Digital Commons Network^™

The Contemporary Tax Journal Volume 15, No. 1 – Summer 2026

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Deviant By Design: How Institutional Forces And Analyst Scrutiny Shape Financial Policy Deviance And Convergence, Jonathan W. Hensley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This dissertation explores the institutional and economic forces shaping corporate financial policy, specifically examining why firms deviate from industry-typical leverage and cash holdings, whether they converge toward these norms, and the performance implications of such trajectories. I develop a framework, rooted in institutional theory and dynamic capital structure literature, that characterizes firms with extreme, multi-year financial policies as "deviant by design." While managers might maintain non-normative leverage or cash positions for firm-specific efficiency gains, these choices often clash with established industry templates, leading to legitimacy costs and institutional pressure for conformity.

Using a longitudinal panel of U.S. public firms from …

Provocable Forgiveness In Noisy Brand--Consumer Systems:An Agent-Based Study Of Repeated Interaction, Tahere Ahmadiyan, Hamidreza Navidi, Behbod Keshavarzi

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

Repeated brand--consumer exchange is often treated as a managerial problem of loyalty, recovery, and trust. It can also be read as a small complex system: many local decisions about cooperation, retaliation, and forgiveness accumulate into market-level selection. This study uses that perspective to examine which relational rules survive when communication is imperfect. Eight canonical Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma strategies are translated into marketing archetypes and evaluated through round-robin tournaments, a six-level noise sweep, proportional-fitness ecological dynamics, and finite-population Moran invasion tests. The tournament leaderboard is calculated without same-strategy self-play, so that reported payoffs reflect inter-archetype competition rather than homogeneous self-coordination. At …

Who Pays Dividend? Statistical Explanation And Machine Learning Prediction: Evidence From Pakistan, Zohaib Aziz, Javed Iqbal

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

This study explains and predicts the firm’s dividend payment decision using an unbalanced panel dataset of non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange covering the period 2009-2020. Several traditional statistical models and modern machine learning algorithms are applied to examine the firm-specific and macroeconomic determinants of dividend decision. Logistic regression and dynamic panel probit models indicate that lagged dividend, firm efficiency and firm size positively influence the firm’s dividend decision whereas leverage and sales growth show negative effects. Lagged dividend is found to be the most influential variable in explaining and predicting the dividend decision while the role of …

Do Voters Understand The Benefits Of Taxes?, Benjamin Carter, Alessandro Del Ponte, Peter Discioli

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

We use economic experiments to study a fundamental question in political economy: Do voters understand the benefits of taxes? Participants play an economic game as members of a virtual society composed of computer players. In each round, the players earn low or high income, see the distribution of income, and then vote for low or high taxes. We test whether participants vote rationally for high taxes when poor and low taxes when rich, following a classic model in political economy, or whether they focus on the burden of taxes more than the benefits. Across three experiments, poor players voted against …

Impostor Syndrome In The Ranks: Understanding Self-Doubt To Improve Leader Performance, Joel Kotanko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Impostor syndrome (IS) — the persistent pattern of self-doubt in which capable individuals fear being exposed as frauds despite objective evidence of competence — has been studied extensively in academic, healthcare, and corporate populations, where it is generally treated as detrimental to professional performance. Little empirical work has examined IS in U.S. military officers, a population operating under structural conditions the literature identifies as primary amplifiers of fraudulence perceptions: high-stakes permanent evaluations, up-or-out promotion systems, cultural pressure against outward expressions of doubt, and recurring role transitions under compressed timelines. This dissertation provides the first quantitative investigation of the relationship between …

How Does An Advanced Educator Utilize Digital Language Teaching And Learning By Integrating Linguistic, Cultural, And Business Life Perspectives?, Hely Westerholm, Pirjo Takanen-Körperich, Ph.D.

International Journal for Business Education

This paper explores advanced educators’ digital working capabilities in online language teaching, with a particular focus on sharing Finnish language and culture in a foreign context. Cultural and linguistic knowledge play a significant role in enhancing students’ motivation to study foreign languages. In today’s educational environment, digitalisation and globalisation exert an increasing influence on foreign language teaching and learning.

The digital learning environment has brought about a paradigm shift in foreign language didactics. Digital language learning is both challenging and holistic in nature. Continued foreign language learning is simultaneously an individual and a social process, as digital learning cultures impose …

How Grades Changed Before, During And After Covid-19 In A Business College, Douglas R. Moodie, Alison Keefe, Robin Cheramie

International Journal for Business Education

Purpose: This study examines how undergraduate business student grades changed before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic using a large institutional dataset from a business college in a US university between 2015 and 2024.

Method: The analysis includes over 390,000 student-course observations and incorporates instructional modality, student demographics, course characteristics, and prior academic performance.

Results: Results show a substantial increase in mean course grades during the COVID-19 period, followed by a partial reversion post-pandemic to levels that remain above pre-pandemic trends. These patterns are consistent across modalities, demographics, and departments.

Implications: The findings raise important questions regarding the interpretation of …

Are Hotels Ready For Flooding? Improving Employee Preparedness, Ahmin Kwon, Marketa Kubickova, Swechchha Subedi

ICHRIE Research Reports

Focusing on the experiences of 500 current hotel employees in the United States, this report evaluates current levels of flood preparedness and the role of organizational support in shaping employee proactive response. Findings indicate that most employees have experience with flooding and rely on multiple information sources, yet trust in government response remains moderate. Clear disparities emerge across hotel segments, with significantly higher preparedness commitment and proactive behavior among employees in luxury hotels and those with longer tenure. Importantly, prior experience does not necessarily translate into effective preparedness. Although many respondents perceive existing information as sufficient, there is a continued …

Building Consumer Trust In Short-Term Rentals: A Literature Review On Factors Influencing Consumer Booking Motivations And Trust Formation, Alyssa N. Thornton, Kiyan Shafieizadeh

ICHRIE Research Reports

This study synthesizes existing research on consumer trust formation and booking motivations in short-term rental (STR) platforms through a systematic literature review. Drawing on 19 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025, the review examines how trust-building cues and motivational factors jointly influence consumer booking decisions in peer-to-peer accommodation contexts. Using a thematic analysis approach, the findings reveal five dominant themes: visual and aesthetic cues, host attributes, reviews and reputation mechanisms, economic and functional motivations, and host–guest interaction. The results highlight the central role of visual presentation and social signals in reducing perceived risk and fostering trust, while economic and …

Fred Luthans, Unl Business Management, Positive Organizational Behavior, Mark Griep, Fred Luthans

UNL ORCA Interview Series

Fred Luthans was awarded the ORCA in 2008. He was born in Clinton, Iowa in 1939. He earned three degrees from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, located only a few miles from Clinton. His bachelor's was in mathematics in 1961, a Master’s of Business Administration in ‘62, PhD in Management and Psychology in 1965. After serving two years as a captain in the Army at West Point, where he taught psychology and leadership, he joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an Associate Professor of Management. He's had a remarkable career, but I'll only mention three major distinctions. His …

Contemporary Cybersecurity Challenges In Emerging Technologies: A Systematic Literature Analysis, Faztudo Languisse Prof

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The accelerating convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, blockchain, and quantum computing has fundamentally transformed the global threat landscape, introducing cybersecurity challenges of unprecedented complexity and scale. This systematic literature review synthesizes findings from peer-reviewed publications, institutional reports, and regulatory documents published primarily between 2020 and 2025 to provide an integrated analysis of contemporary cybersecurity challenges across five key emerging technology domains. The review identifies critical vulnerabilities inherent to each domain, documents the evolution of threat actors and attack methodologies — including AI-powered ransomware, adversarial machine learning, and harvest-now-decrypt-later quantum attacks — and evaluates …

The Specifics Of Green Mortgages: A Case Study Of Poland, Mateusz Tomal, Ewa Gorlecka-Łabiak

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

The green mortgage market in Poland has received limited research attention. Therefore, this article aims to present the specifics of the green mortgage market in Poland. To thoroughly investigate the issue, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 banking sector representatives, each with varying experience and professional roles. The study’s findings revealed that there is no formal definition of green mortgages, which hinders both banks and their customers. Currently, green mortgages are rarely granted due to their limited economic benefit to borrowers and the small number of residential properties that qualify. For banks, green mortgages present an opportunity to expand their …

Addressing The ‘Chicken-And-Egg’ Dilemma: Pension Reform, Market Coordination, And Policy Design, Shujaat Khan, Bo Li, Yunhui Zhao

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

Why do domestic stock markets in many emerging market economies fail to develop, even in the presence of high savings rates? In this paper, we argue that this may be a ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem, which we formalise as a market coordination failure. We first develop a stylised game-theoretical model, showing that when long-term equity investment is subject to network externalities, the Pareto-optimal, high-investment equilibrium is not robust to noise. Individual investors, fearing defection by others, will rationally choose a low-investment (or ‘run’) strategy, trapping the market in a state of underdevelopment. We then show how a specific institutional design – a …

Signal And Substance: Why Methodological Sophistication Fails To Guarantee Inference, Aamir Rashid, Rizwana Rasheed

Publications and Research

Despite increasing analytical sophistication, empirical research in organization studies continues to suffer from fragile inference, uneven theoretical accumulation, and contested credibility. This paper seeks to explain why these problems persist by shifting attention from authors’ methodological choices to the evaluative dynamics of peer review. Adopting a conceptual and theory-analytic approach, the paper theorizes peer review as an inferential gatekeeping system. Drawing on research design, theory evaluation, and philosophy-of-science literatures, this study develops an analytical framework to examine how evaluative routines shape what constitutes empirical rigor during the review process. The analysis identifies five recurring reviewer blind spots: inferential scope inflation, …

Auditor Trust In Artificial Intelligence, Michael L. Decker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Accounting firms are investing in, and advocating for, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in audit procedures. This dissertation attempts to determine what factors may lead to auditors trusting an AI system. Established models of trust show that traits of the individual user, the system, and the situation all have effects on trust. Prior accounting research also indicates that professional skepticism is an important trait in auditors. This dissertation adds professional skepticism into an established trust model and uses Structural Equation Modeling to investigate auditor trust in audit evidence prepared by an AI system. My results indicate that the most …

Francis Bacon As Philosopher Of Leadership: The Essays As Manual For Values-Based Leaders, Matthew Sharpe

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This essay presents the case for Francis Bacon as what we would today term a leadership theorist avant la letter, focusing on the development of the character of leaders, faced with all the pressures of their role.  We aim to show Bacon's leadership theory at once anticipates without directly embodying contemporary leadership theories (in part 1): not only presenting a robust moral vision for leadership, as serving the public good (part 2), but differentiating characteristic kinds of “followers,” with their strengths, weaknesses, and characteristic vices, and realistically addressing how to best lead them (Part 3); and providing ten "how …

Learning Values-Based Leadership Through Practice, Jenny Guan

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This essay explores how values-based leadership can be developed through leadership practice in real-world contexts. Drawing on a Servant Leadership book project involving global contributors, it adopts the Values Clarity Model™ as a reflective lens and uses a practice-based approach informed by observation, imitation, and reflection to examine how leadership values are enacted in authentic settings. By analyzing the project in relation to what I learned in the Principles of Business Leadership course at business school, this essay reflects on how leadership values are understood, practiced, and internalized in real-world settings.

This reflection suggests that values-based leadership is not formed …

Beyond The Romance Of Leadership: Shackleton, Self-Inflicted Crisis, And The Values Of Recovery, Carl Lee Tolbert

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Two men answered to the name Ernest Shackleton. One belonged to the ice, where he was pioneering, inspirational, and heroic. The other belonged to dry land, where he was restless, indebted, and unfulfilled (Smith, 2014). The 1914 to 1916 Endurance expedition has become the most celebrated leadership case study of the past century, a status the 2022 discovery of the ship's preserved wreck has only hardened. Public and scholarly sentiment runs overwhelmingly positive. This article reads that sentiment as a late expression of what Meindl and colleagues named the Romance of Leadership, the disposition to attribute outcomes to dramatic individual …

Sustaining Purpose In Organizations: Leadership Insights From The Psalms, Hershey H. Friedman, Xianfang Zeng

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This conceptual paper examines how the Book of Psalms offers an integrative moral framework that enriches contemporary purpose-driven leadership theory. Although modern management scholarship increasingly emphasizes purpose, stakeholder orientation, and meaningful work, it often focuses on strategic articulation rather than the ethical and relational practices that sustain purpose over time. Drawing on selected Psalms as a historically influential corpus of leadership reflection, this study identifies key leadership principles and situates them within established management literature. Purpose-driven leadership rooted in ancient values builds psychologically safe environments. In these spaces, employees view their work as a meaningful calling instead of a simple …

Irish-Americans Audie Murphy And William Donovan: A Celebrity And A Statesman, Ritch Eich

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

In the long annals of Irish history, many leaders have distinguished themselves as warriors in battle or as civilian heroes, or both. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Blain “Paddy” Mayne, a founding member of the Special Air Service and a highly decorated World War II British Army officer from Northern Ireland, is one. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish Catholic priest whose rescue network helped over 6,500, escaped Allied POWs, Jews, and other fugitives at risk of Nazi persecution evade capture by the Germans during World War II, is another.1 But, not all heroes of Irish descent are remembered equally. Take, for example, …

Moral Identity, Joseph P. Hester

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Foundationally, our communal awareness offers a complexity of meaning, but don’t be deterred, it also provides an avenue for understanding ethics, suggesting a definition of “humanity” as “community.”

The Character Fractal: A Theory Of Virtue Replication In Organizations, Kevin Davis, Scott Kozlak, Matthew M. Orlowsky, David Levy

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Organizational ethics has long been treated as an individual problem requiring individual solutions: the right traits, the right training, the right people in the right roles. This paper argues that framing is fundamentally insufficient. While character and virtue ultimately reside in persons, character development within organizations emerges through recursive ethical interactions shaped by incentives, narratives, feedback loops, and habituation structures cultivated by systems leaders. It replicates, or fails to, across every scale of human interaction, from the unobserved micro-decision of a single employee to the macro-level architecture of executive leadership. Drawing on Mandelbrot's fractal geometry, Lorenz's chaos theory, Kauffman's complexity …

Summer/Fall 2026

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

The Institutional Production Of Ethical War Across Modern Conflict, Katerina Udov

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This paper argues that modern warfare operates through an ethical infrastructure that enables, rather than restrains, the use of violence. Contrary to the common assumption that moral frameworks such as Just War Theory function as safeguards against harm, the historical record shows that ethical language, humanitarian rhetoric, and democratic narratives serve as mechanisms to legitimize intervention, manufacture consent, and naturalize civilian suffering. Through case studies including Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S.-backed coups in Latin America, and French intervention in Mali, the paper traces how political leaders, media institutions, and corporate actors frame war as a moral necessity while pursuing strategic and …

The Effectiveness Of Banks’ Influence On Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Eu Agriculture, Jan Koleśnik

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

This article analyses the effectiveness of the banking sector in limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in European Union agriculture and the impact of EU banking groups‘ policies on their Polish subsidiaries. The study is based on data from 2019–2025 sourced from the Eurostat database, the European Banking Authority (EBA), and capital adequacy disclosures (CQ5 and CR1-B reports). The research sample included 14 EU countries with an agricultural share in GDP of between 1% and 3.6% and 62 EU banking groups at the highest level of consolidation. A linear regression model was employed, using the change in gas emissions as the …

Resignation Typology And Its Impact On Entrepreneurial Intention And Action, Shuaijun Zhang, Wanrong Hou, Sibin Wu

Management Faculty Publications

By categorizing resignees into “genius,” “traditional,” “forced,” and “trapped,” this study examines the relationship between different types of resignees and entrepreneurial intention and action. Furthermore, we argue that anticipated regret and dormant tie reactivation moderate this relationship. An analysis of survey data from 781 participants in the United States indicates that the types of resignees exert varying influences on entrepreneurial intention and action. Compared with “traditional” and “trapped,” but not “forced,” the “genius” group have high intention of starting their own enterprises. However, the “trapped” group engage in more entrepreneurial activities than “genius.” Further, the “trapped” group with high anticipated …

Agricultural Cooperatives And Crop Marketing In Tanzania, Benson Otiene Ndiege Dr

Jurnal Vokasi Indonesia

Agricultural cooperatives have become essential tools in rural areas, fostering agricultural development. This study examines the marketing of farmers' produce by cooperatives in Tanzania. It specifically investigates the collection processes of agricultural produce through cooperatives and the importance of cooperative marketing during the 2023/24 to 2024/25 seasons. The study used a descriptive mixed-methods design that mixed both qualitative secondary data analysis and qualitative documentary review. As such, the study utilised secondary data from the Tanzania Cooperative Development Commission (TCDC) statistical database and the report on the performance of non-financial cooperatives in Tanzania in 2025. The data included variables such as …

Rural Business Development Corporation Annual Report 2025-26, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Reports

Overview

In this report, the Rural Business Development Corporation is referred to as ‘the Corporation’ or ‘the RBDC’. The RBDC is an independent statutory authority of the Government of Western Australia (WA), established under the Rural Business Development Corporation Act 2000 (Act). The Act preserved and continued the body corporate established by the Rural Adjustment and Finance Corporation Act 1993.

What we do

The RBDC administers approved assistance schemes on behalf of the WA Government for the benefit of rural industry and regional communities. Approved schemes may provide financial assistance by way of loans, grants, or other financial incentives. The …

Building Resilient And Sustainable Built Environments Through Climate Adaptation, Digital Innovation, And Infrastructure Governance, Mohammed Ali Berawi, Mustika Sari, Perdana Miraj

CSID Journal of Infrastructure Development

The built environment has become one of the most important arenas for responding to climate change, resource pressure, and rapid urban transformation. Cities, infrastructure networks, buildings, and construction projects are no longer expected only to provide physical services. They are also expected to reduce environmental impact, protect communities from disruption, support economic activity, and remain useful under uncertain future conditions. This expectation places resilience and sustainability at the center of infrastructure development.

Resilience refers to the capacity of built systems to anticipate shocks, absorb pressure, recover from damage, and continue functioning. Sustainability asks whether those systems can do so while …