Other Business Commons^™

Part 4: Virginia's Lawyers Confront Tougher Times, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

While movies and television shows portray lawyers as members of high society, with expensive cars and tastes, the reality is grittier. In 2021, more than 90% of law students took out a loan to enable them to pay their costs, and the typical law school graduate owed $165,000 in loans. The crucial point of this report, however, is that significant proportions of law school graduates are destined to be disappointed if they pursue a career in law believing they will earn lots of money. In this chapter, we explore the supply of lawyers in Virginia and whether we are producing …

Digital Entrepreneurship: Context And Conceptualization, Kisito Futonge Nzembayie, Anthony Paul Buckley

Books/Book Chapters

Recognizing how the lines between digital and traditional forms of entrepreneurship are blurring, this forward-thinking book combines digital technology and entrepreneurship perspectives to advance knowledge on this paradigm-shifting typology of entrepreneurship.

The Social Art Club, Beatrice Giuli

MA Projects

The Social Art Club will be a creative hotspot where leisure, art, culture and work come together in one place. The goal of this club is to expand on the idea behind the traditional social club concept. While members will still have access to use the space in whichever ways they prefer, this social club goes beyond. The Club will be a center for art exhibitions, food discovery, music pleasure, and culture renaissance while promoting a multi-sensorial experience and a long lasting communal atmosphere. Recreating the social aspirations of international and luxury clubs such as Soho House, the Social Art …

Artsino: Art Exhibition In An Immersive Casino Setting, Jiajie Jade Wu

MA Projects

In large cities such as NYC, there are a great number of individuals have good tastes in art. Many of them, such as wall-street bankers and traders, also like to seek risks. They are smart enough not to gamble too much although they still feel excited in the uncertainties. This venture provides an opportunity for artists to showcase their casino theme artworks in an immersive AR casino theme experience. The audiences have an opportunity to view and collect art in a setting that feels like casino, with drinking services, music, and various casino games using playing chips. Potential revenue generation …

Za'a Demi-Fine Jewelry: Cultural Representation Through The Use Of Wearable Crafts, Maria Canedo Gomez Ortigoza

MA Projects

Za'a is an e-commerce demi-fine jewelry brand that gives its wearer the ability to explore, connect and give back to indigenous Latin American cultures. Za'a pieces are made with 14k gold, sterling silver, vermeil (solid gold electroplated silver), and semi-precious gemstones while incorporating traditional craftsmanship; incorporating elements such as woodcarving, embroidery, and painting. What makes Za'a's products unique is that they are designed and fabricated in conjunction with the communities, ensuring fair and ethical practices. This close collaboration turns the pieces into a cultural bridge of communication, an exchange of ideas, and an appreciation between consumers and the indigenous communities. …

Looking South: The Increased Visibility Of Modern Latin American Art, Sofía Festa

MA Theses

This thesis aims to identify and analyze the main factors behind the increased visibility of Latin American Modern art today. I intend to examine the role played by American institutions, private collectors, and the top auction houses and how they are driving awareness in the global art market. The research will focus on artists whose works were made from the 1920s through mid-1940s and are currently breaking records in the auction world. These are the same artists that are being showcased in prominent private collections and American museums, which in turn serves as a way of validating those artists as …

The Private Art Collector’S Foundation In France: Issues And Implications For The Cultural Landscape, Milena Berman

MA Theses

The last two decades have witnessed an explosion in the number of private art spaces worldwide. From Bentonville, Arkansas, to Naoshima, Japan, hundreds of impressive structures built by star architects have been funded by private individuals and corporations to house collections of modern and contemporary art, often in unlikely places. The famously-termed “Bilbao effect” in which a grand museum structure is set up outside of the established art capitals of the world, thus putting the city “on the map” of cultural tourism, has become a widespread trend. The examples vary greatly and range from small private “home museums”
/="/">made …

The Art Market’S Inflection Point: The Inception Of Modern Art Investment, Maria B. Abraham

MA Theses

The relationship between art and finance derives from the socioeconomic realization that art has high-value potential and diversification benefits within the investment sphere. This paper interprets the evolution of art's financialization in three different market contexts as the cause of an inflection point in the art market. Through research in press articles, interviews, published white papers, and journals on statistical art data analysis results, this thesis demonstrates the link between cultural capital and financial investment, which gave rise to initiatives today that bridge the gap between wealth and the accessibility to the art market. A technological or specialized element across …

Part 2: Another Year In Recovery: Virginia's Metropolitan Areas, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

If Virginia is to continue its recovery from the pandemic economic shock of 2020, this growth will largely come from Virginia’s metropolitan areas. We ask whether Virginians have returned to the labor force in the aftermath of the pandemic and explore how unemployment rates may not reflect the availability of labor. Lastly, we examine how population change may influence the future of Virginia’s metro areas.

What's In A Name? Public Perceptions Of Multi-Level Marketing, Robert A. Peterson, Jeffrey A. Peterson

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper presents the results of a nationwide survey of the American public’s general familiarity with, and perceptions of, multi-level marketing, direct selling, and social selling. Survey respondents were most familiar with direct selling; there was no substantive difference in familiarity with multi-level marketing and social selling. Respondents familiar with the three terms possessed perceptions of them that were significantly more positive than were the perceptions of respondents reporting not being familiar with the terms. Across all terms, male respondents reported being more familiar with, and more positively disposed toward, them than did female respondents. Respondents 55 years of age …

Part 1: Inflation, Uncertainty, And Volatility Undermine Virginia's Recovery, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

If the story of 2020 was the pandemic and the tale of 2021 was the recovery, then rising inflation and interest rates dominated the narrative of 2022. The economic recovery remained incomplete, with jobs returning to pre-pandemic levels but some Virginians remaining outside the labor force. Now, with the possibility of a recession in 2023 looming, we ask how Virginia fared over the last 12 months and what are the prospects for future growth?

Crime And The Effects It Has On Business Development, Alexis Pimental

Honors Theses and Capstones

This reading highlights the topic of crime through exploring what crime is as well as the different types of crimes in our everyday lives. Specifically, this research paper wants to highlight the crimes that may affect businesses, as well as the relationships between crime and business development. By using facts and statistics, we will dive into the relationship between the two and see why certain businesses may find success while other businesses struggle. We will also be looking at different pieces of literature, reviewing them, and drawing conclusions from the literature being discussed. The literature review as well as assessments …

Ira Disclosure Framing Effects On Purchase Decisions, Eugene Cautillo, Mary M. Long

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This research examines the use of disclosures included in IRA advertisements to determine their impact on purchase decisions. Disclosures were manipulated through different framing language to examine the investor’s risk perception. The Hayes Process Model was used to test the significance of investor risk perception and risk propensity (investor’s likelihood to act on risk perception) related to framing manipulation and ultimately, the purchase decision. The level of risk propensity was then used to assess the impact on the purchase decision for investors with varying sophistication levels. Additionally, the investor’s sophistication level, determined via a series of investment questions, was also …

Equality Offshore, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

Global governance architecture, crafted by wealthy nations, has perpetuated the subordination of developing jurisdictions. The Article offers a novel and surprising analysis of governance tools used by wealthy countries and inter-governmental organizations to constrain offshore financial centers (OFCs) by focusing on the tools’ disparate impacts on tax havens whose populations comprise predominantly Black and Brown people. With tax haven issues garnering increasing attention, this Article provides a pathbreaking conceptual framework for examining the international tax, crime, and business discourse on OFCs. It also illuminates how the actions of powerful international actors, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development …

Optimization Model For Maintenance Planning Of Loading Equipment In Open Pit Mines, Farshid Javadnejad, Mohammad Reza Sharifi, Mohammad Hossein Basiri, Bakhtiar Ostadi

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Maintenance plays a significant role in operating costs in the mining industry. Improving this matter controls maintenance costs and enhances productivity and production effectively. Shovels are one of the most widely used loading machines in non-continuous activities. Thus, evaluating and optimizing their availability is one of the essential solutions to achieving high productivity and cost reduction. This paper presents a mathematical programming model to maximize availability and minimize the total expected costs. We programmed the proposed nonlinear planning model using the Symbiotic Organisms Search (SOS) meta-heuristic algorithm in Matlab software. It determines the optimal maintenance intervals for different parts of …

The Online Ordering Behaviors Among Participants In The Oklahoma Women, Infants, And Children Program: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, Qi Zhang, Kayoung Park, Junzhou Zhang, Chuanyi Tang

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a nutrition assistance program in the United States (U.S.). Participants in the program redeem their prescribed food benefits in WIC-authorized grocery stores. Online ordering is an innovative method being pilot-tested in some stores to facilitate WIC participants' food benefit redemption, which has become especially important in the COVID-19 pandemic. The present research aimed to examine the online ordering (OO) behaviors among 726 WIC households who adopted WIC OO in a grocery chain, XYZ (anonymous) store, in Oklahoma (OK). These households represented approximately 5% of WIC households who redeemed …

Goodwill Going Green: How Green Branding Can Generate $1m In Revenue, Elia Meltzer, Esha S. Vartak, William M. Crone, Ryan T. Richards

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Goodwill Industries is a nonprofit organization. Not only do they specialize in charity work, but they also have a chain of stores that focus on thrift shopping. Additionally, Goodwill provides other services, such as recycling clothing, electronics, and other goods. Recently, Goodwill of Akron, Ohio received a grant of five million dollars, where the money for the grant would have to be utilized in five years. The main objective of this project was to find a way for Goodwill to use grant money efficiently, to generate revenue for a new transportation initiative.

Our team has recommended utilizing the most popular …

The Viability Of Pop-Up Thrift Shops In Increasing Revenues For Goodwill Industries Of Akron, Morgan Andrews, Casey Bachowski, Caitlin Croston, Zach Dunphy, Weston Latham

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Honors Project in Business Administration course at The University of Akron (UA) College of Business (CoB), conducted September 2021 through May 2022, involved partnership with the local nonprofit Goodwill Industries of Akron (GIA) at the direction of Interim Dean of the CoB, Dr. Susan Hanlon. The purpose of this capstone project was to generate ideas and recommendations to GIA for a new, sustainable business unit, the revenue of which would cover the annual $250,000 operating cost of a new transportation support initiative to overcome GIA’s clients’ barriers to employment. During the secondary research phase of this project undertaken from …

Paris Is Always A Good Idea: Study Into Paris’ Potenial To Regain A Place At The Top Of The European Art Market, Laura Bishai

MA Theses

The objective of this thesis is to come to an informed conclusion, although
inaccurate it may be, about Paris’ potential for growth, and for regaining its place at the top of the European art market given the current context. Through examination of its history, as well as of the current market through art fairs, auction houses and galleries as well as looking at the impact of Brexit and the French approach to culture, it aims to demonstrate the possibility that Paris can regain ground its lost over the years and recognition as the European capital of the art market.

The Impact Of Verified (Unverified) Online Product Consumer Reviews On Consumer Product Attitudes, Kathryn Cort Dr., Roland Leak Dr.

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Customer product reviews are an integral component for companies conducting e-commerce, enabling them to stay connected and engaged with their consumers. However, more important these reviews are being utilized and incorporated into the marketing plans of companies. Companies can use a mixture of verified and unverified purchase badges in their displayed product reviews. This study finds that as customers are provided with this additional information to help form impressions about the products they are reviewing, customers' need for cognition ultimately determines how they utilize the presence or absence of these badges.