Business Commons^™

The Impact Of Medical Device Usability And Accessibility Information On Purchasing Decisions Of People Without Disabilities, Maysam M. Ardehali

Theses and Dissertations

The disparity between people with and without disabilities in timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment is exacerbated by inaccessible medical devices. The industry appears reluctant to address the shortcomings or provide usability and accessibility information to enhance the purchasing decisions of people with disabilities. This reluctance is mainly caused by the lack of market motivation based on perceptions of market size and the profitability of investments in accessibility evaluation and improvement. This study aims to challenge this notion by demonstrating that usability and accessibility information do not solely benefit what may be considered a “niche market,” and the purchasing decisions of …

An Internatural Communication Study Of Identity Within Nonprofit Animal Shelters, Samentha Emily Sepúlveda

Theses and Dissertations

In a two-part study of this dissertation project, I relied on qualitative research methods to examine the stories of animal shelter employees and volunteers—stories about animal shelters, animal sheltering, and shelter animals—to analyze communication processes that shape staff-identity, organizational-identity, and organizational identification. This project was guided by the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) approach, which frames communication as not simply something that happens within an organization, but rather argues organization happens in communication. Furthermore, contributing to internatural communication research, this project explored identity and identification from a “more-than human” perspective. Relating CCO and internatural communication to research in this dissertation …

Memes And Copyright: Article 13, Branding, And Digital Remix Culture, Yasemin Beykont

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the impact of the EU digital copyright directive, Article 13, on memes and internet culture. Due to their transformative nature, it is tricky to fit memes into a traditional copyright framework. Article 13’s filter algorithms will be coded to detect posts that make use of intellectual property, thereby complicating the use of copyrighted images drawn from film and television. This study includes a discourse analysis of news coverage of Article 13 to explore how various groups characterized the value of meme culture and the threats posed by the new directive. It also includes a textual analysis of …

Production Of Native Advertising In The New Media Economy, Siddhant Dwivedee

Theses and Dissertations

The need to study the production of advertising content from an academic standpoint, particularly advertising content that mimics or is embedded in other editorial content, in some form or the other, is greater than ever. Emerging marketing techniques such as native advertising, content marketing, and sponsored content have disrupted traditional media eco-systems and created a new media economy. While traditional advertising research is skewed in the favor of the consumer experience, researching the production and the lived experiences of journalists involved in the production of native advertising can yield promising results.

This project discusses native ethnographic fieldwork that has been …

Business-School Partnerships In Career And Technical Education, Michael E. Trimberger

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

BUSINESS-SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS IN CAREER AND

TECHNICAL EDUCATION

by

Michael E. Trimberger Jr.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2019

Under the Supervision of Professor Dr. Elise Frattura

Public education in Wisconsin has come under harsh political scrutiny in recent years. Schools have been asked to reduce budgets and use the tools provided through legislative changes. The reduction of budgets has not come with a reduction of expectations for our schools. Since 2011, high school principals have been forced to implement Academic Career Plans and ensure that every student graduate college and career ready along with their already comprehensive list of requirements. …

Essays In Financial Economics, Kamilla Kasymova

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays concerning financial economics.

In the first essay, I focus on the role of the life insurance in the financial markets and the factors that drive the development of life insurance industry. The essay examines the causality of the banking sector development on the development of the life insurance market measured by the total premiums received by life insurers using panel estimation for about 90 countries over the period 1996-2010. I employ the dynamic System Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique to resolve the endogeneity problem between the development of the life insurance and the …

Comparing Self-Disclosures And Disclosures Of Co-Owned Private Relationship Information (Copri) In The Workplace: Comfort, Frequencies, And Motivations For Disclosing, Emily Anne Mueller

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals self-disclose (SD) private information to increase intimacy, build trust, and to give or receive social support. When private information is self-disclosed and shared between two people, it is co-owned. For individuals in romantic relationships their private information and co-owned private relationship information (COPRI) is shared in displaced contexts. One context in which such disclosures can be studied is the workplace, where differences in these two types of disclosures can be compared. A sample of 308 individuals was surveyed to compare differences between SDs and disclosures of COPRI in relation to comfort disclosing, disclosure frequency, motivations for disclosing. Additionally, comparisons …

Elements Of Capacity In Hmong Community-Based Organizations, Shuayee Ly

Theses and Dissertations

Capacity building efforts in for-profit and non-profit organizations are thought to be positively associated with increasing organizational effectiveness. As a result, organizational capacity research on non-profit organizations continues to expand as federal funding, charitable giving, and private donations decrease or remain stagnant. With less funding opportunities in combination with the increasing number of non-profit organizations and for-profit organizations competing for scarce resources, how to increase organizational capacity is one area of research scholars are pushing for further analysis. This dissertation continues that analysis through a case study of Hmong mutual assistance associations in Wisconsin and asks: What factors hinder the …

Three Essays On International Credit Market And Monetary Policy, Anni Huang

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation studies the behavior of international credit flow and the associated monetary policy spillover effect. In the first chapter, I am interested in decomposing the long-run variations and the short-run variations of US dollar denominated credit in emerging market economies. This paper uses a multivariate correlated unobserved component model to study the dynamic relationship among dollar credit in emerging market economies, US interest rates and the dollar index. The results from this model suggest that the transitory shocks to dollar credit in emerging market economies are highly negatively correlated with the transitory shocks to the US interest rate and …

A Hero A Minute: The Manufacture Of Aura And Rarity In The World Of Sports Memorabilia And Rapid Commemoration, Roger C. Draeger

Theses and Dissertations

This is a study of the contemporary sports memorabilia industry and its surrounding culture through the analysis of a pair of its biggest providers. The following research explores the business model of Steiner Sports and examines its methods concerning pieces of game-used memorabilia and personal artifacts. The workings of Fanatics Authentic are also evaluated through the analysis of its specific line of In-Focus photographs and its sports memorabilia show held in the spring of 2016. The examination of both companies reveals techniques of manufacturing both rarity and aura that exist in the sports memorabilia industry. Steiner’s focus on providing intimate …

Growing Food Equity: A Participant Observation Exploring The Role Of Communication In A Nonprofit Organization’S Work To Improve Food Access In Urban Areas, Samantha Jane Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the concept of food equity and a nonprofit organization in Milwaukee, Victory Garden Initiative, that is working towards food equity by increasing food access in the city. The work explores issues of inadequate food access, urban development, and other nonprofit organizations working towards food equity. Through participant observation and interviews with VGI, the researcher found that a small nonprofit organization like Victory Garden Initiative is still bound by time, financial, and staffing constraints. In order for nonprofit organizations to market and run effective programming, they need to be efficient with limited resources, take advantage of any research …

Strategic Inventories In A Supply Chain With Vertical Control And Downstream Cournot Competition, Vijayendra Viswanathan

Theses and Dissertations

Strategic Inventory (SI) has been an area of increased interest in theoretical supply chain literature recently. Most of the work so far however, has only considered a supply chain without downstream competition between retailers. Competition is ubiquitous in most market situations, hence, interactions between SI and retailer competition merits study as a first step in bringing the conversations and insights from this stream of literature to the real world.

We present here a two-period and a three-period model of one manufacturer supplying an identical product to two retailers who form a Cournot duopoly. We also study a Commitment contract, where …

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 …

Three Essays On The Effects Of Appraisal, Cultural, Emotional, And Cognitive Factors On Information Technologies Acceptance And Use, Chun-Lung Huang

Theses and Dissertations

In essay 1, we propose a model, which utilized Lazarus and Folkman’s Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Emotion or Appraisal Theory (1984, 1987) as a structural foundation to lay out the nomological relationships among a person’s personal, cognitive, and emotional factors in predicting technology use behaviors. Emotion, likes many social and psychological factors, is challenging to give a full-consensus definition, and has been treated as a polar counterpart of cognition. Lazarus and Folkman’s Appraisal Theory suggested that when a person is facing a (disruptive) event, he or she appraises the possible outcomes (we suppose that appraising is a form of cognitive …

Veteran As Leader: The Lived Experience With Army Leader Development, Michael James Kirchner

Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study examined the lived leader development experience of Post 9/11 Army veterans while serving in the armed forces. At least $10-$15 billion is spent annually on leadership development in the United States and human resource executives claim developing leaders is their number one priority over the next five years. Simultaneously, companies actively hiring veterans claim the former service member's leadership abilities are their most desired quality. Inspection of the Army’s leader development program offers an opportunity for employers to integrate revised approaches in their own leadership development initiatives.

A purposive sample of ten Army veterans—six males and four …

Three Research Essays On Human Behaviors In Social Media, Jiao Wu

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media (SM) has grown to be one of the most popular Internet technologies for individual users and has fostered a global community. For instance, recent statistics reveal that monthly active users of Facebook are almost 1.5 billion by Mar 2015. At the same time, 20% of internet users in the US are expected to have Twitter accounts. This figure has grown from 15.2% in 2012, and is expected to rise to 24.2% by 2018 (Twitter 2015).

People like spending their time on SM to track the latest news, seek knowledge, update personal status, and connect with friends. It is …

"Be A Sturdy Oak:" The Art Of Manliness And Rebranding Masculinity In 21st Century America, Leslie J. Peckham

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the ways the blog, The Art of Manliness, negotiates a rebranding of masculinity through nostalgia-based marketing initiatives and individualistic language and perspectives. This blog, dedicated to the self-improvement of the modern man, relies on “intentionality” and makes room for both traditional forms of masculine consumption and progressive masculine domesticity. The thesis begins by illustrating the ways marketing initiatives have had a hand in creating masculinity and the ways society has adopted or rejected these representations. It goes on to discuss how a contemporary blog on masculinity, The Art of Manliness, has incorporated some of these marketing techniques …

Impact Of Monetary Uncertainty And Economic Uncertainty On Money Demand In Africa, Alice Kones

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role that economic uncertainties and monetary uncertainties play in the money demand function for 21 African countries. The Auto-regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) and F-test approach are employed using quarterly time series data covering the period from 1971I-2012IV. In particular, this paper aims to demonstrate both short and long-run relationships between the dependent variables, Real Money Aggregate (M2), and the independent variables that include real income (Y), inflation rate nominal effective exchange rate (NEX), output uncertainty (VY), and monetary uncertainty (VM). We apply GARCH methodology to approximate the uncertainty measures. The empirical results show that except for …

Identity, Value, And Power: A Qualitative Study Of The Complexity Of The Working Relationship Between Technical Communicators And Subject Matter Experts, Tammy Joann Rice-Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

The working relationship between Technical Communicators (TCs) and their Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can impact such key TC goals as adding valuable contributions, engaging in successful collaboration, and producing quality documentation. Despite the primacy of this relationship, no systematic, qualitative research study in our field has yet examined the depth or breadth of the TC/SME relationship.

To investigate the nature and impact of the TC/SME relationship, I conducted a two-part, qualitative study to explore how TCs and SMEs define the role, value, and power of the TC; identify the behaviors TCs and SMEs report as helpful and damaging in their …

Giving To Be Seen: The Influence Of Facebook Charitable Advertisements On Conspicuous Donation Behavior, Lei Jia

Theses and Dissertations

The arduous financial environments that nonprofit organizations face today motivate nonprofits to continuously search and leverage new communication platforms such as social media to approach a wider individual donor base. This thesis examines whether a Facebook charitable appeal promoting a donation via Facebook Gifts may attract

Facebook users to give for conspicuousness (a public display of a donation behavior). Findings of this thesis revealed a gender difference in responses to the Facebook charitable appeal due to the gender difference in self-construals such that men were more likely to give via Facebook Gifts when the ad promoting the donation via Facebook …

A Study Of Transformational Initiatives And Social Capital, Craig Dean Plain

Theses and Dissertations

A STUDY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL INITIATIVES AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Organizations seek to improve themselves. They do so to become more efficient, to increase sales...indeed, to survive. Many have implemented various initiatives to transform themselves. For some, these efforts have paid off. Companies such as General Electric, Motorola, Allied Signal, and others have claimed billions of dollars in cost reductions and increases in revenue (Altinkemer, Ozcelik, & Ozdemir, 2011; Lucier & Seshadri, 2001). Such successes have driven many others to implement these transformational initiatives. Yet the failure rate hovers around 70% (Kotter J. P., 1995).

This study sought to expand the body …

Examining Generational Differences In The Workplace: Work Centrality, Narcissism, And Their Relation To Employee Work Engagement, Judith L. Fenzel

Theses and Dissertations

In the workplace of today, an unprecedented four generations of workers work side by side. While this blend of generations adds valuable diversity to the workforce, it also adds complexity.

Despite popular interest in the subject of generations in the workplace, systematic research of the specific generational differences of work centrality, narcissism, and their relation to employee engagement is limited. It is vital to examine the possibility of significant generational differences in order for HRD practitioners and scholars to understand the focus and direction of strategies intended to improve individual and organizational performance. Using a quantitative research methodology, an online …

Three Essays In Labor Economics, Benjamin Jack Van Kammen

Theses and Dissertations

There are three chapters in this dissertation, each of which consists of a journal-length article. They are on the following subjects.

The first chapter uses ordinances in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. to measure the effects of mandated paid sick leave on employment and wages. Using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, an employment increase is observed in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. relative to places without an ordinance. This evidence suggests that sick leave mandates correct a market failure of under-provision of benefits.

The second chapter uses a novel measure of distance based on the O*Net Content Model …