Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons^™

Defensive Ability And Salary Determination In Major League Baseball, Christopher B. Shorey

Honors Theses

The process of salary determination in Major League Baseball (MLB) includes multiple levels of bargaining power and performance determinants. Previous studies of MLB salary determination have used a variety of measures of player performance. This paper examines the effect defensive ability has on salary determination for arbitration eligible players and for free agent players. Specifically, it will analyze player salary/contract data negotiated during the 2012-2015 period along with performance data from past seasons to examine the extent to which fielding percentage, errors, and the more recently developed measures of defensive ability affect player salary. Particular attention is paid to matching …

Examining The Effects Of Culture On Preference Of Social Cause In Cause-Related Marketing: A Cross-Cultural Study Of The United States And Chile, Alicia Helfrich

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Cause-related marketing is a common business practice that aims to align strategic goals of a for-profit company with the social needs of the stakeholders and occurs most frequently when a portion of a purchase is donated to a designated social cause. The utilization of cause-related marketing has been shown to increase purchase intention of consumers. The present study examines the impact that culture has on consumer’s preference of social cause in a cause-related marketing campaign by comparing two countries, the United States and Chile. The researchers predicted that people from Chile and those with an interdependent self-construal would be more …

Cultural Influnces On Risk Tolerance And Portfolio Creation, Mark K. Pyles, Yongping Li, Shifang Wu, Steven D. Dolvin

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

We extend existing research that examines the impact of culture on risk tolerance. Using surveys completed by Chinese and American students, we find, consistent with previous studies, that Chinese students perceive themselves as more risk tolerant. However, we find that Chinese students are less consistent in matching their perceived tolerance levels with actual scores from a standard risk tolerance assessment. Further, we also examine mock portfolios created by the respondents and find no evidence that Chinese students create portfolios that are riskier than their American counterparts. Our findings suggest that differences in risk tolerance are at least partially a product …

College Football Coaches’ Pay And Contracts: Are They Overpaid And Unfairly Treated?􀀃, Randall Thomas, Lawrence Van Horn

Indiana Law Journal

College football coaches’ employment contracts and compensation garner public attention and scrutiny in much the same way as those of corporate CEOs. In both cases, the public perception is that they must be overpaid and pampered. Economic theory claims that for coaches and CEOs to be overpaid, they must be receiving compensation in excess of the value they create for their organizations. However, both receive pay-for-performance compensation, which structurally aligns their compensation with value creation. This means we need to examine the underlying structure of the contract that gives rise to the observed compensation to determine whether they are appropriately …

Strategies Independent Coffee Shop Owners Require To Survive Beyond Five Years, Bruce Higdon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Successful independent coffee shop owners in Washington struggle to compete with the larger coffee shop chains. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to investigate what strategies owners of independent coffee shops in Washington use to survive beyond the first 5 years. Five independent coffee shop owners in Washington participated in the study and shared their practices and observations. Systems theory directed the study exploring the perspectives of successful independent coffee shop owners in Washington. Using communication skills and personal availability to answer questions and remain in contact throughout the research process built a rapport with participants. Data …

A Systems Approach To Evaluation Metrics: A Case Study Of Salvation Farms, Julia D. Scheier

Capstone Collection

This paper examines how integrating systems thinking into nonprofit work and evaluation metrics can help to advance an organization’s mission and clarify that mission to the public. The researcher will utilize her practicum site at Salvation Farms, a small nonprofit in northern Vermont, as a case study to observe the extent to which this organization utilizes systems thinking and how current evaluation metrics can be improved to more effectively inform and involve the community. Salvation Farms’ mission, after all, is to build greater resilience into Vermont’s food system through agricultural surplus management.

The researcher offers a literature review on systems …

Factors That Affect Job Satisfaction And Work Outcomes Of Virtual Workers, Regina Marice Willis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employing a virtual workforce has become a common practice among technically advanced and globally competitive organizations. Yet there is limited information regarding factors that affect job satisfaction and work outcomes of virtual workers. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to address the problem by exploring the lived experiences of virtual workers. Principles of Bandura's self-efficacy theory and Maslow's needs theory formed the conceptual framework. Babbie's sampling strategy and social media were used to obtain 26 participants among the target population of virtual workers. By distributing an online questionnaire, data were collected and analyzed through open coding techniques. As the …

The Impact Of Status Consumption On Luxury Consumption Behaviors: The Influence Of Culture, Don L. Faulk

Honors College Theses

Status consumption refers to why people consume luxury products. Over the years a great deal of research has been done as to what factors are linked to status consumption. However there has been little research done on millennial’s status consumption trends. This study examined why millennials consume for status from a cultural angle (individualism and collectivism, power distance, and ethnicity). The survey findings suggest that while the motivation to consume for status and the cultural variable of power distance significantly impacted status purchase intention, individualism/collectivism and ethnicity did not. This study also delves into managerial implications of our results.

A Model Of Idiosyncratic Deal-Making And Attitudinal Outcomes, Violet T. Ho, Amanuel G. Tekleab

Management Faculty Publications

Purpose: We disentangle the relationship between the request of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) and the receipt of such deals, and investigate the moderating roles of human capital (gender and industry experience) and social capital (LMX) in this relationship. Attitudinal outcomes of i-deals receipt are also examined.

Design: Data were collected from 244 alumni of a Midwestern public university.

Findings: The positive relationship between i-deals request and receipt was stronger at higher than at lower levels of LMX. Receiving i-deals was related positively to job satisfaction and affective commitment, and negatively to turnover intention.

Research implications: We provide …

The Impact Of Transportation Infrastructure On Nigeria's Economic Developmeny, William A. Agbigbe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) described Nigeria's road networks as one of the poorest and deadliest transportation infrastructural systems in the world. Data from the UNDP and the World Bank (WB) show that Nigeria has suffered transportation infrastructure deficits; these data also illustrate Nigeria as one of the lowest indices in economic development in the last decade. This qualitative case study addressed the impact of a lack of investment in transportation infrastructure in the form of road networks on Nigeria's economic development. The purpose of the study was to understand the relationship between the investment in road networks and …

The Relationship Between Cultural Intelligence And Work Outcomes Of Expatriates In China, Barbara Joanna Diemer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

International assignment failures cost an organization roughly 3 to 4 times an expatriate's annual salary with the most expatriate failures cited for work assignments in China. Previous scholarly research identified cultural intelligence (CQ) as being influential to expatriate work outcomes. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationships among a subset of CQ predictor variables and work outcome related dependent variables. Quantitative analysis regarding the relationship between CQ and work outcomes for U.S. nationals working in China does not currently exist in the scholarly research. Improvement of expatriate work outcomes and reduction of failed assignment costs is …

Achieving Value Co-Creation In It Outsourcing, Szu-Yuan Sun, Li-Shan Chen

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Over the past few decades, information technology outsourcing has become a widely used and researched means for enterprises to enhance their performance. As future collaboration is the most desirable outcome between enterprises and IT outsourcing vendors, the purpose of this study is to construct a new model to examine: 1) whether information technology outsourcing satisfaction impact future collaboration, 2) whether value co-creation impact outsourcing satisfaction, 3)which factors influence value co-creation, and 4) whether trust influence enterprises’ commitments. This research assumes that: 1) trust predicts enterprises’ commitments; 2) customer orientation and participation, service quality, communication culture, and enterprises’ commitment predicts value …

Identifying Four Key Means Of Business Value Creation Using Enterprise Systems: An Empirical Study, Prithvi Bhattacharya

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Enterprise Systems (ES) is increasingly becoming the choice of IT platform for most large organizations in the world. As a result, the potential of such systems to create more business value is of key interest to both industry and academia. The aim of this study is to identify the key means of business value creation that Enterprise Systems can enable. The contribution of this paper is that it identifies and proposes four key means by which Enterprise Systems can create business value: (a) Operational Efficiency (b) Mergers and Acquisitions, (c) Innovation (in product and process), (d) Strategic Decision Making. This …

Choice Of Agile Methodologies In Software Development: A Vendor Perspective, Sriram Rajagopalan, Saji K. Mathew

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The purpose of this research was to develop understanding about how vendor firms make choice about agile methodologies in software projects and their fit. Two analytical frameworks were developed from extant literature and the findings were compared with real world decisions. Framework 1 showed that the choice of XP for one project was not supported by the guidelines given by the framework. The choices of SCRUM for other two projects, were partially supported. Analysis using the framework 2 showed that except one XP project, all others had sufficient project management support, limited scope for adaptability and had prominence for rules.

Enhancing The Use Of Web 2.0 Technologies In Higher Education: Students’ And Lectures’ Views, Razep Echeng, Abel Usoro

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Learning quality enhancement with Web 2.0 tools needs good implementation framework and lessons from best practice. However, there is not much research on what constitutes best practice in the implementation of Web 2.0 in learning activities. This research seeks to fill this gap by seeking the views of students and lecturers on increased adoption of Web 2.0 social tools in learning activities. The research reports on the quantitative and qualitative study carried out in UK. This research reveals that improved learning experience with the use of Web 2.0 tools in higher education is positively related to perceived usefulness, perceived ease …

Trends In Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Vs. Proprietary Applications, Vijay K. Agrawal, Vipin K. Agrawal, A. Ross Taylor

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This study examines factors valued by IS managers in deciding if COTS software is a viable alternative to proprietary software. The results indicate managers who anticipate increased usage of COTS packages in 5 years used the same top three factors in the formation of their decisions to adopt COTS as their colleagues who anticipated either zero change in COTS usage or an increased usage of proprietary software used in deciding not to adopt COTS software. Managers anticipating increased COTS usage had a statistically significant higher value for each of those items compared to managers not anticipating growth in COTS software.

Online Trust Cues: Perceptions And Application, Antonina A. Bauman

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This qualitative study analyzes perceptions of online trust cues as identified by shoppers from three countries: Germany, Russia, and the USA. A novel approach of the repertory grid method is used to study online trust cues in business-to-consumers commercial online transactions. This study resulted in the list of web site elements and features that consumers recognize as trust cues and use to evaluate e-vendor’s trustworthiness. Findings show that out of fourteen categories of online trust cues, identified by online shoppers, three categories of online trust cues are found to be common across three cultures while eleven categories are culture specific. …

Evaluation Of Classification And Ensemble Algorithms For Bank Customer Marketing Response Prediction, Olatunji Apampa

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This article attempts to improve the performance of classification algorithms used in the bank customer marketing response prediction of an unnamed Portuguese bank using the Random Forest ensemble. A thorough exploratory data analysis (EDA) was conducted on the data in order to ascertain the presence of anomalies such as outliers and extreme values. The EDA revealed that the bank data had 45, 211 instances and 17 features, with 11.7% positive responses. This was in addition to the detection of outliers and extreme values. Classification algorithms used for modelling the bank dataset include; Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Naïve Bayes and the …

The Perceived Business Benefit Of Cloud Computing: An Exploratory Study, Thomas Chen, Ta-Tao Chuang, Kazuo Nakatani

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The objective of the research is to study the benefits of cloud computing perceived by adopters and examine the impact of moderating factors on the relationship between the type of cloud computing and the perceived benefit. The moderating factors include firm size and value-chain activities. A measurement instrument of a 5-point Likert scale was administered on businesses of different sizes in Taiwan. The benefit of cloud computing measured in the study were: cost reduction, improved capability and enhanced scalability. The results show that the perceived benefit of cloud computing varies depending on the type of cloud computing, the value chain …

Can Contracts Replace Qualification In A Sourcing Process With Competitive Suppliers And Imperfect Information?, Yue Jin, Jennifer K. Ryan

Department of Supply Chain Management and Analytics: Faculty Publications

This paper considers a manufacturer who outsources the production of a product to multiple competing suppliers, who differ in their cost structures and in their capabilities for producing high-quality products. The manufacturer must design the sourcing process to ensure that the selected supplier has sufficient quality capability, while encouraging competition among the suppliers. We develop and analyze a mathematical model of performance-based contracting, a sourcing method that is appropriate when the manufacturer has imperfect information regarding the suppliers’ costs and capabilities. We compare the performance of performance-based contracting with that of a two-stage sourcing process, an alternative sourcing method that …