Business Commons^™

The Relationship Between Hope And Self-Directed Learning In The Workplace, Vicki Martin Dieffenderfer

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigated the relationship between self-directed learning and hope in the workplace. Participants completed two self-directed learning instruments, the Survey of Adult Learning Traits (SALT) (Hogg, 2008) and the Learner Self-directedness in the Workplace Scale (LSWS) (De Bruin & De Bruin, 2011), along with two hope scales, the Hope Trait Scale (Snyder et al., 1991) and the author-generated Workplace Learning Hope Scale. Correlation, ANOVA, and multiple regressions were used to test the relationship and differences between self-directed learning and hope, specifically within the domain of workplace learning. All instruments utilized in this study displayed sound internal consistency reliability. The …

Local Foods Purchasing In The Farmers' Market Channel: Value-Attitude-Behavior Theory, Christopher Thomas Sneed

Doctoral Dissertations

From farmers’ market booths to kitchen tables, demand for locally-produced foods has increased significantly over the last decade. Yet, despite increasing popularity of local foods, theoretically-based research of this topic has just begun.

This study fills this gap in literature and broadens the current research base by utilizing Value-Attitude-Behavior Theory to explore local foods purchasing in the farmers’ market channel. The impact of four values (food novelty, food safety, civic engagement, and environmental concern) on consumers’ attitudes regarding farmers’ market design perceptions, farmers’ market social perceptions, and local foods quality perceptions are examined. In turn, the impact of these attitudes …

Do Non-Audit Fees Impair Auditor Independence? Using Goodwill Accounting To Help Reconcile The Debate, Jonathan Edward Shipman

Doctoral Dissertations

Prior literature’s inability to document an empirical relation between non-audit service fees and compromised auditor independence contradicts the significant and long-standing concerns expressed by regulators and the investing community. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile the lack of findings in prior research with regulators’ and investors’ concerns about non-audit services. Using a new measure – goodwill impairments – that alleviates many of the potential limitations that could have prevented prior research from documenting evidence to support the proposed relation between non-audit services and auditor independence, I find that the level of non-audit fees of a client is negatively …

A Study Of Espoused Corporate Cultural Factors And Their Relationship With Business Success, Tonya Denise Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

Reshoring of manufacturing companies is vital to the United States’ economy. Although one may assume that all of the business reshored will be large companies, statistics show that small businesses comprise the largest share of the U.S. economy. Small businesses make up 99.7% employer firms. Yet, 80% of entrepreneurs and small businesses who start will fail within the first 18 months.

This study defines the key success variables of the espoused culture for selected Fortune 500 companies that could be used by entrepreneurs and small businesses to emulate their continued successes. The method to define the key success variables was …

Three Essays On Hedge Funds, Liping Qiu

Doctoral Dissertations

In Essay 1, we find that, on average, hedge funds decrease leverage prior to the beginning of the financial crisis, with leverage remaining below the pre-crisis levels. We also find that younger funds with lower current leverage and stricter fund governance are more likely to increase leverage following favorable performance; funds exposed to higher risk, higher management fee and higher current leverage tend to delever. Managers increase leverage in order to enhance future performance following superior returns only to be disappointed. We find mixed evidence on the performance difference between levered and unlevered funds, but levered funds do survive longer. …

Optimizing Consumer-Centric Assortment Planning Under Cross-Selling Effects, Ameera Ibrahim

Doctoral Dissertations

Central to modern-time, consumer-focused retailing is the ability to provide attractive and reasonably-priced product assortments for different customer profiles. To this end, retailers can benefit from the use of data analytics in order to identify distinct customer segments, each characterized by their buying power, shopping behavior, and preferences. Further, retailers can also benefit from a careful examination of alternative procurement options and cost levers associated with products that are considered for inclusion in the assortment. Issues of assortment planning lie at the interface of operations and marketing. Profitable planning trade-offs can be identified using an optimization methodology and are simultaneously …

Enhancing Online Consumers' Anticipatory Behavior: An Application Of Transportation Theory, Seon Jeong Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

Identifying effective persuasion strategies to encourage consumers’ anticipatory behaviors on the Internet is important for marketers. With the development of technology, consumers tend to access the Internet before they make any purchase decisions. However, the extant literature has not fully investigated the role of persuasion in the online environment. This study aims to explore a relatively new persuasion theory—transportation theory—in the online context to investigate the impact of sensory, brand relationship, and social review type cues on consumers’ transportation experiences in the online environment. This dissertation consists of two studies that examine how sensory attributes, and personal and situation factors …

Corporate Sustainability And The Role Of The Consumer: Three Essays, Jeffrey Gauthier

Doctoral Dissertations

The challenge of sustainability has become an increasingly important concern for organizations. Sustainability raises new questions of legitimacy for organizations, compelling them to address stakeholder expectations of economic, environmental, and social performance. Although consumer stakeholders act as the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy for many firms, we know little about how consumers may influence corporate sustainability. This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the role of consumers in influencing corporate sustainability. The first essay examines how companies may attempt to manage sustainability ratings assigned by ratings agencies in an attempt to retain consumer stakeholder support. I argue that an understanding …

Tacit Knowledge Transfer And Firm Growth: An Experience-Based Approach, Rory Eckardt

Doctoral Dissertations

Scholars frequently suggest that since tacit knowledge is valuable, heterogeneous among firms, and difficult to imitate, it has the potential to provide firms with a sustained competitive advantage. However, the nature of such knowledge can make it difficult for firms to expand and fully exploit its potential. Specifically, the individual orientation of tacit knowledge requires that such knowledge be transferred and replicated internally to achieve scale. This process is difficult and time intensive due to the articulation challenges associated with tacit knowledge. Thus, while tacit knowledge offers the potential for sustained advantage, the ability to realize such an advantage is …

Effects Of Psychological Contract Breaches On Mergers And Acquisitions, Kristine M. Murphy

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates breaches in the psychological employment contract during mergers and acquisitions. An employee's contract is incomplete in regards to mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In its place, psychological contracts are formed. Common psychological contracts breached in the M&A process include raises, bonuses, promotions, job responsibilities, job security, and career development. Employees who have experienced an M&A were surveyed to test the severity of various psychological contract breaches and their effect on employee performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, organizational deviance, and turnover using t-tests, Structural Equation Modeling, and ANOVA. The mediating effect of feelings of violation was also tested. …

The Effects Of Advertised Exclusivity On Consumer Behavior, Danny Clyde Upshaw Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Retailers routinely counter price competition by matching or beating competitors' prices. However, in addition to offering price-matching guarantees many retailers are increasingly adopting a differentiation or product assortment strategy of using "advertised retailer exclusive products" (AREPs) that are not directly comparable to competitor offerings. Such goods may offer added utilitarian and hedonic benefits to the consumer. With this tactic, products are advertised and labeled as "exclusive," but the nature of the exclusivity may range no further than an exclusive label to more pronounced differences, such as unique or additional features. However, the effectiveness of such tactics at: (1) decreasing search …

The Effects Of An Auditor’S Communication Mode And Professional Tone On Client Responses To Audit Inquiries, Aaron Saiewitz

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent audit research has indicated that junior auditors tend to use e-mail for client inquiries. Additionally, audit firms have expressed concerns regarding the ability of junior auditors to communicate professionally. In this study, I investigate whether receiving an auditor inquiry via e-mail differentially affects client responses as compared to more traditional modes of inquiry and whether those responses are affected by the auditor’s professional tone. In an experiment, experienced business professionals respond to a request for information from an auditor regarding a potential accounting adjustment. I varied the communication mode of the request (e-mail, audio, or visual) and the professional …

Fan Response To League Playoff Structure And Consecutive Season Competitive Balance In Professional Sports, Ryan L. Spalding

Doctoral Dissertations

Competitive balance (the level of equality of playing talent across teams) is presumed to be a necessary element for league success due to the unique inter-dependent economic nature of professional sports which requires teams to have financially healthy rivals in order to field games (Rottenberg 1956). Underlying this notion is the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis, which suggests that a fan’s interest in professional sports is dependent on various levels of uncertainty of outcome: individual game uncertainty (who will win the game), individual season uncertainty (who will win the championship), and consecutive season uncertainty (does the same team win the championship …

What Messages To Post? Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Social Media Communications Based On Market And Offering Characteristics, Kunal Swani

Doctoral Dissertations

Marketers are struggling with the successful implementation of social media executions in their marketing efforts. The effectiveness of their social media campaigns may be realized when their customers transmit company brand messages across their unique networks of friends and associates (Berger and Milkman 2012). Indeed, marketers using social media try to determine what messages will engage their customers. In essay one, we provide guidance to B2B (business-to-business) managers by examining the usage and effectiveness of social media message strategies. Building on B2B advertising, organizational buying, and word-of-mouth theories, we highlight key differences in B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) social media message …

Sociotechnical Consumption: A Digital Story Of Empowerment And Social Consumer Experiences, Mujde Yuksel

Doctoral Dissertations

Digital technologies have become a ubiquitous element in contemporary consumption practices. Consumers shop online, take online classes, play fantasy sports, date online, have virtual personal trainers in their phones and even live virtual lives. How do such digital experiences integrate into and reflect upon consumption experiences in the material world? In this dissertation, I propose a theory of sociotechnical consumption that explores this relationship through the digital empowerment (technical) and social interaction (social) elements embedded in consumer products and services in digital spaces. Accordingly, I extend the concept of sociotechnical to the study of consumer behavior, advocating the perspective that …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Exploring Cooperation Among The Brics: Organizational Implications Of Growing Brazil-China Business Relations, Jeffrey A. Kappen

Doctoral Dissertations

The early 21st century has witnessed the beginnings of change in the dominant patterns of global trade. For instance, the nations known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have intensified the coordination of their economic, political and social agendas, including increased trade among their own firms. To date, however, scholarship in organization studies has yet to examine the theoretical and empirical implications for international management of these integrative processes. Intending to close some of this gap, the dissertation explores the formation of new transnational business relationships between firms of two BRICS members, Brazil and China. Building …

Runway Operations Management: Models, Enhancements, And Decomposition Techniques, Farbod Farhadi

Doctoral Dissertations

Air traffic loads have been on the rise over the last several decades and are expected to double, and possibly triple in some regions, over the coming decade. With the advent of larger aircraft and ever-increasing air traffic loads, aviation authorities are continually pressured to examine capacity expansions and to adopt better strategies for capacity utilization. However, this growth in air traffic volumes has not been accompanied by adequate capacity expansions in the air transport infrastructure. It is, therefore, predicted that flight delays costing multi-billion dollars will continue to negatively impact airline companies and consumers. In airport operations management, runways …

Production, Marketing, And Handling Practices To Export Mcintosh Apples To Central American Markets, Mildred L. Alvarado Herrera

Doctoral Dissertations

Latin America offers a marketing opportunity for fresh produce, since many countries are entering into global integration and international trade as part of their portfolio of economic growth. However, to take full advantage of these opportunities, many questions associated with the implementation of marketing approaches, fresh produce quality retention, and profitability need be answered before undertaking this business opportunity. When it comes to developing countries such as those in Central America, and in particular - El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala - language, culture, technology, competitiveness, regulations, poverty, and other barriers become challenges to enter these markets successfully. In order to …

Hospital Competitive Strategies And Performance Outcomes, Wei Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Hospitals are under increasing pressure to improve performance and healthcare outcomes. The existing literature does not point to a clear conclusion on whether competition can help address the performance challenges of hospitals which lead to improvements in clinical outcomes. Prior research on the effects of hospital competitive strategies usually focuses on one strategy or one type of outcome at a time. As such, there is a dearth of systematical studies on different hospital competitive strategies and their consequent performance outcomes.

The main objective of this dissertation is to examine several hospital competitive strategies and quantitatively validate the implications of each …

Exploring The Consequences Of Shopper-Facing Technologies: Their Effect On Shopper Experiences And Shopping Outcomes, Brian Ijams Spaid

Doctoral Dissertations

Just as technology has influenced nearly every facet of the modern consumer’s life, it is also significantly changing how those consumers shop and how it influences their purchase decisions. Understanding how technology impacts these shoppers within the retail environment is crucial for retail managers who are expected to deploy and manage these sources of continuous change.

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the phenomenon of shoppers experiencing technology in the retail environment. Specifically, our primary goal is to understand how shopper-facing technologies impact shoppers’ experiences and behaviors and subsequently affect outcome variables that matter to retailers. To that …

The Roles Boards Play In Ceo Succession Planning, Yi Li Rivolta

Doctoral Dissertations

A lack of CEO succession planning increases business risk as disruption is more likely during a CEO transition. One difficulty of examining the importance of CEO succession planning is that the planning process is difficult to observe and evaluate. The main purposes of this dissertation are two-fold. First is to investigate whether CEO succession planning matters by comparing disruption costs in firms with planned departure and those with unexpected CEO departures due to death and illness. The second purpose is to investigate whether inside or outside directors improve organizational resiliency using the context of sudden CEO departures when CEO succession …

The Importance Of Executive Effort, Lee Edward Biggerstaff

Doctoral Dissertations

Agency theory stipulates that managerial effort is important to shareholders and costly for managers to provide. Executives may provide sub-optimal levels of effort because shareholders cannot easily observe the day-to-day actions of managers and therefore have difficulties properly monitoring the effort provided by firm management. Researchers also face the challenge of measuring executive effort. In this dissertation, I use an observable measure of leisure consumption to proxy for the effort provided by executives to study the impact of executive effort on firm outcomes.

In the first essay, I focus on Chief Executive Officers (“CEOs”) and the impact of their effort …

Deferred Tax Assets And Credit Risk, Scott David White

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines the impact of deferred tax assets on firm creditworthiness. Specifically, I investigate whether the proportion of a firm’s total assets that are composed of deferred tax assets is associated with Standard & Poor’s credit ratings. The benefits associated with deferred tax assets are primarily realized through deductions from future taxable income. If declines in financial performance lead to a subsequent default, deferred tax assets may provide no value to creditors seeking recovery of their investment. I document a significant negative association between deferred tax assets and credit ratings. The evidence is consistent with credit market participants incorporating …

Online Store Atmospherics: Development Of A Gender-Neutral Measure, Wanmo Koo

Doctoral Dissertations

The study was designed to explore store atmospheric cues currently employed by online retailers. The specific research goals were to establish a comprehensive taxonomy of online store atmospheric cues; and to develop a gender-neutral measurement of online store atmospheric cues identified through qualitative and quantitative approaches.

The study generated an initial item pool via literature review and a focus group interview, and personal interviews were conducted to identify possible online store atmospheric cues and classify items into the identified online store atmospheric cues. A pretest (n = 192) was conducted to initially purify items, and the main study (n = …

State Space Modelling Of Dynamic Choice Behavior With Habit Persistence, Kang Bok Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present a new approach to capturing dependence across time in dynamic choice data. To achieve this, I develop a state space dynamic choice model and a novel algorithm to fit the data. Instead of capturing dependence in outcomes through lagged response variables, referred to as state dependence, I introduce a lagged utility term through the latent state equation. The lagged utility term captures habit persistence, which has not been explored directly in earlier models (Heckman, 1981b). The autoregressive nature of the lagged utility provides a significantly richer summary of prior utility than a lagged outcome variable. …

Measuring Academic Leadership Effectiveness Of Hospitality And Tourism Academic Administrators: A Transformation Leadership Framework, James Edward Talbert Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to extend the existing knowledge of academic administrator leadership behaviors that are necessary for effective academic leadership in hospitality and tourism higher education, as viewed through the transformational leadership framework. This study also investigated hospitality and tourism administrators’ previous industry experience, management experience, and management experience in the industry. This dissertation research was guided by three primary objectives. First, this study aimed to develop a model that measures hospitality and tourism academic leadership effectiveness. Second, this dissertation intended to explore the relationship among different leadership styles & leadership effectiveness. Third, this dissertation aspired to …

Organic Food Consumption:Application Of The Means-End Theory, Yun Hee Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is designed to examine the phenomenon of organic food consumption. The overarching goal is to help researchers and marketing practitioners understand how the phenomenon is generated, how organic shoppers experience organic food consumption, and to find significant elements in organic food consumption. Thus, this study examined the phenomenon in two manners. First, a qualitative study was explored to enrich our understanding about the meaning of organic foods and how organic foods are used to achieve organic shoppers’ goals and values. In-depth interviews with fifteen organic shoppers were analyzed by laddering/HVM. The result shows that a means-end hierarchy structure …

May I Help You? How Stereotypes And Innuendoes Influence Service Encounters, Lauren Michelle Brewer

Doctoral Dissertations

"You only get one chance to make a good first impression." The dissertation focuses on marketing agents; among the most visible is the "service provider." Previous research establishes the important role of cognitive social schemata in determining the way consumers react to different types of marketing agents, including service providers. In the literature review, a classification schema is developed for service provider stereotypes derived from theory using social stereotypes. The development of the Service Provider Perception Framework (SPPF) creates a classification for the individual service provider along two main dimensions: competence and affect.

In services design (particularly situations involving a …

Sales Performance And Intuition – The Role Of Gut Feelings, David Locander

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation extends the dual theory of salesperson information processing by examining the relationship between salespersons' emotional intelligence (EI) and their preference for and use of decision-making styles (intuition and/or deliberation) in the selling process. This dissertation contains two studies, Study 1 employs a descriptive research design and Study 2 uses experimental manipulations to investigate the role that intuition and deliberation play within the sales process. Data for both studies come from a sample derived from a national online panel of business to business salespeople.

Study 1, using a survey approach, assesses two competing models and one post hoc model …