Business Commons^™

Will Succession Planning At The Department Of Energy/Nevada Succeed?, James H. Winget

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The topic of this professional paper is the succession planning program at the Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office (DOE/NV). I have prepared this paper for the Department of Public Administration in partial fulfillment of a Masters of Public Administration degree. The paper centers on the interpretation of data that was received through an office-wide survey of the staff and leaders of the DOE/NV. The data presented supports the theory that there may be significant weaknesses found in the current structure of the succession planning that may directly affect whether or not the program will succeed. The analyses performed focuses …

The Etic/Emic Dimensions Of Organizational Citizenship Behavior In Mexico: A Cross -Cultural Research Study, Luis Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The purpose of this dissertation is to use field research data gathered from Mexican maquiladora administrative professionals in order to develop a new scale of Mexican Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (MOCB—“going beyond the norm”). A major tenet from the literature states that to correctly capture an entire phenomenon such as MOCBs in a different culture, researchers must use both the emic/etic dyad, triangulation, and should use employee samples.

The methodology in this dissertation utilizes a preliminary study and a main study. The first study uses two large multinational enterprises (MNEs) to empirically test six propositions. The preliminary study determined that organizational …

An Analysis Of Financial Issues Faced By Microenterprises In Mexico, Heikki Heino

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The economic and social role of microenterprises in developing countries is well recognized. Research has shown that the importance of microenterprises in economic development derives from the fact that small firms use labor intensively rather than capital. In the case of Mexico, microenterprises employ over 20 percent of the working age population. Moreover, from 1991 to 1995 the number of microenterprises operating in Mexico increased from 5.7 to 6.1 million firms.

Given the role that microenterprises play in employment creation, a natural research question that arises is then, “how microenterprises are created and survive under credit market imperfections.” A general …

An Exploratory Study Of Michigan Grantmaker Attributes And Competencies, Lisa R. Wyatt Knowlton

Dissertations

Foundation trustees and professional staff are giving greater attention to issues of accountability and return on investment, while voices of those with significant experience in the private sector inquire with increasing frequency and vigor about the organizational performance of foundations. For these reasons there must be renewed attention on the competencies and attributes of grantmaking practitioners. This study is a self-assessment by grantmakers based on the construct of Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 1995) as well as competency studies in organizational management and leadership.

In association with the Council of Michigan Foundations, grantmakers associated with foundations holding in excess of $1 million …

Compensation And Benefits In The E-World: Paying For It Talent, Alice Mondello

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Sectoral Labor Choice In Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: The Evolution Of The Informal Labor Sector In The 1990s, Michael Jack Pisani

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This dissertation focuses on the contemporary informal labor sector in Nicaragua. Central to the study are four research questions concerning the informal labor sector in Nicaragua; they are: (1) Are Nicaraguans positively or negatively selected into the informal/formal sector? That is, do Nicaraguans participate in their respective sector by choice (e.g., positive selection) or by force (e.g., negative selection)? (2) Are Nicaraguans working in the informal sector queued to work in the formal sector? (3) How has the queue changed, if any, for informal sector workers desiring formal sector employment over the course of the 1990s? and, (4) How have …

Impact Of The American's With Disabilities Act On Local Government (A Retrospective Review Of 10 Years Of Action) Specific To Personnel Administration, Mark A. Dascalos

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

President George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law on January 26, 1990. This Act was intended to overcome many perceived or actual acts of discrimination against persons with disabilities residing in the United States of America. To date, no author has looked back to see what the impact of this comprehensive law has been on local government. This author through study will be determining what, if any, impact this law has had on the State of Nevada counties. This study is being limited in scope to personnel administration, and personnel related remedies. Recommendations for the future …

Knowledge Discovery In Biological Databases : A Neural Network Approach, Qicheng Ma

Dissertations

Knowledge discovery, in databases, also known as data mining, is aimed to find significant information from a set of data. The knowledge to be mined from the dataset may refer to patterns, association rules, classification and clustering rules, and so forth. In this dissertation, we present a neural network approach to finding knowledge in biological databases. Specifically, we propose new methods to process biological sequences in two case studies: the classification of protein sequences and the prediction of E. Coli promoters in DNA sequences. Our proposed methods, based oil neural network architectures combine techniques ranging from Bayesian inference, coding theory, …

The Decrease In The Number Of Female Coaches For Girls And Women's Athletic Teams At The High School And Collegiate Level, Debra A. Pope

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the decreased numbers of female coaches at the high school and collegiate levels on females participating in athletics. To research this subject matter, a survey was conducted. This survey was administered to 40 female athletes at the high school level that were attending a summer girl's basketball camp in the state of North Carolina. With the range of age between 13 and 17, it was felt that the best possible overall spectrum of information for school-age female athletes would be discovered. While researching past studies, reading past and recent …

Women's Income-Generating Activities In Turkey, Nihan Kayaardi

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Home working has recently reemerged in both less-developed and developed countries. It is observed in both unskilled and highly skilled work. In general, there are no estimates of the number of women who bring work into their homes. Home working is part of the informal economy that is disguised and shadowed in the economy. Most of this type of employment is hidden in official statistics. In Turkey, for example the female informal labor force is about 68% (Kumbetoglu, 1993). Most of the work done by the women is piecework, and their earnings depend on the piece-rate.

This thesis utilizes existing …

The Antecedents And Consequences Of Customer Loyalty: The Roles Of Customer Satisfaction And Consumer Trust -Commitment, Sergio Alonso

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The objective of this dissertation is to develop and test a model of customer loyalty. This model can help explain the process that a customer follows to pledge loyalty, sometimes even subconsciously, to a product or service provider. From the provider's perspective, this process enables a firm to have a superior marketing performance based on the consideration that a loyal customer always is going to repurchase from the same provider. The whole model is composed of two sides: the firm and the consumer side. The firm is the entity that starts the process with the production of a consumer value …

Examining The Impact Of Control Systems On The Implementation Of Market -Oriented And Customer-Oriented Strategies, Tara Burnthorne Lopez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examined the notion that firm control systems for managers and salespeople might impact the degree to which market oriented and customer oriented strategies are implemented throughout a firm's activities. In other words, the firm's control systems might facilitate or mitigate the execution of these particular strategies. This dissertation empirically addressed this concern by examining the impact of the management control system on the level of firm market orientation, and the impact of the salesperson control system on both salesperson customer orientation and the level of firm market orientation. In addition, it replicated previous research by testing the relationship …

External Labor Markets: Job Inclusion Structures And Processes, Jeffrey Jon Snell

Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation was to consider the determinants of external labor markets from a multilevel frame of reference. Specifically, the likelihood of a job's inclusion in an external labor market was examined in relation to environmental constraints, power and technological characteristics of the job and demographic features of the jobholder.

The sample frame consisted of a national survey conducted by the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS collected data from over 92,000 respondents relating to their having a job in an external labor market. Logistic regression and nonparametric tests were used in the statistical analyses. Statistical analysis revealed …

The Importance Of Communication Skills: Perceptions Of Is Professionals, Is Managers, And Users, Ruth A. Spurlock Miller

Doctoral Dissertations

Information systems (IS) research has shown that communication skills tend to be more important than technical skills to IS staff in project development activities. Yet, research findings indicate that IS staff are lacking in the communication skills they need to interact successfully with users and managers during systems development. Thus, the two purposes of this research were (1) to determine whether IS staff, IS managers, and IS users differ in their perceptions of important communication skills that IS staff need and (2) if differences do exist, to assess the impact of the differences on user satisfaction with IS product and …

Religious Involvement And Dispositional Characteristics As Predictors Of Work Attitudes And Behaviors, Tami Leigh Knotts

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to empirically examine the effects of (1) religious involvement on job attitudes, (2) dispositions on job attitudes, and (3) religious involvement on workplace behaviors. This study also assessed whether job attitudes mediated the effect of religious involvement an workplace behaviors or the interaction effect of religious involvement and dispositional characteristics on workplace behaviors.

Higher levels of religious involvement were hypothesized to lead to more positive work attitudes and behaviors. Conservative and self-transcendent values along with positive well-being were expected to lead to positive attitudes at work. The effect of religious involvement on work behaviors …

An Empirical Analysis Of Taxpayers' Attitudes And Behavioral Intentions Regarding Compliance With Federal Income Tax Laws, Stanley Wayne Hays

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze variables that potentially affect taxpayers' attitudes about income tax compliance. Phase one of the study focused on the relationships between four groups of variables and ethical perceptions of compliance behaviors. The four groups of variables follow: demographic variables such as age, education, and household income; personal characteristic variables such as idealism, relativism, conservatism, and religiosity; situational variables including an overall attitude about paying federal income taxes and impressions of the effectiveness of a number of law changes intended to make the IRS more responsive; and, consequential variables comprised of five dimensions of …

A Social-Cognitive Approach To Salesperson Work Motivation, Lawrence Scott Silver

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to apply a social-cognitive model of motivation, used extensively in educational psychology, to a sales setting. The topic pertaining to work motivation and its importance is evidenced by the amount of research devoted to the topic. The literature examined for this study was selected from the fields of industrial/organizational psychology, educational psychology, and marketing/sales. Specifically, this study addressed the following research questions: (1) To what extent is salespeople's goal orientation determined by their implicit personality theory? (2) Do salespeople's goal orientation determine their behavior pattern? (3) Does optimism moderate the relationship between salespeople's implicit …

Manipulating Ethos And Pathos: Accents, Product Complexity, And Promotional Messages In Chile, Victor Ramon Davila

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This dissertation is motivated by fundamental questions about source effects in persuasive communications: Do receiver attributes influence perceptions about the source and about the object of the message? Do source and object cues influence receiver perceptions about the source? Do source and object cues influence receiver perceptions about the object of the message?

Traditional conceptions of receiver responses to a source have focused on character trait inferences. Of these character trait inferences, the literature on source credibility appears to converge on two categories: source expertise and source trustworthiness. A more recent stream of research has grown around the concept of …

Genetically Evolved Dynamic Control For Quadruped Walking, Giorgio Grasso

Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to show that dynamic control of quadruped locomotion is achievable through the use of genetically evolved central pattern generators. This strategy is tested both in simulation and on a walking robot. The design of the walker has been chosen to be statically unstable, so that during motion less than three supporting feet may be in contact with the ground.

The control strategy adopted is capable of propelling the artificial walker at a forward locomotion speed of ~1.5 Km/h on rugged terrain and provides for stability of motion. The learning of walking, based on simulated …

Component-Based Software Engineering, Zhiyuan Wang

Dissertations

To solve the problems coming with the current software development methodologies, component-based software engineering has caught many researchers' attention recently. In component-based software engineering, a software system is considered as a set of software components assembled together instead of as a set of functions from the traditional perspective. Software components can be bought from third party vendors as off-the-shelf components and be assembled together.

Component-based software engineering, though very promising, needs to solve several core issues before it becomes a mature software development strategy. The goal of this dissertation is to establish an infrastructure for component-based software development. The author …

Applications Of Agent Architectures To Decision Support In Distributed Simulation And Training Systems, Plamen V. Petrov

Dissertations

This work develops the approach and presents the results of a new model for applying intelligent agents to complex distributed interactive simulation for command and control. In the framework of tactical command, control communications, computers and intelligence (C₄I), software agents provide a novel approach for efficient decision support and distributed interactive mission training. An agent-based architecture for decision support is designed, implemented and is applied in a distributed interactive simulation to significantly enhance the command and control training during simulated exercises. The architecture is based on monitoring, evaluation, and advice agents, which cooperate to provide alternatives to the …

Development And Characterization Of Techniques For Neuro-Imaging Registration, Carlo Ciulla

Theses

Three automated techniques were developed for the alignment of Neuro-Images acquired during distinct scanning periods and their performance were characterized. The techniques are based on the assumption that the human brain is a rigid body and will assume different positions during different scanning periods. One technique uses three fiducial markers, while the other two uses eigenvectors of the inertia matrix of the Neuro-Image, to compute the three angles (pitch, yaw and roll) needed to register the test Neuro-Image to the reference Neuro-Image. A rigid body transformation is computed and applied to the test Neuro-Image such that it results aligned to …

A Proposed Marketing Strategy For Go2hk.Com, Kit Ming Chan, Shuk Man Tam

Bachelor Degree - Marketing - Final Year Project

Within these few years, the Internet becomes popular in the world. There are many well-known websites, such as the eBay, Amazon and Yahoo, etc.. In foreign countries, Web auction is very famous for the Internet users in foreign countries, while it is a new kind of electronic business in Hong Kong. The trend of web auction has penetrated into Hong Kong in this few years, but it is still at a growth stage of the industry life cycle.

Web auction seems to be a new type of business in electronic commerce, thus it can attract the people to participate it …

An Analysis Of The Socio-Economic Impact Of Casino Gambling In Mesquite, Nevada, And Its Implications For Public Policy, Janice K. Herfeld

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study is a preliminary analysis of the socio-economic impact of casino gaming in Mesquite, Nevada. Mesquite is being studied from this perspective in order to provide policymakers with information that will aid in the determination of public policy relevant to and in conjunction with casino gaming activity. A combination of site visits to the area and interviews with casino executive personnel and relevant law enforcement was conducted for the purposes of gathering information for this study. Three police departments (Mesquite, Nevada, Cedar City, Utah and St. George, Utah) were interviewed to determine the crime rate in jurisdiction. Relevant data …

An Analysis Of The Socio-Economic Impact Of Casino Gaming In Mesquite, Nevada, And Its Implications For Public Policy, Janice K. Hetfeld

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study is a preliminary analysis of the socio-economic impact of casino gaming in Mesquite, Nevada. Mesquite is being studied from this perspective in order to provide policymakers with information that will aid in the determination of public policy relevant to and in conjunction with casino gaming activity. A combination of site visits to the area and interviews with casino executive personnel and relevant law enforcement was conducted for the purposes of gathering information for this study. Three police departments (Mesquite, Nevada, Cedar City, Utah and St. George, Utah) were interviewed to determine the crime rate in jurisdiction. Relevant data …

The Legislative History Of Gambling, 1861 - 1915, Ben Hetfeld

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Nevada’s way of regulating gambling has been of such interest over the past years that it has been given a name, the “Nevada Model”. Interested parties usually are seeking to learn if this model of gambling regulation will work in other political units of this country. The point of this paper is to give some background to the “Nevada Model” by looking at how the acts of the legislature of the state evolved through time. Of equal importance is the understanding of the role the miners played in the formation of Nevada’s culture and lifestyle. The miners brought Nevada its …

Public Finance Of Professional Athletic Facilities: Case Studies In Stadium And Arena Finance, Larry Harala

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

During the course of the 1990s cities across the country opted to expend public monies at record levels on stadium and arena construction. The focus of this paper will be an examination of whether or not spending public money on private athletic facilities is justifiable. For the purpose of this paper “justifiable” will mean; that the overall economic benefit to the community can be clearly and quantifiably demonstrate to have a net positive economic impact on the community while benefiting all socio-economic elements of the community at large. The types of facilities that this paper will examine are arenas and …

Indexing Returns To Human Capital, Rana Kanaan

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A History Of Athletics: Lynn University And It's Predecessors, Chris Emerson

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

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Factors Affecting Learning Effectiveness In International Joint Ventures (Ijv): An Empirical Analysis Of Indian Ijvs, Sameer P. Vaidya

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Increasing globalization of the business environment has prompted companies to form cross-border alliances. The need to form joint ventures is evident from the increase in the number of international joint ventures (IJV) in the US as well as in other nations. Researchers are also attempting to identify relationships that foster longevity in IJVs. This study contributes to the research in the field of IJVs by examining issues relating to the learning effectiveness of IJVs. Research (Harrigan, 1985; Kogut, 1998; Beamish, 1994) has shown that there are three main approaches for joint venture formation, which are transaction cost approach, strategic behavior …