Digital Commons Network^™

The Moderating Effect Of Digital Literacy On The Relationship Between Ai Interaction Quality And Consumer Emotional Engagement, Ali Thamer Ali Al-Ibadi

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

As artificial Intelligence (AI) is having an increasing influence on the consumer-brand relationship, empirical evidence of the effects of AI-powered real-time communication on emotional brand engagement over time is scarce. Based on the Digital Emotional Brand Engagement (DEBE) model consisting of four outcome dimensions (Affective Engagement, Cognitive Engagement, Behavioral Engagement, Identification, and Emotional Attachment). The study proposes and empirically tests a model of four dimensions of AI interactions (Responsiveness and Availability, Personalization, Conversational Quality, Problem Resolution Efficiency). A descriptive-correlational quantitative design was adopted, and a sample of 400 consumers who had recently used AI-powered customer service was drawn. Multiple regression …

Key Factors Affecting Arable Land Areas In Iraq: An Analytical Economic Study (1990–2021), Duaa Emad Ahmed, Osamah Kadhim Jbara, Kais Hassan Alwan

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

This paper aims to measure and analyze the factors affecting arable land areas in Iraq during the period (1990–2021), to determine the nature of the relationship between these factors in the short and long term. The study analyzed the relationship between the quantity of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers used in agriculture, the volume of water inflow from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and investment allocations for land reclamation projects. It evaluated their impact on arable land areas in Iraq. Results using the ARDL methodology indicated a long-term cointegration relationship between the variables through the bounds test. The F-value reached 7.597. …

Tribal Governance And Organizational Performance In Iraqi Government Organizations: The Mediating Role Of Employee Competency And The Moderating Role Of Merit-Based Management Systems, Roohallah Noori, Maryam Tehrani, Yousef Vakili, Ghasem Ali Rahimeh Fartoosi

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

Iraqi governmental organizations face a persistent governance crisis in which tribal affiliation - rather than merit – influences recruitment, promotion, and resource allocation decisions, yet the quantitative structural impact of this informal institutional logic on organizational performance remains underexamined. This study aims to examine the direct impact of tribal governance on organizational performance in Iraqi ministerial and governmental organizations, and to test the mediating role of HRM practices effectiveness and employee competency, and the moderating role of merit-based management systems in this relationship. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted with 414 managers and senior specialists across Iraqi governmental organizations, using …

The Relationship Between Financial Depth And Financial Inclusion And Its Impact On Economic Growth: An Econometric Analysis, Omar Mahmood Akawee, Ehsan Jabr Ashoor

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

This research analyzes the impact of financial depth and financial inclusion on economic growth in Iraq, while also examining their combined effect through an interaction term that captures the complementary dimension of the financial sector. The study adopts an econometric approach using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, based on monthly time-series data covering the period (2022–2025), to estimate both short-run and long-run relationships. The results reveal the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship among the study variables, as confirmed by the Bounds Test and the error correction term. Furthermore, financial depth, represented by broad money (M2/GDP) and credit to …

Random Forest Algorithm Vs. Linear Regression For Financial Performance Determinants: Evidence From Iraqi Mixed-Sector Firms, Odaiy Obaid Zeidan, Mustafa Habib Mahdi

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

This paper examines the predictive factors of financial performance among Iraqi mixed-sector firms, comparing the predictive power of traditional Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression with the Random Forest (RF) machine learning algorithm. Utilizing annual data from 11 firms over the period 2015–2020, the study measures financial performance using Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), and Return on Sales (ROS). OLS regression identified the directional relationships and p-values, whereas Random Forest evaluated predictive accuracy and modeled nonlinear relationships. The OLS results indicate that firm size, liquidity, productivity, and cash-to-asset ratio have significant positive effects on financial performance, while the …

Industry Implications Of A Scaffolded Hospitality Co-Op, Juan Mendez, Joel Reynolds

ICHRIE Research Reports

The hospitality industry faces a persistent skills gap as graduates enter the workforce with limited preparation in the adaptive, operational, and AI-enabled competencies modern employers require (Jackson, 2013; Sigala, 2018). Cooperative education offers a structured response, yet many programs default to a single internship that leaves the integration of theory and practice to chance. This report presents an undergraduate scaffolded cooperative education framework developed at a U.S. hospitality business school that sequences two foundation courses, six concurrent work-integrated courses, and a capstone digital portfolio across a two-year arc. The framework is grounded in experiential learning and scaffolding theory (Kolb, 1984; …

The Efficient Market Hypothesis In Youth Entrepreneurship: Understanding, Application, And Contextual Factors — A Systematic Literature Review, Omari Khalifa Mbura Prof,, Binto M. Binto

Business Management Review

This systematic literature review explores how youth entrepreneurs understand and apply the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in their decision-making, and examines the contextual factors influencing the decision-making nexus. Guided by a post-positivist framework, the review synthesises extant literature across youth entrepreneurship, finance, and digital strategy to map emerging themes and identify knowledge gaps. It covered a sample of 38 peer-reviewed articles, selected in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. Findings of the systematic literature review show that youth entrepreneurs' engagement with EMH is largely experiential and indirect, influenced by digital literacy, social learning, and the realities of rapidly changing market environments. …

Ai-Driven Project Management In Real Estate Private Equity: Impacts On Workflow Efficiency And Standardization, Alexander D. Van Den Bosch

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in project management, yet limited research has examined its relationship with workflow efficiency and process standardization in real estate private equity (REPE) acquisitions. This quantitative correlational study examined these relationships and identified which AI-supported functionalities respondents perceived as contributing most to project management performance. The study drew on project management principles and the Technology Acceptance Model. Data were collected through a cross-sectional QuestionPro survey of professionals involved in REPE and related acquisition workflows, resulting in 146 completed surveys. The study used descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and regression analysis to evaluate the data. AI implementation …

Employees With Disabilities: Determining If Servant Leadership Moderates The Relationship Between Accommodations And Job Performance, Rachael E. Stout

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Over 11% of working-age adults have a disability in the United States. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act established accommodations as the gold standard to help disabled individuals perform at work. The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study was to evaluate the moderating effect of servant leadership on the relationship between accommodation support and job performance across different types of disabilities. This study used a cross-sectional online survey with NSHD disability types, the servant leadership SLQ-7, a question about the effectiveness of accommodation support, and the IWPQ for job performance. Survey responses were collected anonymously from 248 disabled workers …

The Lack Of Social Interaction In The Full-Time Remote Work Environment And Career Development, Tiphany Moguel-Young

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore the lack of social interaction in the full-time remote work environment and its influence on career development for remote workers at a U.S.-based financial services organization in Dallas, Texas. The theory that guided this study was social cognitive career theory. The central research question was, “What attributes of social interactions do remote workers perceive as assisting or hindering their career development?” Data collection consisted of semistructured interviews with nonmanagerial remote workers, a focus group with managers, and anonymous open-ended survey responses and reflective journaling from all participants. The data …

Faculty Development Courses On Ai: Introducing The Faculty Ai Capability Selection Framework, Dan R. Bradbury, Barbara Jo White, H. Kevin Fulk, Raymond Large

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

University faculty members are faced with how to best address pressing needs for building artificial intelligence (AI) skills.  Some of these needs are student-focused, as employers seek graduates with useful AI skills.  Faculty members, understanding how generative AI can impact the work they do, also face pressures to enhance their own skills and comfort using AI tools.  In this article, we consider AI capabilities that are impacting organizations’ expectations for new college graduates as well as AI capabilities changing the shape of faculty members’ work.  We propose the Faculty AI Capability Selection Framework as a means to guide the development …

Refereed Research - Indispensable Yet Not Fully Legitimate: Street Markets As Invisible Subsistence Infrastructure, Raji Srinivasan, Maria C. Merino

Subsistence Marketplaces

Street markets are key provisioning systems across the Global South, supplying fresh food, employment, and retail access absent formal infrastructure. Yet despite street markets’ functional indispensability to millions of low-income consumers, their legitimacy is chronically contested, affirmed by vendors and communities yet challenged by planners, developers, and state authorities who apply formal-economy criteria in evaluating them. We theorize this as a legitimacy paradox and ask what structural mechanisms sustain it? Using composite vignettes grounded in fieldwork, we theorize three mechanisms. First, visibility without recognition: street markets are hyper-visible yet excluded from cognitive templates of legitimate, formal retail. Second, asymmetric essentiality: …

Empowering Generations: The Role Of Family And Consumer Sciences In Advancing Financial Literacy And Resilience, Stephen Molchan

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

In this article, I explore the critical role of family and consumer sciences (FCS) in advancing financial literacy and resilience across generations. By addressing systemic financial challenges and integrating financial education into its curriculum, FCS empowers individuals and families to make informed decisions and build secure futures. The article highlights strategies such as early intervention, culturally relevant programs, and community outreach, emphasizing how FCS equips individuals with practical skills in budgeting, saving, debt management, and risk assessment. I discuss the importance of advocacy for financial inclusion and consumer protection as a means to create equitable opportunities for financial well-being, underscoring …

Eliciting Information About Teacher Applicants Using Open-Ended Questions, Joseph Aguilar-Bohorquez, Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Elton Mykerezi, Prayash Pathak, Aaron Sojourner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Employers commonly use open-ended questions in hiring, but usually responses aren’t recorded, and knowledge about the usefulness of such responses is limited. This study investigates properties of written responses to open-ended questions collected over many years via an application tracking platform that school districts use to hire teachers. We develop a scalable process to discover topics within the corpus of responses to each question and then to classify each response with respect to the topics while preserving interpretability and transparency. It adapts a traditional qualitative topic modeling approach, Inductive Thematic Analysis, to best combine the strengths of researcher judgment and …

Interrupting The First Story: A Lonerganian Claim Audit For Visual Analytics, Ajaya K. Swain

San Jose - Lonergan Chair in Catholic Philosophy

Visualizations can create an impression of immediacy: a pattern appears, an explanation follows, and managerial action can seem warranted before the transitions among observation, interpretation, judgment, and decision have been examined. This conceptual and pedagogical paper develops a Lonerganian Claim Audit for visual analytics, a discipline-specific adaptation of Bernard Lonergan's account of experience, understanding, judgment, and decision. It conceptualizes visual inferential compression as diminished differentiation among these operations, such that confidence generated by a visible pattern transfers to an explanation, an evidential claim, and an action without the distinct warrant required at each transition. The Claim Audit interrupts that movement …

From Consumer Experience To Brand Meaning: Teaching Brand Management Through Lonergan’S Generalized Empirical Method (Gem), Nicole Kirpalani

San Jose - Lonergan Chair in Catholic Philosophy

Teaching marketing involves more than helping students learn disciplinary concepts and frameworks. It also involves developing processes of inquiry that prepare students to analyze complex situations, interpret evidence, exercise judgment, and make thoughtful professional decisions. As marketing practice continues to evolve, marketing education must similarly reconsider how courses, assignments, and learning experiences prepare students for professional practice (Grewal et al., 2025). Lonergan’s Generalized Empirical Method (GEM) offers one framework for structuring this process of inquiry. Lonergan, writing as a philosopher, theologian, and educator, initially described the underlying pattern of conscious operations as the transcendental method. In his later work, he …

Mentorship As A Catalyst For Change Readiness: A Qualitative Study Of How Effective Mentoring Mitigates Burnout And Turnover During Organizational Transformation, Jeffery M. Camp

Journal of Online Mentoring

This qualitative study examined how effective mentorship mitigates burnout and attenuates turnover intention during organizational change, foregrounding the perspectives of experienced mentors. Drawing on Biggs’s presage–process–product (PPP) model, data were collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 12) and two focus group discussions (n = 6 each), engaging 18 unique mentors employed in organizations with 1,000 or more employees. Thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase protocol yielded four themes: (1) mentorship as strategic facilitation of organizational change; (2) mentorship as provision of emotional and psychological support; (3) empowering mentees through relationship-building; and (4) applying adaptive and reflective strategies. …

Supporting Women On The Hospitality Career Ladder: Fixing The Leadership Pipeline Drop-Off, Samantha A. Baker, Susan E. Gordon

ICHRIE Research Reports

The hospitality industry has a large discrepancy when comparing the number of women working within higher management roles compared to the number of men. This is despite women making up a majority of the hospitality industry. The goal for this study was to bring attention to this discrepancy by investigating how companies can retain female employees and aid in their career advancement. Interviews of a diverse set of women who all carry relations to the hospitality industry, produced three main themes of flexibility, career support, and work-life balance. Some actions that can be taken by companies to help women advance …

Twenty Years Later: Measuring The Accessibility Of The U.S. State Government Websites, Tanya Goette, Sean Lynch

Communications of the IIMA

Web accessibility remains an important issue as individuals rely on Internet access and web site accessibility for daily functions. It is an unwritten rule that people should access an organization’s website to search for answers before calling to ask a human (or a bot). Over twenty years ago, in 2005, a study (White, Goette, & Young) was conducted to analyze the accessibility of state government web sites. The assumption was made that state governments should be setting an example of following accessibility guidelines. The study found that about a third of the home pages did not meet basic accessibility guidelines. …

Mission Over Bureaucracy: Special Operations Command’S Warrior-Driven Model For Defense Innovation, Robert D. Seader

Joint Force Quarterly

In an era of accelerating technological change, military organizations must rapidly develop and field new capabilities to maintain battlefield superiority. Traditional defense acquisition processes, optimized for peacetime oversight and risk avoidance, now take four times longer than in the 1950s, threatening to undermine military effectiveness against rapidly modernizing adversaries. This paper examines how the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has pioneered a fundamentally different acquisition approach that delivers new capabilities in months rather than the decades typical of conventional programs.

Through extensive interviews with senior acquisition leaders, this analysis identifies three core elements of USSOCOM’s success: a mission-centric culture …

The Nine-Block Pyramid: A Structural Framework For Cultivating An Ai Adoption Mindset Culture At Enterprise Scale, Ahmad Masri

Communications of the IIMA

Enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is nearly universal in name but shallow in practice: a large majority of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, yet only a small minority have scaled it enterprise-wide, and leadership commitment rather than technology is repeatedly cited as the binding constraint. This conceptual paper argues that AI adoption is fundamentally a mindset-culture problem, not a tooling problem, and proposes a nine-block pyramid as a practical framework describing a sequencing heuristic, anchored in established organizational-behavior theory, for the cultural conditions an enterprise should build to sustain an AI adoption mindset: (1) Enterprise …

Ai Slop In The Generative Ai Era: Uncovering Hidden Costs For Information Quality, Trust, And Human-Centered Systems, Blenda G. Mutuma

Communications of the IIMA

The rapid proliferation of generative AI tools has fundamentally altered the volume, velocity, and perceived quality of information produced across academic and professional settings (Bommasani et al., 2021; Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence [HAI], 2025). Yet this expansion has introduced a critical and underexamined threat to sustainable information ecosystems: what this paper formally terms AI slop ; defined as AI-generated content that achieves surface-level plausibility while offering limited substantive value, accuracy, or contextual depth. At scale, AI slop degrades information quality and erodes institutional trust (Bender et al., 2021; Weidinger et al., 2021). More critically, it generates what this …

Teaching Communication And Teamwork Under Pressure: An Experiential Activity Using Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, Bryan L. Rogers, Cody Logan Chullen, Brian Waterwall

International Journal for Business Education

Background/Introduction/Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an experiential classroom activity designed to help students develop communication and teamwork skills under conditions of time pressure and information asymmetry.

Methods/Design: This paper presents a teaching activity rather than an empirical study; no research design, sample, instruments, or analytic procedures are reported. The paper describes and contextualizes an experiential learning activity using the cooperative video game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. Drawing on research in experiential learning, cooperative learning, and simulation-based instruction, the paper outlines learning objectives, materials, implementation procedures, observer roles, and structured debriefing strategies suitable for undergraduate and …

Hospitality And Tourism Students’ Perceptions Of Well-Being, Belonging, And Engagement In Their Academic Endeavors And Extracurricular Activities, Cynthia S. Deale, Seung Hyun Lee

International Journal for Business Education

Background/Introduction/Purpose: This study examined hospitality and tourism college/university students’ views of their engagement, well-being, and sense of belonging in academic and extracurricular activities, based on 130 responses from students in the United States.

Methods: Descriptive analysis, analysis of variance, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the responses. Qualitative comments were also obtained.

Results:  Respondents felt positive overall about their engagement, and many participated in extracurricular activities. The relationships between class engagement and sense of belonging, and between campus engagement and sense of belonging were significant, and the sense of belonging significantly influenced student subjective …

The Role Of Generative Ai In Secondary School Business Education: Insights From Teachers’ Perceptions, Leonard Busuttil, Emanuel Mizzi

International Journal for Business Education

Background/Introduction/Purpose: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has entered classrooms more quickly than the evidence base needed to guide its use, and that evidence base remains concentrated in higher education. Comparatively little is known about secondary school business education, a curricular area that brings together accounting, business studies, economics, financial literacy, marketing, and retail, and in which teachers move between subjects whose epistemological and procedural demands differ considerably. Existing studies also tend to treat business education as a single homogeneous domain, or to examine one of its subjects in isolation. This study addresses that gap by examining how secondary school business education …

Progress Without Consent: Ai Deployment And The Democratic Legitimacy Gap, Engin Obucic, Ekrem Nurovic, Mersid Poturak

Communications of the IIMA

Drawing upon critical and technology studies, this conceptual provocation introduces the concept of “Progress without Consent”, referring to the introduction of AI technological innovation into society without collective societal deliberation, legitimacy and consent. The paper problematises the introduction of structurally transformative AI technology into society, the strategy of depolitisation of this technology, robotic automation of society without social mandate, and the manner in which technological innovation moves faster than democratic institutions can process its implications on societal structures. Ultimately, the authors argue, the development and deployment of AI does not belong to isolated labs and the private sphere of technological …

Designing Classifact: Towards A Transparent And Secure Platform For Stakeholder-In-The-Loop Data Annotation, Philippine Waisvisz

Communications of the IIMA

AI systems depend on human judgment, yet many annotation workflows are either designed for data-science specialists or managed through external commercial platforms. The first approach may demand more technical skills than relevant stakeholders possess. The second can require organizations to transfer data, expertise, and governance to an outside provider. Both can limit the involvement of people who understand what data means in its real-world context. Human-in-the-loop approaches introduce human judgment. Stakeholder-in-the-loop annotation focuses on selecting and organizing people whose contextual knowledge fits the AI application.

This paper presents Classifact, a transparent and secure platform for stakeholder-in-the-loop data annotation and validation. …

Religious Tourism And Local Development In Rural Areas: Analysis Of The Social And Economic Impact Of Holy Week Celebrations In Osuna, Spain, Elena Garcia-De-Soto-Camacho, Miguel A. Garcia-Gordillo Dr., Antonio Montaño-Valle, Carlos Chavarría-Ortiz, Rosa María Vaca-Acosta

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study explores the role of religious tourism in promoting rural development through the case of Holy Week in Osuna, Spain. By applying a quantitative methodology with fieldwork conducted during the 2022 celebration, the research analyses the social and economic impacts derived from the influx of visitors. The study segments tourists based on their motivations, demographic profiles, levels of satisfaction, spending behaviour, and future intentions. Through cluster analysis, three distinct visitor profiles were identified, reflecting varying degrees of religious and cultural interest. The findings confirm that Holy Week tourism generates significant economic benefits for the locality through direct, indirect, and …

Religious Visitors’ Spiritual Values And Their Relative Importance: Evidence From Chinese Buddhist Tourism Contexts, Zhiqing Wang, Keji Huang, Jiankang Zhang, Yunyun Fan, Ge Zhang

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Spiritual values are affected by diverse factors with different roles and influence daily life in various ways. Using Mount Jiuhua and Mount Putuo, two mountains in Mainland China with great importance in Buddhism, as examples, this study explores the specific dimensions of religious visitors’ spiritual values. Through a survey study, five factors of these spiritual values were extracted and their relative importance was measured. The identified factors were transcendence, general connectedness, inner balance, positive life direction and special religious feelings. According to factor importance analysis, these spiritual values can be categorised into three levels: fundamental, reflective and surpassing. This study …

Pilgrimage As A Regional Socio-Economic Driver: Case Study Of Sarria, Km 0 Of The Camino De Santiago, Mª Carmen Pardo Lopez, Mónica Cortés Garcia

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study explores the potential of pilgrimage as a catalyst for tourism growth, with a specific focus on the municipality of Sarria, located along the renowned Way of Saint James (El Camino de Santiago). Despite its international fame, many municipalities along the route fail to capitalise on the socio-economic opportunities presented by pilgrimage tourism (Machado & Pardo, 2018). Sarria, known as ‘Kilometre Zero’ for pilgrims on the French Way, serves as a critical starting point for obtaining the Compostela certificate. This research employs destination planning methodology, utilising qualitative and quantitative data through surveys, interviews, and mystery shopper audits, to analyse …