Business Commons^™

Covid-19, Labor Demand, And Government Responses: Evidence From Job Posting Data, Xiaobing Shuai, Christine Chmura, James Stinchcomb

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Using high-frequency job advertisement data, this paper evaluates dynamics among COVID-19, labor market, and government policies. We find that COVID-19 has caused a significant decline in labor demand, by as much as 30%, measured by the number of job advertisements. But the pandemic did not result in noticeable changes in advertised wages. Regarding the roles of government policies, the study finds that the “stay-at-home” measures implemented by states appeared to suppress labor demand. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) program helps to stabilize the advertised wages, but also suppresses labor demand. Finally, the pandemic may increase labor demand for certain healthcare-related …

The “Right” Recipes For Security Culture: A Competing Values Model Perspective, Hwee-Joo Kam, Thoma Mattson, Dan J. Kim

Management Faculty Publications

This study argues that the effect of perceived organizational culture on the formation of security-related subjective norms and the level of compliance pressure will vary based on how the employees perceive their organization’s cultural values. These perceptions reflect on the assumptions and principles that organizations use to guide their security-related behaviors. To make these arguments, we adopt the competing values model (CVM), which is a model used to understand the range of organizational values and resulting cultural archetypes.

Making Energy Metrics Relevant To Service Firms: From Energy Conservation To Energy Productivity, Randle D. Raggio, Peter Ekman, Steve Thompson

Marketing Faculty Publications

Although energy conservation and reduction in environmental impact are on the international and most national agendas, service firms rarely include energy consumption metrics in their strategic decision-making. One reason for the omission is that for service industries, firm level energy utilization is most commonly measured in kilowatt hours per square meter of office space where changes often related to the space rather than the firm performance. The measure also presents several problems for firms in service industries. First, energy conservation and reduction may be counterproductive for service firms that are growing and require energy to sustain that growth. Second, it …

The Passion Bug: How And When Do Leaders Inspire Work Passion?, Violet Ho, Marina N. Astakhova

Management Faculty Publications

Drawing from signaling theory, we propose a work passion transfer model where leaders' passion is transmitted to employees through the former's leadership style and is contingent on employees' perceived importance of performance to self-esteem (IPSE). Data from 201 supervisor–employee dyads from the health-care industry show that leaders' harmonious passion led to employees' harmonious passion through charismatic leadership, whereas contingent reward leadership accounted for the transfer of obsessive passion; IPSE did not play a moderating role for either form of passion. Results from a supplementary study further reveal that the link between leadership and employee passion operated through employees' perception of …

Chronic Disease Management: How It And Analytics Create Healthcare Value Through The Temporal Displacement Of Care, Steve M. Thompson, Johnathan Whitaker, Rajiv Kohli, Craig Jones

Finance Faculty Publications

The treatment of chronic diseases consumes 86% of U.S. healthcare costs. While healthcare organizations have traditionally focused on treating the complications of chronic diseases, advances in information technology (IT) and analytics can help clinicians and patients manage and slow the progression of chronic diseases to result in higher quality of life for patients and lower healthcare costs.

We build on prior research to introduce the notion of temporal displacement of care (TDC), in which IT and analytics create healthcare value by displacing the time at which providers and patients make interventions to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs. We propose …

Passion At Work: A Meta-Analysis Of Individual Work Outcomes, Jeffrey M. Pollack, Violet Ho, Ernest H. O'Boyle, Bradley L. Kirkman

Management Faculty Publications

Academic research on passion is much more complex than the extant literature or popular press portray. Although research on work-related passion has progressed rapidly over the last decade, much remains unknown. We are now just beginning to recognize the different theoretical underpinnings and empirical operationalizations that work passion research has adopted, and the confusion this has generated hampers our understanding of the construct and its relationship to workplace outcomes. Accordingly, we use a meta-analytic examination to study the work-related outcomes of three dominant literature streams of work passion: general passion, dualistic passion (i.e., harmonious passion and obsessive passion), and role-based …

The Liability Of Disruption, Valentina Marano, Stephen Tallman, Hildy J. Teegan

Management Faculty Publications

Research summary. We study the internationalization-related legitimacy challenges of firms with disruptive business models by using a case comparison of leading sharing economy companies Airbnb and Uber. We show that they are insulated from many traditional legitimacy challenges to multinationals entering host markets, but exposed to others that have not been noted previously. Specifically, we identify a novel market-entry legitimacy challenge, ‘liability of disruption,’ which manifests as regulatory, incumbent business and societal pushback against firms with disruptive business models. After presenting our cross-case analysis, we theorize about the nature and impacts of these three distinct but interconnected forms of host …

Uber, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Bryant Holden, Kelli Mckenna, Scott Mcquiddy, Alex Wiles

Robins Case Network

Uber focuses primarily on the ride-hailing industry, which puts the company in direct competition with regular taxis. The company is like a lot of tech-driven, fast growing entrepreneurial firms in that it still struggles for profitability. Also, the popularity of this new form of transportation has put the company and its close competitors, such as Lyft, in the spotlight of government lawmakers and regulators. If they classify Uber drivers as employees rather than independent contractors, it could dramatically alter the Uber business model. This case is written in the aftermath of the ouster of one of the company’s co-founders as …

Human Capital Is Not Enough: How Offshore Bpo Professionals Use Social Support To Deal With Strenuous Work Conditions, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Violet Ho, Sunil Mithas, Dongwon Lee

Management Faculty Publications

The past decade has witnessed explosive growth in the segment of information technology (IT) professionals who work in the offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. BPO positions are highly regimented and standardized with coercive and normative controls to deter employees from deviating from prescribed work procedures and exercising independent judgment. Coping with these challenges requires a different set of skills than human capital and technical competencies that are discussed in most prior information systems (IS) research. This paper develops theory on the role of social support in employee compensation, and tests the theory using a unique data set of 8,000+ …

Stakeholder Theory At The Crossroads, Jay B. Barney, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Management Faculty Publications

The stakeholder perspective has provided a rich forum for a variety of debates at the intersection of business and society. Scholars gathered for two consecutive years, first in North American, and then in Europe, to discuss the major issues surrounding what has come to be known as stakeholder theory, to attempt to find common ground, and to uncover areas in need of further inquiry. Those meetings led to a list of “tensions” and a call for papers for this special issue to help address them. In this article we introduce the resulting articles and provide some brief commentary on their …

Debt Covenant Condition And The Relative Use Of Operating Lease And Long-Term Debt, Daniel Gyung Paik, Brandon Byunghwan Lee, Joyce Van Der Laan Smith, Sung Wook Yoon

Accounting Faculty Publications

Purpose: We investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by the constraints on firms in the financial ratios in their debt covenants.

Design/methodology/approach: We determine debt risk profiles using three measures: the ex- ante probability of covenant violation (Demerjian and Owens, 2016), firms in violation of debt covenants, and firms close to covenant violations.

Findings: High-risk firms according to all three measures, on average, have a significantly lower level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a substitute for long-term debt. More interesting, for firms …

Fast Poisson Estimation With High-Dimensional Fixed Effects, Sergio Correia, Paulo Guimarães, Thomas Zylkin

Economics Faculty Publications

In this paper we present ppmlhdfe, a new Stata command for estimation of (pseudo) Poisson regression models with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects (HDFE). Estimation is implemented using a modified version of the iteratively reweighted least-squares (IRLS) algorithm that allows for fast estimation in the presence of HDFE. Because the code is built around the reghdfe package, it has similar syntax, supports many of the same functionalities, and benefits from reghdfe’s fast convergence properties for computing high-dimensional least squares problems. Performance is further enhanced by some new techniques we introduce for accelerating HDFE-IRLS estimation specifically ppmlhdfe also implements a novel and …

Digital Transformation Of Global Business Processes: The Role Of Dual Embeddedness, Peter Ekman, Peter Thilenius, Steven M. Thompson, Jonathan W. Whitaker

Management Faculty Publications

While much existing research on MNC digital transformation has followed a linear design and implementation logic using cross-sectional data, the multiple and divergent needs of headquarters (HQ) and subsidiaries suggest that MNC digital transformation actually involves a more iterative journey. In this paper, we apply the theoretical perspective of embeddedness to better define the complexities of MNC digital transformation, and identify how HQ and subsidiaries can navigate the complexities. This paper presents a longitudinal multi-case study of five Forbes Global 2000 firms that are HQ in Europe with large subsidiaries in the U.S. We find that the process of digital …

Dynamics Of Country Image: Evidence From Malaysia, Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, Zafar U. Ahmed, Irfan Ahmed, Tan Hui Min

International Business Faculty Publications

Purpose – Previous research has posited country image to operate at two levels: the country’s macro image, based on general politico-economic descriptors of the country, and the country’s micro image, based on perceptions of products from the country. The purpose of this paper is to further explore this premise in a practical study, using a psychometric assessment of macro and micro country images by ascertaining the nature of differences in macro and micro images of leading exporters, the USA and China, for consumers in Malaysia, a top import destination of US and Chinese goods; the images of Malaysian goods were …