Digital Commons Network^™

Consumers' Acceptance To Buy And Dispose Of Recycling Textile Products, Roa Alsayed

Theses and Dissertations

The textile industry is the second most polluting worldwide, following food manufacturing. It is one of the industries that is rarely scrutinized in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This work analyzes the fashion industry from the perspective of consumer attitudes towards the purchase and disposal of clothing, and their behavior with regards to old garments. The study was conducted in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two countries that achieved similar results in the fashion industry. The methodology is divided into three phases. First, the manuscript begins with a review of topics such as sustainability, consumer behavior in the …

Identifying Barriers To Data Use On U.S. Beef Cow-Calf Operations And Developing Solutions To Improve Cow-Calf Record-Keeping, William Isaac Jumper

Theses and Dissertations

Cattle health and production records (CHPR) are data collected by cattle producers and veterinarians in the form of measurements, observations, counts of events over time, and physiologic attributes that describe individual and group-level health and production. These data are useful to both veterinarians and cattle producers for making evidence-based decisions on cow-calf operations. Currently, there are no uniform, industry-wide methods of capturing and recording CHPR in the U.S. cow-calf industry. Although many cow-calf producers in the U.S. are thought to collect some form of CHPR, it is believed that relatively few are doing so in an electronic manner that facilitates …

The Role Of Energy Storage In The Transition Toward A Carbon-Neutral Economy, Siyu Feng

Theses and Dissertations

Energy transitions to less-carbon intense technologies, such as wind and solar energy, in the electricity, sector are crucial to realizing international climate goals because the electricity sector has been one of the main global carbon emitter for decades, and environmental plans in most countries involve electrifying heavily polluting industries with clean electricity generation. The intermittency problem of renewable energy has been the main stumbling block on the path, and energy storage is now referred to as the key in these transitions because it can boost renewable energy use while also improving the efficiency of conventional power plants (Hall and Bain, …

Factors Driving Enterprise Adoption Of Blockchain Technology, Matthew C. Foster

Theses and Dissertations

Amidst the rapidly evolving advancement of blockchain technology (BT), enterprises face notable challenges in leveraging its transformative potential, starting with a need to understand the technology and how it can be used for particular applications. Two challenges are that many BT trials have not been successful and large-scale implementations that have led to continued use are scarce. This research provides a comprehensive examination of factors that drive the successful adoption of BT for enterprise use cases. A dual-phased approach was employed. First, I introduce a taxonomy matrix correlating BT design characteristics with use case characteristics, offering a framework for BT …

School Innovation: A Phenomenological Study Of Leadership, Kevin H. Storch

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to gain an understanding of what school innovation looks like as well as how school and district leaders address the concept. Technology has forever changed society. We must be careful not to confuse school innovation as the implementation of technology in the classroom. Educational leaders face the challenge of engaging students in meaningful learning opportunities that go beyond rote memorization and performance on standardized assessments following NCLB and Common Core. This study identifies characteristics of school culture that are necessary for innovation to take place. Principal and district leaders have to be knowledgeable …

Impact Of Internal Corporate Social Responsibility Factors On The Employee’S Innovation Climate In The Medical Diagnostics Industry, Sofia M. Beglari

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between employee-driven corporate social responsibility (CSR) factors and employee innovation in U.S. medical diagnostic companies during the respiratory syndrome coronavirus (COVID) pandemic. This study examined what employee-driven CSR factors affect such motivation of employees toward innovation. The research population was employees who have worked in operation, quality control, research, technical, and management departments of medical diagnostics companies in the United States of America. The investigator used a survey questionnaire for this correlation design study. Employees’ responses were analyzed based on education level, gender, and job function using descriptive analysis, t-test, and ANOVA-test. The theoretical framework …

Investor Reaction To Exploration Versus Exploitation Using An Asorptive Capacity Lens, Kevin Walsh

Theses and Dissertations

In his seminal work, March (1991) points to innovation as a key to a firm’s survival. In this dissertation proposal, I seek to build on March’s research by leveraging his construct of balancing a focus on improving existing capabilities (“exploitation”) while simultaneously creating new competencies (“exploration”). These two approaches to innovation are often viewed as requiring a firm to leverage very different skills. Not only are there differing skills, but the level of risk and potential reward also vary based on a firm’s decision to focus on exploration versus exploitation. The reaction of investors to this dichotomy is the focus …

A Pilot Study Examining The Influence Of An Entrepreneurial Education Program On Entrepreneurial Intention And Its Antecedents In A Population Of Adolescent Males In Recovery, Ian Mckay

Theses and Dissertations

Drug addiction is a chronically relapsing disorder that has been characterized by the compulsive use of addictive substances despite adverse consequences to the individual and society. Research has shown various social-psychological factors (e.g., positive affect, self-efficacy, behavioral intentions, beliefs held by others, and ones' perceptions of a behavior) to be essential determinants in recovery. Research has also demonstrated Entrepreneurial Education Programs (EEPs) to improve specific and global self-efficacy and autonomy in adolescent populations. The following study is the first to examine the impact of a therapeutically oriented EEP on entrepreneurial intentions and its antecedents in a population of adolescent males …

Innovation And Extended Producer Responsibility In Supply Chain Management, Yuqi Peng

Theses and Dissertations

Supply chain management is an important field in operations management. In recent decades, innovation and sustainability have drawn increasing attention in supply chain management research, while empirical research is still scarce due to data limitations. In this dissertation, we collect unique data and explore the propagation of innovation and sustainability across the supply chain networks.

In the first part of my dissertation, we study research and development (R&D) productivity transmission across supply chain network. Using a two-sided econometric model, we find that having R&D-productive partners plays a significant role in transforming an agent’s R&D into revenues.

In the second part …

Investigating Technology Integration In A Technology Driven School: A Descriptive Research Study On Skill, Self-Efficacy, Barriers, And Integration Practices, Kela L. Sharpton

Theses and Dissertations

Administrative observations show the use of digital technologies to facilitate learning and technology skill development are inadequate among teachers at a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) accredited magnet school with International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) based student technology guarantees. The purpose of this descriptive research study is to describe teachers’ skill and confidence levels of technology use, teachers’ perception of barriers to their technology integration, and levels of in-class technology integration in a STEAM accredited middle school with student Technology Guarantees in order to develop recommendations for future professional development and technology acquisition.

The research study …

Corporate Venturing In The Media & Entertainment Industry: Contextual Factors That Influence Corporate Venture Decision Making, Graylind R. Wherry

Theses and Dissertations

This research study focuses on Corporate Venturing (CV) within the Media and Entertainment(M&E) industry and investigates factors that influence CV decision-making. CV provides a viable strategy to facilitate innovation and organizational change within companies; however, this area is understudied within the M&E industry. Companies that make up the entertainment industry may not have specific insight into how best to exploit this opportunity. Specifically, this study looks at the influence of firm characteristics, industry characteristics, and other outside factors using the PESTLE strategy model characteristics impacting the parent or venture unit's CV decision-making within the M&E industry. In terms of this …

Exploring Behavioral Flexibility, Problem-Solving, And Innovation In Captive Asian Elephants (Elephas Maximus), Amanda Puitiza

Theses and Dissertations

Asian elephants encounter and adapt to changing environments by problem-solving and innovating. In this study, we assessed behavioral measures, such as persistence and motivation, to determine potential predictors of problem-solving success. This is the first examination of problem-solving in elephants with a multi-solution puzzle box.

The Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of A Cooling Garment, Richard James Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this research is to design a device or technology capable of cooling the user – such as a college student walking to class, for example – in a manner as convenient as putting on a jacket. The idea is to use the peltier effect – a phenomenon in which two dissimilar semi-conductors heat up and cool down with the application of an electric current – as the source of heat absorption used to cool the user. In this research it will be determined whether or not it is feasible to use such a phenomenon to keep the …

Creativity And Engagement In Ideas Crowdsourcing: A Situation Awareness Perspective, James Gitau Wairimu

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the influence of performance feedback in user motivation and creativity development in idea crowdsourcing engagement. Creativity occurs when users of idea crowdsourcing communities engage in direct and indirect interactions that expose them to a pool of knowledge that enhances their cognitive development leading to the contribution of novel ideas for innovation in organizations. Additionally, participant motivation to engage in ideas crowdsourcing is increased through rewards and conditions that make the ideation process more inclusive and enjoyable. An idea network design is developed by applying social network analysis principles. The idea network design consists of mechanisms for motivating …

The Kairos Model: Best Leadership Practices For Small-To-Medium Sized Management Consulting Firms, Edward Eng

Theses and Dissertations

Breakthrough technologies and ever-increasing customer demands are paving the way for new entrants to disrupt the traditional management industry. With their capacious resources, industry incumbents have mitigated these emergent forces by integrating digital capabilities into their arsenal of services. Without the capacity of market leaders, small and medium-sized business consultants are struggling to compete effectively. To fill this research gap, this study strove to develop a practical framework to help small- to medium-sized business consultants act more purposefully amidst growing competitive pressures.

The researcher chose a qualitative grounded theory design to collect data through face-to- face, semi-structured interview questions. Insights …

University Hackathons: Managerialism, Gamification, And The Foreclosure Of Creativity, Anthony L. Clary

Theses and Dissertations

This research presents a generative critique of hackathon events held in the contemporary research university. Through the analysis of cultural imaginaries and embedded techno-political forms, it works toward an assessment of whether these events support, foreclose, or redirect ideas of the future that might otherwise challenge technocratic, accumulatory, and/or hierarchal organization. Informed by institutional histories and firsthand field research at events, dynamics of entrepreneurialism, gamification, and techno-solutionism are extrapolated and problematized. Ultimately, this research draws on a historical materialist approach to understanding how and why hackathon events have flourished in the university setting. Corroborating recent theories of platform capitalism, vectoralism, …

Exploring Innovation And Behavioral Flexibility In African Lions (Panthera Leo) And Snow Leopards (Panthera Uncia), Victoria L. O'Connor

Theses and Dissertations

Intelligence may have evolved to help animals problem-solve in their physical and/or social environments, which enables them to cope with changes in their environments. Humans can reduce wildlife conflict by understanding how species that face harsh environments assess a situation and alter their behavior. Tests for cognitive behavior aim to formulate clear behavioral criteria for inferring an animal’s mental processes. We designed a custom multi-access puzzle box (MAB) to present a simple and effective behavioral test for exploring innovation in two species, African lions (Panthera leo) and snow leopards (Panthera uncia). Despite being vastly underrepresented in …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Leaders’ Security Orientation, Joseph J. Simpson

Theses and Dissertations

Organizations’ leaders are responsible for ensuring that firms’ proprietary assets are protected from expropriation. Firms are increasingly targets of large-scale proprietary assets breaches that jeopardize their ability to financially benefit from their innovation activities. Some firms have proactively built capabilities that allow them to protect their proprietary assets, while leaders are more security oriented and therefore do more to protect their organizations from proprietary assets breaches? Current research on leaders’ role in the protection of proprietary assets is lacking at the strategic level because most studies on organizational security have emphasized employee-level behaviors (e.g., da Veiga & Eloff, 2010, Lee, …

U.S. Government Acquisition Reform And Its Influence On Defense Contracting, Innovation, Diversification, And Collaboration, Edgar Quiñones Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Acquisition reform has been active within the Defense Industry for over two centuries and continues to this day for the Federal Government. Recently, due to sequestration, high national debt, and political pressures, the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act (WSARA) and Better Buying Power (BBP) was put into action, in 2009 and 2010 respectively, as a way to further streamline the Defense Industry. This study examined the Defense Industry’s attitudes and coping strategies (focused on ‘countervailing power’) deal with the actions and the influence of a monopsonist (sole) buyer on the contracting process and how that ultimately affects costs, industry strategy, …

Investigating The Adoption Of Auto-Steer By Row-Crop Farmers In Mississippi, Patrick Jason Poindexter

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to identify socio-economic factors which may influence the adoption of auto-steer technologies by row crop farmers in Mississippi. The variables of geographic location, size of farm, age of the farmer, and educational level of the farmer were analyzed using a binary logistic regression analysis to determine if those variables could be used as predictors in the farmer’s adoption of auto-steer. Analysis revealed that the size of the farm and the age of the farmer are both statistically significant predictors of the probability of a farmer adopting auto-steer in the state of Mississippi. Geographic location …

Lean Six Sigma's Impact On Firm Innovation Performance, Austin Michael Strong

Theses and Dissertations

Following Toyota's dramatic rise to prominence within the automotive industry in the late 1980's, firms around the globe have widely sought to adopt Lean Six Sigma (LSS) as a means of reducing costs, improving quality, and gaining an overall competitive advantage. While the operational benefits of LSS are largely undisputed, there are criticisms of the movement with regards to its effect on firm innovation capability. Prior academic studies investigating the relationship between LSS and innovation are largely conceptual in nature, rely heavily on qualitative data, and display a high degree of variability in results. The objective of this work was …

Investigating If Multidisciplinary Or Homogenous Teams Are More Innovative In A Higher Education Setting, Blake Howard Hoover

Theses and Dissertations

This study is derived from the claim that multidisciplinary groups are more innovative than homogeneous groups; a claim that has flooded the business industry and has become criteria for accreditation in higher education. However, the impact of disciplinary diversity in work groups is a growing area of research; therefore, it is yet to be thoroughly understood. The purpose of this study is to answer the question: are multidisciplinary teams more innovative than homogenous teams. To accomplish this university students from differing majors were sorted into multidisciplinary and homogeneous groups while participating in a two-day innovation course. The course taught the …

Symbiotic Relationships Among Innovations And Sustainable Practices: A Supply Chain Management Perspective, Muratcan Erkul

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainability as a business phenomenon has occupied the attention of academicians, practitioners, and consumers for more than three decades. While some firms emphasize on their own internal sustainability initiatives, there is a growing trend to implement sustainability across the supply chain. This increasing interest makes implementation of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices very important for focal firm's sustainability; however, the ability to create innovative products, processes, and ways of operating is crucial if an organization is to be sustainable. Although there have been studies that investigate innovation in the context of sustainability, their scopes are limited to a single …

Agility Within Higher Education It Organizations: A Loosely Coupled Systems Perspective, Thomas E. Bunton

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how leadership focus on innovation and organizational centralization relate with organizational agility, speed of technology adoption, and defined governance processes and technology standards. The study used data from the 2015 Educause survey of higher education IT organizations (N = 822). A five-component framework of organizational agility was identified via factor analysis and subsequently used to evaluate relationships between study variables. Findings reveal that leadership focus on innovation was statistically significant in predicting all five identified components of organizational agility, the speed of technology adoption, and the adoption of defined governance standards, reinforcing the perspective that communication is …

A Comprehensive Study Of Intrapreneruship As A Cultural Form Of Innovation And Sustainable Competive Advantage, Timothy Charles Mcdowell

Theses and Dissertations

Intrapreneurial activity within the firm varies within the contexts of employee perception and motivation. The problem explored in this study is to better understand complex internal workings of organizational dynamics, discovering what factors energize employees to perform intrapreneurially in the aerospace industry. This study examines antecedents and consequences of intrapreneurial activity within firms leading to innovation as a sustainable competitive advantage. The need for specific research is evident from limited data available regarding intrapreneurial motivation from the individual perspective within the aerospace community. The phenomenon of intrapreneurship within the aerospace industry often occurs over multiple years. This study examines the …

The Contextual Impact Of Innovation And Operational Spillovers On Firm Performance, Cherry Singhal

Theses and Dissertations

Extant literature across various research disciplines has investigated the influence of a firm’s technological innovation on its performance. However, the findings on this relationship remain inconclusive as it is subject to many strategic and environmental factors. In this dissertation, the relationship between a firm’s technological innovation and performance is evaluated. Additionally, this relationship is examined in the presence of various contextual factors.

In the first study, meta-analysis is utilized to quantitatively aggregate existing empirical research in this domain. Cultural and institutional aspects of the nation in which the firm operates are examined for their potential in explaining variability within the …

Group Flow In The Byu Animation Studio, Jana Lynn Duncan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation encompasses three articles concerning Sawyer's (2007) theory of group flow in the context of higher education, including a literature review, and two interpretive studies. In the literature review and in the first interpretive research article, the results of the research illuminated the applicability of themes of group flow in collaborative settings in higher education in themes of vision, ownership and contribution, and communication. The final article provides a description of the roles of student lead and professor in this environment and the unique ways that they may have encouraged those themes in the studio. The context for this …

The Ambience Of Innovation: A Material Semiotic Analysis Of Corporate And Community Innovation Sites, Reed Stratton

Theses and Dissertations

There are unprecedented opportunities in professional and technical writing (PTW) and rhetoric research thanks to a contemporary expansion of rhetorical studies beyond the linguistic/symbolic and into the material, accounting for the rhetorical contributions of “nonhumans” (Latour Reassembling the Social). Material rhetoric frameworks such as Thomas Rickert’s ambient rhetoric and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, provide fertile grounds for PTW/rhetoric research that explores the diffusion of “rhetoric into material space” (Rickert xii) which has especially exciting implications for the study of place and how it embodies values and rhetorically shapes acting, thinking, and the entire spectrum of “human flourishing” (Rickert xii).

This …

Innovation In The Local Administration System In Egypt, Mustafa Adel Abdulrahman

Theses and Dissertations

The Egyptian public sector always described as a highly centralized system, with an inflexible hierarchical structure and high levels of formal relationships channeling its communications through public enterprises and institutions. Even establishing the local administration system as an approach of decentralization, it still highly connected and governed by the central government. On the other hand, innovation in public sector studies and application in last two decades gained much interest from scholars, practitioners and even leaders and policy makers as an approach to enhance public sector efficiency and effectiveness. Accordingly, this study aims to explore innovation in the public sector in …

Adopting Sustainability Innovations In Restaurants: An Evaluation Of The Factors Influencing Owner-Managers’ Decisions In Richmond, Virginia, Anna Salzberg

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing restaurant Owner-Managers’ decisions to adopt sustainability innovations in restaurants. A cross-sectional survey research design is used for this study, which entails distributing a survey to restaurants in the City of Richmond, Virginia, to gain an understanding of the factors influencing sustainability innovation adoption. Drawing from both the innovation adoption theory and the theory of planned behavior, the researcher contributes a baseline of the restaurants’ sustainability and the Owner-Managers’ intrinsic motivations. By integrating innovation adoption theory’s perceived innovation characteristics and measuring restaurants’ past sustainability behavior, this study increases the overall …