Business Commons^™

Accounting For The Gift: Theology And Ethics In Accounting, Daniel Sebastian

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Accounting is often assumed to be a neutral presentation of the facts of economic activities and actions. Its double-entry system means that it is always in balance and comports to the rigor of mathematical formulas, and it is taken to be a matter of empirical counting that lends it certainty as well. The dissertation argues that this description of accounting is inadequate. Accounting is better seen as a political tool and technology for producing trust that can help resolve social conflicts. As such, accounting is not value-neutral but carries within it a particular sociality that has moral implications. These moral …

The Right To Repair: (Re)Building A Better Future, Jumana Labib

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The goal of this research project was to take a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach to research and examine the Right to Repair movement’s progress, current repair practices, impediments, and imperatives, and the various large-scale implications (environmental, economic, social, etc.) stemming from diminished consumer freedom as a result of increased corporate greed and lack of governmental regulations with regards to repair and the environment. This poster exhibits the highlights of my general research project on the Right to Repair movement over the course of this four month internship, and aims to disseminate information about the movement to the wider public in an …

An Integrative Study Of Service And Safety Climate And Performance: Do Climates Compete?, Jeffrey B. Paul

Selected Faculty Publications

Organizational scholars continue to expand our knowledge of the contextual forces influencing employee behavior in organizations. A notable stream in this research agenda includes organizational climate studies that describe the social processes guiding employee perceptions of their environment. These shared perceptions formulate climate constructs that have demonstrated through theorizing and empirical findings relationships with attitudinal, behavioral, and performance outcomes across multiple levels of analysis. Contemporary climate studies have focused on facet-specific climates, such as a service climate or safety climate, and have linked facet climates with the same facet related performance (e. g. safety climate predicts increased safety performance). Given …

African American Female Law Enforcement Officers' Lived Experiences And Mentoring: A Thematic Narrative, Harold Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

Black female officers are an underrepresented sub-group of the law-enforcement profession. The bulk of research on women’s policing has focused on the growth of women in law enforcement, barriers, sexual harassment, gender differences, why women are deterred from law enforcement, physical limitations, and instruments used during the recruitment process, and the stress endured after entry into the profession. When looking at Black female officers’ lived experience and perceptions around mentoring; research is lacking. Eight Black female officers from the San Francisco Bay Area participated in this study. Findings revealed that all of the women have faced a recurring sense of …

Tackling Under-Declared Employment In The European Union: Input Paper To Thematic Discussion Of European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Evaluating Policy Approaches Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Fyr Of Macedonia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Evaluating Competing Perspectives Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Bulgaria, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

A Multidisciplinary Approach To Understanding Gambling And The Millennial Generation, Don Feeney

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

While numerous studies have been done on the gambling habits of the Millennial Generation, we can learn much about their reaction to gambling through an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates insights from demography, cultural anthropology, history, sociology and other fields. In particular, an analysis of formative experiences and how they differ from previous generations tells us much about their gambling behavior and attitudes. In addition to a discussion of key findings, the presentation will focus on the implications of these findings for the gambling industry and for programs that raise awareness of, prevent, and treat gambling problems.

Multicultural Advertising And Updated Branding For Wedding Photographers, Kaitlyn Wimmers

Honors Projects

A traditional image of a couple getting married includes one man, one woman, who are young, white, and do not have children. Yet, demographics of prospective couples have become more diverse in terms of age, race-ethnicity, sexual orientation, and family composition. This project examines the extent to which these changes toward diversity in prospective couples are reflected in wedding photographers’ marketing strategies, using content analysis of photographs (N = 960) from photographers' Wedding Wire profiles, personal photography websites, and professional Facebook pages. Eight photographers were chosen from the Midwest (Chicago and Indianapolis) and the West Coast (Los Angeles and San …

On Organizations And Oligarchies: Michels In The Twenty-First Century, Pamela S. Tolbert, Shon R. Hiatt

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] A central problem for those interested in studying and explaining the actions of organizations is how to conceptualize these social phenomena. In particular, because organizations are constituted by individuals, each of whom may seek to achieve his or her interests through the organization, questions of how decisions are made in organizations and whose preferences drive those decisions are critical to explaining organizational actions. Although early organizational scholars spent much time wrestling with these questions (e.g. Barnard 1938; Simon 1947; Parsons 1956; March and Simon 1958), more recent work in organizational studies has tended to elide them, adopting an implicit …

Deification Of Market; Homogenization Of Cultures: 'Free Trade' And Other Euphemisms For Global Capitalism, Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

In this book chapter, I argue that states and MNCs enter into extraterritorial pacts with global institutions like the WTO, UN, and IMF to derive economic benefit from international trade. Given that both entities are drawn to international trade by the quest for financial gain, there is no justification for attributing to either corporations or their countries of national origin malevolent intent such as colonization of the world under the banner of a particular culture. Economic actors direct their deliberate and intentional activities towards achieving economic goals; and this is done to such an extent that they are often willing …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Identifying The Factors That Influence Conflict Management Behavior Of Human Resource Professionals In The Workplace: An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Personality And Conflict Management Behavior, Gail Joyce Shapiro

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Effective conflict management in the workplace can reduce the negative consequences of conflict. These negative outcomes can include low productivity, health-related stress, increased employee turnover, or litigation. A Human Resource (HR) professional can help mitigate these negative outcomes in the workplace when using effective conflict management behavior with employees. However, there is a void in research pertaining to HR professionals’ use of conflict management behavior.

This quantitative, correlational research study examined whether personality has an impact on assertive or cooperative conflict management behavior of HR professionals in the workplace. Statistical testing found a significant relationship between the harmonious, people-person (a …

Measuring Normlessness In The Workplace: A Study Of Organizational Anomie In The Academic Setting, Tayo Glenn Switzer

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The dissertation explores leadership and change by examining normlessness in the workplace through a multi-layered study of anomie theory, anomie research in the workplace, and organizational and business management theory. The research validates a quantitative survey designed to measure the level of normlessness experienced by workgroups within an organizational context. The survey reflects a set of six normative aspects that when disrupted produce organizational anomie—a state of normlessness that leads to an increase in worker resistance and a reduction in worker consent. The audience studied in this dissertation is associate professors at a large Midwestern research university. Data were gathered …

Locating Sociological Concepts In Business Games, Dylan Kissane, Helen Roux-Fontaine

Dylan Kissane

"This article describes one strategy for demonstrating the value of sociological concepts to business students by adopting a cross-discipline approach to a business game at a French-American business school. This strategy proved effective in allowing a social science professor to demonstrate the practical implications of two concepts – gender and race – to undergraduate students while simultaneously allowing an international management professor to demonstrate how cross-cultural teams should be managed in order to work effectively. This article first explains the Ecotonos business game; secondly, it explains the crucial debriefing process for the business game and demonstrates how sociological concepts can …

Organizational Institutionalism And Sociology: A Reflection, Pamela S. Tolbert

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] In 1991, DiMaggio and Powell observed: Institutional theory presents a paradox. Institutional analysis is as old as Emile Durkheim's exhortation to study 'social facts as things', yet sufficiently novel to be preceded by new in much of the contemporary literature. (1991: 1) We argue that this paradox is, at least in part, the result of a long-standing tension in sociology between more materialist, interest-driven explanations of behavior and ideational, normative explanations, a tension that has often driven oscillating waves of sociological theorizing. It underlies many classical debates (e.g., between Spencer and Durkheim, Weber and Marx, and even Parsons and …

Tourist Experience: Contemporary Perspectives, Philip R. Stone

Dr Philip Stone

How Does Advertising Articulate The Tropes Of The Posthuman That Exist In Contemporary Culture?, Norah Campbell

Doctoral

The posthuman is a concept that has accrued much currency in disciplines as diverse as legal theory, artificial life science and philosophy. This thesis explores the meaning of the concept by initially examining what it means to be human, finding that art and science have so far failed to provide a long-lasting definition of humanness. Instead of a temporal “coming-after” stage of humanity, posthumanism might be more usefully seen as a concept that draws attention to the cracks that have always existed in the apparently water-tight description of the human- how the “human” has changed radically and continues to change …

Sorry, But It's The Law: The Westernization Of Islam, Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

The last quartile of the 20th Century vastly changed the religio-cultural landscape of the West. Previously the stronghold of Christianity, the West has entered into a period of deep diversity as a result of the unprecedented level of migration of non-Western, non-Christian peoples to western destinations. These new immigrants, with their foreign cultures and unfamiliar religions, came westward with the full expectation that they--like the diverse array of Christian emigrants who migrated westward decades before--would fully enjoy religious liberty in nations long heralded for their commitment to democratic principles and respect for civil rights. How are these immigrants faring on …

The Effects Of Ethnicity, Ethnic Salience And Ethnic Identification On Consumers' Sources Of Information And Purchase Behavior, Patricia Wooten Humphrey

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were any significant differences in the search and purchase behavior between white and black consumers due to ethnicity, ethnic identification, ethnic salience and ethnic situation.

The sample was chosen from two universities, one predominately white, the other predominately black. Of the 360 questionnaires administered, 345 were usable. The sample was representative of the student population of each university with respect to age, gender, and ethnicity. Statistical techniques used were ANOVAs, t-tests and paired comparisons.

The findings indicate that ethnicity plays an important role in an individual's sources of information used …

Work Role Vs. Familial Roles: Management Of Work And Family Responsibilities Among Blue-Collar Chicana And Mexican Immigrant Women In The Lower Rio Grande Valley Apparel Industry, Maria Olivia Villarreal-Solano

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This qualitative study examined how a select group of forty Chicana and Mexican immigrant women employed as apparel production workers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley manage work and family responsibilities. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews. The interviews were conducted over a one year period in the county of Hidalgo, Texas. This study identified two processes used by women in managing work and family. Age and the timing of life events were found to have the greatest influence on the process of managing work and family responsibilities among the studied women. Ethnicity, contrary to existing explanatory models, was not …

A Comparison Of The Effectiveness Of Civilian Conservation Centers And Contract Centers From 1984 To 1988, Robert P. Slaughter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the continuous instability of policy decisions relating to the effectiveness of Civilian Conservation Centers and Contract Centers was a result of measurable differences in performance between the two models. Six hypotheses tested differences between types of centers on six quantitative variables which were: average length of stay, job placement, hourly starting wages, educational gains in reading, math, and General Educational Development (GED). To investigate the problem, 30 Civilian Conservation Centers and 17 comparably sized Contract Centers were selected. Reports from the Department of Labor's Automated Management System provided data for comparison …