Business Commons^™

How Should We Motivate Effort, Shamima Khan

Theses and Dissertations

This research uses an experimental design to study if the pattern and positioning of rewards influence the amount of effort participants put in. The three key hypotheses tested here are: 1) are people more likely to complete a task if the incentives are given in more regular intervals, 2) do uncertainty of reward timing hurt or help in maintaining motivation, 3) is intrinsic motivation more influential than the patterns in which incentives are structured? The treatments in this experiment are created by varying the reward structure of candies and pens in exchange of a simple math test completion. Among the …

A Hero A Minute: The Manufacture Of Aura And Rarity In The World Of Sports Memorabilia And Rapid Commemoration, Roger C. Draeger

Theses and Dissertations

This is a study of the contemporary sports memorabilia industry and its surrounding culture through the analysis of a pair of its biggest providers. The following research explores the business model of Steiner Sports and examines its methods concerning pieces of game-used memorabilia and personal artifacts. The workings of Fanatics Authentic are also evaluated through the analysis of its specific line of In-Focus photographs and its sports memorabilia show held in the spring of 2016. The examination of both companies reveals techniques of manufacturing both rarity and aura that exist in the sports memorabilia industry. Steiner’s focus on providing intimate …

Growing Food Equity: A Participant Observation Exploring The Role Of Communication In A Nonprofit Organization’S Work To Improve Food Access In Urban Areas, Samantha Jane Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the concept of food equity and a nonprofit organization in Milwaukee, Victory Garden Initiative, that is working towards food equity by increasing food access in the city. The work explores issues of inadequate food access, urban development, and other nonprofit organizations working towards food equity. Through participant observation and interviews with VGI, the researcher found that a small nonprofit organization like Victory Garden Initiative is still bound by time, financial, and staffing constraints. In order for nonprofit organizations to market and run effective programming, they need to be efficient with limited resources, take advantage of any research …

Essays On The Economics Of International Remittances And Migration, Marian Manic

Theses and Dissertations

Existing literature on international remittances recognizes the increasing importance of these transfers on economic development as well as their effect on the reduction of poverty in developing countries. However, the studies on this topic are still divided over the long-term effects of remittances, identifying instances when remittances have either positive or negative results. Probably the most important oversight of the literature on international remittances and migration is the lack of the regional dimension in the analysis, which is the focus of this dissertation.

In the first chapter I propose a novel spatial dataset of remittances and spending from a nationally …

Strategic Inventories In A Supply Chain With Vertical Control And Downstream Cournot Competition, Vijayendra Viswanathan

Theses and Dissertations

Strategic Inventory (SI) has been an area of increased interest in theoretical supply chain literature recently. Most of the work so far however, has only considered a supply chain without downstream competition between retailers. Competition is ubiquitous in most market situations, hence, interactions between SI and retailer competition merits study as a first step in bringing the conversations and insights from this stream of literature to the real world.

We present here a two-period and a three-period model of one manufacturer supplying an identical product to two retailers who form a Cournot duopoly. We also study a Commitment contract, where …

The Ambience Of Innovation: A Material Semiotic Analysis Of Corporate And Community Innovation Sites, Reed Stratton

Theses and Dissertations

There are unprecedented opportunities in professional and technical writing (PTW) and rhetoric research thanks to a contemporary expansion of rhetorical studies beyond the linguistic/symbolic and into the material, accounting for the rhetorical contributions of “nonhumans” (Latour Reassembling the Social). Material rhetoric frameworks such as Thomas Rickert’s ambient rhetoric and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, provide fertile grounds for PTW/rhetoric research that explores the diffusion of “rhetoric into material space” (Rickert xii) which has especially exciting implications for the study of place and how it embodies values and rhetorically shapes acting, thinking, and the entire spectrum of “human flourishing” (Rickert xii).

This …

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 …

Veteran As Leader: The Lived Experience With Army Leader Development, Michael James Kirchner

Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study examined the lived leader development experience of Post 9/11 Army veterans while serving in the armed forces. At least $10-$15 billion is spent annually on leadership development in the United States and human resource executives claim developing leaders is their number one priority over the next five years. Simultaneously, companies actively hiring veterans claim the former service member's leadership abilities are their most desired quality. Inspection of the Army’s leader development program offers an opportunity for employers to integrate revised approaches in their own leadership development initiatives.

A purposive sample of ten Army veterans—six males and four …

Financial Conflict Messages And Marital Satisfaction: The Mediating Role Of Financial Communication Satisfaction, Samantha Josephine Shebib

Theses and Dissertations

The current study explores how methods of handling financial disagreements contribute to, or detracts from, marital satisfaction. In addition, satisfaction with communicating about financial obligations in marriage is predicted to contribute to marital satisfaction.