Business Commons^™

Analysis Of The Impact Of Contagion Flow On Firm Value And Application To High Yield Bond Portfolio Optimization, Wendy Ann-Swenson Roth

Doctoral Dissertations

Portfolios of financial instruments are designed to increase returns and manage risk. In high-risk investment strategies, central measures of risk must be complemented with controls on tail measures of risk. An unanticipated event that impacts securities of one firm can contagiously effect those of other firms through a contagion flow process that may occur via a set of network connections. Such connections among firms arise due to a variety of factors, such as a shared supply chain member or auditing firm. These connections spread the contagion, potentially impacting numerous other firms in the network. This can adversely affect the level …

Liquidity In The 144a Debt Market, Karen Ann Craig

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents my research analyzing the liquidity component of corporate bond spreads for bonds issued privately under Rule 144A during the period 2003 – 2011. Rule 144A bonds are limited to trading among qualified institutional investors and therefore are inherently less liquid than registered corporate bonds. I assess an amendment to Rule 144 modifying the restrictions on public resale of Rule 144A bonds intended to increase the liquidity of 144A bonds and decrease the cost of capital to firms issuing these securities. This amendment provides an ideal exogenous shock to evaluate 144A bonds. Assessing the liquidity premiums and yield …

The Role Of Sense Of Community In Online Brand Social Networking Sites, Je Won Lyu

Doctoral Dissertations

This study was designed to explore the phenomenon of social commerce marketing in relation to consumer-brand relationship development. The specific research objective were as follows: (a) to identify multiple factors motivating consumers to have sense of community in the context of brand social networking sites; (b) to investigate the effects of general connection between consumers and the brand on developing a sense of online brand community in social networking site-based brand communities; (c) to examine potential outcomes of having a sense of online brand community in brand social networking sites such as brand commitment, advocacy, and loyalty; (d) to investigate …

Effects Of Online Consumer Reviews On Attitudes And Behavioral Intentions Toward Products And Retailers, Jee Sun Park

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the role of consumer reviews in consumers’ decision making process. The current study aims to help researchers and practitioners understand how consumers process different type of information in online consumer reviews. The specific research objectives are to examine (1) how different type of online consumer reviews influence consumers’ responses toward the reviews (2) how different types of individual characteristics influence consumer processing of the content of the reviews, and (3) how consumers’ responses evoked by review content affect consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the reviewed products and retailers. This study addressed …

Emotional Labor And Authentic Leadership, John E. Buckner V

Doctoral Dissertations

Organizational research has begun to once again focus on the importance of emotions in the workplace. In particular, the concept of emotional labor, the management of emotions at work to influence clients and customers, has recently received much attention. While research has addressed the impact of emotional labor on both employees and clients or customers, research has not examined emotional labor within the context of leadership.

Authentic leadership, an emerging construct in the study of leadership, is proposed to relate to emotional labor. Leaders' authentic behavior has been shown to positively impact followers, such as increasing trust in their leader …

The Correlates Of Work Role Stress With Employee Burnout, Engagement, Amy Rebecca Caponetti

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study assessed the effects of work role stress on burnout, engagement and turnover intention. In addition, the mediating effects of satisfaction with one’s supervisor were assessed. The Job Demands Resources theory was used as a basis for the construction of the current theoretical model. The study utilized a population of non-exempt employees from a large land grant university who worked at Research and Education Centers performing manual agricultural labor. This non-exempt population is a population that is largely overlooked in literature. Findings confirmed that work role stress does have an effect on burnout and engagement, but no effect …

Boards As Strategy Makers: The Antecedents And Consequences Of Board Involvement In Strategic Decision Making, Karen Ford Eickhoff

Doctoral Dissertations

This study describes the antecedents and consequences of the direct involvement of boards in forming the strategies of the organizations they serve. If boards are involved directly and early in the strategic decision making process rather than being held at the periphery, board members may become important assets to their organizations as strategy makers beyond their limited contributions as monitors or advisors. By providing a look inside the “black box” of decision making in board rooms, this research addresses a gap in the strategy and board literatures and has important practical implications for executives and board members who are interested …

Shopper Marketing And Social Networks: The Path To Integration, Hannah Joy Stolze

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the phenomenon of cross-functional integration of frontline employees supporting complex marketing initiatives. This dissertation contributes to research and managers through the exploration of how integration takes place, how knowledge is integrated across functions through social ties between people, and to begin to inspect its effects on the performance of marketing strategies. Integration captures the state of collaboration and coordination between individuals within and between a firm’s functions. To date, cross-functional integration has been conceptually developed, but not empirically evaluated.

An extensive, multi-disciplinary literature review provides the foundation for understanding integration within the …

At The Frontline Of Shopper Marketing: A Multi-Method Study Of In-Store Shopper Marketing Execution, Marcellis Maria Zondag

Doctoral Dissertations

Shopper marketing is an integrated marketing strategy increasingly used in the retail channel for Consumer Packaged Goods. The main characteristic of shopper marketing is close collaboration between retail channel partners with the objective to engage customers and potential customers prior to, during, and after shopping trips. The goal of shopper marketing is to create a mindset and physical store environment that facilitates shoppers’ purchasing decisions. The in-store manifestations of shopper marketing represent the culmination of the channel partners’ joint efforts and are crucial to the success of shopper marketing as a newly minted marketing strategy.

In-store shopper marketing may well …

Examining Corporate Social Responsibility In Thailand: A View From Thai Companies, Nutthanun Rajanakorn

Doctoral Dissertations

This study aims to understand the perceptions and meanings of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of Thailand. Phenomenology was used to explore the inquiry of how Thai executives perceived and implemented their companies’ CSR. Twenty long-interviews were conducted with Thai executives who were directly involved in and in charge of CSR in their companies. Several themes emerged from the study, and the findings were presented in the aspects of their perceptions of CSR involvement, the motivations, the benefits, and the overall meanings of CSR. Giving back, caring for and helping /sharing, and developing and creating are three themes …

Ownership Structure And Monitoring Around Secondary Offerings, Joshua Tyler White

Doctoral Dissertations

Secondary offerings represent a unique setting to examine investors’ perception of the value of monitoring intensity around changes in block ownership. I find blockholders present at 97% of firms with a secondary offering over 1998-2006. These blockholders participate in 87% of secondary offerings and offer the majority of secondary shares in 75% of these offerings. Using a unique, hand-collected dataset of ownership structure, I empirically test two hypotheses explaining secondary offering announcement returns and underpricing based on seller heterogeneities: the information hypothesis and the monitoring hypothesis. The results largely support the monitoring hypothesis. Secondary offerings by close, active monitors who …

Understanding The Dimensions Of Trust In Public Relations And Their Measurements, Joosuk Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Trust judgment of an organization’s publics validates the existence of an organization as well as being one of the most powerful moderators of public relations effectiveness. The ideas of trust as one of the key dimensions to explain relational status between an organization and its key publics has been around more than a decade. Over the last two decades, the idea of trust in fact has been showing rising prominence across many diversified studies of relationship and relationship management. In relationship management, one of the important goals of public relations is to build mutually beneficial relationships among organizations and their …

Organizational Ambidexterity And Not-For-Profit Financial Performance, Timothy Michael Madden

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to extend the concept of organizational ambidexterity (OA) into the domain of not-for-profit (NFP) organizations. These organizations are subject to many of the same demands as their for-profit counterparts, yet research has not been conducted on how NFPs manage the competing pressures of refining existing routines for efficiency with the need to grow and innovate. This dissertation includes two portions: a quantitative analysis of a large NFP-rating agency dataset and qualitative interviews with executive directors and managers from within the food banking industry to identify the processes in use at a sample of ambidextrous …

Converging Transnational Financial Reporting Standards: Validating The Joint Fasb/Iasb Concept Of Information Quality, Jim Watkins

Doctoral Dissertations

Accelerating cross-border investing activity transformed global financial markets during the latter part of the 20th century. Due to lack of trans-cultural consistency comparability in financial reporting was compromised hindering multinational investment. In light thereof there is a movement afoot among international authorities to converge national financial reporting standards into a single international financial reporting system. In September 2010 Financial Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standards Board agreed on a concept of information quality to guide formulation of internationally acceptable financial reporting standards. The Boards' goal is sustenance of local relevance while achieving transnational comparability. Toward that end, instead of …

Valuing Value: Value-In-Use And Marketing Performance, Kevin William James

Doctoral Dissertations

A unified subject matter defines every scientific discipline. Marketing then, like other disciplines, consists of a finite set of core concepts. This dissertation focuses specifically on the core concept of "value" as being among the most central of concepts and more specifically elaborates theoretically on the concept of value-in-use. Historically, marketing's received view suggests customer satisfaction is a key contributor to firm success. However, the extant literature reports a weak relation between customer satisfaction and a firm's organizational performance (Woodruff, 1997). This dissertation makes a theoretical case for value as among the most telling metrics in all of marketing and …

Response Rate And Response Error In Marketing Research, M. Yasemin Ocal Atinc

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I investigate the perspectives of marketing researchers views about the two important concepts of survey research, response rate and response bias. I specifically aimed to answer the following questions: Research Question #1: Do marketing researchers separate the concepts of response rate from response bias? Research Question #2: How exactly should data quality be measured? Is it about sample representativeness, minimizing non- response bias or just solely Increasing the response rate? Research Question #3: What are researchers doing to assess and minimize response bias? Research Question #4: Do additional efforts put forth by survey researchers, such as reminder …

Optimal Tax Risk And Firm Value, Rebekah Daniele Mccarty

Doctoral Dissertations

I use the tax reserve data available from FIN 48 to investigate whether equity market value and tax risk exhibit a concave association, consistent with an optimal level of tax risk from an equity valuation standpoint. I find a concave association between tax risk and firm value which suggests firm value is increasing in tax risk at a diminishing rate until an optimal level is reached, after which firm value is decreasing in tax risk. I do not find evidence of excessive risk taking in the context of tax avoidance. Instead almost all firms in my sample are below the …

Investigating Supplier Accommodation Of Customers: A Mixed-Method Approach, Monique Lynn Murfield

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate and begin to formulate an understanding of supplier accommodation of customers from the supplier’s perspective, its impact on supplier relational performance outcomes, and the associated impact on buyer’s perceptions and evaluation of the relationship. Supplier accommodation of customers (SAC) is defined as the supplier’s efforts to make special adjustments in response to a specific customer’s changing needs and unforeseen changes, and is conceptualized as consisting of elements of supplier flexibility and supplier adaptation. Extant research has focused on the buyer’s perspective of SAC, with little regard for the supplier’s perspective of relational …

Sailing Blue Oceans In Search Of Blue Ribbons: A Case Study Of The Application Of Reconstructionist Strategy In Collegiate Business Schools, Shay Denton Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

Business schools are facing an increasingly competitive marketplace driven by the globalization of management education and the many new entrants providing educational and research services within this space. School rankings have become a substitute for independent assessments of quality by constituencies, often driving schools toward isomorphism in bids to climb higher in the rankings. Business school leaders need to fully understand their strategic options as they lead their schools during this challenging time. The purpose of this case study was to explore the pursuit, implementation, and potential performance effects of a type of reconstructionist strategy, Blue Ocean Strategy, within the …

Integrity, Self-Control, And The Impact Of Ego Depletion On Counterproductive Behavior, Joshua D. Bazzy

Doctoral Dissertations

Although integrity has been found to significantly predict job performance and counterproductive behaviors, the constructs that underlie it have remained unclear. Personality, specifically conscientiousness, has been linked to integrity most consistently, but only accounts for a small amount of integrity’s variance. Research points to a relationship between integrity and self-control, but this has not been investigated.

The present investigation examined the nature and implications of this relationship. Results found that self-control contributed significantly to the variance in integrity beyond conscientiousness and the other dimensions of personality. Indeed, the addition of self-control to the model, essentially eliminated conscientiousness as a significant …

Clawback Provisions: How Sharp Are The Claws? An Analysis Of The Deterrence Effectiveness Of Voluntary Clawback Provisions, Allison Kristina Beck

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper investigates the effectiveness of voluntary clawback provisions as a deterrent for earnings management behavior. The Dodd-Frank (DF) Bill signed into law July 21, 2010 mandates that the SEC adopt a rule requiring all U.S.-listed companies to implement clawback provisions that recapture excess compensation received by executives on the basis of a faulty financial statement filing with the SEC that later must be restated. Implicitly, the DF regulation assumes that clawbacks will successfully constrain financial misreporting and that a “one-size-fits-all” approach is best. In contrast with prior research that has investigated factors associated with a firm’s decision to adopt …

Board Of Directors Monitoring Of Ceo Insider Trading: Before And After The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Alireza Ebrahim

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates the impact monitoring by the board of directors had on the incidence of insider trading by firm chief executive officers (CEO) and on the abnormal returns they realized from 1996 to 2008. The study also analyzes the impact the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) had on this relationship. The results show that CEOs earned significant abnormal returns on their buy and sell trades during this period. Furthermore, the results show that internal governance mechanisms such as board independence and CEO/Chairman duality reduce abnormal return and the intensity of CEOs' insider trades. The results are particularly significant for …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Supply Chain Resilience: A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective, Serhiy Ponomarov

Doctoral Dissertations

Supply chain resilience is a comparatively unexplored area of supply chain research, that is related to risk management, but at the same time differs from traditional risk management approaches in that it focuses on firms’ ability to absorb disruptions or enables the supply network to return to stable conditions faster. The increased risks that are the result of complex and geographically disperse global supply chains necessitate that companies gain a better theoretical understanding of this emerging critical topic in order to be sustainable in the long term and effectively operate in turbulent business environment. Thus, a better understanding of supply …

Shopper Value: A Framework And Examination Of The Impact Of Importance, Shopping Context And Shopping Social Situation, Robert Paul Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is exploratory, examining a little studied part of retail, the shopper. Shoppers are defined as: actively engaged in the pursuit of a target purchase driven by a specific need requiring a solution. The objectives of this research are to clarify the differences between consumers and shoppers, justifying the need for further study. This research also seeks to develop a values based framework of shopper behavior in order to facilitate future research. An extensive review of the literature provides a foundation for the differences between shoppers and consumers. The theory of reasoned action provides the foundation for the shopper …

Cross-Listed Firms And Shareholder-Initiated Lawsuits: The Market Penalties Of Securities Class Action Lawsuits Against Foreign Firms, Kathryn Mary Schumann

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines the market penalties levied by shareholders against firms that are alleged to have violated securities laws within the U.S. Using a sample of private securities class action cases brought against foreign firms that cross-list on the major U.S. exchanges, this paper presents evidence that the enforcement risk criticism may not be as severe as initially thought. I examine market penalties at alleged violation disclosure dates and securities class action filing dates and find that each event corresponds to an economically and statistically significant loss of value for the accused firm. On average I find that the violation …

Cognitive Style Diversity In Decision Making Teams, Abby Lynn Mello

Doctoral Dissertations

Rational and intuitive cognitive styles represent two typical manners of acquiring, organizing, and processing information. Rational style is data-driven, slow, and detailed. Intuitive style is feelings-driven, fast, and global. People have a stable preference for one style over the other and style underlies such processes as decision making (Leonard, Scholl, & Kowalski, 1999). The present study took the perspective that cognitive style is an individual difference upon which members of a decision making team may vary and that diversity in cognitive style is related to team processes and outcomes. Specifically, it was hypothesized that diversity in cognitive style would increase …

Linking Authentic Leadership To Positive Employee Health, Behavioral Engagement, And Job Performance, Yan Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the emerging field of positive organizational behavior. The field of Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) has its roots in the concept of "positive psychology" (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008) but is more narrowly defined as "the study and application of positively oriented human resources strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace" (Luthans, 2002, p.698). More and more researchers have begun to emphasize what is right with people rather than focusing on what is wrong with people.

Given this opportunity, this dissertation explicitly …

The Relationship Between Interaction Patterns On An Online Idea Generation Community And The Implementation Of Ideas, Michael D. Jacobson

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to investigate a socially-networked online idea-generation community. Specifically, the study examined the specific interaction patterns on an online social network and the emergence of ideas. Using social-network analysis, the interaction among the network participants was studied. This analysis included examining the relationships among the network participants in the generation and implementation of ideas. Comparisons were made between networks with ideas that were implemented and those that were not. The findings revealed that activities on the community can be expressed from a network perspective and that insights were found about participant relationships and positions in …