Other Business Commons^™

Designing A Scalable Recruitment & Partnership System For The Leadership And Business Strategy (Lbs) Program Through Strategic Marketing And Brand Development, Daniela Padilla

Honors Theses

The Leadership and Business Strategy (LBS) program at Western Michigan University delivers a highly immersive experience that allows students to learn business by doing business. Students engage directly with executives, including CEOs, working alongside them on complex consulting projects with real companies. The program takes place at Sleeping Giant Capital, a Michigan-based private equity firm, where students operate in a real business environment and gain exposure to high-level strategy and decision-making. Yet despite its impact, many students only discover LBS after enrolling at the university. Student data reinforces this gap, showing that while most students know their intended major before …

Virtus Fidelis: Design In Modern-Day Catholicism, Elisha N. Butryn

Honors College Theses

Art plays a major role in how we view the world, and particularly, how we view religion. This thesis explores those themes and how design appears in modern-day Catholicism, and how Catholicism can impact design through the development of the brand Virtus Fidelis.

The Iron Pyramid: Expanding The Iron Triangle To Integrate Safety As A Fundamental Dimension Of Construction Success, Laura Cooley

All Theses

For more than fifty years, construction project success has been judged by staying on schedule, remaining within budget, and completing the planned scope of work—an approach commonly known as the “Iron Triangle” (Barnes, Ph.D., 2006). While these measures are important, they do not capture the full range of factors that determine whether a project truly succeeds.

This study introduces the “Iron Pyramid” (Cooley, 2025), a model that expands the traditional framework by adding a fourth dimension: safety. Safety is understood not simply as regulatory compliance or the absence of injuries, but as a holistic construct encompassing project culture, leadership practices, …

Human Capital, Immigration, And Growth: A State-Level Dynamic Panel Study, William R. Cooper

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This study examines whether who immigrates, rather than how many, matters for state economic growth in the United States. It integrates a policy-relevant proxy for skill (H-1B approvals) into an augmented Solow framework that separates immigration's quantity channel from its human capital channel and estimates dynamic effects in a balanced quarterly panel of 50 states (2010 to 2023 ). The empirical strategy estimates a two-step difference GMM Arellano-Bond model that reinforces identification using a double/debiased machine learning (DML) variant that orthogonalizes high-dimensional nuisance components via cross-fitting. This design targets the distinct roles of immigrant headcount versus skill in per capita …

Helping Craft Beer Hunters Make Their Next Great Beer Discovery, Mark Mitchell, Sheila Mitchell

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The number of craft beer producers and consumers in the United States has increased dramatically over the last ten years. This manuscript provides an overview of the craft beer marketplace in the United States with a focus on the craft brewers and retailers as well as the consumers who favor craft beers. Craft beer enthusiasts are a “consumption community” or, a group of consumers who share a deep involvement with the craft beer category. This study presents a list of common business practices designed to appeal to this unique consumer group.

Trusted Advisor: Reality Or Fading Myth?, Stephen C. Carlson, Susanna Warnock, Gerald Sullivan, Margaret Ryder

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The role of trusted advisor has long differentiated the role of community banking from traditional national banks in its relationship with small businesses. This study serves two purposes. First is to confirm presence of a trusted advisor relationship and secondly, understand the impact of digital banking services on the community banker – small business owner relationship. Using data collected in a survey of community bankers and small business owners in five southeastern United States, this study assesses the viability of the trusted advisor construct by applying the Integrative Model of Organizational Trust (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995, 2007), trust-building behaviors …

Trailblazing Pathways: Personal Traits Fueling Success For Underrepresented Minority Entrepreneurs, Rebecca P. Wilson

Dissertations

This study examines how entrepreneurial personality traits influence business outcomes among underrepresented minority entrepreneurs in the United States. Specifically, it investigates the effects of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, locus of control, risk tolerance, and extraversion on entrepreneurial performance, as well as the moderating role of grit and the mediating role of business networking. Although underrepresented minority entrepreneurs contribute significantly to innovation and economic growth, they continue to face persistent barriers, including limited access to capital, mentorship, and supportive entrepreneurial ecosystems. Guided by Trait Theory of Entrepreneurship and Social Cognitive Theory, this study employed a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design with embedded open-ended questions …

Rethinking Schedule Quality Risk Assessment, Michael E. Oliver, Patrick T. Rodjom

Beyond the Project Horizon: Journal of the Center for Project Management Innovation

Critical Path Method schedule reliability is dependent on exhibition of specific qualities. Failure to exhibit these qualities (i.e., schedule defects) increases project risk exposure. Although current schedule quality assessment methods provide diagnostic remediation insights, they do not provide a meaningful singular assessment value that characterizes the nature and magnitude of schedule quality risk nor do they enable parity when comparing schedule quality across multiple schedules of disparate size (e.g., number of tasks) or complexity (e.g., number of concurrent paths, degree of merge bias). This study employed a design science research approach to address current schedule quality assessment practice dilemmas through …

At The Crossroads: Ryan Coogler’S Metaphysical Meditation On Blues Music’S Power Of Salvation And The Terror Of Racial Predation In “Sinners”, Terri Bowles

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In Sinners (2025), written and directed by Ryan Coogler, intercultural histories of music, religion and oral tradition inform a modern and complex horror tale confronting the terror of Jim Crow in the post–World War I Mississippi Delta. The film, starring frequent Coogler collaborator and muse Michael B. Jordan as twin war veterans out to reestablish their lives as juke joint owners, coalesces themes of economic repression, racial voyeurism, and secular and religious entanglements with cinematic horror allegories of objectification, consumption and possession. This review explores the film’s tense and violent examination of these themes and the lived and imagined spaces …

Navigating The Open-Loops: Actor Dynamics And Bottlenecks In The Transition Towards Circular Household Waste Supply Chains, Burcin Ozdamar, Aysu Göçer

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Household waste supply chains (HWSCs) in developing countries often suffer from fragmented actor structures, weak coordination, and informal practices that limit their overall performance and circularity potential. Existing studies tend to focus on isolated aspects such as waste types, technologies, or individual actors, without systematically examining the broader network and interdependencies shaping HWSC outcomes. Addressing this gap, this study investigates the key components (e.g. actors and waste processes) and bottleneck points that hinder the structure and functioning of current HWSCs to transform into circular systems. Drawing on industrial network theory, the research analyzes how actor relationships and system configurations influence …

A Time Of Transition: Globally And At Mgdr, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik, Zeynep Ozdamar Ertekin, Delphine Godefroit-Winkel

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Evolution Of A New Strategic Orientation In The Ai Era: Exploring The Determinants Of Ai Orientation, Sreelakshmy Geethakumari

Dissertations

The field of AI has undergone significant evolution over the past few decades. While AI is heralded as one of the most transformative technologies, scholars caution that its strategic impact may still not be fully realized. Given the strategic importance of AI in today's firms, it is essential to consider AI as a strategic orientation and understand its determinants in detail. Our study examines AI Orientation, defined as a firm's deliberate application of AI technologies to achieve its strategic objectives. Drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives, this study investigates the determinants that shape a firm’s AI orientation. This study employs a …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Revisiting “The Menace Of Competition And Gambling Deregulation”, Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper continues the analysis and discussion of gambling deregulation from an institutional economics perspective done in the article “The Menace of Competition and Gambling Deregulation” by Atkinson, Nichols, and Oleson (2000). John R. Commons’ concept of the “menace of competition” is used to analyze how gambling industry regulations and laws are gradually changed in the last decades of the 20th Century, and this in turn helps the industry to grow and prosper throughout the US. Since the publication of this paper, much has changed in the gambling industry in the US. Sports gambling has grown dramatically since it has …

Pause For Thought – Exploring Ai Error In The Assessment Of Industrial Sustainability Reports, Jake Mooney, Colm Tormey, Cillian Gleeson, Shane Hoban, Dylan Kirby, Christine Nangle

SURE Journal: Science Undergraduate Research Experience Journal

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Obstacles And Enablers Of Female Entrepreneurs In Pakistan's Service Sector: A Pathway To Gender Equality, Social Inclusion, And Sustainability, Syed Aamir Alam Rizvi, Dr. Muhammad Azeem Qureshi Associate Professor, Dr. Junaid Ansari Associate Professor

Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship

The research investigates women's motivation, and challenges in business, focusing on gender equality and social inclusion's impact on female entrepreneurs in the service industry. This is qualitative research. Phenomenology served as the research design. The semi-structured interviews were employed for interviews from eighteen entrepreneurs after acquiring ethical approval. Thematic analysis was employed as a data analysis approach. Multiple methods assured rigor. The study's outcome addressed several themes, suggesting that Women's entrepreneurship may increase social inclusion, and gender equality, and lessen poverty. Nevertheless, Pakistani women entrepreneurs experience hurdles such as social and cultural restraints, discrimination, and gender inequities. Despite these hurdles, …

Passenger Delight In Liminal Spaces: Uncovering The Dynamics Of Airport Airside F&B, Thorsten Merkle, Sushanta Das

ICHRIE Research Reports

The airport airside environment is a unique and highly consequential setting for consumer behavior, where passengers’ food and beverage (F&B) decisions are shaped by time pressure, emotional states, and spatial constraints. This study empirically validates two complementary frameworks - the CX Delightors Framework and the Airport Airside Consumption Model - in the U.S. context to deepen understanding of passenger behavior in this liminal space. Using survey data from 1,374 passengers across three major U.S. hub airports (DEN, PHX, SLC), we conducted principal component analyses to refine the original nine CX Delightors attributes into five robust dimensions: Hospitality & Ambiance, Value …

When Does The Tick Size Help Or Harm Market Quality? Evidence From The Tick Size Pilot, Yashar H. Barardehi, Peter Dixon, Qiyu Liu, Ariel Lohr

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Tick sizes affect market quality through a tradeoff between pricing fidelity and undercutting. The U.S. Tick Size Pilot (TSP), which raised the minimum tick from 1¢ to 5¢, provides a natural experiment to study this tradeoff. We find that the TSP harmed liquidity for stocks with spreads below 10¢ but improved liquidity for stocks with spreads above 15¢. These opposing effects explain the mixed results across prior studies which pool together stocks with very different prevailing spreads. We recommend researchers using the TSP for causal inference should, at minimum, split samples at 10¢-spreads to account for these heterogeneous liquidity effects.

The Effect Of Customer Perception Of Service Failure And Recovery On Relationship Dissolution Behavior: Evidence In Airline Services, Jihyo Moon, Sang-Lin Han, Jong Won Lee

Asia Marketing Journal

Many previous studies have been conducted on service failure and recovery, but the existing preceding studies are mainly focused on positive behavioral intentions such as loyalty, word of mouth intention and recommendation intention. Therefore, there is relatively little interest in customers’ negative behavioral intentions.

In today’s society where SNS is very developed, customers’ complaints or retaliatory actions can be spread to other customers without time and space limitations, which can have a great negative impact on the company’s image. In this respect, it is a very important task for service companies to examine the impact of service failure and recovery …

The Effect Of National Brand Failure On Micro-National Image And Attitudes Toward Other Brands: The Moderating Role Of Ethnocentrism, Lingge Jia, Seong Do Cho

Asia Marketing Journal

This study examines the effect of failures by prominent Korean brands on Korea’s micro-level national image and other Korean brands among Chinese consumers, focusing on technological capability and design dimensions, and the moderating role of consumer ethnocentrism. Data was collected through surveys that presented scenarios of varying degrees of brand failures and analyzed using AMOS and Hayes Process Macro. Results reveal that typical brand failures negatively affect perceptions of Korea’s micro-national image, particularly in terms of technology capability and design. Additionally, higher levels of ethnocentrism amplify the negative effect of brand failures on the design dimensions of Korea’s image. However, …