Business Commons^™

2013 Performance Horse Sale At The Cal Poly Equine Center, Jennifer Rauch

Animal Science

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Oil Prices Fluctuations On Economies In The Age Of Globalization, Ancel Raynaud Soh Feussi

Applied Economics Theses

Early in the past century, oil has powered economic growth in industrialized economies. Towards the end of the 20^th century, as emerging and underdeveloped economies relied more on oil powered means for their everyday need, their appetite for oil has considerably increased and this put an upward pressure on the global oil demand. As supply now struggles to match demand, oil prices are more and more driven by macroeconomics fundamentals. The disparity between supply and demand has had different effects on economies depending, if it is a net oil-exporting or net oil-importing one. This paper will attempt to quantify …

Vlerësimi I Performancës Dhe Metodat Më Të Përdorura, Shpresa Gashi

Theses and Dissertations

Vlerësimi i performancës si një fenomen njerëzor natyral është një nga funksionet më të rëndësishme të menaxhimit të burimeve njerëzore që fillon menjëherë pasi punëtorët merren në punë dhe vazhdon me tej gjatë gjithë procesit të punës. Vlerësimi i vazhdueshëm dhe i drejtë i punëtorëve është i lidhur me motivimin dhe performancën e mëtejshme të tyre. Vetëm kur ndihen të vlerësuar dhe të motivuar punëtorët mund të punojnë me efikasitet me të lartë dhe nuk do të jenë të prirë të largohen nga ndërmarrja në të cilën janë të punësuar. Vlerësimi i performancës ka për qëllim që të zbuloj anët …

Sistemi Informativ I Marketingut, Bardha Blakqori

Theses and Dissertations

Marketingu ne tërësi është aktivitet I prodhimi qe optimalizohet për përmbushjen e nevojave dhe të kërkesave të konsumatorëve ngase tregu me mekanizmat e tij sugjeron për mënyrën e prodhimit, asortimentin, shpërndarjen, çmimin, porositë dhe sjelljen e konsumatorëve. Pra marketingu mund te themi qe është aktivitet i biznesit, që ndikon në rregullimin dhe përcaktimin e prodhimit, në procesin e këmbimit, me qëllim të vetëm: përmbushjen e nevojave dhe të kërkesave të konsumatorëve dhe realizimin e fitimit të ndërmarrjes. Marketingu nuk është vetëm proces ndërmjetësues në mes të prodhuesit dhe konsumatorit, por është hallkë që i lidhë dhe i integron sferën e …

Avid Fan’S Impact On Casual Fans, Cory Law

Sport Management Undergraduate

In lieu of an abstract, here is the paper's first paragraph: The lifeline of the sporting industry is the fans that attend the games, purchase merchandise, consume media, and passionately follow their favorite team or sport. Sport organizations do whatever they can to attract fans to their games and entice them to buy more tickets, merchandise, concessions and consume more of their team through social media, visits to the team website, and following the team. A critical area for these sport franchises to examine is why fans attend sporting events and what makes them a loyal fan of a certain …

Broadband Access For Students At East Tennessee State University, Thomas Scott Sawyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the availability of Internet access for students attending East Tennessee State University during the fall semester 2013. It has been unknown to what degree broadband access is available in the East Tennessee State University service area that includes counties in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and Western North Carolina.

The research was conducted during the fall semester 2013 including the months of August, September, and October of 2011. Data were gathered by surveying currently enrolled students of the university. Seven hundred eighty-four students responded to the survey. The survey instrument covered areas of …

Framing Of Business In China: East Vs. West, Xueyi Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

China is one of the largest and most promising markets for new global business ventures. This exploratory research investigates the current news-related themes regarding business in China by comparing news originating from eastern countries to western countries. This study applied agenda-setting and framing theoretical frameworks. A mixed-method approach of both qualitative and quantitative content analyses was used to generate key themes and their related concepts. The results indicate some thematic similarities as well as differences in agenda and news framing between eastern and western news samples. This exploratory study contributes to agenda-setting and framing literature as well as by creating …

The Sustainability Of Agriculture In Nigeria Using Rubber As A Case Study, Owen Osahon Ogbebor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study is an investigation of the sustainability of agriculture in Nigeria using Rubber as case study. Edo and Abia states were sampled for the study with 300 questionnaires administered in 10 communities among rubber farmers. The study is an investigation of the socio-demographic distribution of the rubber farmers, perception of rubber farmers, and influence of government activities. Sources of information and the data were cumulated for Nigeria as a whole. The data were analyzed using statistical analysis.

Findings indicated the distribution of rubber farmers on socio-demographic distribution, sources of funds, and the effects on agricultural sustainability in Nigeria. Farmers’ …

Mobile Museum Of Art, Glenn Bingham

Arts Administration Master's Reports

The following internship report is an investigation of the organizational structure of the Mobile Museum of Art from January 2013 to August 2013. During the internship, I was able to work in several different capacities, from volunteer coordinating, to marketing, to programming. This report analyzes several aspects within these fields, including the organization’s brand, marketing strategies, and educational structure as they shift under new management. Based on my observations, I will offer recommendations for programming, marketing, and volunteer management, and compare the current structure to best practices of other museums and similar organizations. Through this extensive analysis I will also …

Denver Art Museum: Creating Interactive And Educational Experiences In The Museum Setting, Sarah Clinton

Arts Administration Master's Reports

The following report documents my internship at the Denver Art Museum from June to August 2013 in Denver, Colorado. This report is a result of my work with the multiple divisions in the Education Department. I worked in depth with a variety of programs, which facilitated and encouraged new and exciting methods of education to a wide range of audiences. This report will be an in depth examination of the effectiveness of interactive educational programing by first discussing the goals and purposes of each one. There will then be an explanation of the intern’s responsibilities and observations within the department. …

89.9fm Wwno - New Orleans Public Radio: An Internship Report, Hallie Sheck

Arts Administration Master's Reports

This report is the result of multiple positions I held during a period of time with WWNO 89.9 FM, New Orleans Public Radio. The bulk of the information that lent to the analysis of this organization was gathered during a six month long internship, from January 2013 until June of the same year, totaling 480 hours. Before beginning this internship, however, I was hired by the station to be a student worker, and since the completion of the internship, have continued my work as a contracted development and membership assistant. Thus, the scope of this report spans more than two …

The Alabama Ballet: A Master's Examination Report, Alison Heath

Arts Administration Master's Reports

This report investigates the successes and shortcomings of an established and financially stable arts organization, and analyzes the position of the organization within the greater whole of the arts community. Alabama Ballet is a 501(c)(3) taxexempt non-profit organization located in Birmingham, Alabama. Alabama Ballet strives to offer high quality, professional dance in the state of Alabama through dance programming, education programs, and outreach efforts. The exploration and discovery took place during a 480-hour Internship while working as an Administrative Intern within the organization. This report explores the strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions for organizational improvement based on studies and knowledge gained …

A Report On The New Orleans Center For Creative Arts, Justin Shiels

Arts Administration Master's Reports

In order to maintain relevance, arts organizations must continuously evolve to fulfill the needs of an ever--‐changing consumer landscape. The following paper documents Justin Shiels’ internship with the New Orleans Center of Creative Art (NOCCA), in furtherance of the degree requirements for the Master of Arts in Arts Administration. NOCCA is a regional, pre--‐professional arts training center that offers students intensive arts and academic instruction. Through analysis of current operations, SWOT analysis, and best practices model, this report will explore the core competencies for established arts organizations and the methods of shifting from a good organization to a great organization.

Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans: A Time Of Transition, Christy A. Hedlund

Arts Administration Master's Reports

As part of the degree requirements for a Master of Arts in Arts Administration, this paper is an analytical discussion of my experience and observations as an intern for the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, LA from January to June 2013. The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is a non-collecting, multidisciplinary arts center dedicated to the presentation, production and promotion of contemporary art.

With a shift in executive leadership, changes in staff, and a plan for rebranding the image of the organization, the CAC finds itself in a period of great transition. This paper will examine the various effects of …

A Two-Echelon Location-Inventory Model For A Multi-Product Donation-Demand Driven Industry, Milad Khajehnezhad

Theses and Dissertations

This study involves a joint bi-echelon location inventory model for a donation-demand driven industry in which Distribution Centers (DC) and retailers (R) exist. In this model, we confine the variables of interest to include; coverage radius, service level, and multiple products. Each retailer has two classes of product flowing to and from its assigned DC i.e. surpluses and deliveries. The proposed model determines the number of DCs, DC locations, and assignments of retailers to those DCs so that the total annual cost including: facility location costs, transportation costs, and inventory costs are minimized. Due to the complexity of problem, the …

The Mechanisms Of Interpersonal Privacy In Social Networking Websites: A Study Of Subconscious Processes, Social Network Analysis, And Fear Of Social Exclusion, Bryan I. Hammer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With increasing usage of Social networking sites like Facebook there is a need to study privacy. Previous research has placed more emphasis on outcome-oriented contexts, such as e-commerce sites. In process-oriented contexts, like Facebook, privacy has become a source of conflict for users. The majority of architectural privacy (e.g. privacy policies, website mechanisms) enables the relationship between a user and business, focusing on the institutional privacy concern and trust; however, architectural privacy mechanisms that enables relationships between and among users is lacking. This leaves users the responsibility to manage privacy for their interpersonal relationships. This research focuses on the following …

Successful Marketing Strategies For Promoting Event Destinations, Evease Iniece Tucker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Travel and tourism has been recognized as being an important driver of jobs, growth and economic recovery in the United States. Meetings, events and incentive travel contribute $98.7 billion of the direct spending, $15.0 billion in taxes and 859,000 jobs. As a result, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) in the United States are taking advantage of this impact for growth in their destinations. As a destination marketing organization's main job responsibility is to promote their destination to attract visitors, which requires superior marketing strategies to achieve these goals.

This research investigates the marketing strategies of DMOs in the United States. The …

Consumer Adoption Of Health Information Systems, Sankara Subramanian Srinivasan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At nearly 18 percent of the country's GDP, the U.S. healthcare industry continues to wrestle with growing cost and a quality of care that does not match the increased spending. The dominant focus to date has been on promoting Health IT (HIT) system implementation and digitizing health records at the provider's end, with scant attention to the role of the patient in the healthcare process. The source of inefficiency in the healthcare system is not only on account of shortcomings at the provider's end but also due to non-compliance (such as failing to adhere to medication advice and follow-up visits) …

Giving To Be Seen: The Influence Of Facebook Charitable Advertisements On Conspicuous Donation Behavior, Lei Jia

Theses and Dissertations

The arduous financial environments that nonprofit organizations face today motivate nonprofits to continuously search and leverage new communication platforms such as social media to approach a wider individual donor base. This thesis examines whether a Facebook charitable appeal promoting a donation via Facebook Gifts may attract

Facebook users to give for conspicuousness (a public display of a donation behavior). Findings of this thesis revealed a gender difference in responses to the Facebook charitable appeal due to the gender difference in self-construals such that men were more likely to give via Facebook Gifts when the ad promoting the donation via Facebook …

A Study On Rebranding Strategies, Megan Bryant

Graphic Communication

This project is a study on rebranding strategies. Companies go through a rebrand to change their strategy and direction. Many companies succeed by going through these processes, while many others fail.

In addition to extensive research on past company rebrands, a questionnaire was conducted on a sample of 25 individuals of various ages about their experiences with brands and rebranding in order to compare their responses with actual company decisions.

Participants provided insight on their own personal behaviors, decisions, and perceptions about brands and purchasing products. The study concluded that, on average, quality was more important than price in almost …

Compelled To Be Connected: An Ethnographic Exploration Of Organizational Culture, Work-Life Balance, And The Use Of Mobile Workplace Technologies, Kristopher J. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

This study is an ethnographic exploration of organizational culture, work-life balance, and the use of information and communication technology ("ICT") in the work and home settings. The researcher was embedded for nine weeks within the Information Technology ("IT") department at the corporate headquarters of a mid-sized manufacturing firm in the upper Midwest. The espoused values of the organization proved contradictory, one favoring work-life balance and the other requiring that employees be available to work anytime and from anywhere. The behaviors observed provided insight as to why employee actually used ICT after hours--because it was required of their role and/or because …

A Study Of Transformational Initiatives And Social Capital, Craig Dean Plain

Theses and Dissertations

A STUDY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL INITIATIVES AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Organizations seek to improve themselves. They do so to become more efficient, to increase sales...indeed, to survive. Many have implemented various initiatives to transform themselves. For some, these efforts have paid off. Companies such as General Electric, Motorola, Allied Signal, and others have claimed billions of dollars in cost reductions and increases in revenue (Altinkemer, Ozcelik, & Ozdemir, 2011; Lucier & Seshadri, 2001). Such successes have driven many others to implement these transformational initiatives. Yet the failure rate hovers around 70% (Kotter J. P., 1995).

This study sought to expand the body …

Examining Generational Differences In The Workplace: Work Centrality, Narcissism, And Their Relation To Employee Work Engagement, Judith L. Fenzel

Theses and Dissertations

In the workplace of today, an unprecedented four generations of workers work side by side. While this blend of generations adds valuable diversity to the workforce, it also adds complexity.

Despite popular interest in the subject of generations in the workplace, systematic research of the specific generational differences of work centrality, narcissism, and their relation to employee engagement is limited. It is vital to examine the possibility of significant generational differences in order for HRD practitioners and scholars to understand the focus and direction of strategies intended to improve individual and organizational performance. Using a quantitative research methodology, an online …

Agco Corporation Valuation, Sean Michael Miller

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper will discuss the excellent growth potential that AGCO Corporation faces and the reason that this company's stock is rated as a hold position. AGCO has seen tremendous progress and is in an industry that shows that a growing world population will continue to need food and more efficient ways to create food. However, based on sensitivities of assumptions in the models presented herein and on a current share price that is already close to my assumed fair value I do not issue a buy recommendation.

Technology Expectations Of Cpa Firms: Hiring And The Accounting Curriculum, Kristy N. Wilson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine the technology expectations of Certified Public Accounting (CPA) firms and to evaluate whether or not accounting curriculums adequately prepare students to meet the firms’ hiring expectations. A total of 28 participants - 19 sole practitioners and 9 CPA firms - completed an online survey designed to determine the technological skills CPA firms require of new hires, the extent to which recent new hires have met the firms’ expectations, and the accounting software and programs that firms typically use. The researcher also analyzed the accounting curriculums of 22 four-year public universities to gather …

The Effect Of Product Density On Perceived Price And Quality, Joshua Jc Holston

Honors Theses

This study explores whether product density affects crowding, perceived quality, and perceived price of products within the retail space. The goal is to determine whether product density directly affects customers’ perceptions of price and quality of merchandise within retail spaces. It tests the hypotheses that increased product density will lead to an increase in crowding perceptions but a decrease in perceived price and quality. The study uses photographs of retail spaces with differing densities to manipulate product density and an online questionnaire to gather data. A student sample is used to collect the data. ANOVAs are used to determine the …

Workforce Preparedness Of Information Systems Students: Perceptions Of Students, Alumni, And Employers, Susan Bristow

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Employers of newly hired higher education graduates report their new workforce is not prepared. Further research was required to discover insights to the workforce readiness gap. This concurrent mixed methods study explored what competencies influenced employer's perceptions of the work-readiness of Information Systems (ISYS) undergraduate students and discovered ISYS graduates' and current ISYS students' perceptions of their work-readiness. Participants consisted of a convenience sample including 69 ISYS program upperclassmen, 20 ISYS program alumni, and 8 employers of the ISYS program graduates. ISYS program alumni completed an online Qualtrics survey to measure the participants' perception of their workforce preparedness. ISYS program …

Introduction To Creativity: A Lecture And Curriculum Framework For Students Who Identify Themselves As Creative, Miriam Kelley

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project focuses on the creative person, process, product and press- the 4Ps of creativity as articulated by Rhodes (1961). A curricular framework was developed with an emphasis on enhancing the abilities of those who already identify themselves as creative, specifically undergraduate Freshmen and Sophomores looking to study various fields of Design at the university level. The objective of the framework is to not only identify the innate processes that may have led these students to identify themselves as creative- thereby choosing their major- but also to allow them to recognize, improve and be deliberate in those processes, to enhance …

Canadian Family Leisure, Family Functioning, And Family Satisfaction: A Family Perspective, Shaun C. Nua

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to further examine the relationship between family leisure variables and the dependent variables of family functioning and satisfaction with family life among a broad, national sample of Canadian families using the Core and Balance framework. Specifically, this study examined how both family leisure involvement (core and balance) and family leisure satisfaction contributed to the explanation of variance in family functioning and satisfaction with family life. Because the data were nested in families, this study accounted for family-level variance by incorporating mixed modeling. The sample consisted of 943 families across Canada including one parent and …

An Assessment Of A Just-In-Time Training Intervention In A Manufacturing Organization, Barry James Wilkie

Dissertations

High Performance Work Practices (HPWP) is part of an area of human resource systems growing in interest among performance improvement experts. This research paper assesses the degree to which job-training-intervention programs, a type of HPWP, contribute to organizational performance in a manufacturing environment. The literature review reveals that while there is a growing body of evidence supporting an association between HPWP and organizational performance, limited research exists on the association. This research provides a literature review of previous studies, which show different ways that HPWP help to achieve the optimization of employees’ skill sets. The relationship between one type of …