Business Commons^™

How To Train Your Algo: Investigating The Enablers Of Bias In Algorithmic Development, Marta Stelmaszak Rosa

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Literature on algorithmic bias identifies its source in either biased data or statistical methods, more rarely in the development of algorithmic solutions as a potential factor. Because of the prior unknowability of algorithms, data scientists developing such solutions have to take various design decisions. Drawing from the flow-oriented approach, we study algorithmic unknowability and how data scientists respond to it in 35 public data science Jupyter notebooks containing algorithmic solutions to predict customer churn in a credit card dataset on a data science platform Kaggle.com. We offer a more thorough understanding of the unknowability in algorithmic development that can enable …

Enhancement Of The Command-Line Environment For Use In The Introductory Statistics Course And Beyond, David W. Gerbing

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

R and Python are commonly used software languages for data analytics. Using these languages as the course software for the introductory course gives students practical skills for applying statistical concepts to data analysis. However, the reliance upon the command line is perceived by the typical nontechnical introductory student as sufficiently esoteric that its use detracts from the teaching of statistical concepts and data analysis. An R package was developed based on the successive feedback of hundreds of introductory statistics students over multiple years to provide a set of functions that apply basic statistical principles with command-line R. The package offers …

When A Ban Is Not A Ban: Institutional Work And The Russian Doping Scandal, Mathew Dowling, Spencer Harris, Marvin Washington

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

There are fewer cases of such blatant acts to defy and subsequent heroic efforts to rearrange institutional norms than the Russian doping scandal. In adopting a neo-institutional perspective, the authors theorize the scandal as a case of attempted but failed institutional disruption. More specifically, the authors draw upon the institutional change literature and the institutional work perspective to explain the key events surrounding actors’ response to the scandal. The analysis utilized Gioia’s methodological approach to examine secondary empirical data. Findings reveal how stakeholders circumvented traditional governance structures in an attempt to disrupt institutional arrangements, but despite this, much of the …

The Semiconductor Shortage: An Analysis Of Potential And Ongoing Remediation Efforts And Their Implications On The Industry & Macroeconomy, Carter Young

University Honors Theses

In recent months, the health of the macroeconomy has suffered due to logistical issues, inflation, and the labor market. Specifically, supply-side shocks within the semiconductor industry have dramatically affected firms’ ability to produce chipsets. The resulting destabilization is felt across innumerable downstream sectors which rely on these products for implementation into their own finished goods. This paper examines the exact impacts of these recent developments within the semiconductor industry, utilizing what-if and historical analysis to gauge how logistical issues, inflation, and increased capital expenditures will financially impact both firms within the industry and those which depend on their production. Additionally, …

Institutional Theory In Sport: A Scoping Review, Jonathan Robertson, Mathew Dowling, Marvin Washington, Becca Leopkey, Dana Lee Ellis, Lee Smith

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Institutional theory has generated considerable insight into fundamental issues within sport. This study seeks to advance Washington and Patterson’s review by providing an empirical review of institutional theory in sport. We follow Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review protocol to identify 188 sport-related institutional studies between 1979 and 2019. Our review provides evidence regarding the state of institutional scholarship within sport via an analysis of authorship, year, journal, methodology, method, study population, and use of institutional constructs (legitimacy, isomorphism, change, logics, fields, and work). Rather than a hostile takeover or a joint venture proposed in Washington and Patterson’s review, the relationship …

The Longitudinal Effects Of A Family And Sleep Supportive Intervention On Service Member Anger And Resilience, Shalene Joyce Allen

Dissertations and Theses

The vast majority of workplace intervention research on employee anger and resilience primarily focuses on individual-level strategies for mitigating employee anger and resilience outcomes in the workplace, with no studies having examined these outcomes with tangible occupational health interventions utilizing organizational-level techniques. Thus, the current study extends the literature on how to provide improvements in employee anger and resilience using higher system and organizational change mechanisms by providing evidence-based support for the effectiveness of a Total Worker Health® intervention, referred to as the Family and Sleep Supportive Intervention Training (FaSST). This approach employs both health protection and health promotion strategies …

When Are The Bigger Fish In The Small Pond Better Citizens? A Multilevel Examination Of Relative Overqualification In Workgroups, Farid Jahantab, Prajya R. Vidyarthi, Smriti Anand, Berrin Erdogan

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this study, we extend overqualification research to employees' social context of workgroup membership. Drawing upon social comparison theory and integrating with social exchange theory, we contend that employees' relative overqualification (ROQ, defined as individual overqualification relative to other group members' overqualification perceptions) is associated with their relative standing with their leader (measured as LMXSC, leader–member exchange social comparison), which in turn relates to employees' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Furthermore, we assert that workgroup structural attributes and individual values (leader span of control and power distance orientation) influence the ROQ–LMXSC–OCB relationship. Multilevel modeling using data from 243 employees nested in …

Center For Real Estate Quarterly, Volume 17, Number 7, Portland State University. Center For Real Estate

Center for Real Estate Quarterly

Table of Contents:
-- Economic Analysis by Jerry Johnson
-- Portland’s Midas Touch and the Housing Market by Gerard C.S. Mildner
-- The Office Market by Anthony Bertenelli
-- The Industrial Market by Rodrigo Flores
-- The Retail Market by Rodrigo Flores
-- The Multifamily Residential Report by Jason Guralnick
-- Housing Production by Jordan Mulvihill
-- Ownership Housing Market by Parker Webb
-- Renter Assistance by Dan Noyes
-- Rental Evictions by Rachel Luoto
-- Inclusionary Housing by Nate Grein

Continuity In The Face Of Disruptions: Purchasing And Supply Management Research's Persistence Amidst Covid-19, Steven Carnovale, Scott Duhadway

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Undoubtedly, the history books and future research will engage in serious retrospection of the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruptions that came in its wake. What were the key drivers and antecedents of the disruptions, and how were they managed? What effective tools for managing during a global disruption were developed, tested, and proven? While the true root cases will come out eventually, one thing is for certain: purchasing and supply management was the glue that held the global economy together during what was an otherwise chaotic time. Indeed, fields such as purchasing, supply chain management, and operations management have risen …

Fandom In The Digital Age: Examining Parasocial Relationships Between Fans And Music Artists On Instagram, Brittani Wert

University Honors Theses

With the rise of social media as a cultural staple in entertainment industries such as music, Instagram changes the landscape of the artist-fan connection and muddles the boundaries of parasocial relationships in a digital space. While a wealth of research exists on how fans perceive mediated relationships, the perspective of the artist and how they navigate this connectivity is missing from the discourse. This study builds on the current literature surrounding mediated artist-fan interactions and examines how music artists use Instagram to build strong, loyal relationships with fans through the lens of parasocial relationships. Through interviews with up-and-coming artists and …

Market Research For Small Businesses: A “Real World” Perspective, Kerry Wu

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

SCORE plays an essential role in supporting predominantly new small business entrepreneurs with limited resources. This article shares findings from in-depth interviews with SCORE mentors on how they advised clients on doing market research, their strategies and recommended resources on popular topics, and the perceived challenges their clients faced. Academic librarians can take advantage of opportunities identified in the study to build a robust relationship with SCORE, as well as leveraging SCORE methods and resources in their core reference and instruction work with students.

Online Grocery Shopping: A Staple Of The Present -- And Maybe The Future?, Henry B. Chao

altREU Projects

This project aims to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people's food shopping tendencies, specifically focusing on the use of online grocers. It uses data collected by a team of researchers led out of Portland State University. This data consists of roughly 8000 surveys distributed starting in September of 2020. The survey asks respondents to discuss their demographics, household resources, and shopping tendencies.

In particular, this project wants to understand how inclined a respondent is to use online grocers based on their personal experience with COVID-19. To do this, the project uses a Latent Class Model (LCM) to classify …

Ronald E. Mcnair Scholars Program Profiles And Abstracts 2021, Mcnair Scholars Program

McNair Symposium

This is the complete event program and provides presentation abstracts and biographies of McNair scholars and their mentors.

Unboxing The Algorithm: A Process Model Of An Algorithmic Solution, Marta Stelmaszak Rosa

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

With the explosion of data, analytics and artificial intelligence, information systems research focuses on the use, management and consequences of algorithms. This far, only a handful of papers offer insights into how algorithmic solutions work. To address this gap, we studied the code making up 45 public data science Jupyter notebooks containing algorithmic solutions developed to predict customer churn in a credit card dataset on a data science platform Kaggle. com. We synthesized a process model of an algorithmic solution: preparing the environment, reading in data, cleaning data, exploratory data analysis, pre-processing the dataset, building and training the model, and …

Distressed And Distracted By Covid-19 During High-Stakes Virtual Interviews: The Role Of Job Interview Anxiety On Performance And Reactions, Julie M. Mccarthy, Donald M. Truxillo, Talya N. Bauer, Berrin Erdogan, Yiduo Shao, Mo Wang, Joshua Liff, Cari Gardner

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Employers have increasingly turned to virtual interviews to facilitate online, socially distanced selection processes in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is little understanding about the experience of job candidates in these virtual interview contexts. We draw from Event System Theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) to advance and test a conceptual model that focuses on a high-stress, high-stakes setting and integrates literatures on workplace stress with literatures on applicant reactions. We predict that when applicants ruminate about COVID-19 during an interview and have higher levels of COVID-19 exhaustion, they will have higher levels of anxiety during virtual interviews, …

Vancouver Anchor District, Vancouver, Sandra Rollinson, Bryan Husin, Huy Le, Alicia Tillery, Colby Mikulich, Dawnna Wilder

Real Estate Development Workshop Projects

In response to the City of Vancouver’s Request for Quote (RFQ), Harbor Development Partners, LLC (HDP) is proud to present The Anchor District: A gateway master plan development that will anchor together Esther Short Park, the historic core, and the new Waterfront District. The theme of this new district is an experiential celebration of the rich culture and history of Vancouver, by way of expansive pavilions, enhanced transit hub, community-centric buildings, placemaking lighting, and an inner-urban promenade that promotes access and blurs the line between private and public spaces. All paths are designed to lead to the centric point of …

Center For Real Estate Quarterly, Volume 15, Number 5, Portland State University. Center For Real Estate

Center for Real Estate Quarterly

Table of Contents:
-- Economic Analysis by Jerry Johnson
-- Suburbs, Edge Cities and Santa Fe: A Conversation with Joel Garreau by Gerard C.S. Mildner and Trey Barrineau
-- The Office Market by Anthony Bertenelli
-- The Industrial Market by Brian Yarne
-- The Retail Market by Brian Yarne
-- The Multifamily Residential Report by Jason Guralnick
-- Housing Production by Jordan Mulvihill
-- The Challenge of Oregon’s Rent Relief Programs by Dan Noyes
--Missing Middle Housing by Rick Brody

Vancouver Gateway Project, Vancouver, Washington, Brandon Brezic, Isabella Day, Jesse Debord, Brett Herb, Dylan Nichols, Tera Perala

Real Estate Development Workshop Projects

Located in Southwestern Washington, the City of Vancouver’s Downtown and Waterfront districts have experienced a significant transformation during the past five years, resulting in over 900 new homes, and 88,000 and 170,000 square feet of new retail and office space, respectively. This central area is poised for exponential growth over the next 5 years focused along the 32-acre Waterfront Vancouver master plan area. At the heart of the city center is an undeveloped 6.4 acre site that has the potential to seamlessly connect the urban fabric of Vancouver.

We view this site not only as an opportunity to connect the …

From Early Curiosity To Space Wide Web: Emergence Of The Small Satellite Innovation Ecosystem, Yue Song, Devi R. Gnyawali, Lihong Qian

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research Questions:

• How did the small satellite ecosystem emerge and evolve?
• Although the first modern small satellite UoSat-1 was successfully launched in 1981, and the CubeSat dominant design was introduced in 1999, the sales takeoff of small satellites did not occur until the early 2010s. What explains this long time period?

How To Decide Whether And How To Sell A Small Family Business, Gabriel Harlow

University Honors Theses

Small family business owners face the issue of deciding what becomes of both themselves and their business as they near retirement, no longer feel passionate about the business they run, and would no longer like to be in the position of running a business. In the context of a small family business, there are factors of splitting revenue, passing the business onto other relatives, and other considerations. Businesses have value and determining that value is a necessary part of deciding whether or not to move on from one. Through preparation, situational analysis, decision models, and evaluation, a business's future can …

Order From Chaos: A Meta-Analysis Of Supply Chain Complexity And Firm Performance, Melek Akin Ates, Robert Suurmond, Davide Luzzini, Daniel R. Krause

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Increased globalization, varying customer requirements, extended product lines, uncertainty regarding supplier performance, and myriad related factors make supply chains utterly complex. While previous research indicates that supply chain complexity plays an important role in explaining performance outcomes, the accumulating evidence is ambiguous. Thus, a finer-grained analysis is required. By meta-analyzing 27,668 observations across 102 independent samples from 123 empirical studies, we examine the link between supply chain complexity and firm performance. While the preponderance of evidence from previous studies identifies supply chain complexity as detrimental to firm performance, our results illustrate that although supply chain complexity has a negative effect …

Opportunities For Vietnam's Footwear Industry After The 2019-2020 Pandemic To Achieve Competitive Advantage, Thuan Nguyen

University Honors Theses

Vietnam's footwear industry is the main topic of the research. The thesis paper will evaluate the industry's current performance based on existing data to discover Vietnam's footwear opportunities to achieve a competitive advantage over other countries after the COVID-19 pandemic. Vietnam plays a crucial role in the global footwear industry and its supply chain. My thesis methodology will be an abductive approach strategy, using both data and theory to find an explanation, which itself can be shown to be true or viable. The research and implementation theory of Michael Porter’s Diamond Model will allow for the identification of opportunities for …

Corporate Sociopolitical Activism And Nonprofit Identity Orientation On An Individual's Likelihood To Support, Tara Duenas

University Honors Theses

The purpose of this study aims to identify whether corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) as a marketing strategy impacts individual stakeholders and their likelihood to support (time, money, or for-profit partnership) a nonprofit who may have different identity orientations (collectivistic or relational). The two nonprofits that inspired this study are Portland State University (PSU) and SNACK BLOC. Both organizations vary greatly in size and have implemented CSA in response to police abolition within the past year and currently receive public funding. There are various organizational differences between these nonprofits but there has been a suggested link in research that an organization’s …

Should Synergy Alone Be Accepted As Justification For Premia Paid In M&A?, Sebastian Araguas

University Honors Theses

Synergy is often used by management as justification to pay, and oftentimes overpay, for acquisitions. This paper explores the phenomenon of synergy being used as justification for overpayment in various M&A transactions, and the impact it has on value for shareholders. Current methods of valuation are compiled, summarized, and examined for potential areas of conflict, challenges with post merger integration are explored, and real world examples of improper integration and overpayment are examined. We find that the current methods of valuation leave room for error based on hubris and personal interest, that the realization of synergy is often much more …

Police Union Contracts And Impediments To Accountability: A Case Study Analysis Of Ppa Bargaining Agreements, Elizabeth Ott

University Honors Theses

Despite a growing widespread recognition that police unions represent a major component of policing and have major influences on aspects of policing such as disciplinary procedures, day-to-day management, and police-community relations, they have until recently been largely ignored by police scholars. In light of significant gaps in knowledge regarding police unions and the impacts that they have on law enforcement behavior and police accountability, this paper utilizes a case study approach to analyze all existing union contracts between the Portland Police Association (PPA) and the City of Portland in order to explore the prevalence of particular contract provisions that critics …

The Role Of Cognitive Load And Individual Differences When Interpreting Human-Resource Data Visualizations, Zachary Hesson

University Honors Theses

Data visualizations (e.g., bar graph, dashboard) can be used as decision-support and storytelling tools that aid users’ interpretation of sometimes complex information, including within the human resource management (HRM) context. As HRM evolves towards implementing more data-informed decisions, it is important to understand how users interpret data visualizations. The aims of this thesis are to (a) identify whether cognitive load affects the amount of time users spend arriving forming and interpretation and the accuracy of their interpretations, and (b) to evaluate whether cognitive load moderates the association between individual-difference variables and interpretation time and accuracy. The individual differences that are …

Towards A Theory Of Informal Supply Networks: An Exploratory Case Study Of The Za'atari Refugee Camp, Ismail Abushaikha, Zhaohui Wu, Theodore A. Khoury

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Studies of humanitarian supply chain operations contribute to efficient system designs for the delivery of goods and services to disaster- and conflict-stricken regions. However, our understanding of what happens to these relief goods and services after they are delivered is quite limited. Using a case study of the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan, we develop a theory of informal supply networks, whereby we uncover how refugee-led, informal supply networks emerge in the camp. We find that these supply networks are an aggregate of predominantly illicit—yet legitimate—channels and social relationships that support the economic exchange of goods and services between distinct …

Perceived Value Of Technology Product Features By Crowdfunding Backers: The Case Of 3d Printing Technology On Kickstarter Platform, Nina Chaichi

Dissertations and Theses

Crowdfunding is an activity that gathers funds by drawing on a relatively small contribution from a relatively large number of individuals using the internet. One of the crowdfunding purposes is to fund entrepreneurial ventures. Modern crowdfunding activities--that utilize the internet--go back to 1997 and gained popularity in the music and video community. However, the most common platforms for entrepreneurial activities, including Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, have been established as recently as 2008. Thus the understanding of crowdfunding's dynamic is in its infancy.

Crowdfunding has been studied from various perspectives, primarily focusing on the factors that increase the platform's participation and determinants …

When Imperfect Is Preferred: The Differential Effect Of Aesthetic Imperfections On Choice Of Processed And Unprocessed Foods, Jacob A. Suher, Courtney Szocs, Koert Van Ittersum

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Some companies design processed foods to contain aesthetic imperfections such as non-uniformities in shape, color, or texture. Simultaneously, consumers annually discard millions of pounds of unprocessed, safe-to-eat fruits and vegetables owing to aesthetic imperfections. Why design processed foods with aesthetic imperfections when people discard unprocessed foods because of them? Seven studies, including a choice study at a grocery store and an incentive-compatible study, show that the effect of aesthetic imperfections on consumer preferences depends on whether foods are unprocessed or processed. While imperfections negatively influence preferences for unprocessed foods, they positively influence preferences for processed foods. We attribute this preference …

Technology Management Maturity Assessment Model In Healthcare, Amir Shaygan

Dissertations and Theses

Significant gaps in the practical transformation of clinical knowledge into practices, increasing healthcare costs, costly medical errors, healthcare institutions' obligations towards improving safety, clinical outcomes, and efficacy of care from one side; and the rise of disruptive innovations, the adoption of electronic health records and novel diagnostic tools, and the plethora of data from the other side has made the need for a new approach in managing the U.S healthcare systems an imperative. Continuous learning has been utilized to mitigate some of these issues have been in healthcare organizations. Continuous learning is especially important in the research centers that act …