as a stable construct and measured it in order to explain the between-individual variance. Consequently, …

Manufacturing Site Selection In The Global Context, Mahsa Mardikoraem Mardikoraem

Theses and Dissertations

The decision making regarding global site selection has been always a challenging and strategic problem. Recently, due to the globalization of the problem many new factors such as political, social, regulatory, government, environmental consideration, etc. gained importance in the decision making process. One of the goals in this thesis is to identify the relevant factors in manufacturing site selection and incorporate them into the data analysis. The collection of a wide range of factors that impact the manufacturing site selection problem at a country level, the quantification of these factors, and incorporation of them into the decision making process needs …

Three Essays On The Effects Of Appraisal, Cultural, Emotional, And Cognitive Factors On Information Technologies Acceptance And Use, Chun-Lung Huang

Theses and Dissertations

In essay 1, we propose a model, which utilized Lazarus and Folkman’s Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Emotion or Appraisal Theory (1984, 1987) as a structural foundation to lay out the nomological relationships among a person’s personal, cognitive, and emotional factors in predicting technology use behaviors. Emotion, likes many social and psychological factors, is challenging to give a full-consensus definition, and has been treated as a polar counterpart of cognition. Lazarus and Folkman’s Appraisal Theory suggested that when a person is facing a (disruptive) event, he or she appraises the possible outcomes (we suppose that appraising is a form of cognitive …

Warranty Period And Product Price Optimization For Remanufactured Products, Yuxi Liu

Theses and Dissertations

This study considers a remanufactured electrical product under a tiered warranty policy. Warranty is key in ensuring a good manufacturer—consumer relationship. Manufacturers hope to minimize warranty costs while consumers believe that good warranty promises better product quality and reliability. This Thesis presents an optimal warranty period from the perspective of a manufacturer to maximize the total expected profits, while ensuring sustained consumer relation. We use real data from a local company with a global supply chain to provide a numerical example.

Optimal Cyclic Control Of A Buffer Between Two Consecutive Non-Synchronized Manufacturing Processes, Wenhuan Hsieh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents methods for efficiently controlling a buffer that is located between two non-synchronized manufacturing processes. Several machines with different cycle times and/or batch sizes perform each manufacturing process. The overall operation cycles every T time units. The first objective of the problem is to minimize the average buffer inventory level during one cycle. The second objective is to minimize the maximum inventory level observed at any point during the cycle. This new optimization problem has not been previously considered in the literature. An integer program is developed to model this problem. In addition, two heuristic methods—a simulated annealing …

Three Research Essays On The Effects Of Culture Across It Diffusion Within Social Networks, Organizations, And Hospitals, Yu Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on two research streams: IT diffusion and culture, and each can be examined in various contexts. Specifically, this study investigates IT diffusion through online social network use, knowledge sharing towards the general organizational information systems, and hospital information systems usage. In terms of culture, espoused national cultural values, IT occupational subculture, and organizational cultural variables are examined in the following essays.

Essay1: Espoused National Cultural Values and Online Social Network Use: Towards an Extension of UTAUT

Prior research has developed a number of models for examining the acceptance and use of technology. This paper extends the unified …

The Effect Of Cultural And Emotional Intelligence On Mentor And Protege Perceptions Of Attitude Homophily And Relationship Quality In Culturally Diverse Mentoring Relationships, Gloria J. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Mentoring has become more common in organizations as firms have discovered the benefits of this process, such as the retention and cultivation of employees who create the work and products of the organization. To meet the challenges associated with increasing diversity within organizations, researchers have focused on understanding diverse mentoring relationships (Athey, Avery, & Zemsky, 2000; Clutterbuck & Ragins, 2002; Hardy, 1998; Knouse, Hill, & Webb, 2005; Ragins, 1997). The demographic (e.g., ethnicity, gender, age) and situational (e.g., position, power) disparities between mentors and protégés often make it more difficult for diverse partners to develop quality relationships that are needed …

The Effects Of Patent Attributes And Patent Litigation On Control Rights, Alliance Formation And Technological Innovation, Yanxin Liu

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation consisting of three essays focuses on the role of technological innovations in value distribution within R&D alliance, and the impact of patent litigation on R&D alliance formation and technological innovation. Essays one and two are intended to extend signaling theory with transaction cost economics (TCE) and social embeddedness perspective. Essays two and three investigate the consequences of patent litigation on R&D alliance formation and technological search, respectively. Essay one investigates the empirical relationships between patent attributes and allocation of control rights, and the relationships between patent attributes and up-front payment in R&D alliance contracts. Patent attributes of focal …

Production Scheduling In Integrated Steel Manufacturing, Wanxi Li

Theses and Dissertations

Steel manufacturing is both energy and capital intensive, and it includes multiple production stages, such as iron-making, steelmaking, and rolling. This dissertation investigates the order schedule coordination problem in a multi-stage manufacturing context. A mixed-integer linear programming model is proposed to generate operational (up to the minute) schedules for the steelmaking and rolling stages simultaneously. The proposed multi-stage scheduling model in integrated steel manufacturing can provide a broader view of the cost impact on the individual stages. It also extends the current order scheduling literature in steel manufacturing from a single-stage focus to the coordinated multi-stage focus. Experiments are introduced …

Understanding The Role Of Workplace Relationships In Employee Commitment And Engagement: A Complementary Fit Perspective, Kyle Ehrhardt

Theses and Dissertations

For most of us, work is an inherently social experience. We depend on our relationships to accomplish our work tasks. Emerging theory also suggests that work relationships play a role in meeting our social and developmental needs, and in so doing, affect our attitudes toward our jobs and organizations. Specifically, relational systems theory holds that employees have five different `relational needs,' and are more likely to become committed to their organization and engaged in their work when they are embedded in a set of workplace relationships that meet these needs. According to the theory, employees' experiences of need fulfillment create …

Three Essays On Refining The Challenge And Hindrance Stressors Framework, Mihaela Dimitrova

Theses and Dissertations

Job demands, or stressors, are viewed as "physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort" (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) and are traditionally seen as detrimental due to their influence on stress. However, recent advancements suggest that, despite their effect on stress, some demands (i.e., challenge demands) could be instrumental in achieving valued personal and job outcomes, while others (i.e., hindrance demands) would have purely deleterious effects (Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling, & Boudreau, 2000). Based on this challenge and hindrance stressors framework, scholars have found differentiated effects of demands in relation to outcomes such …

Three Research Essays On The Effects Of Charity Website Design On Online Donations, Dong-Heon Austin Kwak

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation, which comprises three essays, examines the effects of charity website characteristics on people's attitudes and online donation behaviors based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Essay 1), the halo effect (Essay 2), and self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric (Essay 3).

Essay 1: The Elaborating Role of Personal Involvement with Charity Giving and Helper's High on the Effects of Website Quality: Multiple Roles of Variables

Although the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) has been utilized for decades, researchers have not leveraged its full capabilities and richness in understanding the multiple roles postulate and employing the central and peripheral routes …

A Study Of Transformational Initiatives And Social Capital, Craig Dean Plain

Theses and Dissertations

A STUDY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL INITIATIVES AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Organizations seek to improve themselves. They do so to become more efficient, to increase sales...indeed, to survive. Many have implemented various initiatives to transform themselves. For some, these efforts have paid off. Companies such as General Electric, Motorola, Allied Signal, and others have claimed billions of dollars in cost reductions and increases in revenue (Altinkemer, Ozcelik, & Ozdemir, 2011; Lucier & Seshadri, 2001). Such successes have driven many others to implement these transformational initiatives. Yet the failure rate hovers around 70% (Kotter J. P., 1995).

This study sought to expand the body …

Compelled To Be Connected: An Ethnographic Exploration Of Organizational Culture, Work-Life Balance, And The Use Of Mobile Workplace Technologies, Kristopher J. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

This study is an ethnographic exploration of organizational culture, work-life balance, and the use of information and communication technology ("ICT") in the work and home settings. The researcher was embedded for nine weeks within the Information Technology ("IT") department at the corporate headquarters of a mid-sized manufacturing firm in the upper Midwest. The espoused values of the organization proved contradictory, one favoring work-life balance and the other requiring that employees be available to work anytime and from anywhere. The behaviors observed provided insight as to why employee actually used ICT after hours--because it was required of their role and/or because …

A Review And Analysis Of The Effects Of Financial Slack On Firm Innovation, Tony Croix Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

I analyze the effect of financial slack on firm innovation by reviewing prior research and conducting an empirical analysis. The goal of this paper is to describe, refine and expand research on the relationship between financial slack and innovation. I describe how past scholars' conceptualizations and operationalizations of financial slack vary across studies and are often inconsistent with theoretical definitions suggesting that financial slack is a resource that exists in excess of some foreseeable need. My theoretical analysis suggests that one solution to this problem may be to operationalize financial slack as a proportion of total R&D spending (what I …

Essays On Dispersion, Fairness Perception And Partitioning Of Online Prices, Yiyuan Liu

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is primarily on online pricing, by empirically investigating how formats and structures of prices influence consumer responses and subsequent purchasing behavior, brand choice, etc. Currently, three essays of my dissertation explore topics on price fairness perception, price dispersion, as well as price partitioning.

First, although previous researchers have tested effects of price changes on consumer's perceptions on price (e.g., Maxwell 1999, Campbell 2007), little work has focused on the effects of prices/costs levels on online price judgments and virtually none has examined it jointly with both internal/external reference prices from multiple comparison parties. Less work has applied price …

Economic Perspective On Cloud Computing: Three Essays, Abhijit Dutt

Theses and Dissertations

Improvements in Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and standardization of interoperability standards among heterogeneous Information System (IS) applications have brought a paradigm shift in the way an IS application could be used and delivered. Not only an IS application can be built using standardized component but also parts of it can be hosted by different organizations in different locations provided it can be accessed using the Internet. This dissertation is an attempt to uncover unique aspects of this phenomenon known as Software as a Service (SaaS).

The first essay examines design decision making by SaaS providers by analyzing effects of two …

Virtual Team Citizenship Behaviors: Scale Development And Validation, Joline Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are the extra-role, voluntary behaviors performed by organization members for the benefit of the organization. These behaviors have been widely studied and several dimensions have been defined. However, the majority of the work on OCBs focuses on traditional organizations where all employees are collocated and can interact on a regular basis. With the changing workplace, employees can now work remotely or across different locations and still be expected to work together. Those employees who are not collocated may not feel the need to benefit the organization, but may feel connected to the team and therefore participate …

A Three-Stage Process Model Of Self-Initiated Expatriate Career Transitions: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective, Yu-Ping Chen

Theses and Dissertations

With more than 31 percent of employers worldwide having difficulty filling positions due to the lack of suitable talent available in their home markets (Manpower, 2010), talent shortage has become a global problem. Thus, many employers are seeking and recruiting skilled employees worldwide. Echoing this trend is the emergence of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs), a growing breed of expatriates that is responding to global talent shortages. Unlike corporate expatriates who are sponsored by organizations to take an international assignment, SIEs independently choose to expatriate and their expatriation experiences are riskier and more unpredictable. Thus, SIEs' motivations pertaining to their decisions to …