Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

Cross-Cultural Managerial Behavior – A Comparative Study Between The Republic Of Korea And The United States Of America, Colson Richter

Senior Honors Theses

Among the many trade partners the United States engages with, the Republic of Korea is the nation’s seventh largest trading partner – exchanging over $154.9 Billion in 2020 (USTR, 2021). Despite this strong economic relationship between these two nations, the cultural distance that these societies have is one of the largest within anthropological academia (Hofstede, 2017). This reality creates the need for a solid framework of a management-focused, cultural understanding between these two countries.

In this study, academic literature will be collected and reviewed to lend insight into particular areas of culture that an American and Korean perspective would be …

Werner Enterprises Strategic Audit, Leavitt K. Reno

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Werner Enterprises is a large trucking company based in Omaha, Nebraska, operating out of 15 terminals around the country. It is among the top five trucking companies in the United States. This report examines the trucking industry and where Werner Enterprises stands within it, as well as Werner Enterprises’ competitive advantages, and how future challenges of the trucking industry may affect the company. The report utilizes a PESTEL and Porter’s Five Forces analysis to closer examine the external environment and industry Werner Enterprises operates in. Following this evaluation, recommendations are provided based on Werner Enterprises’ current positioning and future challenges …

Governance Of Drug Development Alliances, Devashish Chandrashekhar Thakar

Theses and Dissertations

Innovative biotechnology firms (hereafter, biotechs or biotech firms) consider drug development alliances with incumbent pharmaceutical firms (hereafter, pharmas or pharma firms) as a means to access complementary commercialization capabilities, enhance their managerial skillset through close interactions, and maintain financial stability. However, biotechs face challenges in designing and developing alliance contracts that (a) enable them to retain and refine valuable alliance assets and (b) ensure that the alliance makes tangible scientific progress. Designing contracts to achieve these dual purposes is therefore a salient concern for the biotechs.

Given these challenges, the first essay of this dissertation explores the factors driving the …

Experiencing The Formalness: The Role Of Contextual Cues In Consumers’ Luxury Perception And Lifestyle Preference, Zhenyu Jin

Theses and Dissertations

Formalness, which refers to the sense of seriousness, importance, and significance, is a commonly-encountered experience in consumers’ daily lives and can influence consumer behavior in wide domains. Despite its ubiquitous nature, research on consumer experiences of formalness in marketing settings is limited. This dissertation investigates the sense of formalness in consumer behavior, exploring its antecedents and consequences in sensory marketing, luxury consumption, and consumer lifestyles.

Essay 1 identifies one of the antecedents and consequences of formalness sense by exploring how music used in marketing communications and retail environments can induce a sense of formalness in consumers, which in turn shapes …

The Impact Of Subordinates’ Proactive Personality On Empowering Leadership, Xin Zhan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Research has documented numerous benefits of proactive personality for employees’ job outcomes. However, the success of proactive employees largely depends on their leaders’ empowerment. Extant research has focused on the bright side of proactive personality for inducing empowerment, without considering its risks. We thus have an incomplete understanding of the effects of employees’ proactive personality on empowering leadership. I take a balanced perspective on proactive personality and propose that proactive personality has an inverted U-shaped relationship with empowering leadership, such that empowering leadership is highest when proactive personality is at a moderate level. I argue that leader-member exchange (LMX) mediates …

A Study On The Business Models Of Chinese Video Websites And Its Evolution, Xiaohui Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation delves into the 20-year developmental history of Chinese video websites, with specific emphasis on major players currently in operation such as iQIYI, Tencent Video, Youku, Bilibili, and Mango TV. It critically analyzes the business model of Chinese video websites from five key dimensions—developmental evolution, market operation, content production, user relationships, and policy relations—providing a comprehensive understanding of the industry’s landscape. Research has shown that the business models of Chinese video websites present not a simple chain relationship but a complex network of relationships. Elements such as capital, market, content, technology, users, and policies dynamically interact and balance each …

The Impact Of Ipo Pricing Model On The Issuing Price: Evidence From China, Shancheng Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

IPO pricing effectiveness refers to the deviation between the IPO price in the primary market and the actual trading price in the secondary market at the initial stage of listing. IPO underpricing ratio is the main research index used to investigate the effectiveness of IPO pricing in capital market. The phenomenon of excessive IPO underpricing brings many problems to the development of Chinese capital market. The GEM from the establishment of the initial audit system to the registration system, to the inquiry of the implementation of the new rules, IPO underpricing rate has been gradually controlled. This paper mainly studies …

Customer Value, Product Repositioning And Supply Chain Strategy: A Case Of Supply Chain Design For Lansea Corporation, Lei Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With continuous development of Chinese economy, the incomes of Chinese citizens are constantly increasing, leading to dramatical changes of consumer demand patterns, especially in household electric appliances. The analysis of income and household wealth shows that the proportion of the middle-class population is about 20%-30% of the total population, and this proportion is still increasing. Consequently, it seems that consumption is constantly upgrading. This means, on one hand, part of the consumers still focuses on quality and cost, while on the other hand, part of consumers pays more attention on performance and styles. Therefore, it is critical for the manufacturers …

The Effect Of Psychological Distance On Online Advertising: A Case Study Of Video Enrollment Advertisement Of Colleges, Xian He

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Advertising for enrolment through the Internet has become an important means of enrolment promotion in Chinese universities. However, there is currently no clear research conclusion on how to conduct effective advertising, especially on the selection of factors such as promotion time, promotion platform, and promotion targets. Based on the construal level theory, this study investigated the effects of different types of college enrolment advertising on different new media platforms, using different dimensions of psychological distance corresponding to factors such as promotional time and promotional area. The empirical results show that different advertising types do have significant effect differences on different …

Reading Between The Lines Of The Second-Hand E-Commerce Business In China: A Study Of Consumer Behaviour Xianyu Second-Hand Platform, Bing Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Second-hand transactions are gradually becoming an indispensable and significant form of the sharing economy; however, there is limited research on consumer behaviour in second-hand markets in an online environment. This dissertation aims to enrich the research in this area by analysing the impact of the characteristics of buyers, sellers, and products in second-hand markets on consumer purchasing intentions and behaviours. The study uses transaction data from Xianyu, China’s largest C2C second-hand trading platform, to investigate the factors that influence consumers’ choices between first-hand and second-hand trading platforms. It was found that consumers have a higher willingness to purchase well-known brands …

The Elevator Speech, Christopher J. Smiley

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This editorial discusses the effectiveness of crafting an "elevator speech" for concise and impactful communication in various scenarios. Leaders at a previous MDA Board of Trustees orientation were trained to construct brief, efficient presentations of two to five minutes. The process involves targeting the audience's needs, focusing on critical points, and concluding with a call to action. Examples are given for addressing questions on MDA membership benefits, emphasizing volunteer contributions, services, resources, and the value of the MDA Journal. The editorial encourages readers to adopt these strategies for efficient communication in professional and public settings.

Good Communications: Why It’S Essential To Winning Elections, Matthew J. Levin Mpa, Jd

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

The article emphasizes the pivotal role of strategic communications in winning elections and guiding prospective political candidates in developing effective communication plans. The modern electoral landscape demands that candidates master the art of communication to connect with voters and convey their mission effectively.

The article highlights two key components of communication: crafting compelling messages and delivering them adeptly. The former involves developing a series of messages, starting with an elevator pitch and talking points, while the latter requires diligent practice.

The role of media in campaigns is explored, differentiating between earned and paid media. Earned media, generated organically through viral …

J Mich Dent Assoc April 2023

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

In this issue, the reader will find the following original content:

• A profile of two dentist legislators, Representative Steven Bradley, DDS of Iowa and Representative Jane Gillette, DDS, MPH. who represents Montana, to help readers best understand what that commitment means if they plan to seek elected office.
• An article discussing essential communication strategies to win elections.
• An update on ADA efforts to promote Oral Health Equity
• Profiles of MDA leadership candidates
• A 10Minute EBD contrasting closing diastemas with or without frenectomy with orthodontic treatment.
• Editorial, Advocacy update, News Briefs, News from the MDA Foundation, News from the ADA and …

Supply Chain Collaboration Under A Christian Business Ethics Lens, Daniel Oldak

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

Supply chain management is a source of competitive advantages for firms and is becoming an increasingly important part of the business. Firms, on a strategic level, have it in their best interest to operate in a way that leverages their partnership with their suppliers to form sustainable strategic advantages which include but are not limited to product innovation & design, operational efficiency, shared cost savings, and collaborative planning, forecasting, & inventory. A collaborative supply chain that yields these benefits is only possible through the exercise of the justice dimensions of procedural, distributive, and interactional justice which are related to fair …

Tracking The Donor Dollar: A Critical Examination Of Ngo Impact, Joshua Werth

Senior Honors Theses

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) comprise the backbone of civilization. Whether intended or not, governments fail to improve social situations, financial standings, and spirituality comprehensively. NGOs attempt to cover these areas. From Angola to Zambia, countless NGOs exist around the world; however, many fail due to a misplaced focus internally on the annual donations received rather than externally on the disenfranchised. Additionally, even if NGOs manage to stay afloat, they will need help procuring funds and then distributing those resources with the most effective impact for the impoverished. The honors thesis proposed will attempt to determine more effective impact measurements for NGOs, …

Running For Political Office: These Dentists Did . . . How About You? Insights From Two Dentist-Legislators, W. Erick Rupprecht Dds, Lynn Aronoff

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

The Michigan Dental Association encourages members to seek political office. Why? Having a member dentist hold an elected office improves the profession's visibility and builds relationships with other elected officials and community leaders who can support dentistry's goals. A dentist-legislator becomes a resource with their legislative colleagues when they debate health policy, regulations, and business initiatives. Having member dentists on the inside provides receptive ears when the Association advocates for the profession's needs and priorities.

To give insight into what public service by a dentist looks like, the Journal interviewed two colleagues who have made that commitment, State Representative Steven …

Essays On Consumer Returns And Environmental Sustainability In Operations Management, Aditya Balaram

Theses and Dissertations

Consumer returns and environmental sustainability greatly impact the operational decisions that firms make. Focusing on consumer returns, lenient return policies aid consumers with resolving uncertainty but impose additional reverse logistics costs on retailers. The current retail landscape has largely eliminated the possibility of offering more stringent return policies since consumers have come to expect such policies as a given. This has driven retailers to look for innovative solutions while still offering costly free return policies. With respect to environmental sustainability, a number of operational decisions have been examined in the academic literature. These have ranged all the way from examining …

Employability Of The Graduates From 14 Cfr Part 147 Schools: Understanding The Critical Factors Using Covariance-Based Sem, Christine T. Kelley

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Certified aviation mechanics are crucial to maintaining a healthy aviation industry in the United States. To fulfill this need, 14 CFR Part 147 aviation mechanic schools educate students under the supervision of the FAA. Though the demand for mechanics is projected to increase over the next 20 years, the supply is not expected to meet this demand. Therefore, the research discussed in this paper addressed this potential deficiency by asking two research questions. The first related to the factors students feel affect their employability, and the second was used to analyze whether the students learned these skills at school or …

Patagonia’S Identity: Balancing Mission And Growth, Grace Clausen, Michael Kelly, Brysen Reeser, Liam Seper, Andy Zhang

B-Corp Case Studies by UNL Raikes Seniors

This case study examines the challenges Patagonia has faced in attempting to balance its mission of sustainability and company growth. Since its inception, Patagonia has been dedicated to environmentalism and sustainability. They demonstrate this dedication through numerous ways including donating to environmental groups, using recycled materials to make their products, and implementing renewable energy in their production practices. However, as the company has scaled, it has made decisions to meet the needs of its growing customer base and increasing demand, which has led to conflicts with its mission. Additionally, Patagonia’s hard stance on sustainability puts every action they take under …

Athleta B Corporation Case Study, Megan Chaffey, Vivian Jacobitz, Ariel Levi, Leah Olson, Nicole Serpico

B-Corp Case Studies by UNL Raikes Seniors

As a B Corporation, Athleta has the unique challenge of identifying a competitive strategy that will guide the company to success in the highly competitive athleisure market while also remaining consistent with its mission, vision, and values and supporting its parent company, Gap Inc. This case study was developed to evaluate this challenge through internal and external analysis of the company and to encourage readers to consider Athleta’s future priorities as the company undergoes changes in strategic leadership. The case study begins with a brief overview of the competitive landscape of the Athleisure market and a review of the history …