Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons^™

College Of Business, Business Career Accelerator, Qualitative Research Study On Student Involvement In Professional Development Activities, Madison Vincent

Honors Projects

The creation and execution of this project began by analyzing the honors project specifications, to design a project that met the Honors College criteria. To meet these criteria, a market research study was conducted to assist the College of Business’s Business Career Accelerator management in understanding the student market of the College of Business. In addition, the study’s goal is to make recommendations utilizing marketing and education frameworks to maintain and increase student usage of the center. The project was executed using traditional market research frameworks, which required conducting in-depth interviews of College of Business students to determine student attitudes …

Understanding Employee Engagement: A Mixed-Methods Study, Joren M. Scharn

Theses & Dissertations

For over 4 decades businesses around the world have been conducting employee satisfaction surveys at regular intervals and this surfaced a strong positive relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and overall company performance. In recent years however, academics and researchers have reopened the debate on whether employee or job satisfaction metrics are in fact reliable indicators of productivity, suggesting that employee engagement has a far stronger correlation to productivity. This study addresses two interrelated problems that are associated with a practice that is common in working environments all over the world. According to literature, it is generally accepted that (a) …

Optimal Pricing And Treatment Policies In Health Care, Gregory J. Critchley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Health care decision makers are faced with many types of uncertainty. There may be uncertainty in the benefit a new treatment provides, uncertainty in the demand for the new treatment, and uncertainty in the drug approval process. In three essays, I study the impact of various types of uncertainty within health care systems.

In the first essay, I study the welfare properties of six practical pharmaceutical pricing and access policies. Using a game theoretic approach, I find that when demand can be influenced by costly marketing effort, there are meaningful differences to the desirability of various pricing and listing agreements, …

An Examination Of The Effectiveness Of A Training Programme To Improve Decision Making In Insurance Risk Underwriting, Gavin Raj Maistry

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies the effectiveness of a training programme to improve decision making in insurance risk underwriting. A key component of insurance risk underwriting decisions is qualitative judgement, in addition to quantitative analytical modelling. In the training of insurance underwriters, great strides have been made on the analytical side. However, the training of judgement, both intuitive and deliberate, has largely been ignored. The aim of this research proposal is to design and test a training programme to improve judgement in insurance underwriting.

Our research extends the script training concept, used extensively in medical training, to the domain of insurance underwriting …

Multi-Generational Workforce Strategies For 21st Century Managers, Gail M. Cushing

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

At any given time, managers can employ up to five generations of individuals in the workplace. Each generational cohort enhances the workplace with their own belief system, habits, attitude, and work expectations. The manager's responsibility to both the organization and the workforce is to bring all the employees together to foster shared values and work towards the organization’s common goal. The aim of this qualitative collective case study was to investigate the strategies managers use to direct a multigenerational workforce in today’s marketplace. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews from managers in the banking, educational, grocery, medical, non-profit, restaurant, and …

Successful Venture Building: What Matters! An Empirical Examination Of Effective Incubation Practices, Patrick Thng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Incubator models have evolved since the first known US incubator in 1959. From the first generation of a facilities-focused incubator model in the 1960s to the fourth generation of emerging models, commonly referred to as, the “Accelerator” model and the “Venture Builder” model.
Since 2006, there has been a significant increase in the number of venture builders and accelerators. Yet very little is known about a) their performance and the antecedents; b) the key differences between venture builders and accelerators; c) the factors and practices that characterise highly successful venture builders and d) their (venture builders)comparative advantages or disadvantages compared …

Big-Data Talent Analytics In The Public Sector: A Promotion And Firing Model Of Employees At Federal Agencies, Rabih Neouchi

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

Talent analytics is a relatively new area of focus to researchers working in analytics and data science. Talent Analytics has the potential to help companies make many informed critical decisions around talent acquisition, promotion and retention. This work investigates data science to predict “shiny star” employees in the U.S. public sector, defined as top-notch performers over the years of a given time span. Its scope falls within talent analytics, also called people analytics, a relatively new research area.

We clean a data set made available by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and present two models to predict the …

Essays On The Economics Of Digital Piracy, Zhuang Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis consists of three chapters relating to the economics of digital piracy. Digital piracy is a debated topic catching tremendous academic and public attention. My studies contribute to the understanding of the impact of digital piracy on legitimate sales revenue with a focus on the motion picture industry.

In my first chapter, I examine the effects of screener piracy on the movie box office. Screeners are movie copies sent to critics and industry professionals for evaluation purposes. Sometimes, screeners are leaked and made available to download on the Internet. This chapter exploits the plausibly exogenous variation of file sharing/piracy …

A Study In Three Practical Management Science Problems, John S.F. Lyons

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study of practical problems in Management Science (MS) describes novel mathematical models for three different decision settings. It addresses questions of: (a) what optimal route should be taken through a time-windows and topographically complex network; (b) what optimal sequencing of scheduled surgeries best coordinates flow of patients through central recovery; and (c) what prices should be charged and what stock amounts should be produced for two markets or channels to maximize profit explicitly, given various capacity and uncertainty conditions.

The first problem is in a sport analytics context, using a novel Integer Programming and big data from Whistler-Blackcomb ski …

A Quasi-Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Experience Staging Techniques On Engagement, Emerson Ferrell Watanabe

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of experience staging techniques (personalization through co-creation and multisensory stimuli) on engagement level. This study also explores the possible contribution of experience staging techniques as practical tools that recreation professionals can use to better engage participants in recreation activities and events. A 2-way univariate ANOVA revealed no significant relationship between the use of co-creative and multisensory stimulating techniques and engagement levels in participants (F (3,200) = .263, p = .826, partial η2 = .004). Practical applications for recreation professionals and further research opportunities are discussed.

Antecedents And Consequences Of Leaders’ Security Orientation, Joseph J. Simpson

Theses and Dissertations

Organizations’ leaders are responsible for ensuring that firms’ proprietary assets are protected from expropriation. Firms are increasingly targets of large-scale proprietary assets breaches that jeopardize their ability to financially benefit from their innovation activities. Some firms have proactively built capabilities that allow them to protect their proprietary assets, while leaders are more security oriented and therefore do more to protect their organizations from proprietary assets breaches? Current research on leaders’ role in the protection of proprietary assets is lacking at the strategic level because most studies on organizational security have emphasized employee-level behaviors (e.g., da Veiga & Eloff, 2010, Lee, …

The Negative Impact Of Positive Stereotyping: Relationship Between Positive Stereotypes, Perceived Competence And Perceived Potential For Leadership, Megan Chan

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For many years, Asian Americans have been positively stereotyped as the most successful racial group in America. Yet, very few Asian Americans occupy top leadership positions. This research investigates how positive stereotyping affects managers’ perception towards Asian Americans’ level of competence and potential for leadership. I conducted a scenario study with a sample of 315 people working and residing in the United States. These participants assumed the role of decisions makers and were presented with information about job applicants where the variable data (i.e. race) was manipulated. Based on the differences in ratings on Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans, I …

Blood Supply Chain Networks In Healthcare: Game Theory Models And Numerical Case Studies, Pritha Dutta

Doctoral Dissertations

A crucial component of every healthcare system is the safe and steady supply of the life-saving product, blood. In order to meet the demand for blood consistently, it is imperative to maintain a robust supply chain. The blood banking industry in the United States, faced with emerging challenges, which include, an increase in operating costs, rise in competition among blood centers, insufficient reimbursement from payers such as insurance companies and government programs, in addition to inherent challenges such as donor motivation, seasonal shortages, perishability, is trying to adapt to the changing dynamics to sustain itself economically. The altruistic nature of …

New Perspectives On M&A Research, Zhefei Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Corporate acquisition is among the most important strategic tools wielded by managers to achieve competitive advantage. Acquisition may create strategic values for the acquirer by gaining market power through industry consolidation, diversifying into rapidly growing industries, entering into emerging markets, and most importantly by combining unique valuable resources from acquirer and target. Despite the many appealing aspects of the motive for acquisition, however, meta-analytical studies suggest that though highly beneficial for the target firm’s shareholders, acquisition on average destroys acquirer shareholder values. to understand the determinants of acquisition performance success, it becomes imperative to study the antecedents as well as …

Examining Inter-Relationships Between Supervisor Full-Range Leadership, Organizational Climate Strength, And Employee Job Satisfaction Using Multi-Level Modeling, Bharat Mohan

Dissertations

Employee job satisfaction, organizational climate, and supervisor leadership style have long been researched due to their influences on critical metrics for measuring organizational success. While the relationships between these three variables have been investigated, current research suffers from two major issues. First, no existing study has explored the inter-relationships between the aforementioned components within the same model. Second, existing studies are fraught with levels-of-analysis issues that yield findings that are either incomplete or inaccurate. This study addresses these issues by introducing organizational climate strength as a mediating variable (between supervisor leadership and employee satisfaction) and by employing multi-level modeling techniques. …

The Moderating Effect Of Media Naturalness On Motivating Language, James Cox

Theses and Dissertations

For decades, the research in communication in organizational behavior has focused on the reduction of uncertainty and consequently so has the research of leadership and computer mediated communication (CMC) (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1977; Sullivan, 1988). Because of this, many of the controversial issues and competing theories of CMC that have in good part centered around the topic of media choice in the context of task performance, which is a reflection of this narrow focus of CMC on uncertainty reduction. Therefore in order to study the more whole form of communication in motivation proposed by Sullivan (1988), a CMC theory is …

Microfoundations Of Innovation In Organizations, Trey Cummings

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation weaves together three distinct chapters that are unified in their focus on the microfoundations of innovation in organizations. Chapter 1 utilizes a unique NASA employee data set to investigate the effect of promotion reward incentives on knowledge worker innovation. This study is the first to empirically show a positive relationship of promotion incentives with individual innovation outcomes in a field setting while also revealing a decrease in collaboration. This result exposes promotion structure as a potentially powerful tool for affecting innovation. Chapter 2 develops a unique measure of R&D structure and finds that the incentives created by long-term …

Benchmarking Oecd Countries’ Sustainable Development Performance: A Goal-Specific Pca Approach, Shyam Lamichhane

Master's Theses

In this thesis, the current status of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ sustainable development performance towards reaching the recently announced 2030 Agenda (17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)) was investigated. Over 90 social, economic and environmental sustainability indicators were considered for the performance assessment of OECD countries towards reaching the targeted SDGs. The current weighted averaging approach used in the recent SDG Index and Dashboards Report was used as the benchmark and its limitations were discussed. To overcome the limitations, a novel Goal Specific Principal Component Analysis (GS-PCA) approach was proposed to create composite sustainability index …

The Interplay Between Change And Project Management For Business Results, Taiwo O.O. Abraham

Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigates the potential interplay between change management and project management. The research aims to determine the causal effect between the two concepts. Data is collected from a focus group comprised of various managers. The study concludes that managers readily apply the concepts of both change management and PM when making decisions. Also, there is significant appreciation of the value of both PM and change management in the contemporary business environment. Future studies need to investigate the relevance of the change management models on PM strategies.

Managing Information Security Investments Under Uncertainty: Optimal Policies For Technology Investment And Information Sharing, Yueran Zhuo

Doctoral Dissertations

Information systems are an integral part of today's business environment. Businesses, government organizations, and the society rely on these systems for various transactions, most of which have huge financial implications. Hence, attacks that breach information systems result in interruption of operations, loss of data and customer confidence, constituting a significant threat to firms. The losses due to attacks on information systems can be mitigated through investments in information security technologies and services. In this thesis we study three practical problems related to information system security investment management: (1) Optimal policies for technology investment in information system security; (2) Optimal policies …

Trabajo De Grado En Proyección Social Fundación Construyendo Caminos De Esperanza “Funcades”, Viviana Andrea Prieto Vélez, David Leandro Albarracín Alvarado

Contaduría Pública

El trabajo de proyección social busca establecer en los estudiantes criterios estratégicos de análisis e investigación, en un espacio de aplicación real al interior de una fundación, donde se puedan identificar los puntos de mejora y dar una solución factible y aplicable con términos administrativos, contables y financieros.

Bribery And Export Intensity: The Role Of Formal Institutional Constraint Susceptibility, Randika Eramudugoda Gamage

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study explores the influence of home country formal institutional constraints on firm bribery payments and export intensity. Distinguishing between forms of formal institutional constraints based on their susceptibility to bribery, this study highlights the different mechanisms through which formal institutional constraints impact export intensity. I propose that highly susceptible formal institutional constraints will behave as incentives leading to increased bribery payments. In contrast, less-susceptible formal institutional constraints will act as an added cost, ex-post to bribery payments, in the bribery-export intensity relationship. These less-susceptible formal institutional constraints will further decrease export intensity. Utilizing a firm-level dataset from 25 countries, …

The Future Of Work: An Investigation Of The Expatriate Experiences Of Jamaican C-Suite Female Executives In The Diaspora, On Working In Multi-National Companies, Suzette Amoy Henry-Campbell

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the lived experiences of Jamaican Expatriate Female C-suite executives in the diaspora of working in Multi-national Companies (MNCs). A further question to be answered was the meaning they derived from their experiences. With little research emerging from the Caribbean about this elite class of professionals, the research intended to expose the challenges faced as an outsider in unfamiliar spaces. Research on other groups have exposed limiting factors to women’s progress in MNCs. Critical Race Theory with a brief mention of Critical Human Geography and Intersectionality are lens applied to critique the experiences …

Spurring Tensions At The Workplace And The Moderating Role Of Psychological Resilience: A Paradox Theory Perspective, Rawia Ahmed

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Paradoxes are integral parts of our work lives. In this paper, I tested workplace triggers of four different categories of tensions: belonging, learning, organizing, and performing tensions, and I offered a theoretical framework on how these types of tensions affect employees' wellbeing negatively by examining stress. Further, I presented psychological resilience as a contingency variable that reduces the experience of stress at the workplace. I also created the organizing tensions instrument. I validated the scale and tested the model with three different samples: Sample 1 (125 MBA students), sample 2 (time 1 520 Qualtrics Panel respondents), and sample 3 (time …

Management Of Virtual Offices, Cheryl Donaldson Howard

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many organizational leaders manage virtual employees without the specific training and experience required for leading a virtual organization, which can lead to billions of dollars in lost productivity. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies managers used to manage a virtual office. The target population consisted of 4 managers located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States who had a minimum of 2 years of experience managing virtual offices. The conceptual framework for this study was social exchange theory. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and a review of company documents. Data were analyzed using …

Island Invasion: The Silent Crisis In Hawaii, Sophia Janssen

Pomona Senior Theses

Keeping out invasive species may, upon first review, seem like a trivial environmental cry from ecologists and deep environmentalists; a belated wish to return to an undeveloped world where nature was pristine. However invasive species create problems that impact all of us and can have far more severe consequences than changing a stunning landscape. These problems are heightened in islands like Hawaii, where the fragile ecosystems have developed over centuries of evolution and adaptation. The introduction of a disease-carrying mosquito can put the people of Hawaii at risk to many vector-born illnesses and create an epidemic, taking human life. The …

Employee Resistance To Disruptive Technological Change In Higher Education, Barbara Ann Miller

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employees can be resistant to work-based change, specifically when the change is due to disruptive or new technology. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of 20 Swiss-based educational employees adapting to online technologies introduced in their workplaces. Disruptive innovation theory provided the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with 20 purposely selected participants from 3 Swiss-based higher education campuses. The modified Van Kaam method was used to organize and analyze the data. Four themes from participants' responses were identified: educational employees are not resistant to technology-based change, educational …

Sustainable Supply Chain Management In The Nigerian Consumer Goods Manufacturing Sector, Ekpen Theophilus Owie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Supply chain practitioners in developing economies, like Nigeria, experience challenges in implementing sustainable supply chain management practices. Poor sustainability implementation engenders the negative effects of supply chain operations on people, the environment, and business continuity. The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study was to explore and describe the experiences of supply chain practitioners in the consumer goods manufacturing industry in Nigeria about sustainable supply chain management based on the theoretical foundations of stakeholder and general systems theories. The focus of the research question was to examine the experiences of supply chain practitioners to understand the challenges in implementing sustainable …

Relationship Between Employee Development, Employee Burnout, And Employee Turnover Intentions, Marvin D. Hall

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee turnover is a concern for the highway maintenance leaders in the construction

industry because employees with turnover intentions may exhibit decreased commitment and increased cynicism towards the organization, which may affect business profits. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between employee development, employee burnout, and employee turnover intentions in highway maintenance organizations in the United States. Hobfoll's conservation of resources theory was the framework for this study. A convenience sampling of participants, which included a target audience who accessed the paper-based surveys from 6 field offices and the central office building within the northwestern …

Strategies To Mitigate Supply Chain Disruption Risks, Daniel G. Haloukas

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Businesses with global supply chains typically have a minimum of 1 interruption to their supply chain annually, which can decrease profitability and affect overall company performance. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies personal care business supply chain managers used to mitigate supply chain disruption risk. The targeted population was 9 supply chain managers working in 5 different Fortune 500 consumer packaged goods personal care companies in the northeastern United States who have successfully used strategies to mitigate supply chain disruptions. Corporate risk management was used as the conceptual framework of the study to determine how …