Business Commons^™

Quantification Of Mandatory Sustainment Requirements, Joe M. Blackman

Theses and Dissertations

To emphasize the importance of sustainment, the DoD Joint Requirements Oversight Council addressed sustained Materiel readiness and established a mandatory Key Performance Parameter (KPP) for Materiel Availability; it also established supporting Key System Attributes (KSAs) for Materiel Reliability and Ownership Cost (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Manual (CJCSM) 3170.01C, 2007). Current guidance requires two numbers: a threshold value and an objective value (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Manual (CJCSM) 3170.01C, 2007). No distinction is made between the approaches in establishing these values for major system acquisitions, versus smaller, modification-focused efforts for existing systems. The Joint Staff …

Afternoon Concurrent Track 3: Green Curricula At Unlv, Thomas Jones, Ken Teeters, Barbara St. Pierre Schneider, Nancy Menzel, Lori Candela, Yu Xu, Sally Miller, Scott Nowicki

Education for a Global Future: 21st Century Challenges in Sustainability & Climate Change Education

AFTERNOON CONCURRENT TRACK 3: GREEN CURRICULA AT UNLV Moderator Carolyn Yucha Student Union Room 213 Tom Jones, Ken Teeters – Incorporating Sustainability into a Hospitality Management Curriculum Abstract: For the past 15 years, faculty members in the Harrah College of Hotel Administration who teach Facilities Management (HMD 395) have incorporated a sustainability management component in this required course. The concepts of sustainability and global climate change are introduced through readings and multi-media. The concept of Triple Bottom Line is presented and is applied to almost every component in the course. Students are assigned a variety of semester-long service-learning projects that …

Ceo Pay-For-Performance Heterogeneity: Examples Using Quantile Regression, Kevin F. Hallock, Regina Madalozzo, Clayton G. Reck

Kevin F Hallock

We provide some examples of how quantile regression can be used to investigate heterogeneity in pay–firm size and pay-performance relationships for U.S. CEOs. For example, do conditionally (predicted) high-wage managers have a stronger relationship between pay and performance than conditionally low-wage managers? Our results using data over a decade show, for some standard specifications, there is considerable heterogeneity in the returns to firm performance across the conditional distribution of wages. Quantile regression adds substantially to our understanding of the pay-performance relationship. This heterogeneity is masked when using more standard empirical techniques.

Quantile Regression, Roger Koenker, Kevin F. Hallock

Kevin F Hallock

Quantile regression as introduced by Koenker and Bassett seeks to extend ideas of quantiles to the estimation of conditional quantile functions--models in which quantiles of the conditional distribution of the response variable are expressed as functions of observed covariates.

Interview With Daniel Hilton, Mt. Hood Community College, 2009 (Audio), Daniel Hilton

All Sustainability History Project Oral Histories

Interview of Daniel Hilton by Cory Minick at Mt. Hood Community College on March 5th, 2009.

The interview index is available for download.

Interview With Patricia Swenney, Spiral Of Life, 2009 (Audio), Patricia Swenney

All Sustainability History Project Oral Histories

Interview of Patricia Swenney by Hanna Flagg on March 5th, 2009.

The interview index is available for download.

A Simulated Annealing Approach To Communication Network Design, Stephen J. Sugden, Marcus Randall, Graham Mcmahon

Stephen Sugden

This paper explores the use of the meta-heuristic search algorithm Simulated Annealing for solving a minimum cost network synthesis problem. This problem is a common one in the design of telecommunication networks. The formulation we use models a number of practical problems with hop-limit, degree and capacity constraints. Emphasis is placed on a new approach that uses a knapsack polytope to select amongst a number of pre-computed traffic routes in order to synthesise the network. The advantage of this approach is that a subset of the best routes can be used instead of the whole set, thereby making the process …

Enhancing The Communication Competency Of Business Undergraduates: A Consumer Socialization Perspective, K. C. Gehrt, M. O'Brien, David Mease

David Mease

Explaining how individuals acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively participate in society is often accomplished through Socialization Theory. We investigate numerous socialization agents and their relationship with the communication competency of university business majors. Communication competency (reading, writing, and verbal) was measured via both a standardized skill test and self report. Exploratory analysis was conducted upon high and low communication competency groups that were identified via cluster analysis. Our findings generally indicate the most important socialization agents are via personal interactions whereas the least important socialization agents are influencing via primarily electronic or media-based methods.

Ua35/1 Doers & Deeds Vol. 7, No. 10, Wku Provost

WKU Archives Records

Newsletter created by the WKU Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs to highlight the activities of faculty, staff and alumni.

Enhancing The Communication Competency Of Business Undergraduates: A Consumer Socialization Perspective, K. C. Gehrt, M. O'Brien, David Mease

Faculty Publications

Explaining how individuals acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively participate in society is often accomplished through Socialization Theory. We investigate numerous socialization agents and their relationship with the communication competency of university business majors. Communication competency (reading, writing, and verbal) was measured via both a standardized skill test and self report. Exploratory analysis was conducted upon high and low communication competency groups that were identified via cluster analysis. Our findings generally indicate the most important socialization agents are via personal interactions whereas the least important socialization agents are influencing via primarily electronic or media-based methods.

House Of Cards, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We are in dire straits - no doubt about it. Our banks and financial edifices are collapsing. Those left standing also look shaky. The financial industry as a whole is battling to survive. And, as its frontline warriors, we will bear the brunt of the blood- bath sure to ensue any minute now. A good opportunity to play solitaire?

Crop Updates 2009 - Genetically Modified Crops, Nutrition, Soils, & Others, Wallace Cowling, Art Diggle, Caroline Peek, Frank D'Emden, Fiona Evans, Bob French, Rob Grima, Sam Harburg, Abul Hashem, John Holmes, Jeromy Lemon, Peter Newman, Janet Paterson, Steve Penny, Peter Portman, Mark Slatter, Angus Maclennan, Andrew Wells, Bill Bowden, Wayne Pluske, Wen Chen, Geoff Anderson, Ross Brennan, Richard Bell, Hannah Rigby, Deborah Pritchard, David Collins, Katrina Walton, David Allen, Nancy Penney, Michael Robertson, Roger Lawes, Stephen Davies, Chris Gazey, Breanne Best, David Gartner, Quenten Knight, Joel Andrew, Ryan Pearce, F. C. Hoyle, A. Bennett, Rick Llewellyn, Ken Flower, Julian Krieg, Owen Catto, Cindy Parsons

Crop Updates

This session covers fifteen papers from different authors:

1. Performance of Canola Breeders Roundup Ready^® canola hybrid CHYB-166 in 2008, Wallace Cowling, Canola Breeders Western Australia Pty Ltd

2. The implications of GM glyphosate resistant lupin, Art Diggle, Caroline Peek, Frank D’Emden, Fiona Evans, Bob French, Rob Grima, Sam Harburg, Abul Hashem,, John Holmes, Jeremy Lemon, Peter Newman, Janet Paterson, Steve Penny,Department of Agriculture and Food, Peter Portmann, Agriconnect

3. Nufarm Roundup Ready® Canola Systems Trials— 2008 Mark Slatter, Research and Development …

Crop Updates 2009 - Farming Systems, Derk Bakker, Grey Poulish, Steve Lacy, Svetlana Micic, Peter Mangano, Tony Dore, Alan Lord, Vivien Vanstone, Helen Hunter, Sean Kelly, W. K. Anderson, Gary Lang, David Mccarthy, Ruhi Ferdowsian, Ian Rose, Andrew Van Burgel, David Ferris, Rob Grima, Natalie Hogg, John Davis, Jarrad Martin, Pippa Michael, Robert Belford, Kawsar P. Salam, Roy Murray-Prior, David Bowran, Moin U. Salam, Tim Scanlon, Len Wade, Megan Ryan, Megan Abrahams, Chad Reynolds, Caroline Peek, Dennis Van Gool, Kari-Lee Falconer, Daniel Gardiner, Geoff Anderson, Siva Sivapalan, Tim Mcclelland, James Hunt, Zvi Hochman, Bill Long, Dean Holzworth, Anthony Whitbread, Stephen Van Rees, Peter Devoil, Yvette Oliver, Michael Robertson, Peter Stone

Crop Updates

This session covers nineteen papers from different authors:

Decision support technology

1. The use of high resolution imagery in broad acre cropping, Derk Bakker and Grey Poulish, Department of Agriculture and Food

2. Spraywise decisions – online spray applicatiors planning tool, Steve Lacy, Nufarm Australia Ltd

3. Testing for redlegged earthmite resistance in Western Australia, Svetlana Micic, Peter Mangano, Tony Dore and Alan Lord, Department of Agriculture and Food

4. Screening cereal, canola and pasture cultivars for Root Lesion Nematode (Pratylenchus neglectus), Vivien Vanstone, Helen Hunter and Sean Kelly,Department of Agriculture and Food

Farming Systems Research

5. …

39th Annual Wku Student Research Conference, Student Research Council, Western Kentucky University

Student Research Conference Select Presentations

No abstract provided.

Ultra Lightweight Web Applications: A Single-Page Wiki Employing A Partial Ajax Solution, Michael J. Rees

Michael J Rees

The overloaded term Web 2.0 web site usually connotes an interactive web application that offers features normally associated with free-standing applications running directly under the control of an operating system. Such an interactive web applications, also known as a rich internet application (RIA), run within web browsers and must download XHTML and client-side scripts to control user interactivity. Via a variety of technologies the web server must provide a storage mechanism to support the RIA and the presentation of dynamic data in the browser interface. Such storage may be of large volume and bring concomitant bandwidth, response and server storage …

Taxonomy Of Business Ethics Theories, Grace S. Thomson

Dr. Grace S. Thomson

An increasing interest on ethics in business has resulted in a fruitful production of scholarly research that provides business leaders and decision-makers with references to bridge theory and practice (Cherry, Lee, and Chien, 2003). For an effective application of business ethics theories, it is necessary to comprehend their domains, their external and internal logic, and the specific applications to the ethical issues under analysis (Wempe, 2008).

This document presents a taxonomy of 11 ethical theories applied to business ethics that incorporate grounded theory and conceptual frameworks. As a basis for the construction of this taxonomy, the selection of the theories …

Ua35/1 Doers & Deeds Vol. 7, No. 9, Wku Provost

WKU Archives Records

Newsletter created by the WKU Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs to highlight the activities of faculty, staff and alumni.

A Life Cycle Perspective On Online Community Success, Alicia Iriberri '06, Gondy Leroy

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Using the information systems lifecycle as a unifying framework, we review online communities research and propose a sequence for incorporating success conditions during initiation and development to increase their chances of becoming a successful community, one in which members participate actively and develop lasting relationships. Online communities evolve following distinctive lifecycle stages and recommendations for success are more or less relevant depending on the developmental stage of the online community. In addition, the goal of the online community under study determines the components to include in the development of a successful online community. Online community builders and researchers will benefit …

A Hybrid Scatter Search For The Discrete Time/Resource Trade-Off Problem In Project Scheduling, Mohammad Ranbar, Bert De Reyck, Fereydoon Kianfar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We develop a heuristic procedure for solving the discrete time/resource trade-off problem in the field of project scheduling. In this problem, a project contains activities interrelated by finish-start-type precedence constraints with a time lag of zero, which require one or more constrained renewable resources. Each activity has a specified work content and can be performed in different modes, i.e. with different durations and resource requirements, as long as the required work content is met. The objective is to schedule each activity in one of its modes in order to minimize the project makespan. We use a scatter search algorithm to …

Voting In Group Support Systems : Theory, Implementation, And Results From An Exploratory Study, Kung-E Cheng

Dissertations

Group decision making is essential in organizations. Group Support Systems (GSS) can aide groups in making decisions by providing tools and process support. GSS is especially useful for geographically or temporally distributed groups. Researchers of GSS have pointed out that convergence processes are hard to accomplish in GSS. Voting tools in GSS can be a valuable asset in alleviating the difficulty of convergence processes because voting is a concise communication of individual preferences with a well defined procedure that is accepted by group members. In addition, voting results can serve as a group memory of the convergence processes. Field observations …

Collaborative Learning Utilizing A Domain-Based Shared Data Repository To Enhance Learning Outcomes, David J. Lubliner

Dissertations

A number of learning paradigms have postulated that knowledge formation is a dynamic process where learners actively construct a representation of concepts integrating information from multiple sources. Current teaching strategies utilize a compartmentalized approach where individual courses contain a small subset of the knowledge required for a discipline. The intent of this research is to provide a framework to integrate the components of a discipline into a cohesive whole and accelerate the integration of concepts enhancing the learning process. The components utilized to accomplish these goals include two new knowledge integration models; a Knowledge Weighting Model (KWM) and the Aggregate-Integrate-Master …

Sla Automated Negotiation Manager For Computing Services, Halina Kaminski, Mark Perry

Mark Perry

Success in today’s marketing arena can often depend on companies embracing effective new technologies and integrating them into their business model. In the computing service supply industry, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are commonly prepared and signed agreements between the service provider and its customers. SLAs should match business needs of both sides of the agreement as closely as possible. This paper focuses on at the steps and activities that the service provider can take to facilitate agreement. It proposes an automated way for creating SLA’s from a set of Service Level Objectives (SLOs). The SLA should achieve business goals, including …

E-Business: Revolution, Evolution, Or Hype?, T. Coltman, T. M. Devinney, A. Latukefu, D. F. Midgley

Tim Coltman

As the Internet continues to grow in size and capability, many firms are implementing Web-based applications and Internet-derived economic change continues to occur. If this change is revolutionary, now or in the near future, then many managers will be required to rethink their firm strategies and managerial responses in a profound way. On the other hand, if the change is simply evolutionary, it will apply more to some firms than to others, and pre-Internet strategies and managerial responses will still be appropriate in many circumstances. While it is premature to categorize e-business as revolutionary, e-business is not a silver bullet, …

The Value Of Managerial Beliefs In Turbulent Environments: Managerial Orientation And E-Business Advantage, T. Coltman, T. M. Devinney, D. F. Midgley

Tim Coltman

There is a great divide between the degree to which academic research accounts for the role of managerial discretion in firm performance and the weight given by the popular press and financial community to the importance of the management of an organization. The purpose of this paper is to bridge this gap by quantifying the way managerial beliefs influence the quality of firm performance in a turbulent environment based on e-business. An e-business research setting is used that is associated with a situation of environmental turbulence to allow for sufficient variance in managerial beliefs to measure their effect on firm …

Walking Box Ranch Planning And Design Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending April 10, 2009, Margaret N. Rees

Walking Box Ranch

• UNLV faculty and PLI scientists and interpreters participated in the 50% Design Concept Plan meeting, March 25-27 at UNLV-PLI and Walking Box Ranch (WBR), and provided comments toward proposed concepts for the museum and field, research, and training center at Walking Box Ranch.
• UNLV is continuing to work with the Architectural Resources Group (ARG) under our SAT grant, to complete Master and Preservation Plans that will guide the SNPLMA-funded museum and field station projects now underway.
• The National Historic Register nomination process, initiated under the SAT grant, was approved and WBR was placed on the NPS National Register of Historic …

A Methodology To Allow Rural Extension Professionals To Build (With Don Kerr And John Gammack), Shah Jahan Miah

Dr Shah Jahan Miah

Expert systems (ES) development technology has been used to build rural business applications in the past but these have usually been developed using traditional expert systems shells. This paper introduces a new architecture for the development of a design environment where the domain experts can build a knowledge base for target-specific ES for rural business operators. The system allows rural business operators to use their own knowledge in building their own, target-specific ES for tailored development to their own specific requirements. At this stage, this reusable design environment caters for the Australian dairy industry but in the long run we …

Exploratory Study Of The Download Speed Of Leading University Hospitality And Tourism Department Websites Worldwide, Steven Chan, Rosanna Leung, Rob Law, Wen Shi

Hospitality Review

Increased broadband penetration (BP) rates around the world have encouraged web designers to include more web content and additional functions on their web sites, thereby enhancing the richness and playfulness of the information. However, it is often very difficult for web surfers who are still using narrowband connections to access such web sites. Many university web sites target international audiences; therefore their download performance should be considered, as it may directly influence the user experience. This exploratory study examined 331 university hospitality and tourism department web sites in 37 countries. The empirical results showed that entry web pages of universities …

Demographic, Behavioral And Perceptual Comparisons Of U.S Visitor Experience With Group Package Tours And Free Independent Travel To China, Mark A. Bonn, Howook "Sean" Chang, Jerome Agrusta, H. Leslie Furr, Woo Gon Kim

Hospitality Review

U.S. visitor demand for the China travel experience is anticipated to rise significantly through 2105, causing the Chinese government to employ 100 million service providers over the next six years and raising concern about service delivery and perceptions of the on-site China experience. In an effort to better understand these issues concerning U.S. visitors, this study investigated two specific types of U.S. travelers to China: Group Package Tour (GPT) visitors and Free Independent Travel (FIT) visitors. Results indicated that GPT visitors were more likely to be older and have higher household income than FIT visitors. Four trip-related characteristics of GPT …

The Lookup Technique To Replace Nested-If Formulas In Spreadsheet Programming, Thomas A. Grossman Jr., O Ozluk, J Gustavson

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Spreadsheet programmers often implement contingent logic using a nested-IF formula even though this technique is difficult to test and audit and is believed to be risky. We interpret the programming of contingent logic in spreadsheets in the context of traditional computer programming. We investigate the “lookup technique” as an alternative to nested-IF formulas, describe its benefits for testing and auditing, and define its limitations. The lookup technique employs four distinct principles: 1) make logical tests visible; 2) make outcomes visible; 3) make logical structure visible; and 4) replace a multi-function nested-IF formula with a single-function lookup formula. It can be …

An Hsus Report: The Implications Of Farm Animal-Based Bioenergy Production, The Humane Society Of The United States

Impact of Animal Agriculture

As the current and potential impacts of climate change become more evident and increasingly urgent, entities such as governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are seeking out non-fossil fuelbased sources of energy to mitigate those effects. In addition, many governments are investigating ways to promote their own domestic energy sources as a result of rising oil prices. Bioenergy—made from recently living organic matter, such as plants, agricultural waste and crop residue, meat processing wastes, or farmed animals’ fats and manure—has quickly become one of the fastest growing, and controversial, alternative energy sources. Globally, production of biofuels, generally used for transport, …