Business Commons^™

Work In Progress: Students' Perception Of Collaborative Online International Learning, Philip Appiah-Kubi, Jennifer Nichwitz

Engineering Management and Systems Faculty Publications

Teaching and learning in the digital age harness the opportunities created by internet technologies to distribute and learn various information all over the world. This is commonly referred to as connectivism, and it values the impact of stakeholder information appraisal skills, virtual and personal communication skills [1], and the sense of cultural awareness. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a type of connectivism, typically involves instructors and students from at least two geographically and culturally distinct areas who collaborate virtually on a common project for four or more weeks.

The objective is to create a culturally diverse virtual environment where students …

A Review Of A Collaborative Online International Learning, Philip Appiah-Kubi, Ebenezer Annan

Engineering Management and Systems Faculty Publications

Globalization has exacerbated the need for engineers who are capable of working in a cross-cultural environment. Multinational companies continuously seek for engineers who are interculturally competent and capable of conducting business successfully in a cross-cultural environment. However, the skills required to be successful in a multicultural environment are difficult to be taught in the traditional classroom. One of the most effective approaches to acquiring intercultural competency skills is through experiential learning. It is, therefore, not surprising that most colleges all over the world are devoting resources towards the internationalization of their classrooms and the campus community. This ensures that students …

A Transdisciplinary Collaboration And Innovation Education Model And Experience, Brian Laduca, Michelle Hayford, Adrienne Ausdenmoore, Jerome Yorke, Kevin Hallinan, Rebecca Blust, Anne R. Crecelius, Philip Appiah-Kubi, Jennifer Katz-Buonconintro, Jana Bennett, Jackie Marshall Arnold, Connie L. Bowman, Castel Sweet

Engineering Management and Systems Faculty Publications

As the interconnectedness of the world grows, the need to prepare college students capable of addressing complexity likewise grows. In this context, the University of Dayton has developed and tested a transdisciplinary model for education. This model links multiple classes from different disciplines via a common theme and within a common space. It also employs an educational model premised on the following trajectory: disciplinary content development / transdisciplinary observation (empathy); transdisciplinary disruption leading to “A-Ha” observations which transform the disciplinary directions; and lastly transdisciplinary informed design and research. Central to this model is a 3,500 square foot common space used …

Multivariate Analysis Of Students Perception On Teaching With Client Based And Non-Client Based Team Projects, Philip Appiah-Kubi

Engineering Management and Systems Faculty Publications

The classroom experience has evolved from traditional lecture, PowerPoint and whiteboards to a more active environment where students and instructors work together on hands-on activities to achieve the course objectives. Various names have been given to this pedagogy; experiential learning, project based learning (client based versus non-client based), active learning, and problem based learning are a handful of names used to describe this evolving pedagogy. The main challenge faced by educators in educating undergraduate students to be independent thinkers and problem solvers has been the driving force fueling the shift in pedagogy. This research looks into student’s perception on project …

Enhancing Students Learning And Assessment Through Positive Reinforcement, Philip Appiah-Kubi

Engineering Management and Systems Faculty Publications

Students’ understanding of class material, and knowledge retention are assessed through homework, exams, and a host of other methods. None of these forms of assessment is intrinsically paramount to the others; however, the benefits depend on how well they are used. A good assessment depends on the purpose and learning objectives, and one way of maximizing the benefits of assessment is to involve students in the assessment methodology. This paper evaluates the benefits of having students prepare some of the questions for their final exams. Generally, students put in more effort when they understand that they are in charge. Each …

Assessing The Emphasis On Information Security In The Systems Analysis And Design Course, William David Salisbury, Thomas W. Ferratt, Donald E. Wynn

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Due to several recent highly publicized information breaches, information security has gained a higher profile. Hence, it is reasonable to expect that information security would receive an equally significant emphasis in the education of future systems professionals. A variety of security standards that various entities (e.g., NIST, COSO, ISACA-COBIT, ISO) have put forth emphasize the importance of information security from the very beginning of the system development lifecycle (SDLC) to avoid significant redesign in later phases. To determine the emphasis on security in typical systems analysis and design (SA&D) courses, we examine (1) to what extent security is emphasized in …

A Simulation-Based Approach To Solve A Specific Type Of Chance Constrained Optimization, Lijian Chan

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

We solve the chance constrained optimization with convex feasible set through approximating the chance constraint by another convex smooth function. The approximation is based on the numerical properties of the Bernstein polynomial that is capable of effectively controlling the approximation error for both function value and gradient. Thus, we adopt a first-order algorithm to reach a satisfactory solution which is expected to be optimal. When the explicit expression of joint distribution is not available, we then use Monte Carlo approach to numerically evaluate the chance constraint to obtain an optimal solution by probability. Numerical results for known problem instances are …

International Management: Strategic Opportunities And Cultural Challenges, Paul B. Sweeney, Dean B. Mcfarlin

Management and Marketing Faculty Publications

As the economies of many countries become more interrelated, international managers are facing huge challenges and unique opportunities associated with their roles. Now in its fifth edition, Sweeney and McFarlin's International Management embodies a balanced and integrated approach to the subject, emphasizing the strategic opportunities available to firms on a global playing field, as well as exploring the challenges of managing an international workforce.

Integrating theory and practice across all chapter topics, this book helps students to learn, grasp, and apply the underlying principles of successful international management:

• Understanding the broad context of international business, including the critical trends impacting …

Capacity Planning With Financial And Operational Hedging In Low‐Cost Countries, Lijian Chen, Shanling Li, Letian Wang

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

The authors of this paper outline a capacity planning problem in which a risk-averse firm reserves capacities with potential suppliers that are located in multiple low-cost countries. While demand is uncertain, the firm also faces multi-country foreign currency exposures. This study develops a mean-variance model that maximizes the firm’s optimal utility and derives optimal utility and optimal decisions in capacity and financial hedging size. The authors show that when demand and exchange rate risks are perfectly correlated, a risk- averse firm, by using financial hedging, will achieve the same optimal utility as a risk-neutral firm. In this paper as well, …

The Promises And Challenges Of Innovating Through Big Data And Analytics In Healthcare, Donald E. Wynn, Renée M. E. Pratt

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

In this article, we present the promises and challenges of big data and analytics (BD&A) in healthcare, informed by our observations of and interviews with healthcare providers in the US and European Union (EU). We then provide a set of recommendations for capitalizing on the extraordinary innovation opportunities available through big data.

Integrating Strategic And Tactical Rolling Stock Models With Cyclical Demand, Michael F. Gorman

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

In the transportation industry, companies position rolling stock where it is likely to be needed in the face of a pronounced weekly cyclical demand pattern in orders.

Strategic policies based on assumptions of repetition of cyclical weekly patterns set rolling stock targets; during tactical execution, a myriad dynamic influences cause deviations from strategically set targets. We find that optimal strategic plans do not agree with results of tactical modeling; strategic results are in fact suboptimal in many tactical situations. We discuss managerial implications of this finding and how the two modeling paradigms can be reconciled.

Synergy And Its Limits In Managing Information Technology Professionals, Thomas W. Ferratt, Jayesh Prasad, Harvey Enns

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

We examine the effects of human resource management (HRM) practices (e.g., career development, social support, compensation, and security) on IT professionals‟ job search behavior. Job search is a relatively novel dependent variable in studies of voluntary withdrawal behavior, in general, and for IT professionals, in particular. From a universalistic perspective, HRM practices individually and in combination exhibit independently additive effects on job search behavior. Our study contrasts this perspective with configurational theory, hypothesizing that proposed idealtype configurations of HRM practices have synergistic effects on job search behavior. We contribute to the IT and broader HRM literature by theoretically explicating and …

Principles For Conducting Critical Realist Case Study Research In Information Systems, Donald E. Wynn, Clay K. Williams

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Critical realism is emerging as a viable philosophical paradigm for conducting social science research, and has been proposed as an alternative to the more prevalent paradigms of positivism and interpretivism. Few papers, however, have offered clear guidance for applying this philosophy to actual research methodologies. Under critical realism, a causal explanation for a given phenomenon is inferred by explicitly identifying the means by which structural entities and contextual conditions interact to generate a given set of events. Consistent with this view of causality, we propose a set of methodological principles for conducting and evaluating critical realism-based explanatory case study research …

Attitudes Toward And Behavioral Intentions To Adopt Mobile Marketing: Comparisons Of Gen Y In The United States, France And China, Rebecca Wells, Catherine E. Kleshinski, Terence Lau

Management and Marketing Faculty Publications

The rapid global diffusion of mobile marketing makes it increasingly important to understand cross-­‐cultural consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward mobile marketing as a promotional channel. By building on the previously published research of Altuna and Konuk (2009), this work investigates the attitudes and behavioral intentions toward mobile marketing of Generation Y consumers in the United States, France, and China. Based on this analysis, Chinese Gen Y have the most positive attitude toward mobile marketing, and their overall attitude is significantly more positive than the attitudes of French and American Gen Y groups. While American Gen Y's behavioral intentions are …

Ancillary Service Capacity Optimization For Both Electric Power Suppliers And Independent System Operator, Lijian Chen, Dengfeng Sun, Guang Li

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Ancillary Services (AS) in electric power industry are critical to support the transmission of energy from generators to load demands while maintaining reliable operation of transmission systems in accordance with good utility practice. The ancillary services are procured by the independent system operator (ISO) through a process called the market clearing process which can be modeled by the partial equilibrium from the ends of ISO. There are two capacity optimization problems for both Market participants (MP) and Independent System Operator (ISO). For a market participant, the firm needs to determine the capacity allocation plan for various AS to pursue operating …

Irish Cios’ Influence On Technology Innovation And It-Business Alignment, Harvey Enns, Joseph J. Mcdonagh

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Technology is the driving force behind many of today’s new products, services, and cost-cutting measures. However, there are gaps in our understanding about how technological innovation is fostered and nurtured in organizations.

Part of the answer is to examine how Chief Information Officers (CIOs) exercise influence regarding technological innovation in organizations. This is particularly important since the CIO is the head of technology in organizations, an important source of technological innovation. This article draws on an established executive influence framework to demonstrate how Irish CIOs are able to solidify Information Technology’s (IT’s) contribution to technological innovation via relational means. Most …

How Cios Overcome The Competing Values Challenge: Irish Cios’ Perspectives, Harvey Enns, Dean B. Mcfarlin, Paul B. Sweeney

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Competing values are a fact of organizational life. However, there are gaps in our understanding about how these opposing beliefs hinder influence processes. This article draws on interview data to demonstrate how Irish Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are able to convince their colleagues to support new projects within their firms in the face of competing values. Focused interviews were used to explore the influence process and the competing values phenomenon, since this type of research is at an early stage and qualitative methods and analysis serve as a rich source of theory development.

The data showed that the CIOs who …

Choosing Management Information Systems As A Major: Understanding The Smifactors For Mis, Thomas W. Ferratt, Stephen R. Hall, Jayesh Prasad, Donald E. Wynn

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Given declining management information systems (MIS) enrollments at our university, we seek to understand our students‘ selection of a major. Prior studies have found that students choose a major based on a number of factors, with subject matter interest consistently being most important. We contribute to the literature by developing a deeper understanding of what is meant by subject matter interest, which we refer to as smiFactors, for MIS as a major and career. Based on a qualitative analysis of open-ended survey questions completed by undergraduate business students, we confirm a number of smiFactors for MIS gleaned from recent studies …

Re-Solving Stochastic Programming Models For Airline Revenue Management, Lijian Chen, Tito Homem-De-Mello

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

We study some mathematical programming formulations for the origin-destination model in airline revenue management. In particular, we focus on the traditional probabilistic model proposed in the literature. The approach we study consists of solving a sequence of two-stage stochastic programs with simple recourse, which can be viewed as an approximation to a multi-stage stochastic programming formulation to the seat allocation problem. Our theoretical results show that the proposed approximation is robust, in the sense that solving more successive two-stage programs can never worsen the expected revenue obtained with the corresponding allocation policy. Although intuitive, such a property is known not …

Capacity-Driven Pricing Mechanism In Special Service Industries, Lijian Chen, Suraj M. Alexander

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

We propose a capacity driven pricing mechanism for several service industries in which the customer behavior, the price demand relationship, and the competition are significantly distinct from other industries. According our observation, we found that the price demand relationship in these industries cannot be modeled by fitted curves; the customers would neither plan in advance nor purchase the service strategically; and the competition would be largely local. We analyze both risk neutral and risk aversion pricing models and conclude the proposed capacity driven model would be the optimal solution under mild assumptions. The resulting pricing mechanism has been implemented at …

Volume And Cost Implications Of Product Portfolio Complexity, Mark A. Jacobs

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Business leaders are concerned about the impacts of increasing levels of product portfolio complexity since many sense that complexity related costs such as order management, procurement, and inventory threaten to undermine operational efficiencies and consume profits. Even so, managers do not fully understand the extent and breadth of the impacts of product portfolio complexity. A more complete understanding of the operational effects of product portfolio complexity is lacking partially because researchers have not yet offered a robust theoretical perspective or studied it in a focused controlled way; until now. Herein, measures of product portfolio complexity are developed and related to …

Product Complexity: A Definition And Impacts On Operations, Mark A. Jacobs

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

The difficulty for organizations arises because neither complexity nor its impacts on performance are well understood (Fisher & Ittner, 1999b). The mechanisms through which it affects cost, quality, delivery, and flexibility need to be explained (Ramdas, 2003). However, this cannot happen until complexity can be explained theoretically. But, to build theory there must first be a common understanding about the construct of interest (Wacker, 2004). Only then can researchers operationalize it and search for meaningful relationships. In light of this, I develop a definition of complexity below. A sampling of the operations management literature is then presented within the context …

Pricing And Product Mix Optimization In Freight Transportation, Michael F. Gorman

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

We propose improved pricing and market mix can improve the profitability of the freight transportation provider through the reduction of equipment repositioning costs. We hypothesize that because of complexities surrounding pricing and equipment repositioning costing, existing pricing strategies in freight transportation fail to fully consider these costs. We test this hypothesis in an applied setting in which Monte Carlo simulation captures the stochasticity of market conditions inherent in the problem. We use a heuristic to improve the nondifferentiable, discontinuous objective function.

Our results from test cases show with high confidence that current prices are not optimal, as indicated by a …

Enhancing Manufacturing Planning And Control Systems Through Artificial Intelligence Techniques, Ronald S. Dattero, John J. Kanet, Edna M. White

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Manufacturing planning and control systems are currently dominated by systems based upon Material Requirements Planning (MRP). MRP systems have a number of fundamental flaws. A potential alternative to MRP systems is suggested after research into the economic batch scheduling problem.

Based on the ideas of economic batch scheduling, and enhanced through artificial intelligence techniques, an alternative approach to manufacturing planning and control is developed. A framework for future research on this alternative to MRP is presented.