Business Commons^™

The Abcs Of Modified Bond Duration And Wxyzs Of Bond Convexity, Tom Arnold, Andrew C. Szakmary

Finance Faculty Publications

By breaking the mathematical derivation of Macaulay Duration, Modified Duration, and Bond Convexity into smaller easily calculated component parts, a more manageable means of calculation for these bond measures emerges for the student. Further, an Excel spreadsheet or an algorithm within a programming language can also be implemented using these smaller component calculations. The Excel template provided can be made into an assignment or used as a resource for the student.

Required Minimum Distribution (Rmd) Spreadsheet Calculators Based On The Secure Act Of 2022, Tom Arnold, John H. Earl, Jr., Cassandra D. Marshall

Finance Faculty Publications

Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) Spreadsheet Calculators

Based on the SECURE Act of 2022

The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act (SECURE Act) of 2022 made a second round of changes (relative to the SECURE Act of 2019) to the required minimum distribution (RMD) schedule for individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and defined contribution retirement plans. Excel spreadsheet calculators are developed to calculate the new annual RMD cash flows throughout retirement for those who are retired and for those who are planning to retire. The spreadsheet calculators also allow savings to accrue with interest if the RMD is in excess …

Tiger Investment Partners. “To Stream Or Not To Stream” Case Study, Roger R. Schnorbus

Robins School of Business White Paper Series, 1980-2022

Tiger Investment Partners (TIP) TIP is a boutique technology investment firm in Richmond, VA. It was founded in 2012 by its three principal partners and is managing over $300 million in investment funds. Its stated mission is to someday be as successful as Berkshire Hathaway with a focus on firms that were or would be major disruptors in their given industries.

Simplified Portfolio Optimization Using Cramer’S Rule In Excel, Tom Arnold, Joseph Farizo, Terry D. Nixon

Finance Faculty Publications

The matrix algebra associated with finding minimum variance portfolio weights, mapping the efficient frontier, and determining the tangency portfolio weights is greatly simplified in Excel by applying Cramer’s Rule. Only a scant knowledge of linear algebra is necessary for producing a very intuitive presentation for a multi-asset portfolio. The technique is very easily replicated for an assignment or for providing a classroom resource.

Monte Carlo And Bootstrapping Carry Trade Simulations In Excel, Tom Arnold, C. Mitchell Conover, Joseph Farizo

Finance Faculty Publications

In a currency carry trade, an investor borrows money in a low interest rate currency and invests in a high interest rate currency. The trade is profitable if the future exchange rate does not adjust to the interest rate differential. After downloading exchange rate data, a Monte Carlo simulation of a carry trade is performed in Excel based on a normal distribution and the data’s mean and standard deviation. A bootstrapping carry trade simulation exercise is also generated by randomly selecting observations from the historical data. In contrast to the Monte Carlo simulation, the bootstrapping exercise preserves the skewness within …

Information Search In Times Of Market Uncertainty: An Examination Of Aggregate And Disaggregate Uncertainty, Marshall A. Geiger, Rajib Hasan, Abdullah Kumas, Joyce Van Der Van Der Laan Smith

Accounting Faculty Publications

Purpose – This study explores the association between individual investor information demand and two measures of market uncertainty – aggregate market uncertainty and disaggregate industry-specific market uncertainty. It extends the literature by being the first to empirically examine investor information demand and disaggregate market uncertainty.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper constructs a measure of information search by using the Google Search Volume Index and computes measures of aggregate and disaggregate market uncertainty using institutional investors’ trading data from Ancerno Ltd. The relation between market uncertainty, as measured by trading disagreements among institutional investors, and information search is analyzed using an OLS …

Metaphors, Mental Models, And Multiplicity: Understanding Student Perception Of Digital Literacy, Jason Tham, Kenyan Degles Burnham, Daniel L. Hocutt, Nupoor Ranade, John Misak, Ann Hill Dunn, Isabel Pedersen, Jessica Lynn Campbell

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

This study examines student perception of digital literacy from their engagement with the Fabric of Digital Life, a digital archive of emerging technologies. Through grounded theory analysis we identified the ways students make sense of an unfamiliar technology. Our results show students assign metaphors to understand a new digital platform, apply mental models transferred from previous conceptual domains onto new technologies, and express multiply-layered approaches that facilitated their digital literacy development––an indication for instructors to orient toward an expansive description of digital literacy that caters to student learning needs as well as their professional futures.

Using Excel To Simulate A Financial Calculator And Excel Tvm Formulas, Maura Alexander, Tom Arnold, Joseph Farizo

Finance Faculty Publications

Excel is used to build a simulation of the TI BAII-Plus financial calculator to illustrate the N, I/Y, PV, PMT, and FV inputs. Unlike other financial calculator simulators, this template also displays the corresponding Excel functions to aid in transitioning the student to using Excel for financial analysis.

Visual Timelines In Excel To Illustrate Tvm Calculations, Maura Alexander, Tom Arnold, Joseph Farizo

Finance Faculty Publications

Time value of money calculations are illustrated through developing a timeline with cash flow graphics in Excel. The cash flow graphics can be used in the live or virtual classroom and as a resource for students outside of the classroom. Further, the graphic is readily adjustable to different scenarios making it useful for multiple time value of money topics.

Visual Presentation Of Mirr And Mnpv Calculations, Tom Arnold, Joseph Farizo

Finance Faculty Publications

Project cash flows and modified cash flows are presented in an illustrative graphic within Excel for the live or virtual classroom. Further, the graphic computes and displays the relevant modified internal rate of return (MIRR) and modified net present value (MNPV), with associated formulas. The presentation allows for a discussion of the reinvestment assumption attributed to the internal rate of return (IRR) and the net present value (NPV) calculations.

Covid-19, Labor Demand, And Government Responses: Evidence From Job Posting Data, Xiaobing Shuai, Christine Chmura, James Stinchcomb

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Using high-frequency job advertisement data, this paper evaluates dynamics among COVID-19, labor market, and government policies. We find that COVID-19 has caused a significant decline in labor demand, by as much as 30%, measured by the number of job advertisements. But the pandemic did not result in noticeable changes in advertised wages. Regarding the roles of government policies, the study finds that the “stay-at-home” measures implemented by states appeared to suppress labor demand. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) program helps to stabilize the advertised wages, but also suppresses labor demand. Finally, the pandemic may increase labor demand for certain healthcare-related …

The “Right” Recipes For Security Culture: A Competing Values Model Perspective, Hwee-Joo Kam, Thoma Mattson, Dan J. Kim

Management Faculty Publications

This study argues that the effect of perceived organizational culture on the formation of security-related subjective norms and the level of compliance pressure will vary based on how the employees perceive their organization’s cultural values. These perceptions reflect on the assumptions and principles that organizations use to guide their security-related behaviors. To make these arguments, we adopt the competing values model (CVM), which is a model used to understand the range of organizational values and resulting cultural archetypes.

Making Energy Metrics Relevant To Service Firms: From Energy Conservation To Energy Productivity, Randle D. Raggio, Peter Ekman, Steve Thompson

Marketing Faculty Publications

Although energy conservation and reduction in environmental impact are on the international and most national agendas, service firms rarely include energy consumption metrics in their strategic decision-making. One reason for the omission is that for service industries, firm level energy utilization is most commonly measured in kilowatt hours per square meter of office space where changes often related to the space rather than the firm performance. The measure also presents several problems for firms in service industries. First, energy conservation and reduction may be counterproductive for service firms that are growing and require energy to sustain that growth. Second, it …

The Passion Bug: How And When Do Leaders Inspire Work Passion?, Violet Ho, Marina N. Astakhova

Management Faculty Publications

Drawing from signaling theory, we propose a work passion transfer model where leaders' passion is transmitted to employees through the former's leadership style and is contingent on employees' perceived importance of performance to self-esteem (IPSE). Data from 201 supervisor–employee dyads from the health-care industry show that leaders' harmonious passion led to employees' harmonious passion through charismatic leadership, whereas contingent reward leadership accounted for the transfer of obsessive passion; IPSE did not play a moderating role for either form of passion. Results from a supplementary study further reveal that the link between leadership and employee passion operated through employees' perception of …

Chronic Disease Management: How It And Analytics Create Healthcare Value Through The Temporal Displacement Of Care, Steve M. Thompson, Johnathan Whitaker, Rajiv Kohli, Craig Jones

Finance Faculty Publications

The treatment of chronic diseases consumes 86% of U.S. healthcare costs. While healthcare organizations have traditionally focused on treating the complications of chronic diseases, advances in information technology (IT) and analytics can help clinicians and patients manage and slow the progression of chronic diseases to result in higher quality of life for patients and lower healthcare costs.

We build on prior research to introduce the notion of temporal displacement of care (TDC), in which IT and analytics create healthcare value by displacing the time at which providers and patients make interventions to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs. We propose …

Passion At Work: A Meta-Analysis Of Individual Work Outcomes, Jeffrey M. Pollack, Violet Ho, Ernest H. O'Boyle, Bradley L. Kirkman

Management Faculty Publications

Academic research on passion is much more complex than the extant literature or popular press portray. Although research on work-related passion has progressed rapidly over the last decade, much remains unknown. We are now just beginning to recognize the different theoretical underpinnings and empirical operationalizations that work passion research has adopted, and the confusion this has generated hampers our understanding of the construct and its relationship to workplace outcomes. Accordingly, we use a meta-analytic examination to study the work-related outcomes of three dominant literature streams of work passion: general passion, dualistic passion (i.e., harmonious passion and obsessive passion), and role-based …

The Liability Of Disruption, Valentina Marano, Stephen Tallman, Hildy J. Teegan

Management Faculty Publications

Research summary. We study the internationalization-related legitimacy challenges of firms with disruptive business models by using a case comparison of leading sharing economy companies Airbnb and Uber. We show that they are insulated from many traditional legitimacy challenges to multinationals entering host markets, but exposed to others that have not been noted previously. Specifically, we identify a novel market-entry legitimacy challenge, ‘liability of disruption,’ which manifests as regulatory, incumbent business and societal pushback against firms with disruptive business models. After presenting our cross-case analysis, we theorize about the nature and impacts of these three distinct but interconnected forms of host …

Uber, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Bryant Holden, Kelli Mckenna, Scott Mcquiddy, Alex Wiles

Robins Case Network

Uber focuses primarily on the ride-hailing industry, which puts the company in direct competition with regular taxis. The company is like a lot of tech-driven, fast growing entrepreneurial firms in that it still struggles for profitability. Also, the popularity of this new form of transportation has put the company and its close competitors, such as Lyft, in the spotlight of government lawmakers and regulators. If they classify Uber drivers as employees rather than independent contractors, it could dramatically alter the Uber business model. This case is written in the aftermath of the ouster of one of the company’s co-founders as …

Human Capital Is Not Enough: How Offshore Bpo Professionals Use Social Support To Deal With Strenuous Work Conditions, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Violet Ho, Sunil Mithas, Dongwon Lee

Management Faculty Publications

The past decade has witnessed explosive growth in the segment of information technology (IT) professionals who work in the offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. BPO positions are highly regimented and standardized with coercive and normative controls to deter employees from deviating from prescribed work procedures and exercising independent judgment. Coping with these challenges requires a different set of skills than human capital and technical competencies that are discussed in most prior information systems (IS) research. This paper develops theory on the role of social support in employee compensation, and tests the theory using a unique data set of 8,000+ …

Digital Transformation Of Global Business Processes: The Role Of Dual Embeddedness, Peter Ekman, Peter Thilenius, Steven M. Thompson, Jonathan W. Whitaker

Management Faculty Publications

While much existing research on MNC digital transformation has followed a linear design and implementation logic using cross-sectional data, the multiple and divergent needs of headquarters (HQ) and subsidiaries suggest that MNC digital transformation actually involves a more iterative journey. In this paper, we apply the theoretical perspective of embeddedness to better define the complexities of MNC digital transformation, and identify how HQ and subsidiaries can navigate the complexities. This paper presents a longitudinal multi-case study of five Forbes Global 2000 firms that are HQ in Europe with large subsidiaries in the U.S. We find that the process of digital …

Stakeholder Theory At The Crossroads, Jay B. Barney, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Management Faculty Publications

The stakeholder perspective has provided a rich forum for a variety of debates at the intersection of business and society. Scholars gathered for two consecutive years, first in North American, and then in Europe, to discuss the major issues surrounding what has come to be known as stakeholder theory, to attempt to find common ground, and to uncover areas in need of further inquiry. Those meetings led to a list of “tensions” and a call for papers for this special issue to help address them. In this article we introduce the resulting articles and provide some brief commentary on their …

Dynamics Of Country Image: Evidence From Malaysia, Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, Zafar U. Ahmed, Irfan Ahmed, Tan Hui Min

International Business Faculty Publications

Purpose – Previous research has posited country image to operate at two levels: the country’s macro image, based on general politico-economic descriptors of the country, and the country’s micro image, based on perceptions of products from the country. The purpose of this paper is to further explore this premise in a practical study, using a psychometric assessment of macro and micro country images by ascertaining the nature of differences in macro and micro images of leading exporters, the USA and China, for consumers in Malaysia, a top import destination of US and Chinese goods; the images of Malaysian goods were …

Fast Poisson Estimation With High-Dimensional Fixed Effects, Sergio Correia, Paulo Guimarães, Thomas Zylkin

Economics Faculty Publications

In this paper we present ppmlhdfe, a new Stata command for estimation of (pseudo) Poisson regression models with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects (HDFE). Estimation is implemented using a modified version of the iteratively reweighted least-squares (IRLS) algorithm that allows for fast estimation in the presence of HDFE. Because the code is built around the reghdfe package, it has similar syntax, supports many of the same functionalities, and benefits from reghdfe’s fast convergence properties for computing high-dimensional least squares problems. Performance is further enhanced by some new techniques we introduce for accelerating HDFE-IRLS estimation specifically ppmlhdfe also implements a novel and …

Debt Covenant Condition And The Relative Use Of Operating Lease And Long-Term Debt, Daniel Gyung Paik, Brandon Byunghwan Lee, Joyce Van Der Laan Smith, Sung Wook Yoon

Accounting Faculty Publications

Purpose: We investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by the constraints on firms in the financial ratios in their debt covenants.

Design/methodology/approach: We determine debt risk profiles using three measures: the ex- ante probability of covenant violation (Demerjian and Owens, 2016), firms in violation of debt covenants, and firms close to covenant violations.

Findings: High-risk firms according to all three measures, on average, have a significantly lower level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a substitute for long-term debt. More interesting, for firms …

Who’S Got My Back? Comparing Consumers’ Reactions Topeer‐Provided And Firm‐Provided Customer Support, Lan Jiang, Matthew O'Hern, Sara Hanson

Marketing Faculty Publications

This study demonstrates that when an individual encounters a product‐related problem, fellow consumers (i.e., one’s peers) have a unique advantage in providing social support to the affected consumer. Specifically, we find that social support can be a dominant driver of consumer satisfaction when the risk of customer defection is at its highest (i.e., following an unsuccessful attempt to solve the consumer’s problem). Using real‐world data from an online support community, a pilot study finds that if the problem that a consumer faces goes unsolved, satisfaction is greater when consumers receive peer‐provided versus firm‐provided support. Study 1 replicates this finding in …

Values-Based Rivalry: A Theoretical Framework Of Rivalry Between Activists And Firms, Theodore L. Waldron, Chad Navis, Olivia Aronson, Jeffrey G. York, Desiree F. Pacheco

Management Faculty Publications

In this article we develop a theoretical framework to explain values-based rivalry between activists and firms by integrating and advancing key insights from competitive dynamics and social activist research. The first part of our framework conceptualizes the unique tensions, actions, and responses that characterize values-based rivalry and distinguish it from rivalry between firms. The second part of our framework conceptualizes the role of managers’ perceptions in shaping their firms’ likelihood of responding to activists’ actions during values-based rivalry. Overall, our conceptualization primarily expands competitive dynamics research to account for rivalry between dissimilar actors and, in doing so, broadens social activist …

Influence Of Country And Company Characteristics On International Business Decisions: A Review, Conceptual Model, And Propositions, Kotler Philip, Lalita A. Manrai, Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, Ajay K. Manrai

Marketing Faculty Publications

This research advances four propositions and a conceptual model of country and company characteristics influencing key International Business Decisions (IBDs). The IBDs in this study are country selection and evaluation, entry mode, segmentation-targeting-positioning, and the marketing mix – the first two in the international business domain, and the latter two in the international marketing field. The conceptual model and related four propositions are advanced, based on an extensive literature review and subsequent in-depth review of 169 published research papers on major IBDs and their determinants, namely, country characteristics, including opportunities, risks, and various distances between the host country and home …

Loan Purpose And Accounting Based Debt Covenants, Daniel Gyung Paik, Timothy L. Hamilton, Brandon Byunghwan Lee, Sung Wook Yoon

Accounting Faculty Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between the purpose of a loan and the type of debt covenants, separated into balance sheet-based and income statement-based covenants.

Design/methodology/approach

Using private loan deal observations obtained from the DealScan database over the period between 1996 and 2013, the authors classify the sample loan deals into three categories based on the purpose of borrowing, namely, borrowings for corporate daily operating purposes, financing purposes and acquisition and investing purposes. The authors conduct multinomial logistic regression analysis to test the relationship between the choice of financial ratios in a debt covenant …

A Study Of Safari Tourism In Sub-Saharan Africa: An Empirical Test Of Tourism A-B-C (T-Abc) Model, Lalita A. Manrai, Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, Ajay K. Manrai

Marketing Faculty Publications

The competition for safari tourism in sub-Saharan Africa is intense. Aside from inter-country competition, there is also intra-country competition among game viewing lodges and resorts within each country. In this context, it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each country for safari tourism. We empirically test the relationship between tourism performance and multiple tourism dimensions, namely, tourism Attractions (A), Basics (B), and Context (C). We test the Tourism A-B-C model (Manrai, Manrai, & Friedeborn, 2018) using data from Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The study, a first in the region, addresses tourism …

How Does Customer Service Offshoring Impact Customer Satisfaction?, Jonathan W. Whitaker, M. S. Krishnan, Claes Fornell, Forrest Morgeson

Management Faculty Publications

Information technology (IT) plays a vital role in customer relationship management (CRM), because CRM processes include the collection and analysis of customer information, firms use technology tools to interact with customers, and IT created the conditions under which firms can offshore CRM processes. Customers have negative perceptions toward offshoring, which suggests that firms might be reluctant to offshore IT-enabled CRM processes. However, firms have significantly increased offshoring for CRM processes, presenting a conundrum. Why would firms increase offshoring for CRM processes if there could be a risk to customer satisfaction?

This paper helps to resolve the conundrum by studying the …