Business Commons^™

Workers Of The Word Unite!: The Powell's Books Union Organizing Campaign, 1998-2001, Ryan Thomas Wisnor

Dissertations and Theses

The labor movement's groundswell in the 1990s accompanied a period of intense competition and conglomeration within the retail book sector. Unexpectedly, the intersection of these two trends produced two dozen union drives across the country between 1996 and 2004 at large retail bookstores, including Borders and Barnes & Noble. Historians have yet to fully examine these retail organizing contests or recount their contributions to the labor movement and its history, including booksellers' pioneering use of the internet as an organizing tool. This thesis focuses on the aspirations, tactics, and contributions of booksellers in their struggles to unionize their workplaces, while …

Technology Planning For Aligning Emerging Business Models And Regulatory Structures: The Case Of Electric Vehicle Charging And The Smart Grid, Kelly R. Cowan

Dissertations and Theses

Smart grid has been described as the Energy Internet: Where Energy Technology meets Information Technology. The incorporation of such technology into vast existing utility infrastructures offers many advantages, including possibilities for new smart appliances, energy management systems, better integration of renewable energy, value added services, and new business models, both for supply- and demand-side management. Smart grid also replaces aging utility technologies that are becoming increasingly unreliable, as the average ages for many critical components in utility systems now exceed their original design lives. However, while smart grid offers the promise of revolutionizing utility delivery systems, many questions remain about …

The Nonprofit Nerd (December 2017), The Nonprofit Institute At Portland State University

The Nonprofit Institute Newsletter

This edition of the Nonprofit Nerd features research highlights, Nerds at Work, and news from the Nonprofit Institute.

Center For Real Estate Quarterly, Volume 11, Number 4, Portland State University. Center For Real Estate

Center for Real Estate Quarterly

Table of Contents:
-- Hospitality Market by Sondra Storm
-- Portland Housing Market and 2018 UGB by Gerard Mildner
-- State of the Economy by Andrew Crampton
-- Housing Market Analysis by Jon Legarza
-- Office Market Analysis by Riley Henderson
-- Industrial Market Analysis by Andrew Crampton
-- Retail Market Analysis by Riley Henderson

Effects Of Top-Performer Rewards On Fellow Salespeople: A Double-Edged Sword, C. Fred Miao, Kenneth R. Evans, Pochien Li

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Rewarding top performers is of strategic importance to the sales organization. Top-performing salespeople not only contribute significantly to the success of their firm but may also motivate the skill development of peer salespeople. However, both academic research and anecdotal evidence suggest that top performer rewards can boomerang by damaging peer salespeople's morale and productivity, although the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions remain unclear. Using a sample of salespeople and their managers from financial investment firms in Taiwan, the authors uncover both positive and negative effects of top-performer rewards. Specifically, it is found that when behavior control is employed, top-performer rewards …

Wine Tasting Room, Touraj Goudarznia, Kyle Kniffin, Ali Alkhafaji

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The Purpose of this project is to renovate an abandon building already located on the CPI winery property and turn it into a wine tasting room. The CPI winery, located right here in the Willamette valley has been bottling and selling wine to the general public for the past five years. They have built a loyal customer base all around the country but look to expand their footprint by opening a brand new tasting room. 52 days after the approval from the owner of the winery to move forward with the project CPI wines will be celebrating a news year’s …

Lead User Discovery Through Netnography: Transhumanist Subcultures Of Grinders And Biohackers, Brian Lux, Page Bailey, Catalina Reyes

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Industry has already been set as a precedent that lead users are indicators for future products and areas of forming trends. By following where these lead users come from, understanding their motivations and intent of use can help discover new products. In this paper there are two groups under the ideological umbrella of Transhumanism, “Grinders” and “Biohackers” which are fringe groups where we felt there were possible lead users. To study them, we employed the use of the Unified Theory of Adoption and Use of Technology as a framework to gain an understanding of their characteristics and motivations. By doing …

Implications In Implementing Self-Managed Teams In Organizations, Aayushi Gupta, Alex Tacco Melendez, Janet Rosenthal, Lipishree Vrushabhendra

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Over the past few decades, organizations have developed workplace teams that are multi-faceted, diverse and classified or divided by objective. These teams are essentially turning out to be instrumental in innovation and change in organizations. One such work team that has evoked interest in the recent past is the self-managed team. The design, structure and performance of self-managed teams varies from the other teams significantly. Nevertheless, these teams like the other workplace teams share common benefits such as increased knowledge and skills, synergy and commitment. The main difference lies in the way these teams work. The objective of this research …

Online Managment - Pro Courses: Provide Online Training Services For Working Professionals To Achieve Their Career Goals, Alex Tacco Melendez, Lipishree Vrushabhendra, Shahram Khorasanizadeh, Tanzila Akhter

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The organization works on software projects that develops application software, website portals for private and government institutions, including its own projects related to website development. The latest project of this organization is called the Online Management-Pro Courses to provide online training services for working professionals to achieve their career goals. The purpose of this project is to develop an online training portal with courses for students and professionals aspiring to excel in management. This web portal will create a knowledge network that is expected to catalyze solutions for management challenges. This will be achieved by disseminating courses in order to …

Spacex Satellite Constellations, Anju Babu, Kevin Camp, Wray Price

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

As of June 2017, only 51% of people worldwide have access to the internet. The goal of this project is to deploy the world's first global satellite internet service capable of servicing both internet backbone infrastructure and end consumers across the globe.

Founded in 2002 SpaceX has revolutionized the space launch industry, with the end goal of making Humans a multi planetary species. This effort requires significant funding resources, which has led to the pursuit of business opportunities beyond the launch market where SpaceX currently does the majority of its business. By providing global internet coverage, SpaceX stands to make …

The Nonprofit Nerd (October 2017), The Nonprofit Institute At Portland State University

The Nonprofit Institute Newsletter

This month’s theme is Equity in Evaluation!

If you’ve been following along the past few months you may have seen that NPI is working with the latest cohort of our Professional Certificate in Nonprofit Program Evaluation to bring evaluation tools into their organizational equity work. Measuring progress toward our goals is a critical part of every organization’s learning, improvement and accountability to the communities we serve.

But what about the equity implications of how we actually do evaluation? What does it mean to employ an equity lens in our approach to evaluation itself—the questions we ask, the data we collect, …

Solarworld Amidst Uncertainty, Palak Goel, Roland Richards, Asawari Kulkarni, Nagarjun Hassan Ranganath, Majed Alshamlani

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Solar energy is turning out to be a widely accepted renewable energy alternative. It is considered as the cleanest and abundantly available source of energy. Adoption of this source for energy generation has been made possible by technological advancements. The United States has realized the potential of the solar energy but hasn’t been able to exploit the technology until recently. Since 2009, the US has seen a significant growth in consumption of solar energy. Efficiency of solar cells, tax credits, state policies, increasing public awareness on environmental pollution have resulted in increasing use of solar energy. Although a key reason …

Reb Strategic Plan, Mohamed Sheikh, Catalina Reyes, Oneshin Aiken, Marthed Mohammed, Bhawinee Banchongraksa

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Slides from a presentation outlining the strategic plan for a new skin care enterprise, including strategic planning, customer analysis,marketing plan and forecasting.

Data Envelopment Analysis Using Glpkapi In R, Konrad Miziolek, Jordan Beary, Shreyas Vasanth, Surekha Chanamolu, Rudraxi Mitra

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The work done here is primarily a wrapper function written to separate some of the more difficult-to-use glpkAPI functionality from the end-user. The user, when prompted, selects the appropriate configuration of the .mod file to the task (for example, output-oriented CRS), and the data file, as a .dat. The function then loads the required glpkAPI library, and carries forward the model. It allocates the problem and workspace, reads the model file and data file the user selects, builds the problem, and solves it. The function returns primal values, and, if dual = TRUE is selected, also returns dual weights.

Optimizing Distributed Energy Resources On A Distribution Feeder, Bill Henry, Stephen Macdonald, Nicole Wehner, Gabe Mcbride, Tyler Groth

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The purpose of this study is to optimize a set of distributed energy resources (DERs) on an electric utility distribution level feeder. A DER is a decentralized resource, usually located at end-use electric utility customer sites, that stores or generates electricity – such as batteries and rooftop photovoltaic solar, or in the case of demand response, in which the utility has the ability to manage electricity consumption to the benefit of distribution grid operation. The aggregation and optimization of a set of DERs of disparate operating characteristics, over a period of three years is performed and the methods employed explained. …

Assessment Of Minimum Viable Product Techniques: A Literature Review, Mohammadsaleh Saadatmand

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Although the minimum viable product (MVP) concept provides a means to test ideas and hypothesis at early stages, it does not indicate that it is easy to build. MVP tests whether your idea solves a real problem that customers are willing to pay for. In order to reach the stage of building a product that people want to use and pay for, we need to make sure product passes certain tests. In turn, MVP techniques/methods are designed not only to test technical questions about the product, but also to assess the viability of business model hypothesis. Once the hypothesis that …

A Simulation For Managing Complexity In Sales And Operations Planning Decisions, Scott Duhadway, David Dreyfus

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Within the classroom it is often difficult to convey the complexities and intricacies that go into making sales and operations planning decisions. This article describes an in‐class simulation that allows students to gain hands‐on experience with the complexities in making forecasting, inventory, and supplier selection decisions as part of the sales and operations planning process. The activity may be run during one class period and is flexible enough to accommodate almost any class size. During the simulation, students may apply forecasting techniques, inventory management concepts, and supplier selection processes, while experiencing the effects of supply chain disruptions. This simulation is …

Portland General Electric’S Adoption Of Distributed Energy Resources, Lennae Misiewicz, Jason Carver, Abdalilah Owaishiz, Stephen Macdonald

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

For over 100 years, people have been searching for ways to make the electric grid more efficient, resilient, and cost effective. Although there have been many improvements over the years, in the past two decades from; increased concern on climate change, innovation in advance technologies, and political will mounting to become energy independent, there has been a shift in how our grid stakeholders talk future grid improvements for the next 100 years. One of the causes behind this shift is due to greater saturation of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) on the grid. This disruptive technology creates many challenges to legacy …

Virtual Teams : Boon Or Bane?, Krishna Priya Muraleedharan, Satvik Vishnubhatta, Smitha Mandhani, Unmesh Deodhar

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

A virtual team is a group of people who work together across time, space and organizational boundaries.Virtual teams came into existence as the work expertise is distributed globally and it provides more flexibility to the employees. The members of a virtual team have varied skills and they work towards achieving a common goal.

To explain the challenges faced by virtual teams we have studied research papers and case study for whom the only economically and practically means of communication was asynchronous and synchronous computer-mediated communication. This research paper highlights the challenges of making and keeping trust in a virtual team …

Dilemmas In Not Invented Here Syndrome, Surekha Chanamolu, Shihab Hanayneh, Lennae Misiewicz, Marthed Mohammed, Jacqueline Nayame

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Not Invented Here syndrome has many negative effects on the performance of companies. However, there are several ways companies can work to overcome NIH syndrome. Some of the most important aspects when it comes to identifying and overcoming NIH syndrome include performance and communication, optimal performance and tenure, the absorptive capacity paradox, intra-organizational communication, experience with external knowledge, and poorly balanced incentive systems. NIH syndrome typically begins when a company feels that their identity is threatened and therefore they reject information from other companies or organizations. The focus of this paper is to address the manifestations, causes, and consequences of …

Optimizing Student Workforce Scheduling At Psu Office Of Information Technology (Oit), Agam Ebramsyah, Aishwarya Joy, Cody Miller, Jake Stevens, Priyanka Patil

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

A significant challenge for businesses of any size, is generating a work schedule that ensures adequate personnel coverage to ensure all aspects of the business are properly staffed, while preventing waste produced from having an excess number of employees working at a given time. The decision to manually create spreadsheets and work schedules that take into account availability, staffing requirements, and cost efficiency can become overwhelming and labor intensive. For Portland State University's Office of Information Technology (OIT), there is a significant challenge in scheduling student workers, while ensuring staffing requirements are met, student work hour restrictions are observed, and …

Organics To You - Optimization Of Produce Bins, Rassaniya Lerdphayakkarat, Chuan Chieh Lu, Jon Roschke, Juliana Suzuki, Jessie Truong

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Organics to You (www.organicstoyou.org ) is a produce delivery company that focuses on bringing organic local food from local farms straight to the homes, schools, and businesses of its clients. Each week a "Small Bin" is created using different varieties of local produce from various farms. Customers receive a bin that contains 12-14 varieties of produce with 2-6 "servings" of each variety (e.g., 1 melon, 4 apples, 1 head of lettuce, 2 lbs potatoes, etc).

Our objective is to optimize the contents of the “Small Bin”. The decision we want to make is how much of each variety do …

Maximizing Profit Of Certification Services Provided By Nrtls, Bhawinee Banchongraksa, Chatchai Kubpiyajanya, Mufeed Yacoub, Tiffany Tran

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories (NRTLs) are independent third-party organizations recognized by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) to provide evaluation, testing and certification of products. All NRTLs conduct testing and certification are based on safety standards developed by organizations, such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL). In order to remain competitive in their respective markets, NRTLs must continually find new business lines to provide services to and maintain. NRTLs accomplish this goal by seeking out companies to which they can provide their certification services at a profit.

One of the biggest challenges NRTLs face in their annual operations, is finding a …

Exclusive Summary: Diabetes Happy Meal, Bhawinee Banchongraksa

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Brief summary of application software designed to assist diabetics to make healthy dietary choices, and to offer means to buy ingredients online.

Flipscreen.Ai, Christopher Davis

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Slides from a presentation outlining a new software product that pushes real time, personalized fantasy data directly to viewers' televisions, allowing them to better play skill based fantasy sports games.

Effects Of Work-Family Interface Conflicts On Salesperson Behaviors: A Double-Edged Sword, C. Fred Miao, Guangping Wang

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Work–family interface conflicts have typically been cast in a negative light due to their detrimental consequences. This study offers new insights by uncovering conditions under which such conflicts may produce both positive and negative effects on salesperson job-related behaviors in the context of B2B sales. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory as an overarching theoretical framework, the authors suggest that informal controls (i.e., professional control and self-control) have differential moderating effects in salespeople’s primary and secondary appraisal processes when faced with work–family conflict and family–work conflict. Dyadic data from a matched salesperson–customer sample reveals that professional control amplifies, whereas self-control mitigates, …

What Is The Nature Of The Conflict Experienced By Japanese Workers In International Companies Based In Japan And What Type Of Conflict Management Do They Access?, Tomoko Shinohara Le

Dissertations and Theses

The aim of this thesis was to identify and analyze workplace conflict by enquiring into the nature of conflict, conflict management, and human resources (HR) strategies for conflict management in international companies based in Japan (ICBIJ). This study explores one part of a conflict system comprising cultural issues, HR strategies, conflict, and its effect on retention. The research question is "What is the nature of the conflict experienced by Japanese workers in international companies based in Japan and what type of conflict management do they access?" 16 Japanese workers were surveyed yielding qualitative and qualitative data. Findings indicate that workplace …

Center For Real Estate Quarterly, Volume 11, Number 3, Portland State University. Center For Real Estate

Center for Real Estate Quarterly

Table of Contents:
--Design Review Update by Kristina Benson
-- The State of the Economy by Sydney Bowman
-- Residential Market Analysis by Jon Legarza
-- Multifamily Market Analysis by Carlo Castoro
-- Office Market Analysis by Riley Henderson
-- Industrial Market Analysis by Sydney Bowman
-- Retail Market Analysis by Riley Henderson

Toward A Three-Dimensional Framework For Omni-Channel, Soroosh Saghiri, Richard Wilding, Carlos Mena, Michael Bourlakis

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

The omni-channel, as an emerging trend in retail, aims to coordinate processes and technologies across supply and sales channels. The evolution of this concept is still nascent. This paper develops a conceptual framework for omni-channel systems, configured by three dimensions of channel stage, channel type and channel agent. Integration and visibility are also explored and discussed as the main enablers, which support the implementation of omni-channel framework.

This research is built upon the empirical and secondary data. Multiple case studies and expert interview methods are employed for data collection to validate the recommended framework and to explore its …

The Portland Innovation Center, Rully Adisuryo, Melissa Beh, Yan Zhang, Jamison Loos, Ben Summers, Andrew Crampton, Conner Dowling

Real Estate Development Workshop Projects

The following report is our development program for the 2.17 – acre site in the Central Eastside Industrial District currently owned by Prosper Portland. Our proposal consists of three half blocks housing a CLT building and dual-block office hub named Portland Innovation Center. We believe this unique site can be molded into a next-generation “factory” becoming ground zero for creative collaboration and product development on the Eastside while producing solution-oriented ideas and citywide connections.