Business Commons^™

Motivations For Social Network Site (Sns) Gaming: A Uses And Gratification & Flow Perspective, Brinda Sampat, Bala Krishnamoorthy

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The penetration of the internet, smart-phones and tablets has witnessed tremendous increase in the number of people playing online games in the past few years. Social networking site (SNS) games are a subset of digital games. They are platform based, multiplayer and reveal the real identity of the player. These games are hosted on social networks such as Facebook, where in people play with many other players online. The risks associated with social network gaming are addiction, theft, fraud, loneliness, anxiety, aggression, poor academic performance, cognition distortion etc. This study aims to understand the user motivations to continue to play …

The Impact Of Analytics Utilization On Team Performance: Comparisons Within And Across The U.S. Professional Sports Leagues, Lee A. Freeman

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Business analytics, defined as the use of data to make better, more relevant, evidence-based business decisions, has received a great deal of attention in practitioner circles. Organizations have adopted business analytics in an effort to improve revenue, product placement, and customer satisfaction. Professional sports teams are no different. While analytics has been used for over 30 years, the use of analytics by professional sports teams is a relatively new concept. However, it is unclear whether the teams that have adopted analytics are seeing any results. If not, then perhaps analytics is not the right solution. Analyses across the four, major …

A Data-Centric Analysis On Stem Majoring And Success: Attitude And Readiness, Xin James He, Myron Sheu, Jie Tao

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This research studies attitude and readiness of STEM majoring and success with

the data from a survey with a total of 501 viable responses, with respect to STEM

(science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) related majors that are

essential and fundamental to skills relevant to big data business analytics.

Recruiting and keeping students in STEM areas have attracted a large body of

attention in pedagogical studies. An effective way of achieving such a goal is to

show them how rewarding and self-fulfilling STEM careers can be toward

perspective students. One example of the abundance of STEM careers is the rapid

growth …

Prediction And Recommendations On The It Leaners' Learning Path As A Collective Intelligence Using A Data Mining Technique, Seong-Yong Hong, Juyun Cho, Yonghyun Hwang

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

With the recent advances in computer technology along with pervasive internet accesses, data analytics is getting more attention than ever before. In addition, research areas on data analysis are diverging and integrating lots of different fields such as a business and social sector. Especially, recent researches focus on the data analysis for a better intelligent decision making and prediction system. This paper analyzes data collected from current IT learners who have already studied various IT subjects to find the IT learners’ learning patterns. The most popular learning patterns are identified through an association rule data mining using an arules package …

Violating Of Individual Privacy: Moroccan Perceptions Of The Ban Of Voip Services, Tyler Delhees

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

On January 6, 2016, the Moroccan telecommunications regulatory agency, the ANRT, announced a ban onVoice Over Internet Protocol(VoIP) calling services such as Skype, WhatsApp, and Viber. The ban triggered sweeping opposition among the Moroccan public, opening discussion of digital rights, censorship, and Internet governance. Considering liberal democratic rights in the 2011 Moroccan Constitution and a history of censorship, this study analyzes the official justification of the ANRT alongside additional explanations involving business interests and the security services. The purpose of this study is to gauge the perceptions of Moroccans on the decision of the ANRT and provide a holistic explanation. …

Sport, Twitter Hashtags And The Public Sphere, Brendan O'Hallarn

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

Sport and social media researchers have been challenged to go beyond simply analyzing the content of public social media posts, and to incorporate different critical frameworks to seek more meaningful findings about these relatively new online phenomena. This three-paper format dissertation attempts to frame interactions through sport-themed Twitter hashtags sociologically by incorporating a critical theory rarely deployed in the study of sport—the public sphere. In paper one, the study introduces a theoretical model which suggests sport consumption patterns and the unique architecture of Twitter can promote public sphere-like discourse in hashtags connected to sport. The model suggests amplifiers and barriers …

Fernandez And Palmer, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

There is crying in baseball and in Miami this past week there was a flood of tears. The shocking news that Jose Fernandez had been killed in a boating accident produced disbelief and sadness. For his family, for teammates, for Marlin fans, and for baseball fans across the country, it was a jolting piece of news that greeted them on Sunday morning. The following day came the announcement of the death of Arnold Palmer, the man who is credited with making golf a favorite sport for ordinary fans in the new television age. The juxtaposition of the two deaths has …

Affect And Value In Critical Examinations Of The Production And ‘Prosumption’ Of Big Data, Daniel G. Cockayne

Geography Faculty Publications

In this paper I explore the relationship between the production and the value of Big Data. In particular I examine the concept of social media ‘prosumption’—which has predominantly been theorized from a Marxist, political economic perspective—to consider what other forms of value Big Data have, imbricated with their often speculative economic value. I take the example of social media firms in their early stages of operation to suggest that, since these firms do not necessarily generate revenue, data collected through user contributions do not always realize economic value, at least in a Marxist sense, and that, in addition to their …

Goodell And Drones, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

For the past few years the NFL, through the pious pronouncements from its Commissioner, Roger Goodell, has professed a heavy commitment to safety, with a particular focus on hits to the head. This of course followed years of cover-up and denial of any connection between CTE and football related head trauma, not to mention an active and aggressive campaign against anyone and any evidence to the contrary.

Us Open Tennis, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

In London it is the Wimbledon Fortnight. What can be called simply “two weeks of damn good tennis” concluded this weekend at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center where the fourth and final Grand Slam event of the tennis season was contested. As it often does the U.S. Open produced some very high quality tennis, along with some “interesting” moments, and promising new, and not so new, faces arriving in the spotlight.

School Of Business Admin Earns Accreditation: School Reaffirmed Through Self- And Peer Evaluation

Andrews Agenda: Campus News

"The Board of Commissioners of the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE) is pleased to announce that, at its meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, on July 12-13, 2016, Andrews University was granted reaffirmation of accreditation of the business and management programs offered through its School of Business Administration."

The National Anthem, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

It has been over a week now since Colin Kaepernick sat during the playing of the National Anthem prior to an NFL Exhibition game. He was protesting discrimination against African Americans and police brutality in the United States. These issues have been in the forefront of public discussion since the shooting of Michael Brown just over two years ago. At various points and venues since the Brown shooting athletes have protested and offered various forms of support directly and indirectly to the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Kaepernick’s action joins a long list of protests, and as has often been the …

Contextual Healing: What To Do About Scandalous Trademarks And Lanham Act 2(A), Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Offensive trademarks have come to the forefront of trademark policy and practice in recent years. While it was once true that more attention had been paid to Lanham Act section 2(a) in the pages of law reviews than in the courts, recent prominent cases have focused attention on the ban on registration of offensive marks and the widespread impact of this ban on trademark owners.

In this Article, I answer the fundamental question: Given the problems that my previous research has identified, what should be done about the 2(a) bar on registration of scandalous trademarks? This Article argues, as a …

Images Of Alzheimer’S: A Visual Analysis Of The Imagery Used To Globally Market Alzheimer’S Services Online​, Elizabeth Spencer, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

Currently more than 46 million people are living with dementia globally (ADI, 2015). The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the worldwide population of persons 60 years of age and older will more than triple between 2000 and 2050 to two billion. The concept of Western patients receiving long-term dementia care in foreign countries is a new and emerging phenomenon (Gray, 2013; Pomareda, 2014; Wegerer, 2014). This study examines the visual images within Alzheimer’s care facility websites (n=105) and uses a cross cultural comparison lens to contrast differences in patient representations and treatment facilities. The goal of this study is to …

Did Bp Atone For Its Transgressions? Expanding Theory Of “Ethical Apology In Crisis Communication, Audra Diers-Lawson, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Ethical communication during crisis response is often assessed by external perceptions of the organization's intentions, rather than an assessment of the organization's communicative behaviors. This can easily lead researchers to draw editorial conclusions about an organization's ethics in crisis response rather than accurately describing its communicative behaviors. The case of BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico provides a prime example for the importance of accurately assessing the ethical content of an organization's crisis response because the ethics of BP's response have been discussed in news and academic sources; yet little direct examination of the ethical content in …

What 100,000 Tweets About The Volkswagen Scandal Tell Us About Angry Customers, Vanitha Swaminathan, Suyun Mah

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In September 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency found that many Volkswagen cars sold in the United States were equipped with software that could falsely improve the performance of diesel engines on emissions tests. This cheating was subsequently acknowledged by the car maker.Among the many issues at stake for the company was one of public perception. Anecdotal evidence at the time of the incident suggested irreparable harm to the Volkswagen brand. So could Volkswagen recover in the short term in this regard? And, the broader question, how can you measure brand perception in times of scandal, particularly in an era where …

27 Floors Of Support: Effectively Advertising Campus Resources To College Students, Amanda Peerce

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

College campuses provide a large variety of resources to college students to help ensure their well-being and success; however, students cannot utilize these resources if they do not know they exist. While there has been extensive research on the importance and efficacy of resources on college campuses, not as much research has been done on how to advertise these services to college students. The goal of this project is to create and assess the efficacy of a campaign educating and encouraging students to seek out campus resources in times of need. This project focuses primarily on promoting resources to first-year …

Olympic Contradictions, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

There are times when I think that the Olympics should be wiped off the sports calendar once and for all. Then when the games begin I flip into reverse and find myself watching the performances and admiring the high level of skill on display.

Extending Organizational Memory And Corporate Communications Research Via Autoethnography/Autobiography, Damion Waymer, Nneka Logan

The Qualitative Report

Culture, business, and communication are overlapping human phenomena. However, corporate communication methods have yet to embrace the complexity of organizational culture. Since the study of culture is anthropological in nature, we propose foregrounding autoethnography/autobiographical approaches and method to analyze corporate organizational culture. We argue that studying corporate communication, public relations, and society via the lenses of organizational culture and subsidiary organizational memory can provide unique insights into practice of corporate communication and the theorizing of organizational memory research. In this case example, we answer this question: In what ways can autobiographical/autoethnographic narratives of organizational members inform the theory, research, and …

Good Vibrations: Charting The Dominant And Emergent Discursive Regimes Of Sex Toys, George Rossolatos

The Qualitative Report

Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category’s consumption. By drawing on Foucault’s theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 sex toys’ product reviews from popular magazines and web sites in order to identify how the discourse about sex toys is articulated in terms of three dominant categories of sexual scripts (Simon & …

Building A Pathway To Engineering For Our Daughters – Brick By Brick, Ali P. Gordon

UCF Forum

As a father of young elementary and middle school-aged kids, I’m also curious to know exactly how my undergrad students came to be interested in mechanical engineering. An exchange with a UCF student might go like this: “You did a great job on the exam. Congrats! By the way, how did you get interested in mechanical engineering, anyway?” I mentally log the answers for my kids’ future benefit.

Impact Of Communication Appeals On Recycling Behaviors Among Undergraduate Students, Ning Zhu

Open Access Theses

The present thesis aims to understand factors influencing student recycling behaviors, and to investigate effective communication approaches to increase such behaviors. An online survey was conducted to examine the relationships between student recycling frequency in different contexts, students’ attitudes toward the environment, barriers to their recycling, students’ perceptions of communication messages, and communication media they think to be effective. Descriptive statistics, ANOVAs, t-test, simple linear regressions, categorical multinomial logistic regression, and a chi-square test were conducted, and the data was collected from a large land-grant university in the Midwestern United States. A total of 537 questionnaires were answered.

The …

Hybrid Agile Approach: Efficiently Blending Traditional And Agile Methodologies, Rashmi Wankhede

Dissertations and Theses

Agile development, in its simplest form, offers a lightweight framework for helping teams, given a constantly evolving functional and technical landscape, maintain a focus on the rapid delivery of business value. Traditional project management focuses more on distinct and predefined sequential phases. It assumes that once requirements are fixed there won’t be any changes or additions in future. In today’s world however this is not true and development teams have to incorporate changes at later stages to be competitive. This is where agile methodologies have an edge over traditional methods. Agile can handle more complex and highly adaptable projects. However, …

Social Media Information And Analyst Forecasts, Mahfuja Malik, Rajib Hasan, Abu S. Amin

WCBT Faculty Publications

In the past decade, social networking has changed the landscape of information dissemination. The rapid diffusion of social media services such as Facebook and Twitter is unprecedented and offers immense possibilities for corporations to communicate with, and engage core stakeholders in, various business decisions. In this study, we investigate whether social media play any role as a source of information for financial analysts. We specifically focus on information revealed on the official Facebook pages of S&P 500 firms. We define information content on a Facebook page as the total number of posts by the corporations and the comments, likes and …

Why We Follow: Exploring How Culture Shapes Users’ Motivation For Following Sport Organizations On Twitter And Weibo, Bo Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how culture shapes Social media users’ usage as they follow sport organizations on two similar microblogging services - Twitter and Weibo. In particular, the study attempted to measure whether Social media users exhibited different usage pattern, points of attachment, and usage motivations within two different cultural environments known as individualism and collectivism.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ Social media followers were selected and invited to participant in this study. There were 839 the Lakers’ Weibo followers and 334 Twitter followers who completed an online survey facilitated on Qualtrics. The results of Multivariate analysis …

A Social Marketing Plan For The Lester C. Howick Animal Shelter, Joseph Michael Spiegelhoff

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Lester C. Howick Animal Shelter (Howick) is a non-profit organization serving Washington County, Arkansas and the Northwest Arkansas community. This thesis offers Howick a comprehensive Social marketing plan. The goal of the animal shelter is to increase the total number of cats and dogs adopted, increase the total amount of donations, and increase the number of volunteers helping at the facility and various events. In order to accomplish these goals for 2016, a Social marketing plan was developed through research on other non-profit organizations, other animal shelters, communication with the shelter employees, crafting a public service announcement (PSA), and …

Leveling The Playing Field? A Content Analysis Of Espn.Com And Espnw.Com’S Online Coverage, Rachael Caldwell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this exploratory study was to compare sports coverage provided by the male-centric website ESPN.com and its affiliated female-centric website ESPNW.com. The amount and type of coverage provided for female athletes was the primary focus of this study. Results suggest that ESPNW.com provides an outlet for increased coverage of women’s sports, but the type of coverage provided to female athletes is not equivalent to that of their male counterparts. These results supported findings in previous studies on mass media coverage of women’s sports, specifically coverage on the emerging field of Internet coverage.

It's All About Me: How Self-Brand Connection And Social Media Interactivity Influence Purchase Intent, Shannon Taylor Mccarthy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social media is ubiquitous and allows consumers to display identity by through possessions through posts, images, and interactions. The self is all the individual calls their own and is expressed outwardly through everything visible, including possessions, relationships, and interactions. They tell their story through the display of envy-inducing artifacts, and create a perfect, photoshopped life. Consumers seek a connection to positively viewed brands they feel are self-representative through interaction. This dissertation seeks to better understand consumer rationale for and gratification from online brand engagement and how that, in turn, impacts the brand. Three studies examined the effects of self-brand connection, …

Patrick Keiller, Robinson In Ruins (2010), Aras Özgün

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Rio 2016, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

It’s beginning to appear that the Russians will be the big winners at the Olympic Games opening next week in Rio. You may wonder how this could be given the fact that large numbers of Russian athletes, including all the track and field team, have been banned from participation in the Games of 2016. That of course is precisely the point.