Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

Social Entrepreneurship And Wealth-Building Plans: Creative Strategies For Working Class Americans, Wayne R. Curtis

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study investigated how the elements of social entrepreneurship with wealth-building strategies can advance the creation of wealth and serve as a mechanism for social change. This research takes a modest first step toward demystifying social entrepreneurship, better understanding the phenomenon, and exploring the relevance of wealth-building in social entrepreneurial activity. Specifically, this exploratory study used a multiple case study design to understand how existing social entrepreneurial ventures include wealth-building strategies, such as employee stock ownership plans for working class Americans. The concept of social entrepreneurship is relatively new. There is general agreement that the concept combines a passion for …

Supply Chain Management: Impact Of Customer Relationship Marketing On Performance Under Cooperation And Competition Strategies, Maria Eugenia Barua

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The dissertation investigation proposes a modified supply chain management model that is grounded on marketing theory and the concept of production sharing. Specifically, the model challenges the traditional cooperation-conflict continuum of strategic marketing management with a new managerial approach based on a cooperation-competition continuum. I investigate the significance of the new model in explaining behaviors in the supply chain management and its performance. In addition, I investigate whether the proposed managerial continuum (cooperation-competition) is consistent with other behaviors including power, conflict, trust, and customer relationship marketing such that coordination and supply chain performance is enhanced.

The data collection from manufacturers, …

Brand Reputation And Product Recall, Anne Meike Eilert

Theses and Dissertations

Every year, firms make numerous announcements to recall products that are deemed unsafe or defective. These recalls pose a significant threat to a firm's brand reputation. The strong, negative reactions of consumers and the media to the recalls initiated by Toyota in 2010 show how fragile brands are in the wake of a recall. Firms spend a great amount of resources on building strong brands and it is unclear how such brands influence the firm's decision to announce a recall and the consumer's decision to return the recalled product. The objective of this dissertation is to shed some light on …

Egocentric Biases In Consumer Judgment Of Products With And Without Target Market Labels, David Norton

Theses and Dissertations

Consumer research to date has posited that if we are cued to think of others, then we are likely to be influenced by the type of others we consider. Thus, research on product evaluations has focused on motivational accounts of either favoring or disfavoring a product contingent upon which specific reference group the product is associated with. In this dissertation I advance the theory that product evaluations are also cognitive in nature. Due to egocentric biases of self availability and self positivity I propose that the cueing of an 'other' lowers the valence of thoughts available (relative to thoughts of …

When Less Is More: The Effect Of Reducing Auditor Liability On Auditor Judgments In Principles-Based And Rules-Based Environments, Linda Quick

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint effects of accounting guidance type (principles-based versus rules-based) and legal liability regime (unlimited versus limited) on auditor decisions. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) believe that moving to more principles-based standards in the United States will allow companies and auditors to more appropriately reflect the economic substance of transactions in the financial statements. However, very little attention has been paid to the possibility that principles-based standards will be applied differently in the United States than in other countries due to a different …

The Effects Of Social Costs And Internal Quality Reviews On Auditor Consultation Strategies, Tammie Janell Schaefer

Theses and Dissertations

Seeking advice from knowledgeable individuals within the firm is an essential feature of firms' quality control systems and is intended to improve auditor decision making. It is important to understand factors that encourage or discourage auditors from proactively seeking out help and relying on the 'right' people because advice can influence audit judgments. Existing studies in accounting focus on factors that affect how auditors use the advice they obtain during informal consultations. In this study, I examine factors that affect when auditors seek advice, to whom auditors go for advice, and how they present audit issues to the advisor, which …

Unintended Consequences Of Regulated Contract Structure, Bryan W. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effect of contract structure (fixed versus contingent) and a contextual factor (positive versus negative benefit surprise) on tax professionals' behavior. Regulatory restrictions on contract structure are based on the belief that contingent fee contracts "encourage tax return preparers to take unsupported positions on the taxpayers' returns" (Murphy 1989, p. 2). Experienced tax professionals participated in an experiment investigating the effect of contract structure and benefit surprise on their judgments and decisions. Contrary to regulators' beliefs about the effect of contingent fee structures, I do not find a main effect of contract structure. Rather, results show that …

Essays On Market Dominance And Price Discovery, James Michael Lockwood

Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay, I examine the burden of cross-listing prices to adjust to changes in exchange rates. Using a 3-system vector moving average model, I measure the effects of exchange rate shocks on cross-listing stock prices in the home and U.S. markets. My sample consists of 46 cross-listings on the NYSE from Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. Findings indicate that New York prices bear roughly 60% of the adjustment to exchange rates for Canadian and Mexican securities, and roughly 45% for Brazilian securities. The NYSE burden of adjustment varies considerably across firms, ranging from 7% to 100% for Canada, 10% …

Social Media, A New Revolution In The Field Of Marketing: The Effect Of Information Sharing, Peer Pressure, Entertainment And Emotional Connection On The Attitude Towards The Brand And In Turn The Purchase Intention From The Brand, Sradha Narendra Sheth

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media has today become one of the fastest and strongest networking and communication tools. Companies realizing the importance of this new marketing revolution have also ventured into the world of social media. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social media marketing on user's attitude towards the brand present on social media and their purchase intentions from the brand. The relevance of this study will provide great insights to retailers with regard to using multiple social media sites and their features to successfully market their products, retain and grow their customer base.

Essays In The Airline Industry, Mariana Luminita Nicolae

Theses and Dissertations

In 2008, most U.S. airlines implemented checked baggage fee policies to generate additional revenue to help with their financial distress caused by abnormally high fuel prices. Since this time, the fees have provided a steady revenue stream and often are the difference between a profit and a loss. Recently, some literature in the operations management field has postulated that altering consumer behavior in a manner that is beneficial to both the firm and customers is an additional purpose of these fees. In Essay 1, we empirically investigate the airline perspective of this hypothesis by considering the operational impact of airline …

Enabling Greater Access To Home Meal Delivery, Maciek Nowak, Leo Gala, Mike Hewitt

Information Systems and Operations Management: Faculty Publications & Other Works

Non-profit organizations like the Meals on Wheels (MOW) association of America prepare and deliver meals, typically daily, to approximately one million homebound citizens in the United States alone. However, many MOW agencies are facing a steadily increasing number of clients requesting meal service without an increase in resources (either financial or human). One strategy for accommodating these requests is to deliver multiple (frozen) meals at a time and thus make fewer delivers. However, many of the stakeholders (funders, volunteers, meal recipients) value the relationships that are developed by having a client receive daily deliveries from the same volunteer. Further, meal …

Workforce Management In Periodic Delivery Operations, Karen Smilowitz, Maciek Nowak, Tingting Jiang

Information Systems and Operations Management: Faculty Publications & Other Works

Service quality and driver efficiency in the delivery industry may be enhanced by increasing the regularity with which a driver visits the same set of customers. However, effectively managing a workforce of drivers may increase travel distance, a traditional metric of the vehicle routing problem (VRP). This paper evaluates the effect that workforce management has on routing costs, providing insight for managerial decision making. The analysis is presented in the context of the period vehicle routing problem (PVRP), an extension of the VRP with vehicle routes constructed to service customers according to preset visit frequencies over an established period of …

Diffusion Of Csr In Global Business Networks: An Embeddedness Perspective, Valentina Marano

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of firm embeddedness in its global business network, relative to the adoption of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. Global business networks refer to the nexus of inter-firm and intra-firm relationships, in which focal actors are engaged. These networks are focal firm specific, span multiple countries and involve different types of economic relationships between the focal actor and its business partners. This study argues that global business networks affect a focal organization's CSR adoption decisions, since they provide access to resources and information and also channel CSR-related institutional influences from the various countries where the focal …

Looking Good By Doing Good: The Antecendents And Consequences Of Stakeholder Attention To Corporate Social Performance, Peter M. Madsen, Zachariah J. Rodgers

Faculty Publications

Stakeholder theory suggests a relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP) because certain stakeholders reward certain types of CSR. This argument assumes that stakeholders attend to firms’ CSR activities—an assumption that has yet to be examined. We fill this gap by extending stakeholder theory to the context of stakeholder attention to firm CSR and exploring the antecedents and consequences of stakeholder attention to corporate disaster relief CSR. We test the resulting hypotheses on a sample of public companies that engaged in natural disaster relief efforts, finding that stakeholder attention partially mediated the relationship between disaster relief …

Contextual Support For Innovation In An Australian Financial Services Firm, Agung N. Fahrudi, Denise E. Gengatharen, Yuliani Suseno, Craig Standing

Research outputs 2013

Organizational learning can facilitate innovation and it is affected by internal and external contexts. Leaders can provide internal contextual support for learning to occur in the organization in order to respond to changes in external contexts. However, there are limited studies about how leaders affect innovation in financial services firms. This paper applies Crossan et al.’s (1999) 4I framework to examine the impact of internal and external factors on an organization’s learning process and the extent of its innovation. An on-going case study of a large Australian financial services firm is used to gain insights about contextual support for innovation. …

How Do Excellent Companies Stay Excellent?, Alan R. Brown

Research outputs 2013

Organisations throughout the world adopt business excellence frameworks to guide their business strategy and continuous improvement. Some seek and receive awards which recognise high levels of achievement against the criteria of these frameworks. Even at these levels of performance, organisations face challenges to maintaining high levels of achievement and these are the subject of this paper. Using a sample of Australian Business Excellence Award winners, interviews with key managers provide insights into the challenges which these organisations face in their ongoing quest for excellence. Six key themes emerged: embedding excellence, ensuring it is not onerous, engaging people, providing meaning, driving …

Change And Discomfort In Academia: How Far Should We Stretch In Our Readiness For Change?, Laurie A. Branch

Student Scholarship

Employee attitudes and their effect on successful implementation of organizational changes continue to engross researchers and practitioners alike. In this study, we investigated the significance and nature of discomfort as it affects readiness for change in business school settings. This choice of context is deliberate. There is a strong push for change in business schools to align with market needs and there are high levels of individual and collective efficacy. Our findings indicate discomfort as a mediator explains significantly more variation in readiness than is explained by perceived collective efficacy. Surprisingly, we found that some forms of discomfort such as …

Institutional Factors Influencing The Effectiveness Of Scientist-Physician Partnerships In Biomedical Research, Yunmei Wang

Student Scholarship

Substantial resources invested in biomedical research have generated revolutionary discoveries in medical science. However, it takes on average 17 years to turn about 14% of research findings into changes that benefit patients. Lack of scientist-physician partnership (SPP) is one main reason for the extremely slow translation of science into medical practice. Our previous study identified several institutional and socio-cultural barriers that hinder SPP and slow down knowledge transfer in medicine. However, the relationships among the identified factors, as well as the prevalence of their impacts on scientist-physician partnership and transfer of knowledge are not clear. This study focuses on the …

Managerial And Organizational Factors That Influence A Firm's Safety And Environmental Performance: An Examination Of The Fortune 500 Companies, David Klossner

Student Scholarship

This research seeks to illuminate which managerial and organizational factors lead large corporations to operate in an environmentally conscious manner. We used a blended quantitative approach to test the effects of managerial and organizational factors on a corporation's environmental performance. We used three data sets: (a) firm's actual environmental performance, (b) firm's actual safety performance, and (c) survey from top executives of the Fortune 500 companies. Our data shows that profit seeking positively affects environmental performance; in contrast, a manager's intrinsic values have little effect; and surprisingly a corporation's environmental performance is inversely related to coercive external pressure and risk …

Enhancing Firm Profitability By Improving Director Dynamics, Solange Charas

Student Scholarship

Board performance research focused on individual director's economically-motivated behaviors and outcomes has generated inconsistent and disappointing results. Most research does not consider the board as a team, despite recent calls for a focus on collective board processes and behaviors. As 90% of directors rate their individual performance at very effective but only 30% rate overall board performance at an equivalent level, it is obvious that this gap needs to be addressed. The discrepancy between individual and team performance effectiveness was the focus of this research, based on original data from 182 directors and their assessment of their board's dynamic, team …