Digital Commons Network^™

The Digital Divide And Participation In Financial Services: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective, Melissa A. Cunningham-Sereque

Dissertations

The global financial technology (FinTech) market reached nearly $395 billion in 2025 and is projected to surpass $1 trillion within the next decade (Fortune Business Insights, 2025). As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in banking and financial services, this dissertation responds to calls within the Information Systems (IS) discipline to better understand digital access, inclusion, and participation in financial systems (PFS). Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory, this study used prominent dimensions from extant digital divide literature to build a digital resource domain consisting of connectability, affordability, usability, mentality, and skill. These dimensions are proposed to influence intrinsic motivation, …

Non-Profit Foundation Boards: An Investigation Into Best Practices Using Fayetteville Public Library Foundation Board As A Test Case, Esther S. Beller

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

Effective governance is critical for the success of non-profit organizations, with foundation boards playing a central role in ensuring accountability, strategic direction, and resource allocation for the organization. This thesis investigates best practices for non-profit foundation boards, using the Fayetteville Public Library Foundation Board as a case study to evaluate the efficiency of its governance practices. The research aims to identify whether the foundation board operates efficiently and adheres to established best practices for non-profit governance boards.

To address this, a two-phase methodology was employed. The first phase involved an extensive review of scholarly journals, industry guidelines, and other resources …

From Bean To Cup: Sustainability Practices In A Small Specialty Coffee Roaster, Reese Weathersby

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sustainability has become an increasingly important issue in the coffee industry as businesses

face growing pressure to balance profitability with environmental and social responsibility.

While much of the existing research focuses on large corporations and global supply chains, less

attention has been given to how small independent businesses approach sustainability with fewer

resources and different operational constraints. This study examines Doomsday Coffee Roasters,

a small specialty coffee business in Northwest Arkansas, to better understand how sustainability

is practiced at the local level.

Using a qualitative case study approach, the research focuses on four areas of operation: ethical

sourcing, roasting practices, …

Analyzing The Effects Of Message Testing On The Public's Opinion About Gene Editing In Agriculture And Medicine, Luke Sanford Wimpy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper will present results from the final survey of a multi-stage project examining factors that influence opinions about gene editing in agriculture and medicine. In this final survey, 3,200 U.S. respondents were recruited and randomized to view one of eight videos that communicated the safety of gene editing to determine which factors are most influential in changing opinions. The eight videos were designed based on data collected from focus groups and three previous surveys in this multi-stage project. The eight videos varied by three attributes: messenger, message, and application. The messenger in the videos was either a researcher or …

Consumer Perceptions Of Fda Front-Of-Package Nutrition Labeling, Madison Price

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a front-of-package nutrition labeling (FOPL) rule in early 2025 to help consumers more quickly and easily compare the nutritional quality of packaged foods (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2025). FOPL is gaining attention as a way to encourage healthier eating habits and consumer choices, but there is still debate over which label format works best. The objective of this study was to examine consumer perceptions, understanding, and trust of FDA FOPL, and to determine how these labels impact purchasing behavior and nutritional decision-making. Data were collected via an online Qualtrics survey distributed …

Corporate Giving In Shifting Political Winds: A Case Study Of Walmart Philanthropy, 2022–2026, Victoria F. Hudson

Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Venture Innovation Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to study whether and how Walmart's philanthropic efforts have shifted amidst the recent turbulent political atmosphere in the United States, specifically. It concludes that the shift in political ideals during the relevant time period has an important impact on Walmart’s communication strategies and frequency. I evaluated Walmart’s philanthropic decisions through its press releases from 2022 to 2026, spanning the transition between the two most recent presidential administrations.

Biodiversity Risk And Firm Valuation: Regional Heterogeneity And Value-Chain Exposure In Global Capital Markets, Madelein Wentzel

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

This study examines whether biodiversity-related risks are priced in global equity markets and whether that pricing varies across regions, using a cross-sectional sample of more than 10,000 globally listed firms with biodiversity and financial data drawn from the fourth quarter of 2025. Consistent with a regional heterogeneity hypothesis, the results show that biodiversity risk is significantly negatively associated with firm valuation in developed markets such as the United States and OECD countries, while the relationship is weaker, insignificant, or even positive in certain emerging regions including Latin America and the Middle East and Africa. The analysis further distinguishes between value-chain …

From Reactive To Predictive: A Hybrid Trust-Mediated Adoption Framework For Data-Driven Maintenance In Distributed-Authority Aviation Environments, Dustin J. Foote

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Modern aviation maintenance operates within increasingly data-intensive technological environments, yet the operational integration of predictive maintenance into routine decision-making remains inconsistent across sectors. Contemporary aircraft incorporate centralized maintenance computers and condition monitoring architectures capable of fault aggregation, exceedance capture, and trend-based data collection. Although prognostics and health management research continues to advance detection and prediction methods, implementation outcomes often depend on factors beyond analytical performance alone.

This paper examines predictive maintenance adoption in distributed-authority aviation environments and argues that constraints emerge less from sensing capability than from organizational structure, decision authority dispersion, and institutional trust dynamics. For purposes of analysis, …

Voices Of A New Era: A Discursive Psychology Study Of Influencer-Follower Discourse On Tiktok, Andrea Guerrero Hernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study researched and investigated the discourse of five mega fashion influencers on TikTok, as well as the discourse of 15 followers engaging with fashion influencer content on the same platform. The theory used to guide this study was discursive psychology theory, which provided the groundwork for understanding how both influencers and followers position their identities, justify their actions and decisions, and construct their reality. The primary aim of this research is to deepen understanding of how influencer discourse shapes follower discourse, identifying recurring patterns, contradictions, and the ways in which tensions are negotiated. The findings reveal a range …

From Consumer-Centric Innovation To Sustainable Restaurant Performance: A Study Of Strategic Capability Integration In An Emerging Market Context, Juliana Juliana, Ira Brunchilda Hubner, Diena M. Lemy, Arifin Djakasaputra, Ferry Jie

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Increasing pressure for innovation-driven competitiveness requires hospitality firms to integrate technological capability, market intelligence, and customer-focused innovation into coherent strategic configurations. However, prior research has largely examined these capabilities separately, limiting understanding of how their integration influences restaurant marketing performance in emerging markets. This study develops and empirically tests an integrated capability framework linking techno-resonance innovation capability, competitor orientation, consumer-centric innovation strategy, and new service development to restaurant marketing performance using survey data from 300 restaurant managers in Java and Bali, Indonesia. The results of PLS-SEM analysis indicate that techno-resonance innovation capability significantly strengthens consumer-centric innovation strategy and new service …

The Night Circus - The Traveling Edition: An Advertising Campaign And Cross-Cultural Analysis, Charlee A. Salinas

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis is an outline of my advertising plansbook that examines how culturally adapted advertising for a single book affects perceived authenticity, emotional resonance, and purchase intent across three distinct markets: the United States, Brazil, and Vietnam. This study examines three culturally distinct markets to identify which advertising elements require full localization versus those where standardization is acceptable. By comparing adapted campaigns against a standardized approach, this research provides actionable insights for publishers navigating the efficiency-effectiveness trade-off.

The research questions asked:

-       How does culturally adapted advertising for the same book affect perceived authenticity, emotional resonance, and purchase intent across …

A Strategic Audit Of Brown-Forman, Joshua Rossman, Carter Mann, Maris Grabill, Joe Meath, Gavin Pokorny

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Brown-Forman is a global spirits company with products sold in more than 170 countries. Known for brands such as Jack Daniel’s, Woodford Reserve, and Herradura, Brown-Forman’s history spans back over 150 years. Much of its success comes from thoughtful brand stewardship and a long-term approach to growth. The company operates in the highly competitive distilleries industry, where strong brand identity and premium positioning are key to performance.

This strategic audit reviews Brown-Forman’s development, leadership, business model, and guiding mission, as well as its external environment and internal capabilities. It also considers performance, competitive dynamics, business-level and corporate-level strategies, governance, and …

The New York Times: A Strategic Audit, Kaylee Campbell, Cassidy June, Keira Cummins, Tanner Maas, Alyssa Fjelstad

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The New York Times is a legacy newspaper that has navigated a great many changes since its founding in 1851. The company rose to success with its traditional print journalism, but has now transformed into a largely digital, subscription-based business model that provides subscribers with access to news, games, recipes, podcasts, product recommendations, and more. This provides an excellent foundation for a strategic audit to understand how one of the giants of a dying industry has not only managed to stay alive, but to thrive.

A PESTEL and Porter’s Five Forces analysis reveals that The New York Times operates in …

Netflix, Inc. Strategic Audit, Jadyn J. Koehler

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Netflix is a dominant company in the global entertainment industry. The company has changed the way people watch and interact with movies and shows. Netflix has over 300 million subscribers and operations in more than 190 countries. This strategic audit examines Netflix’s current situation, including its performance, governance structure, internal strengths, and external environment. This audit also examines some of the biggest problems, which include increased competition, higher content costs, and changes in consumer behavior. This analysis considers strategic alternatives and recommendations to support long-term growth. The goal of this report is to evaluate Netflix’s ability to maintain its competitive …

Impact Of Currency Volatility In The Automotive Import-Export Procurement, Adelaide De-Heer

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

Automobile import and export trade is a global venture and thus affected by global issues including cross border issues and currency volatility. Since it is a major in the economic field, it is vital that some risks be evaded in the initial stages of this trade to ensure sustainability. As a result, this research paper aims to assess how currency volatility as a key procurement risk impacts this business and why it is important to understand these dynamics. Currency volatility significantly influences automobile import and export procurement by shaping cost structures, competitive positioning, and financial stability within the global automotive …

International Business And Sustainability: Towards An Interdisciplinary Research Agenda, Jonathan Doh, Ans Kolk, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The relationship between international business (IB) and sustainability is a complex and multifaceted one. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) both affect and are affected by the social, economic, and ecological (green environment) context in which they are embedded.1 As such, the study of how IB activity influences sustainability and the way that sustainability, in turn, impacts IB, involves incorporating a wide range of drivers, actors, processes, and outcomes. At the same time, sustainability challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, resource scarcity, economic and social inequality and others, are increasingly systemic, multilevel, and intertwined with geo economic, biophysical and governance dynamics …

Research: What Message Are Your Headphones Sending Your Coworkers?, Oguz Gencay, Michael Schaerer, Trevor A. Foulk

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Walk into almost any modern office, and you will see it: earbuds in, playlists on, and heads down. For many employees, music is an essential tool for focusing, mood regulation, and stamina. For most managers, it is a non-issue as long as performance stays strong. If it helps people concentrate, let them listen to music. At worst, it is a harmless preference, such as drinking coffee or using a standing desk.

The Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet: Its History And Legacy In American Saxophone Quartet Performance, James M. Lawhn

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The saxophone quartet has emerged as a legitimate chamber ensemble in the United States through the sustained efforts of a small number of pioneering professional groups. Despite the central role these ensembles have played in shaping repertoire, performance standards, and public perception, their histories have often gone undocumented. Among the most influential of these groups is the Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet, an ensemble that maintained an unusually active national and international touring career for nearly four decades and helped establish the saxophone quartet as a viable professional model.

This document addresses a significant gap in the scholarly literature by presenting …

Political Costs And Strategic Corporate Communication, Christine Cuny, Jungbae Kim, Mihir N. Mehta

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

When subject to public scrutiny, do firms strategically use advertising to reduce expected political costs? Advertising can ease public concerns, thereby reducing the pressure on politicians to act harshly against scrutinized firms and their industries. We use repeated congressional testimony by industry members as a novel way to identify political scrutiny. Our central finding is that scrutinized industries increase their advertising spending 132 percent more in the electorates of politicians overseeing the hearings than in the electorates of other politicians. Further, strategic advertising is complementary to income-decreasing accounting choices and a substitute for lobbying. Overall, our study sheds light on …

Leading Ai Adoption In Organizations: Introducing A Behavioral Human-Centered Approach, Shane Schweitzer, Devesh Narayan, Jack Mcguire, David De Cremer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Initiatives to implement AI technologies in organizations fail at an alarming rate. We argue that leading the adoption of AI is not a simple engineering exercise but rather represents a behavioral exercise where change management principles—the process by which organizations plan, implement, and embed changes in practices—are employed. However, many AI initiatives in business focus predominantly on the AI systems themselves, assuming humans will fall in line. To solve this, we integrate ideas from change management with scholarship on human-centered artificial intelligence to offer a behavioral approach that accounts for the impact of AI adoption on humans at all stages …

The Downside Of Generosity: How Rare Giving Fosters Stronger Social Connection, Minkwang Jang, Shereen J Chaudhry, Ayelet Fishbach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Giving serves not only to benefit others and society but also to foster social connections between givers and recipients. However, more giving is not necessarily merrier. This research finds that social connection depends not only on the act of giving but also on how many others receive the gesture from the same giver. Rare givers—those who give to fewer recipients—are perceived as more socially connected to each recipient than broad givers—those who give to many (the rare giving effect). This effect emerges across diverse contexts, including interpersonal gift exchanges in both new and existing relationships and corporate donations. As a …

From Trees To Treewidth: Inventory Management In Complex Supply Chain Networks, Philippe Blaettchen, Andre Calmon, Georgina Hall, Mohit Tawarmalani

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose an exact solution approach to the Guaranteed Service Model (GSM), one of the most widely applied models for optimizing safety stock placement in supply chain networks. Based on linear programming (LP), our approach handles any directed acyclic network and any cost function that depends on a stage's incoming and outgoing service times. It scales polynomially in the number of nodes n in the network, and exponentially in its treewidth, which quantifies how "tree-like" a network is, and can be much smaller than n. This contrasts with existing approaches, which scale exponentially in n. The proof of exactness of …

Intraday Cotton Futures Price Responses To World Agricultural Supply And Demand Estimates (Wasde) News, Owen Mclane Tyrone

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Price discovery in agricultural futures markets is augmented by information about supply and demand, leading markets to react when public reports are released. Effective price discovery in futures markets is vital to allocate physical commodities across time, synthesize information, and provide hedging tools. Price discovery in cotton markets is unique because it is less liquid than many other commodity markets. Therefore, our objective is to measure the initial price response in the cotton futures market to unanticipated ending stocks information in the WASDE report; then determine if markets continue to adjust after the initial price change. To meet our objective, …

Algorithmic Resilience Memory: Designing Agentic Ai Systems For Organizational Learning And Climate-Crisis Adaptation, Harsha Sammangi, Aditya Jagatha, Navyasri Maddukuri

Research & Publications

Climate disruption has become a persistent organizational condition rather than an episodic event, yet most information systems designed to support organizational resilience treat each disruption as an isolated incident. Existing digital resilience platforms, disaster recovery systems, and AI-driven decision support tools lack the capacity to accumulate, encode, and reuse organizational knowledge across successive climate-related crises. This paper introduces Algorithmic Resilience Memory (ARM), a novel IS construct defined as an AI-enabled organizational capability through which agentic AI systems sense climate-related disruptions, encode prior organizational responses, preserve decision rationale, generate contextually adaptive recommendations, and reconfigure future actions through structured outcome feedback. Drawing …

Fighting Against Recruitment Scams: Theory-Driven Supervised Learning And Empirical Analysis For Digital Fraudulent Recruitment Posting Behavior, Tom (Tianteng) Wang, David (Jingjun) Xu, Keng Siau, Zhongju (John) Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The number of recruitment postings on digital recruitment hiring platforms has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the weak surveillance and operations of these platforms, combined with the fact that most job seekers have relatively low vigilance and a strong desire for recruitment offers, enable scammers to easily deceive job seekers for their money and confidential information. In this work, we combine prevailing text mining techniques (i.e., ChatGPT with prompting engineering and supervised machine learning) with interpersonal deception theory (IDT) from social science to design an interpretable IT system to predict fraudulent recruitment postings on digital recruitment-hiring platforms. We compare …

Long Run Effect Of Industrial Place-Based Policy On County Level Complexity, An Investigation Of The Tennessee Valley Authority, Anita Ifeyinwa Umunnah

Master's Theses

This paper studies the long-term effects of large federal investments in place-based industrial policies on regional economic development, contributing new evidence on how industrial policies shape regional local productive capabilities over time. While extensive research show that industrial policies impact regional development by advancing productive technology (capabilities), the fundamental question remains how to measure this technological transformation. The study employs the use of Economic Complexity Index (ECI) as a measure of “technological advancements” resulting from large federal investments in place-based industrial policies. Previous evaluations of such investment were based on livelihood, employment and income outcomes, with productive capability of receiving …

An Interdisciplinary Review Of The Gaslighting Literature And Future Research Agenda, Paula A. Kincaid, Samantha C.O. Stalion

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Gaslighting is increasingly discussed in organizational contexts, yet its meaning, boundaries, and process remain unclear within management and organizational scholarship. Although research on gaslighting has expanded across multiple disciplines, existing work is conceptually fragmented and difficult to integrate, limiting cumulative theory development and empirical progress. In this review, we synthesize 56 years of gaslighting research (1969-2025; 266 articles) to clarify how gaslighting has been defined, studied, and applied, with particular attention paid to its relevance for work and organizational settings. We identify four recurring ways gaslighting has been conceptualized and show how variation across these approaches has contributed to inconsistent …

Projected Land-Use Change In Northern Utah: Its Implication On Above- And Below-Ground Biomass Carbon, Md Khan Shajidul Kabir

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Land can broadly be classified based on human use and natural characteristics into categories such as cropland, pastureland, urban areas, forests, shrubland, and wetlands. Each type of land has a different capacity to store carbon, and forests play a dominant role. In Utah, economic incentives, urban growth, and population increase are driving shifts in these land-use categories. Using data on agricultural revenue, land values, environmental characteristics, and satellite-based carbon information from the past decade, this study examines how land use may change over the next two decades. The findings suggest a substantial expansion of urban areas, accompanied by declines in …

Diversification For Stock Markets: Commodities Or Crypto, Mico Apostolov, Simone Domenico Scagnelli, Lorenzo Vasile

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The question that an asset could serve as a good store of value has been brought up a number of times, especially due to major market shocks. Despite the long-held belief that gold serves as a safe haven, a growing body of contemporary literature perpetually assesses this notion. Whether cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin as the most well-known of them, as an asset, can serve as a safe haven or hedge gains traction in research. This study investigates the relationship of gold and Bitcoin to S&P 500 stock index and the possibility that these might serve as a safe haven in respect …

Understanding Grain Market Behavior: A Distributional Analysis Of Soybean And Corn Futures During Political And Global Disruptions, Caroline Brickey

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes soybean and corn futures over six years to evaluate how major global events influence volatility, price movement, and trader positioning. Using quantitative market data, the study identifies patterns of market sensitivity and event driven shocks, showing how uncertainty shapes commodity futures behavior and short term price dynamics during political and global disruptions.