Business Commons^™

The Impact Of Irrational Beliefs On Dysfunctional Decision-Making In B2b Salespeople, Barron W. Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

The complexity of the contemporary business-to-business (B2B) sales landscape requires salespeople to respond faster, be more knowledgeable, and add more value to buyer interactions than ever before. As such, B2B salespeople must carefully consider the impact of their decisions since they have the potential to directly impact organizational revenue and bottom-line outcomes. The present research utilizes rational-emotive behavior theory to examine judgment and decision-making in B2B salespeople. Research questions are presented and tested with a sample of 306 B2B salespeople using structural equation modeling. The results of the analysis reveal that irrational beliefs lead to dysfunctional emotions, and in turn, …

Cool Brands And Their Grateful Fans: A Multi-Method Exploration Of Brand Coolness And Consumer Gratitude, Melanie Moore Koskie

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the course of three essays, this dissertation explores brand coolness, gratitude, and the relationship between the two. In the first essay, cool brands and their marketing outcomes are viewed through the lens of standing out and fitting in—two paradoxical motivations held together in the concept of cool. Utilizing structural equation modeling, I examine the relevant relationships between consumer’s motivations to stand out and fit in, the corresponding brand coolness attributes of subcultural and popular, the consumer emotional response of gratitude, and a consumer’s willingness to pay more for cool brands. Importantly, this essay finds that the consumer emotion of …

Demands At Work: The Moderating Influence Of Motivation On The Relationship Between Challenge Demands And Employee Work Engagement, Lauren R. Dinnat

Doctoral Dissertations

Work engagement is a popular topic due to the positive outcomes linked to it. For example, engaged workers are shown to be more productive workers and better organizational citizens. The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory has been the most widely accepted explanatory model for work engagement due to its flexibility to be applied to all work environments. While the JD-R does not argue that motivation is fixed, it does not account for moment-to-moment changes in motivation. A state theory of motivation that examines how motivation may impact the relationships between demands and work engagement has yet to be examined. This study …

New Geographies Of Electronic Commerce: An Appraisal Of Omni-Channel Strategies In The United States Grocery Industry, Connor Reed

Doctoral Dissertations

This body of doctoral research investigates the unique geography of e-commerce [electronic commerce] offerings among major grocery chains in the contiguous United States. Prior research has made efforts to understand the demographic and spatial dynamics that may influence consumers’ decision to shop online or in-store. Far less emphasis, however, has been placed on how firms have made key strategic decisions across space regarding e-commerce. This work leverages spatial econometric modeling and machine learning to understand how the characteristics of trade areas inform grocery chains’ decisions about whether to offer pickup, delivery, both, or no offering at a given store location. …

Two Essays On The Board Of Directors, Dipesh Bhattarai

Doctoral Dissertations

The board of directors plays a crucial role in corporate governance, serving as a vital mechanism to oversee and guide firms towards achieving their goals. Given the importance of boards in the corporate governance framework, we still do not have clear understanding of how directors' characteristics influence the governance and performance of firms. This dissertation ties together two chapters that contribute to this area of research, each focusing on different aspects of directors' influence on corporate governance and firm value.

The first chapter, "The Effect of Director Wealth on Corporate Governance and Firm Value," examines the impact of a director's …

Checking The Box: Does Compliance With Risk Management Regulation Increase Financial Stability?, Samuel W. Adams

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how bank risk management impacts financial stability. In the first chapter, my coauthors and I study how bank risk management impacts systemic risk using a global sample of banks from 2002 to 2020. We find that bank risk management has improved since the global financial crisis, driven by the implementation of country-level reforms mandating Chief Risk Officers and board-level risk committees. We find that stronger risk management lowers banks’ contribution to systemic risk. Using the staggered enactment of bank risk management reforms as a quasi-natural experiment, we provide evidence that the relation is causal. Subsample analysis on …

Who Benefits From Detailed Income Tax Disclosure?, Jack Badger

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I investigate the costs and benefits of providing detailed income tax footnotes. Specifically, I examine whether the level of specificity in a firm’s income tax footnote is associated with the value relevance of income tax numbers, analysts’ effective tax rate (ETR) forecasting ability, and uncertain tax benefit (UTB) settlements. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) launched, and finalized, the Income Tax Disclosure Project to address concerns regarding the amount of boilerplate and generic information in firm’s income tax footnotes. Firms argue that the complex and dynamic nature of income taxes will render these disclosures confusing for investors …

How To Bridge Materialism And Ethical Behavior: Exploring The Influence Of Scarcity Appeal, Minjeong Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper explores the complex dynamics of consumer behavior, particularly focusing on materialistic individuals' propensity towards unsustainable consumption practices and their reluctance to engage with brands' purpose-driven initiatives. Drawing on existing literature, the study highlights strategies to minimize the detrimental effects of materialism on environmental concerns. It also aims to enhance ethical product preferences by examining consumers' consumption patterns. Materialistic consumers prioritize product acquisition for status display rather than practical utility. They often overlook the societal and environmental implications of their choices.

In response to this challenge, the research aims to investigate scarcity strategies as a means to incentivize materialistic …

An Examination Of The Incentives To Issue Spring-Loaded Equity Awards, Kory Davis Maag

Doctoral Dissertations

A spring-loaded equity award is an award granted to an employee while the firm possesses non-public, positive information that is released shortly after the equity award is granted. Generally, shareholders oppose these awards, but firms see them as valid rewards for executives. In my study, I examine factors associated with the issuance of spring-loaded awards. I identify potential spring-loaded awards (SLAs) issued to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) by examining returns shortly following the grant date of equity awards to CEOs. I assign awards to differing levels of potential to be spring-loaded based on these returns. I find that firms are …

The Disparate Effects Of Non-Reliance Restatements On Retail And Institutional Investor Trading, Jason T. Bangert

Doctoral Dissertations

The SEC seeks to mandate disclosures that effectively inform retail investor decision making. To evaluate these efforts, I investigate how retail investors, relative to institutional investors, process non-reliance restatements. I find that both retail and institutional investors revise expectations about firm value and modify investment decisions following these disclosures. However, in contrast to regulator efforts, the results suggest that the costs to process non-reliance restatements are disproportionately high for retail investors. Specifically, individuals tend to disagree regarding the implications of these disclosures for firm value, whereas institutions tend to draw similar inferences. Moreover, individuals take significantly longer than institutions to …

Broker Conflict Of Interest Mitigation Efforts And Mutual Funds: Evidence From The 2016 Department Of Labor Fiduciary Rule, Connor Kasten

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation utilizes the 2016 Department of Labor (DOL) Fiduciary Rule to analyze the impact of efforts to mitigate broker conflicts of interest on mutual funds. The first chapter examines the effect of the Fiduciary Rule on mutual fund investment. Specifically, I look at changes in the composition of funds available for investment and fund flows during and after the implementation of the Fiduciary Rule. I find that investment companies shifted away from offering investments with broker compensation by eliminating commissioned loads on existing funds, removing funds with broker compensation, and adding funds without broker compensation. This change in investment …

Improving Customer Experience Throughout The Customer Journey In The Big Data Era, Mohammad Saljoughian

Doctoral Dissertations

My PhD dissertation focuses on how firms should adapt their strategies to improve customer engagement throughout customer journey. My first paper examines firm-customer conversations on social media. Many firms struggle with how to craft their messages in conversations with customers on social media, and the lack of guidance for interacting with customers is among the top social media challenges reported by firms. The problem is compounded by the fact that these conversations take place in different, simultaneous threads, each of which potentially requiring a different approach. This paper studies how firms can adapt their responses in individual social media conversations …

Firm Transparency Of Risk Oversight: An Examination Of Cybersecurity Governance Disclosures, Laurie E. Ereddia

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I examine factors associated with firm transparency of board oversight using the setting of cybersecurity risk. The SEC requires that, to the extent cybersecurity risks are material, firms must disclose the nature of the board’s role in overseeing the management of that risk, allowing investors to assess how the board is fulfilling its risk oversight duties. Using textual analysis, I identify 2,921 firms that report material cybersecurity risk factors in their annual reports. From these firms’ 2021 proxy statement filings, I hand collect data relating to 12 different elements of cybersecurity board oversight and create an overall …

Local Ipos And Retail Investor Trading, Guanhuan Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines how salient events affect retail investors’ trading behavior. Using data on households’ trading records from a large discount broker between 1991 and 1996, I find that Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) significantly increase the trading activities of local retail investors of stocks in the same industry over the subsequent year. The effect is stronger for less sophisticated investors and investors who live closer to the IPO firm’s headquarters, consistent with salience as the channel. I also find that retail investors are net buyers of stocks right after the local IPOs and become net sellers after a year and …

A Collaborative Autoethnography: Your Passport To Immigrant Women Of Color Leader's Stories Of Identity Exploration And Leadership Barriers And Possibilities, Fraylanie Adan Aglipay

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of the personal and career narratives of immigrant Women of Color can lead to more appropriate standards in mainstream work environments and to the expansion of professional leadership opportunities for immigrant Women of Color. The experiences of immigrant Women of Color leaders are varied and complex, with each leader’s experience offering unique perspectives on their leadership journey. Additionally, it is important to analyze their identities because they contain multiple layers, serving as the foundation that has shaped them into the authentic leaders they are today. As scholars, researchers, and activists, we have a duty to address the lack …

Hospital-Physician Integration And Physician Collaboration: Implications For Care Efficiency And Outcomes, Hui Jia

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis focuses on healthcare operations management and consists of two essays that investigate empirically how the relationship between physicians and hospitals and the relationship between peer physicians, respectively, affect clinical care outcomes and care efficiency.

In the first essay, I study hospital-physician integration as a type of organization-service provider relationship. Many prior studies have provided insights into the benefits of a tight collaboration between hospitals and physicians. However, neutral and even negative effects of this relationship on healthcare performance have been observed and discussed in the literature. This mixed evidence points to a need for further study to elucidate …

Kitchen Invasion: Restaurants’ Business Model Innovations During The Covid-19 Crisis, Jaewoo Jung

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation explores how and why firms facing the same exogenous threats react differently, leading to different business model innovation (BMI) processes. I examine BMI in a context that has been hard-hit by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions—the restaurant industry. Employing a mixed-method research design, I conducted a longitudinal, inductive comparative case study of 17 restaurateurs in the same geographic region to explore how they have responded to the pandemic and how their BMI unfolded over time. To generalize my understanding of these processes, I then analyzed large-scale media data about the restaurant industry using topic modeling. In this quantitative analysis, I …

Playing The Game: Video Games And Video Game Streaming Platforms As Marketing Communication Channels, Roman Welden

Doctoral Dissertations

While video games are generally viewed as a form of entertainment for a small subset of people, in reality they provide a channel for nearly 3.2 billion people to interact with others and offer multiple pathways for marketers to interact with consumers. Pair this alongside 140 million unique consumers who consumer nearly 24 billion hours of content on video game streaming platforms (VGSPs), such as Twitch, and there is a deep need for marketers to understand how to engage consumers in these environments. This dissertation provides a conceptualization of the video game ecosystem as well as the types of influencers …

The Unexplored Impacts Of Communication Elements In Marketing, Can Trinh

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes two essays that examine how the use of different marketing communication approaches influences consumers. In the first essay, I propose that the use of human silhouettes, when compared to images of attractive human models, enhances marketing communication effectiveness by reducing the extent to which consumers experience self-threat when viewing an ad. In addition, I predict this effect holds for appearance-related products only and strengthens as consumers’ level of appearance-related self-esteem decreases. Five studies reported in this essay provide converging evidence in support of these expectations.

In the second essay, I investigate into how the use of puns …

“It's Like You're Trying To Get A Meeting With The Pope”: A Narrative Inquiry On Experiences Of Social Work Field Staff Establishing Field Placements In Sport, Lauren Beasley

Doctoral Dissertations

Social work in sport is a growing subspecialty of social work practice. However, there is limited research on the training of social work students to work in a sport setting. As field education is considered the signature pedagogy of social work education, more insights are needed on social work field internships in sport organizations. To fill this gap in the literature, the purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand social work field staff's narratives of their experiences establishing sport-specific field placements through their lived stories. The study was guided by three research questions: (1) What narratives do social work …

Shareholder Beware? Examining Nol Poison Pill Adoptions, Danielle Stanley

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines whether or not a specific and unilateral action taken by the board of directors, the adoption of a net operating loss (NOL) poison pill, promotes shareholder interests, by examining the factors that are influential in the adoption decision. NOL poison pill adoptions are unique in that the board of directors cites the need to protect a firm’s ability to use its NOL carryforwards in the future, rather than to protect the firm from a specific takeover threat. To address my research question, I examine the firm characteristics associated with NOL poison pill adoptions and find that the …

Do Big 4 Auditors Provide Higher Audit Service Quality Than Second-Tier Auditors In Small And Mid-Sized Initial Public Offerings?, Stefan K. Slavov

Doctoral Dissertations

Big 4 auditors perform most audits of companies that issue initial public offerings (IPOs). Regulators have expressed interest in increasing IPO audit market competition and a growing body of evidence suggests that Second-Tier auditors could provide IPO audit service quality comparable to that of Big 4 auditors. However, there exists limited empirical evidence on whether IPO audit service quality varies with auditor type. I investigate whether IPO audit service quality differs between Big 4 and Second-Tier auditors for a sample of small and mid-sized IPOs from 2005 through 2019. I find that Big 4 clients are associated with lower pre-IPO …

Effects Of Economic Development Status And Eco-Product On Consumption Values: From The Perspective Of Us Consumers, Mostafa Zaman

Doctoral Dissertations

Consumers select a product based on numerous product characteristics. Numerous studies conducted earlier revealed that consumers in developing countries preferred products made in western or developed countries because their product quality is better than the quality of local products (Lee & Nguyen, 2017; Dao & Heidt, 2018; Rodrigo et al., 2019). Moreover, consumers are increasingly concerned about manufacturers’ environmental issues. Although ethical consumers believe that eco-products could save the environment, some consumers are not concerned about the eco-products and thus select products based on other product attributes (Joshi & Rahman, 2015). Hence, it becomes very challenging for retailers to select …

Fintech Lending In Consumer Credit Market During Risky Times: Evidence From The Marketplace Lending Platforms, Miaoyin Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses evidence from Marketplace Lending (MPL) platforms to examine how newly emerged Fintech lending performs during risky times. In the first chapter, I use the COVID-19 pandemic as a setting to examine the role of marketplace lending (MPL) as an alternative credit provider during a long-term and market-wide economic crisis. Using data from LendingClub, I find that marketplace lenders extend more credit to counties with larger COVID-19 exposure, as measured by its local economic impact and an area’s infection rate. This relation is more prominent in areas with fewer banks, suggesting that marketplace lenders fill borrowing needs in …

Sparse Model Selection Using Information Complexity, Yaojin Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies and uses the application of information complexity to statistical model selection through three different projects. Specifically, we design statistical models that incorporate sparsity features to make the models more explanatory and computationally efficient.

In the first project, we propose a Sparse Bridge Regression model for variable selection when the number of variables is much greater than the number of observations if model misspecification occurs. The model is demonstrated to have excellent explanatory power in high-dimensional data analysis through numerical simulations and real-world data analysis.

The second project proposes a novel hybrid modeling method that utilizes a mixture …

Sunny Days Ahead: Messages During A Pandemic: Creative Strategies And Themes In Health And Wellness Public Service Ads By The Ad Council, Meenakshi Trichur Venkitasubramanian

Doctoral Dissertations

Public Service Advertising is an essential field of study because of its ability to impact and shape public behavior and community changes. Historically, the advertising industry has come together during the times of world war to form an association, the Ad Council, to help create awareness to the public. Over the past 75 years, the Ad Council has contributed to the various causes by communicating and advertising to encourage better habits and behavior. The Ad Council has collaborated with CDC and COVID Collaborative to communicate the right messages about coronavirus response and COVID-19 vaccine during this pandemic. The purpose of …

Essays On Size Asymmetry In Supply Chain Disruptions, Yu Chu

Doctoral Dissertations

While size asymmetry (e.g., large buyer and small supplier) has been discussed in a no-disruption operation context (Lee & Johnson, 2012), little is known whether, how and why a large buyer reacts differently when different-sized suppliers cause different types of disruptions. Extant research suggests in a supplier-induced disruption supplier’s recovery actions yield various effects in a dependence-unbalancing setting, indicating a need for a deeper understanding of what buyers prefer in order to resolve disruptions caused by facing different sized suppliers and the rationales behind the decisions. Accordingly, this dissertation examines whether and how the supplier size and supplier-induced disruption type …

Culture And Enforcement Effects On Insider Trading, Market Reactions, And Firm Value: Evidence From The Market Abuse Regulation, Amanda M. Olsen

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the changes to the European Union (EU) law on market abuse, market manipulation, and insider trading regulation made when the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) was enacted. I detail the changes in comparison to the previous legislation under the Market Abuse Directive (MAD) and changes several Member States made to their domestic legislation to achieve compliance with MAR. I highlight the sanctions imposed in several Member States to argue the severity of punishment under MAR. This analysis provides evidence that MAR brought about a plausibly exogenous shock to the cost of insider trading. Next, I examine the effects …

The Auditor’S Application Of Professional Judgment: Evidence From M&A-Related Critical Audit Matters, Xi Ai

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I examine the extent to which auditor attributes affect the auditor’s decision to communicate a Critical Audit Matter (CAM) in the expanded auditor’s report. I expect the CAM communication decision to be adversely affected by threats to independence and by auditor overconfidence. I focus on a sample of companies that completed material mergers and acquisitions because these are likely to be considered as potential CAMs by meeting the minimal requirements of a CAM (i.e., material accounts or disclosures that involve especially challenging, subjective, or complex auditor judgment). Contrary to expectations, I find that the auditor’s CAM communication …

The Impact Of Ceo Compensation Incentives On Financial Reporting Choices: Evidence From Potential Ghost Revenues Created In Mergers And Acquisitions, Jason A. Ashby

Doctoral Dissertations

When an acquirer purchases a target and assumes the target’s deferred revenue liability, accounting standards codification 805 requires that the acquirer recognize the target’s deferred revenue at its estimated fair value as of the acquisition date. If the target’s deferred revenue book value exceeds its fair value, the portion of deferred revenue written down will never be recognized as revenue for the acquirer under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). In this study, I investigate the impact of chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) compensation incentives on the fair value measurement of deferred revenue liabilities in acquisitions. If a larger proportion of CEO …