Business Commons^™

Latest Research Summaries (Migrants And Refugees)

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

Lifting Hands International, Walker Frahm, Hayley Smith

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

HQ: Utah, USA

Mission: Lifting Hands International (LHI) provides aid to refugees at home and abroad. No politics, simply humanitarian. We respond rapidly to forced migration situations, carefully investigating conditions on the ground, and working with partners to fill gaps in the provision of timely and impactful aid to those in need.

The Impact Of Growth Mindset Training On Entrepreneurial Action Among Necessity Entrepreneurs: Evidence From A Randomized Control Trial, Shad Morris, W. Chad Carlos, Geoffrey Kistruck, Robert Lount, Tumsify Elly Thomas

Faculty Publications

Although entrepreneurship training programs are designed to help necessity entrepreneurs acquire skills and capabilities to take entrepreneurial action, participants in these programs often fail to do so. In partnership with a local government agency, we conducted a randomized field experiment involving 165 entrepreneurs in rural Tanzania where in addition to providing technical-skills training, approximately half of the participants also received ‘growth mindset’ psychological training. Those who received the growth mindset training displayed more entrepreneurial action in their business than those in the control group. Importantly, higher levels of entrepreneurial self efficacy mediated the positive impact on entrepreneurial action displayed by …

Racial Empathy Gap In The Workplace: The Existence Of And Consequences For Racial Workplace Disparity Through Lack Of Empathy, Kathleen Bahr

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Extensive research has been done on racial disparities in the workplace and the racial biases and discrimination that causes and contributes to said disparities. This research explores the existence of and causes for a racial empathy gap in the workplace, focusing on empathy between peers. An experimental study was conducted with a sample of 451 people in the United States and the United Kingdom. Using a scenario experiment, I manipulated the gender and race (randomized between male or female and Black or White) of a co-worker who had a negative event occur in their life. The study showed that there …

Utah's Inland Port: The Future Of Logistics In The Intermountain Region Or Gambling With Taxpayer Money, Austin Simonson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the last 20 years, US imports and consumer demand have been steadily growing with no clear end in sight. Despite this, approximately 40% of all our containerized imports are processed through only two ports – the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles. In 2021, these two locations alone moved over 10 million import containers. In order to help ease the strain on our nationwide supply chain – an issue that came clearly into view during the COVID-19 pandemic – in 2016, the University of Utah submitted an assessment regarding a possible inland port in the …

Elevating The Silicon Slopes, Joseph Evans

Undergraduate Honors Theses

From Utah’s humble beginnings in agriculture and mining, Utah has become an economic powerhouse in the United States, largely due to the rise of Silicon Slopes. Despite the successes of Silicon Slopes, there are still significant shortcomings related to diversity and inclusion in Silicon Slopes that must be remediated if it intends to achieve its economic aspirations and ensure its economic benefits flow to people of all types and backgrounds. This work outlines both the rise of Silicon Slopes as well as existing and potential private- and state-ordered solutions that may be implemented to overcome Silicon Slopes’ existing diversity and …

Latest Research: Summary 1. Climate Change Research And The Search For Solutions: Rethinking Interdisciplinarity

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5C in 2018, the escalated pressure to act on climate change has urged scientists to move past providing information regarding climate change and to helping define solutions. The growing need for solutions has put a spotlight on how different disciplines collaborate through interdisciplinary research approaches.

Nonprofit Spotlight 1: The Hydrous

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

The mission of the Hydrous is to create “open access oceans” so that all people may explore, understand, and engage with marine environments, which are severely threatened by climate change and human impacts.

Nonprofit Spotlight 2: Days For Girls International

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

At Days for Girls International (DfG) we are turning periods into pathways. We increase access to menstrual care and education by developing global partnerships, cultivating social enterprises, mobilizing volunteers, and innovating sustainable solutions that shatter stigma and limitations for women and girls.

Latest Research: Summary 4. Environmental Nonprofit Campaigns And State Competition: Influences On Climate Policy In California

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

In the last three decades, nonprofit organizations have tried to address climate change through specific climate campaigns that are aimed at influencing US government policy. Hall and Taplin (2010) dive into the relationship between nonprofits, levels of US government, and relevant policy.

Nonprofit Spotlight 3: Techcharities (Applied Technology Foundation)

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

The mission of TechCharities is to help low-income families build technical skills and confidence by providing computer resources and basic technical training as they move toward self-reliance.

A Case Study: Do Board Consultants And Funders Have It Wrong?, Mike Burns

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

The following case, a moment in time for a 25+ year-old nonprofit, features a smart, committed, driven, savvy, and uber persuasive nonprofit founder/executive who decided it was time to expand the building. Also featured: a board that has never been more than a figurehead to the executive and the public. This case is intended to highlight that the popular thinking about board and executive as partners may be no more than a false narrative throughout the nonprofit sector that should in-fact be rewritten to reflect more of a reality. As a subplot, this case acknowledges that when a board cannot …

Latest Research: Summary 2. Importance Of Food-Demand Management For Climate Mitigation

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

As the global population rises, demand for food increases across the globe. This demand simultaneously expands unsustainable agriculture practices, which contribute significant amounts of carbon emissions to the atmosphere, primarily through the increase in the number of livestock and production of livestock feed.

Decentralization And Centralization In Sociocratic Organizations—Dynamics, Combinations, And Hybrid Solutions, Ted Rau, Phd

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

The article discusses the interplay between decentralized and centralized aspects of governance in the context of decentralized self-governance and shares learnings from Sociocracy For All’s (SoFA) experience, including that decentralization is an active process that requires preparation, budget, strategy, and information can act as centralizing forces, and decentralization requires different ways of thinking about responsibility and leadership. SoFA is a young membership organization founded in 2016 promoting sociocracy, a governance system with consent-based decision-making in small groups, in nonprofits and other organizations.

World Less Than Satisfied With Climate Efforts, Julie Ray, Mary C. Evans

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) summit that took place in Egypt from November 6 to 18, 2022, nearly 200 nations rushed to seek deals to keep climate goals moving forward. The summit ended with minimal progress and many criticisms that more needs to be done.

To measure how people feel about their country’s efforts to preserve the environment, the Gallup World Poll asks people worldwide if they felt satisfied or dissatisfied with those efforts. Below, we explore the global data from this question and dive into the trend on this question in the United States …

Full Issue - Climate Change

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

Latest Research: Summary 5. A Review On The Impact Of Climate Change On Food Security And Malnutrition In The Sahel Region Of Cameroon

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Climate change has direct and indirect impacts on human health. One indirect impact is food insecurity, which can lead to malnutrition. In the Sahel region of Cameroon, the population regularly experiences high levels of malnutrition, because harsh climate conditions (including extreme drought) have a negative influence on agriculture. In particular, the extreme drought conditions lead to a reduction in agricultural production, an important parameter of food security.

Latest Research: Summary 3. Exploring The Impact Of Climate Change On The Future Of Community-Based Wildlife Conservation

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Rural populations with local, small-scale agricultural economies across southern and eastern Africa have adopted community-based conservation (CBC) as their wildlife governance approach. This approach is based on the idea that communities will sustainably govern their wildlife resources when they “receive an enduring interest in and are able control and profit from those resources” (p. 1). The key to the success of this approach is the people within those communities need to believe that the benefit from CBC outweighs the costs associated with living with human-wildlife conflicts (HWC). Human-wildlife conflicts include killing of crops or livestock, destruction of infrastructure, and human …

Student Engagement In The Hyflex And Online Classrooms: Lessons From The Covid‑19 Pandemic, Karoly Bozan, James Gaskin, Claire Stoner

Faculty Publications

Student engagement is determined by the degree to which students perceive that their psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met as prescribed. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its sudden and dramatic shift to mandatory HyFlex (alternating online and face-to-face student attendance) or online learning only, meant less or no faceto- face interactions with peers and faculty, which had an impact on student motivation and engagement in the classroom, as reflected in the National Survey of Student Engagement. This new educational landscape will likely remain in effect to a certain extent, and, thus, there is a need for a deeper …

Barriers To A Cybersecurity Career: Analysis Across Career Stage And Gender, Justin Scott Giboney, Bonnie Brinton Anderson, Geoffrey A. Wright, Shayna Oh, Quincy Taylor, Megan Warren, Kylie Johnson

Faculty Publications

The demand for cybersecurity professionals is high—especially for women. Efforts to attract women to cybersecurity careers are not meeting goals of equal representation. Researchers have not yet identified a theoretical rationale for the differences. To provide a theoretical rationale, we investigate barriers to a cybersecurity career based on career stages defined by Super (1957) and gender. Concerns about a cybersecurity career differ between girls, young adult women, and mid-career women. Girls feel an un- awareness of opportunity and requisite training, whereas adult women are concerned that they will be undervalued in a male-dominated field, and mid-career women are concerned about …

Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs In Decision Making: Perception Shifts And Goal Activation Bias Decision Thresholds, Jeff Larson, Guy Hawkins

Faculty Publications

A fundamental aspect of decision making is the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT): slower decisions tend to be more accurate, but because time is a scarce resource people prefer to conclude decisions more quickly. The current research adds to the SAT literature by documenting two previously unrecognized influences on the SAT: perception shifts and goal activation. Decision makers’ perceptions of what constitutes a fast or a slow decision, and what constitutes an accurate or inaccurate decision, are based on prior experience, and these perceptions influence decision speed. Similarly, previous experience in a decision context associates the context with a particular decision goal. …

Initial Public Offerings And The Local Economy: Evidence Of Crowding Out, Jess Cornaggia, Matthew Gustafson, Jason Kotter, Kevin Pisciotta

Faculty Publications

We test the effect of going public on economic growth in the areas surrounding IPO firms. We focus on IPO-filing firms, thus ensuring that both treatment and control firms are at similar life cycle stages, and use post-filing stock market fluctuations as an instrument for IPO completion. We show that IPOs that are large relative to the size of their counties lead to a 1.1 percentage point relative reduction in annual county-level establishment growth, with similar effects for employment and population growth. There are no corresponding effects for relatively small IPOs. These negative effects appear to be driven by a …

Transformational Experiences Beyond Borders Study Abroad And The Further Development Of The Experience Impact Scale, Neil Lundberg, Grant Lundberg, Jennifer Brown, Evan Grunvig, Brian Hill

Faculty Publications

Study abroad has become a useful context to examine transformative experiences within the experience typology concept as developed by Duerden et al. (2018). Even more recent work has used study abroad to develop instruments for measuring experience types, such as the Experience Impact Scale (EIS, Lundberg et al., 2021). Initial results from the EIS suggest the need to continue clarifying the characteristics of each experience type. In particular, the transformative experience is of specific interest. The purpose of this study was to further examine transformative experiences as described by those defining their experience as such, and to gain additional insights …

Reduced Audit Quality Acts: A Review And Organizational Model, Troy A. Hyatt, Douglas F. Prawitt, Kyle M. Stubbs

Faculty Publications

With increasing regulatory focus on improving audit quality, research on drivers of audit quality remains important to academics, professionals and regulators. One compelling branch of this research focuses on auditors' intentional actions that reduce audit quality, often referred to in the literature as reduced audit quality acts (RAQAs). This paper provides a review and synthesis of the RAQA literature, including a unifying definition for RAQAs and a model for organizing past and future RAQA research. With the model, we explore antecedents to RAQAs as well as the discovery of, responses to and subsequent consequences of RAQAs. We also discuss potential …

The Effects Of Cryptocurrency Wealth On Household Consumption And Investment, Darren Aiello, Scott R. Baker, Tetyana Balyuk, Marco Di. Maggio, Mark Johnson, Jason Kotter, Emily Williams

Faculty Publications

We use bank transaction data from millions of U.S. households to:

1. Characterize retail crypto traders
2. Explore the drivers of crypto adoption
3. Examine the effect of crypto wealth on consumption and investment
4. Document spillovers of crypto wealth to the local economy

Measurement Error, Fixed Effects, And False Positives In Accounting Research, Jared Jennings, Jung Min Kim, Joshua A. Lee, Daniel Taylor

Faculty Publications

We show theoretically and empirically that measurement error can bias in favor of falsely rejecting a true null hypothesis (i.e., a “false positive”) and that regression models with high-dimensional fixed effects can exacerbate measurement error bias and increase the likelihood of false positives. We replicate inferences from prior work in a setting where we can directly observe the amount of measurement error and show that the combination of measurement error and fixed effects materially inflates coefficients and distorts inferences. We provide researchers with a simple diagnostic tool to assess the possibility that the combination of measurement error and fixed effects …

The Effect Of Patent Disclosure Quality On Innovation*, Travis Dyer, Stephen Glaeser, Mark H. Lang, Caroline Sprecher

Faculty Publications

The patent system grants inventors temporary monopoly rights in exchange for a public disclosure detailing their innovation. These disclosures are meant to allow others to recreate and build on the patented innovation. We examine how the quality of these disclosures affects follow-on innovation. We use the plausibly exogenous assignment to patent applications of examiners who differ in their enforcement of disclosure requirements as a source of variation in disclosure quality. We find that some examiners are significantly more lenient with respect to patent disclosure quality requirements, and that patents granted by these examiners include significantly lower-quality disclosures and generate significantly …

Data Visualization In 10-K Filings, Theodore E. Christensen, Karson E. Fronk, Joshua A. Lee, Karen K. Nelson

Faculty Publications

The Securities and Exchange Commission encourages the presentation of information or data in graphical form to improve users’ ability to understand financial disclosures. We find a dramatic increase in the disclosure of both qualitative and quantitative infographics in 10-K filings over time and substantial cross-sectional variation in firms’ choices regarding image types, data content, and the placement of infographics within 10-Ks. We provide evidence on factors associated with firms’ use of infographics and explore the persistence with which they are disclosed over time. Finally, we investigate the relation between the use of infographics and uncertainty in capital markets.

Managers’ Use Of Humor On Public Earnings Conference Calls, Andrew C. Call, Rachel W> Flam, Joshua A. Lee, Nathan Y. Sharp

Faculty Publications

Despite the prevalence and importance of humor in interpersonal communication, the disclosure literature is silent on the use of humor in the context of corporate communication. Using a sophisticated machine learning algorithm, we identify managers’ successful uses of humor during public earnings conference calls. When managers use humor on an earnings call, stock market returns and analyst forecast revisions following the call are more positive, primarily because of a muted response to negative earnings news. Consistent with managers’ successful use of humor being a favorable signal of future firm performance, we find no evidence of a return reversal over the …

Does Gender And Ethnic Diversity Among Audit Partners Influence Office-Level Audit Personnel Retention And Audit Quality?, Eric R. Condie, Ling Lei Lisic, Timothy Seidel, J. Mike Truelson, Aleksandra "Ally" B. Zimmerman

Faculty Publications

Motivated by prior literature on organizational identification and 23 semistructured interviews with a variety of U.S. audit partners and directors, we examine whether the gender and ethnic diversity of an office’s audit partners influences the retention of the office’s audit professionals and the quality of the audits conducted by the office. Using hand-collected data on U.S. audit partners, we find that greater levels of (or changes in) diversity in office audit partners’ gender and ethnicity are associated with lower (reduced) turnover among office audit professionals and higher (increased) office-level audit quality. To provide further insight into the audit quality results, …