Digital Commons Network^™

Perspectives On Georgia Vowels: From Legacy To Synchony, Joseph A. Stanley, Jon Forrest, Leila Glass, Margaret Renwick

Faculty Publications

Nexuses of change in Georgia English

Mid vowels

• How are FACE and DRESS distinguished over time?
• Which speakers show DRESS raising/fronting (SVS, AAVS)?
• When does DRESS lowering/backing begin (LBMS)?
• Which speakers show GOAT fronting (SVS, LBMS vs. AAVS)?

Low vowels

• Which speakers show TRAP raising/fronting (SVS, AAVS)?
• When does TRAP lowering/backing begin (LBMS)?
• Which speakers have the LOT/THOUGHT merger (LBMS)?

"The Working World Is A Minefield": Counterstories Of Job Loss, Rachel Collier Murdock, Matt Baker, Stacy Tye-Williams

Faculty Publications

This study examines narratives told by employees who experienced involuntary job loss. Results expand on previous narrative research investigating the American Dream master narrative and job loss as related to the neoliberal claim that those who work hard will be successful. The study investigated the master narrative’s implications for job loss that if someone loses their job, they must be either flawed or a bad worker. Contributions include a new redeemed-resolved identity construction by individuals who narrated job loss as an opportunity to correct some flaw in either their character or work life and to emerge a better, changed worker. …

Incremental Improvements: Examining Instructional Changes And Rationales Of K-12 Online Teachers Using The Picrat And 4e Frameworks, Jered Borup, Rocio Quiroga Velasquez, Charles R. Graham, Leanna Archambault, Royce Kimmons

Faculty Publications

Teacher preparation programs have been slow to prepare teachers for the online environment, leaving many online teachers needing to learn on the job. However, little research has examined how online teachers grow as educators. One way to better understand this growth is to examine the changes online teachers make in their instruction and their rationales for making them. In this qualitative case study, we surveyed online teachers three times during an academic year regarding their instructional changes. Participants described these changes and categorized them on a modified PICRAT matrix to indicate if the changes made student learning more passive, interactive, …

Providing Institutional Support For Academic Engagement In Online And Blended Learning Programs, Sara Tuiloma, Charles R. Graham, Adriana María Martinez Arias, Diana Maria Parra Caicedo

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we examine how universities can evaluate the level of support they provide to help their students with affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement in their online and blended learning experiences. Additionally, it identifies what types of supports help students engage academically and what barriers hinder their online engagement. Using a survey instrument sent to university students (n = 1295), we conducted a mixed-methods analysis to understand better how students feel the institution supports their online engagement and what barriers they experience. To accomplish this, we addressed the following research questions: (1) How do students feel the institution supports …

The Innovation And Reporting Consequences Of Financial Regulation For Young Life-Cycle Firms, Abigail Allen, Melissa F. Lewis-Western, Kristen Valentine

Faculty Publications

Firm life-cycle stage reflects a firm’s current strategic direction toward exploration independent of age or size. We provide evidence that young life-cycle firms are particularly vulnerable to negative innovation consequences from financial regulation but do not appear to experience any compensating financial reporting quality (FRQ) benefits. Using a generalized difference-indifferences design around Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), we document a significant reduction in both research and development (R&D) spending and innovation outputs for young life-cycle stage firms after regulation. Declines in innovation manifest both from the diversion of scarce resources and from the imposition of an organizational culture mismatched …

Preparer Opposition And Strategic Implementation Of Governmental Accounting Standards: Evidence From Public Pension Accounting Reform, Abigail Allen, Reining C. Petacchi

Faculty Publications

Widely acknowledged as one of the most controversial standards in governmental accounting, GASB 67/68 radically altered both the recognition and measurement for defined benefit public pensions. The standards require the recognition of previously only disclosed unfunded pension liabilities and increase the magnitude of reported pension liabilities by requiring the partial incorporation of a market-based discount rate. While the recognition proposal was unaltered from its initial conception to the final standards, the discount rate proposal was significantly attenuated after the initial proposal met with unanimous preparer opposition. Accordingly, we examine what incentives drive preparer lobbying positions, whether such lobbying is aligned …

Perceptions Of Robotic Process Automation In Big 4 Public Accounting Firms: Do Firm Leaders And Lower-Level Employees Agree?, Lauren A. Cooper, D. Kip Holderness, Trevor L. Sorensen, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

The use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a recent innovation in the public accounting industry, and the Big 4 firms are at the forefront of its implementation. This paper examines how the adoption and use of RPA is affecting the perceived work experience of firm leaders and lower-level employees at Big 4 accounting firms. We interview 14 RPA leaders, survey 139 lower-level employees, and compare and contrast their responses. We find that the two groups generally agree that RPA is having a positive influence on the profession. Both groups believe that RPA is positively changing the work employees perform …

A Framework For Using Robotic Process Automation For Audit Tasks, Marc Eulerich, Justin Pawlowski, Nathan J. Waddoups, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

The ability to automate tasks and processes using robotic process automation (RPA)—or the development of bots—is receiving significant attention in accounting. Auditors often struggle to know what tasks to automate and how to prioritize bot development. Drawing upon sociotechnical systems theory and using a design science methodology, we develop and validate a three-step evaluation framework to assist auditors as they decide what activities to automate. We validate this framework using interviews, surveys of experienced internal and external auditors, and two case studies. By developing and validating our framework through the lens of sociotechnical systems theory, we also provide several insights …

Evidence On Internal Audit Quality From Transitioning To Remote Audits Because Of Covid-19, Marc Eulerich, Martin Wagener, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

As in-person audits were banned by governments and by company policies due to the COVID-19 pandemic, internal auditors had to transition to remote audits to perform their work. Based on survey responses of internal auditors who have conducted both remote and in-person audits, we find that internal auditors perceive no difference in the efficiency and effectiveness of and stakeholders’ reliance on results from remote and in-person audits when considering all responses. However, we also find that perceived efficiency and effectiveness increase the more experience internal auditors have with remote audits. Supplemental analyses show that support from the auditee, but not …

Internal Auditors’ Role In Organizational Innovation: A Social Network Perspective, Margaret H. Christ, Anna Eulerich, Marc Eulerich, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Organizations use innovations to adapt, grow their business, and differentiate themselves from their competitors. However, innovations can introduce new risks to the organization that the internal audit function (IAF) should address. We interview and survey internal auditors about how they respond to innovations, such as the use of emerging technologies, adopted by their organizations. We find that social network theory provides a useful lens through which to interpret our interview results and to guide our survey development and analysis. In particular, we find that the embeddedness of the internal auditors with management, but not with the audit committee, is a …

Uplifts, Respite, Stress, And Marital Quality For Parents Raising Children With Down Syndrome Or Autism, Tina M. Taylor, Jamie K. Easler, Susanne Olsen Roper, Jeremy B. Yorganson, James M, Harper

Faculty Publications

Direct, indirect, and partner effects estimated among uplifts, respite care, stress, and marital quality across mothers and fathers of children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 102) and Down syndrome (n = 111) were examined in this cross-sectional study. Parents of children with ASD who reported more uplifts and less stress individually reported better marital quality; these wives reported better marital quality as their husbands reported more uplifts and less stress. Wives with children with DS who reported more uplifts, individually along with their husbands reported less stress and better marital quality. Respite was directly associated with marital quality for …

Psycholinguistic Profiling Of Children With Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, Kirsten M. Russell, Sean M. Redmond, Andrea C. Ash

Faculty Publications

Language disorders are frequently comorbid with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT),a second attention disorder, may potentially explain some of the links between language disorders and ADHD. In this study we examined the psycholinguistic abilities of 207 children (mean age 7;10) with and without clinically significant levels of SCT symptoms to determine the degree to which symptoms of language disorder co-occur in cases of SCT. Analyses of children’s tense-marking, nonword repetition, and sentence recall indicated that deficits in these areas were not associated with SCT. Instead, SCT appears to be more closely aligned with features of social (pragmatic) …

Cross-Modal Reorganization From Both Visual And Somatosensory Modalities In Cochlear Implanted Children And Its Relationship To Speech Perception, Garrett Cardon, Theresa Hennesy, Julia Campbell, Hannah Glick, Don Bell-Souder

Faculty Publications

Hypothesis: We hypothesized that children with cochlear implants (CIs) who demonstrate cross-modal reorganization by vision also demonstrate cross-modal reorganization by somatosensation and that these processes are interrelated and impact speech perception. Background: Cross-modal reorganization, which occurs when a deprived sensory modality's cortical resources are recruited by other intact modalities, has been proposed as a source of variability underlying speech perception in deaf children with CIs. Visual and somatosensory cross-modal reorganization of auditory cortex have been documented separately in CI children, but reorganization in these modalities has not been documented within the same subjects. Our goal was to examine the relationship …

Brokerage Relationships And Analyst Forecasts: Evidence From The Protocol For Broker Recruiting, Braiden Coleman, Michael S. Drake, Joseph Pacelli, Brady Twedt

Faculty Publications

We offer novel evidence on how the nature of brokerage-client relationships can influence the quality of equity research. We exploit a unique setting provided by the Protocol for Broker Recruiting to examine whether relaxed broker noncompete agreement enforcement generates spillover effects on sell-side analysts. Entry into this agreement reassigns ownership of the client relationship from the brokerage to individual brokers, potentially generating a greater standard of care. Using a generalized difference-in-differences research design, we provide evidence consistent with brokers reducing pressure on analysts to produce optimistic research following protocol entry. This effect is concentrated among less experienced and non-All Star …

The Relevance Of Non-Income Tax Relief*, Michael S. Drake, Ryan V. Hess, Jaron H. Wilde, Braden M. Williams

Faculty Publications

Governments regularly offer non-income tax relief to attract business investment. However, it is unclear whether or how markets impound information about the relief into security prices. We use novel data from retrospective public records to examine the information content of non-income tax relief. We predict and find that the receipt and magnitude of this relief are both strongly associated with recipients’ future accounting performance and future abnormal returns. We further find that abnormal returns associated with the relief cluster around future earnings information events. In combination, this evidence suggests that non-income tax relief is value-relevant but is incorporated into prices …

Earnings Virality*, Brett Campbell, Michael S. Drake, Jacob Thornock, Brady Twedt

Faculty Publications

We examine the determinants and market consequences associated with earnings announcements going viral on social media, a phenomenon we label “earnings virality.” Using a comprehensive panel of historical Twitter data, we find that the typical earnings announcement receives relatively little social media coverage, but others go viral on social media, quickly reaching the feeds of millions of people. We find that viral earnings announcements generally have Twitter content that is more extreme in tone and contains less unique content. Further, earnings virality is positively associated with revenue surprises, investor recognition, retail investor ownership, and retail investor trading around the announcement. …

Students Coming Prepared To Class? A Review Of The Literature With A Call To Research, Melissa P. Larson, Jace Linnell

Faculty Publications

In this literature review, we show that little attention has been given to pre-class learning in a flipped classroom setting. To support learning, a flipped classroom shifts the learning of basic content from a classroom setting to a pre-class setting, thereby freeing up time within class for more active learning activities. Active learning activities support student-centered learning as peers collaborate with deep application of pre-class learning concepts. Thus, higher-order skills of critical thinking and lifelong learning, which are valued in the accounting education curriculum and profession, can be developed through a flipped classroom pedagogy. However, if pre-class learning is not …

The Impact Of Managerial Discretion In Revenue Recognition: A Reexamination*, Linda A. Myers, Roy Schmardebeck, Timothy Seidel, Michael D. Stuart

Faculty Publications

Although the FASB and IASB conceptual frameworks identify relevance and faithful representation as the fundamental qualitative characteristics of useful information, prior research suggests that revenue recognition accounting standards that restrict managerial discretion resulted in improved faithful representation but reduced relevance. We use the adoption of Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2009-13 and ASU 2009-14 to examine the effects of increased managerial discretion to accelerate revenue recognition in multiple-deliverable arrangements; that is, transactions where vendors sell multiple products or services that are delivered at different points in time. We find that increased discretion results in an increase in the relevance of reported …

Developing The Experience Impact Scale: A Qualitative Study Using A Study Abroad And International Internship Program, Neil Lundberg, Peter Ward, Grant Lundberg, Brian Hill, Jennifer Brown, Ramon Zabriskie, Mat Duerden, Heather Ashby

Faculty Publications

Recent work has identified different experience types, including experience classifications of ordinary, memorable, meaningful, and transformative. This study further clarifies the experience typology through qualitative data analysis of each experience type. Data analysis identified that within each extraordinary experience type, additional subtypes were present. Experience types and subtypes were organized according to the experience typology continuum into a 10-item Experience Impact Scale (EIS), as no instrument to measure experience types or experience impact was available. An expert panel was used to determine the representativeness of the items in the EIS and to provide content-related evidence of validity. Discussion of the …

Sending Children To Camp: An Analysis Of Decision-Making By Family Income, Dan Richmond, Camilla Hodge, Jim Sibthorp

Faculty Publications

Objectives: This study sought to (a) identify the factors most salient to parents when sending their child to summer camp, (b) examine family members’ roles in the camp decision-making process, and (c) compare both by income and other family contextual factors in a sample of parents with a child who enrolled and participated in a summer camp experience.

Methods: Survey data were collected from a total of 354 families that included families from high, middle, and lower incomes. Surveys collected data on parental developmental goals for their child, factors related to camp–child and camp–family fit, and the level of involvement …

Free Public Lands Admission For Children And Spillovers In Family Recreation, Jocelyn S. Wikle, Camilla Hodge

Faculty Publications

This study evaluated the Every Kid in a Park program to understand recreation and the contextual interaction between family resources, race, and recreation costs in families with young children. Using a large, nationally representative data sample from the American Time Use Survey (N = 5,119), we analyzed changes over time in recreation patterns of different socioeconomic groups before and after the initiation of the Every Kid in a Park program of the United States National Park Service. We found that free admission corresponded with overall increased frequency of hiking with a child for individuals in affected households. Changes in hiking …

Ecology Of Family Experiences: Contextualizing Family Leisure For Human Development & Family Relations, Camilla Hodge, Kelly D. Chandler, Karen K. Melton, Kelly L. Hoke, Jennifer Blodgett

Faculty Publications

Research on family communication in the leisure context has been limited to retrospective survey reconstructions of perceptions of communication patterns. This study examines the validity of sociometric badges for measuring family communication in real-time. Seven families (married, two-parent families with at least one child ages 4–17 years) wore sociometric badges during a 30-minute leisure activity in a lab setting. We compared mean badge estimates of family communication duration to mean coded video data from the same 30-minute sessions. Intraclass correlation coefficients indicated sociometric badges are not as reliable as video-coded estimates of speech; however, among parents, non-significant mean comparisons partially …

Experience Design And The Origins And Aims Of Leisure Studies: Shifting The Focus From Context To Experience, Mat D. Duerden

Faculty Publications

This article, adapted from the 2019 Butler Lecture at the NRPA National Research session, provides an overview of the origins, development, and potential future trajectory of the field of leisure research. Economic and societal trends of the last few decades may signal the need for the field to intentionally transition its focus on leisure as a context to leisure as an experience. More specifically the field needs to actively consider how insights gained from 60 years of research on leisure experiences can be applied to contexts beyond leisure. To illustrate the possibility of such a shift, lessons learned from transitioning …

Experience Design In Leisure And Recreation Curriculum, Madie Neeley, Sydney Burgess, Mat D. Duerden, Neil Lundberg

Faculty Publications

Experience design is a term that has risen to the forefront in a variety of professional fields and has relevance for the field of park and recreation. Park and recreation professionals are primarily focused on providing experiences and thus could naturally consider themselves experienced designers. Surprisingly, experience design is not a topic often discussed within park and recreation publications or curriculum. This absence is at least in part attributable to the fact that experience design is an emerging field that has grown independently out of multiple disciplines. Consequently, the fields of park and recreation and experience design overlap in a …

Experience Journey Map: A New Experience Design Tool For Structuring Youth Activities, Gary D. Ellis, Jingxian Jiang, Darlene Locke, Patti A. Freeman, Kaylee Jorgensen

Faculty Publications

We introduce a new experience design tool, an experience journey map, to assist youth professionals in planning engagement, immersion, and absorption activities. Experience journey maps are based on customer journey maps, which are widely used in business service design. This new approach highlights strategies for engendering deep structured experiences during the activity. An experience journey map is a matrix of columns and rows. Columns represent the sequence of activity stages. Rows are experience-structuring strategies derived from the theory of structured experience. These strategies include service performance strategies, deep structured experience strategies, and engagement, immersion, and absorption strategies. We present a …

Back From The Future: Mediation And Prediction Of Events Uncertainty Through Event-Driven Models (Edms), Samuel Ogbeibu, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

The event-driven model (EDM) is an emerging concept in human behavioural research, and understanding how EDMs can promote theory development remains a fundamental quest of predictive science. Traditionally, researchers have heavily depended upon theory confirmation and the inclusion of mediating constructs to clarify uncertainty associated with plausible events (e.g. political, socio-economic, technological, environmental). Though this approach has pushed the field forward, it has also steered mediation research towards largely ignoring the fundamental role of prediction as a key for better understanding future events represented by EDMs. Additionally, emerging research using partial least squares structural equation modelling to execute prediction-oriented analysis …

Transformational It Leaders And Digital Innovation: The Moderating Effect Of Formal It Governance, Linda M. Pittenger, Nicholas Berente, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Does formal IT governance encourage innovation in the traditional domains of the IT function at the expense of new forms of “digital” innovation? We report on a study of 158 IT managers and leaders to understand the conditions under which transformational IT leadership can drive innovation in traditional forms of IT, as well as in the emerging “digital” domain. We find that highly formal IT governance practices can reduce ability of transformational IT managers and leaders to innovate in both domains, and this effect is greater for digital innovation. In stable cultures the moderation effect was strengthened, while insignificant in …

Digital Behavioral Biometrics And Privacy: Methods For Improving Business Processes Without Compromising Customer Privacy, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, D. Čišić

Faculty Publications

To enable people to interact with online websites and systems, browsers capture a variety of events that occur on the page—such as how a person is moving the computer mouse, what a person clicks on, what a person types, and whether a person is scrolling. These events represent a user’s behavior on a page, referred to as the DOM or Document Object Model, and are recorded at a millisecond precision rate (e.g., the exact millisecond timestamp when a key goes down and when it comes back up). Research and practice alike have found that these behavioral events can provide powerful …

An Institutional Theory Perspective On Ehr Engagement: Mandates, Penalties, And Enforcement, Mark J. Keith, Elina Chun Stewart, Tevin Stewart, Mitchell Josephson, Bob Cash, Connor Bice

Faculty Publications

Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are the predominant information system (IS) used by healthcare clinicians and have been the source of both great success and pain. User engagement with EHR systems is unique from traditional IS contexts in significant ways. Prior research explains EHR usage and success primarily on traditional technology acceptance research (i.e., TAM, UTAUT). However, these models assume that EHR engagement is no different from IS systems in general business domains. Yet, the healthcare context is far more regulated than most. Based on qualitative focus group sessions with a leading healthcare analytics firm (KLAS Research), we identify the …

Information Filtering In Electronic Networks Of Practice: An Fmri Investigation Of Expectation (Dis)Confirmation, Kelly J. Fadel, Thomas O. Meservy, C. Brock Kirwan

Faculty Publications

Online forums sponsored by electronic networks of practice (ENPs) have become an important platform for technology-mediated knowledge exchange, yet relatively little is known about how ENP participants filter and evaluate the information they encounter on these forums. This study integrates perspectives from expectation confirmation theory, prospect theory, and neuroscience research to explore how ENP forum filtering judgments are influenced when expectations formed on the basis of contextual cues are confirmed or disconfirmed by the examination of solution quality. We summarize six different models of expectation confirmation explored in previous IS literature and report the results of a neuroimaging experiment using …