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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Theses/Dissertations

2017

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Articles 1 - 18 of 18

Full-Text Articles in Business

Game Theory For Security Investments In Cyber And Supply Chain Networks, Shivani Shukla Nov 2017

Game Theory For Security Investments In Cyber And Supply Chain Networks, Shivani Shukla

Doctoral Dissertations

In a constantly and intricately connected world that is going digital, cybersecurity is imperative to not just the success but also the survival of a business. The ubiquitous digital transformation is fueled by a convulsive growth of devices and data that are leading important innovations in the domain of cyber-physical systems. However, this growth has also enabled internal and external threats to skyrocket, depicting the inherent dichotomy. With an evolving threat landscape, a perpetrator has to be successful once, while the defenders have to continually succeed in fending-off attacks to protect critical infrastructure and digital assets. Businesses are facing a …


Theory And Practice Of Supply Chain Synchronization, Michael Prokle Nov 2017

Theory And Practice Of Supply Chain Synchronization, Michael Prokle

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, we develop strategies to synchronize component procurement in assemble-to-order (ATO) production and overhaul operations. We focus on the high-tech and mass customization industries which are not only considered to be very important to create or keep U.S. manufacturing jobs, but also suffer most from component inventory burden. In the second chapter, we address the deterministic joint replenishment inventory problem with batch size constraints (JRPB). We characterize system regeneration points, derive a closed-form expression of the average product inventory, and formulate the problem of finding the optimal joint reorder interval to minimize inventory and ordering costs per unit …


Currency Mismatch And Balance Sheet Effects Of Exchange Rate In Turkish Non-Financial Corporations, Serkan Demirkilic Nov 2017

Currency Mismatch And Balance Sheet Effects Of Exchange Rate In Turkish Non-Financial Corporations, Serkan Demirkilic

Doctoral Dissertations

Until the East Asian Crisis of 1990s, literature exclusively focused on the assumed expansionary competitiveness channel of deprecation in the domestic currency. The East Asian and Latin American Crisis of 1990s proved that depreciation in the domestic currency caused fragilities through the deterioration in firms’ balance sheet net- worth. Many have argued that excessive reliance on short-term debt and un-hedged foreign currency borrowings of firms were responsible of fragilities, and resulting poor performances of firms in these countries. The latter body of the literature introduced the contractionary balance sheet effects of foreign currency indebtedness through depreciation, and argued that if …


Rethinking Person-Organization Fit: Operationalization And Measurement Of Perceived Organizational Fit, Ben Bulmash Nov 2017

Rethinking Person-Organization Fit: Operationalization And Measurement Of Perceived Organizational Fit, Ben Bulmash

Doctoral Dissertations

Person-environment (PE) fit research embodies the premise that attitudes and behaviors result not from the person or environment separately, rather, from the relationship between the two. Person-organization (P-O) fit is a key facet of PE fit, which pertains to the similarity or match between individuals and their organizations. A major area of P-O fit research studies the employees’ perception of fit. This line of work asks people to report their fit with the organization, and then correlates this measurement with outcomes of interest such as job satisfaction, intention to leave, and organizational commitment. While fit researchers tend to pay little …


Z-Cube: Mobile Living For Feminist Nomads, Zi Ye Jul 2017

Z-Cube: Mobile Living For Feminist Nomads, Zi Ye

Masters Theses

Homes proclaim our social standing and reflect the trend of the times. This project seeks to explore and redefine the relationship between modern homes and modern women who strive for mobile life styles.

Modernism and globalization have brought us a new way of living that could have never been imagined before— our workspace and homes are no longer limited to a specific unit but have extended to the entire globe. The physical changes compelled by modernity have also complemented the changing role of women. Since the beginning of the 20th century, modern women have expanded their lives outside of their …


Corporate Social Responsibility Authenticity: Csr Authenticity On Consumer Behavioral Intentions Toward A Sport Organization, Soyoung Joo Jul 2017

Corporate Social Responsibility Authenticity: Csr Authenticity On Consumer Behavioral Intentions Toward A Sport Organization, Soyoung Joo

Doctoral Dissertations

While authenticity has been researched as a vital concept in various marketing streams, little is known in regard to consumer perceptions of authenticity in a CSR program and its effects on consumer responses. In particular, prior research on authenticity in CSR has not identified authenticity dimensions that are germane in the context of CSR in sport. The purpose of the current research is to (1) elucidate the key dimensions of CSR authenticity that are appropriate to the context of CSR in sport, (2) develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure authenticity in CSR activities in sport organizations, and (3) …


The Silent Language: The Effects Of Nonverbal Cues On Perception Of Brands In Online And Offline Contexts, Fatima M. Hajjat Jul 2017

The Silent Language: The Effects Of Nonverbal Cues On Perception Of Brands In Online And Offline Contexts, Fatima M. Hajjat

Doctoral Dissertations

Nonverbal cues are an essential part of message creation and interpretation, and are central to many socially meaningful outcomes in interactions in all different types of relationships. Most importantly, nonverbal communication can affect the establishment, maintenance and dissolution of relationships. The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine the effects of nonverbal cues on consumer-brand interactions in both face-to-face communications (FTFC) and computer-mediated communications (CMC). The first essay is dedicated to understanding how the employees’ speech rate affects impressions of the employee and the brand associated with the employee. In general, research has recognized the importance of frontline employees …


Statistical Methods On Risk Management Of Extreme Events, Zijing Zhang Jul 2017

Statistical Methods On Risk Management Of Extreme Events, Zijing Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of the dissertation is the investigation of financial risk analysis methodologies, using the schemes for extreme value modeling as well as techniques from copula modeling. Extreme value theory is concerned with probabilistic and statistical questions re- lated to unusual behavior or rare events. The subject has a rich mathematical theory and also a long tradition of applications in a variety of areas. We are interested in its application in risk management, with a focus on estimating and forcasting the Value-at-Risk of financial time series data. Extremal data are inherently scarce, thus making inference challenging. In order to obtain …


Internationalization And Hotel Performance: Moderating Effects Of Agglomeration, Linda Woo Jul 2017

Internationalization And Hotel Performance: Moderating Effects Of Agglomeration, Linda Woo

Doctoral Dissertations

The relationship between internationalization and performance has been extensively examined in international business studies, but the findings remain mixed. Furthermore, recent studies have failed to reflect the complexity of internationalization and the unique nature of the hotel industry. The relationship between internationalization and hotel performance is not simple: there are many variables in the middle that affect this relationship, and a failure to account for these variables may result in poor hypothesis testing. This study aims to fill these literature gaps by providing a more robust analysis of internationalization-hotel performance relationship. To capture the complex patterns of internationalization, this study …


Navigating The Auditor-Client Relationship During Sensitive Events: Insight On Audit Firm Practices And An Experimental Study, Mary Dodgson Jul 2017

Navigating The Auditor-Client Relationship During Sensitive Events: Insight On Audit Firm Practices And An Experimental Study, Mary Dodgson

Doctoral Dissertations

Maintaining a positive auditor-client relationship is critical for audit firms, particularly during sensitive events. For instance, audit firms state in transparency reports that they take steps to minimize disruption during audit partner rotations, yet it is unclear what these actions entail or the potential effects of these actions on auditor independence and audit quality. I use multiple methods to provide insight into these practices and their related effects. First, I interview 20 audit partners to learn about the process by which audit firms manage the auditor-client relationship during sensitive partner rotation events. Interviewees describe how audit firms identify appropriate partner …


The Struggles Of Living In A Postcard: Tourisms Social And Cultural Influences On A Mountain Community, Elizabeth A. Cartier Jul 2017

The Struggles Of Living In A Postcard: Tourisms Social And Cultural Influences On A Mountain Community, Elizabeth A. Cartier

Doctoral Dissertations

Tourism scholarship is continuously advancing the understanding of tourism development as it positively relates economically and environmentally to tourism-based societies. In recent years, the tourism discipline as a whole has made little progress in identifying the social and cultural impacts of tourism, including questions of why and how local communities’ traditional foundations and defining characteristics are changed, influenced, and challenged by tourists and tourism business development. This dissertation restores the conversation that focuses on how tourism development and consumerism can change the socio-cultural profiles of local communities by addressing the understudied area of the ways in which tourism may affect …


The Impact Of Forecast Roundness, Forecast Uncertainty, And Managers’ Language On Investors’ Judgments, Jessica Osgood Jul 2017

The Impact Of Forecast Roundness, Forecast Uncertainty, And Managers’ Language On Investors’ Judgments, Jessica Osgood

Doctoral Dissertations

Management forecasts can have varying degrees of roundness, including sharp (e.g., a sales growth forecast of 9.73% or 10.27%), explicitly round (e.g., 10.00%), and rounded (e.g., 10%). Prior archival research indicates investors rely less upon round than sharp forecasts (Bamber, Hui, and Yeung 2010), yet it is unclear why this occurs or how contextual features of earnings forecasts moderate this effect. Moreover, this prior research has not distinguished between the effects of explicitly round versus rounded estimates. I provide evidence that the impact of forecast roundness on willingness to invest depends upon forecast uncertainty. That is, rounded sales forecasts enhance …


Multi-Criteria Decision Making When Planning Sustainable Multimodal Transportation Routes In A Linear Corridor, Marie Louis Jul 2017

Multi-Criteria Decision Making When Planning Sustainable Multimodal Transportation Routes In A Linear Corridor, Marie Louis

Doctoral Dissertations

In urban and suburban locations, public transit can be seen as an effective mode of daily transportation. The majority of the time, travelers would seek the cheapest, shortest, and possibly most eco-friendly means of transit. When designing public transit network systems, transportation planners and decision-makers, with input from stakeholders, should strive to optimize transportation services to meet the needs of the population most efficiently and at the lowest cost, that is, providing a transportation system that s the three E's of the sustainability concept: environment, social equity, and economic. Previous studies have focused on sustainability as the primary concern in …


Others’ Reactions To Service Recovery Efforts In Social Media: A Third-Party Justice Perspective, Minwoo Lee Jul 2017

Others’ Reactions To Service Recovery Efforts In Social Media: A Third-Party Justice Perspective, Minwoo Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

Service failures are inevitable incidents in hospitality settings due to the characteristics of hospitality offerings such as intangibility, heterogeneity, and inseparability. When service failures occur, effective service recovery effort should be made in order to redress such failures and improve customer satisfaction because service failures could negatively affect customers’ satisfaction and future behaviors. In the context of social media, firms’ service recovery efforts can be witnessed by the complainant’s family, close friends, other fan page members, and/or even unknown people who are connected and influenced through enormous social networks. However, no prior study has been found to investigate how and …


Sustainability In The Apparel Industry: A Study Of Self-Regulatory Institutions And Logic Hybridization Processes, Yoojung Ahn Jul 2017

Sustainability In The Apparel Industry: A Study Of Self-Regulatory Institutions And Logic Hybridization Processes, Yoojung Ahn

Doctoral Dissertations

Scholars have sought to understand the relationship between organizations and institutions, and research to date has generated findings that speak to both the top down effects of institutions on organizations as enabling and constraining, and the bottom up influence of organizations shaping institutions. This dissertation explores the context of sustainability in the apparel industry and inquires how organizations participate in self-regulation to influence institutional change, using a mixed methods approach to understand this question. In particular, I observe the process of building a specific self-regulatory institution – the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). First, I study the impact of a reputation …


Exploring The Role Of Collective Narcissism In Sport Team Identification, Ben Larkin Jul 2017

Exploring The Role Of Collective Narcissism In Sport Team Identification, Ben Larkin

Doctoral Dissertations

Team identification is among the most widely studied concepts in sport fan behavior. This is largely due to the fact that highly identified fans exhibit drastically different and more avid consumption and purchase behavior compared to those low and/or moderate on team identification. Most notably, this has been manifested in a greater propensity to attend games, watch the team on television, and purchase team merchandise. While the study of team identification has focused both on its development and outcomes, one constant is that scholars have generally assumed team identification to take the form of a healthy and positive team attachment. …


Do I Deserve To Spend? Social Support And Spending Pleasure, Kawon Kim Jul 2017

Do I Deserve To Spend? Social Support And Spending Pleasure, Kawon Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite evidence of people posting their consumption experience on online social networks to fulfill the needs of social support, a systemic understanding of how social support obtained via online social networks affects post-consumption behaviors related to spending remains elusive. This dissertation aims to answer the question of how social support via online social networks affects consumer’s post-consumption behavior by investigating in what form and from whom consumers obtain online social support. To do so, the purpose of this dissertation is to examine how online social support from others influences perceptions of deservingness which then influences spending pleasure. This dissertation focuses …


Affective Responses To Technology Use: Examining The Dark Side, Exploring The Bright Side, David Agogo Jul 2017

Affective Responses To Technology Use: Examining The Dark Side, Exploring The Bright Side, David Agogo

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of individual, affect-related consequences from technology adoption and use is gaining traction in the information systems (IS) discipline. Efforts to explore affective reactions to technology have considered various positive, affective constructs (e.g., enjoyment, computer playfulness, and flow), with a more recent focus on the dark side of technology use and constructs such as technostress, technophobia, and computer anxiety. While some research has examined these negative affective responses to technology, construct definitions and relationships are not well-defined or theoretically grounded. A recent theoretical advance in IS, the Affective Response Model (ARM) categorizes affective responses to technology based on five …