Business Commons^™

A Review Of The Business Capstone: Working With An Education Program, Hanna Tran

University Honors Theses

This review thesis walks through the business capstone process which is a hands-on experience with a local business client. The business client, Company A, is an arts and education program that has reached out to the School of Business's capstone class to help them improve their reach to potential customers and find alternative funding other than student tuition and donations. To achieve these goals, our group conducted several analyses and thorough research combined with our existing business education. Our findings and final recommendations are shown in presentations and a final report that the business client can utilize for their future …

A Capstone Journey In Enterprise Software Consulting For Microsoft: How An Interdisciplinary Philosophy Fosters Critical Thinking And Promotes Cross-Functional Teamwork, Jacob Mccall

University Honors Theses

This capstone review thesis explores the application of strategic innovation and enterprise software with a Portland State University (PSU) School of Business Administration (SBA) interdisciplinary team consulting for Microsoft. Faced with improving pitch meetings with a new target audience of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), Microsoft’s West Coast enterprise software sales team sought consultation from the PSU SBA 2023 Business Honors cohort. This text reflects on the precursors responsible for the consulting project’s success, including the university’s guiding principles, interdisciplinary philosophy, and applicable business practices. The final solution includes insights into CMO types, needs development, a marketing enterprise software visual sales …

The Praxis Of Professional Communication In Simulated Business: Psu Capstone Analysis, Molly Daniels

University Honors Theses

"Let knowledge serve the city" serves not only as Portland State University's motto but also as the guiding intent of the Business Administration capstone program to assist local companies in the city of Portland. This review covers the experience of my participation in the program including the use of education and challenges. While the experience recorded within is atypical due to the unforeseen closure of the participating client, effective communication studies with clients and other students remain pressing. This entailed examining the quantitative and qualitative needs of a hybrid coffee shop and event space and whether changing to a larger …

Business Analysis And Recommendations For Timber, Jared Alexander

University Honors Theses

To close out my PSU school of business experience, I've been placed on a team with five other classmates in the School of Business honors program cohort to help a business owner with some hurdles they are facing in their ventures. Throughout the last nine weeks, my teammates and I conducted a lot of research, and gave four presentations to the business owner. Our final presentation highlighted our final recommendations. The name of the business owner and company have been anonymized for confidentiality. All images featuring the name or logo of the company have been covered.

In this capstone review, …

The Evolution Of Leadership During The Covid-19 Pandemic: An Analysis Of The Research, Luca Patrick Thierry Gregston

University Honors Theses

A crisis, however terrible in its consequences, is also a great opportunity to study and create new models of leadership, to discover how the concept of leadership has evolved over the pandemic. Hence this paper's research question, "How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed the concept and practice of leadership? In the end much of the empirical evidence for what COVID 19 did or didn't change in leadership practices is still relatively ambiguous. So it is too early to say that "business as usual" is gone for good. And COVID furthered and deepened long term trends, accelerating the great resignation and …

Traits Of Leadership, Alinta Magdalene Ali

University Honors Theses

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the correlation between leadership styles, introverted and extroverted trails, and their impact on effective leadership within the workplace. The first section defines leadership and introduces leadership styles: servant, transformational, identity, autocratic, democratic, and coaching. The discuss delves into the distinctive characteristics, advantages, and obstacles associated with each leadership style, highlighting how each leadership prioritize personalized guidance and assistance for team members. The second section explores the introvert and extrovert aspects and how they complement each other in the workplace. Effective leaders possess the ability to adjust their personality traits, exhibiting both social …

Leading For Success: Leader-Member Exchange Relationships And Employee Creative Self-Efficacy, Mary Joy Wytsma

University Honors Theses

In today's competitive and ever-evolving business landscape, creativity has become a major focus for managers, leaders, and organizations. However, there are downsides to making creative employees the end-all goal. Instead, managers and leaders should focus on fostering employee creative self-efficacy via high-quality Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) relationships. Within team settings, LMX works in tandem with Team-Member Exchange (TMX), and these relationships allow employees to experience positive physiological state, social persuasion, vicarious experience, and mastery experience, the four drivers of self-efficacy. Employees with high levels of creative self-efficacy experience increased creativity, job satisfaction, and motivation, making them major assets to teams and …

Portland State University Spring Symposium Report, Stephen Percy, Amy Mulkerin, Anna Ruby, Andria Johnson, Rowanna L. Carpenter, Jill Emery, Jennifer H. Allen, Kevin Neely, Lindsey Wilkinson, Cara Meyer, Michelle Janke, Jen Gray-O'Connor, Brad Simmons, Kelly Fry

Office of the President Publications and Presentations

The 2023 Spring Symposium arose in response to a request to PSU administrators in a Faculty Senate Resolution. That resolution noted the high level of interest by the Faculty Senate in both understanding and engaging in the university’s budgeting processes.

The Symposium offered an opportunity for all PSU employees to come together to identify priorities and shared purpose regarding the university’s approach to long term financial planning. The recommendations created during the symposium are being shared with incoming president Ann Cudd to inform her thinking as PSU pursues a path toward financial sustainability.

Table of Contents

04 Statement from President …

Social Media Impact On Small Brick And Mortar Businesses, David N. Bowles

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the implementation of various strategies and goals for small to medium brick-and-mortar enterprises regarding their use of social media. Drawing from primary data collection with small brick-and-mortar businesses within the greater metro area of Portland, Oregon, the value of social media is the ability of an organization to create a sense of value for their consumers while promoting positive relations and enhancing the consumer's ability to interact with an organization on a more personal level. Focusing on the implementation of various strategies and promotional efforts to increase the success of these small businesses and align their organizational …

Developing An Assessment Model For Entrepreneurship Ecosystems Using Hierarchical Decision Model: Case Study Of Riyadh City, Mustafa Kamal Almuzel

Dissertations and Theses

Entrepreneurship is one of the major drivers of economies. Countries that aim to improve their economies by increasing entrepreneurial activities and its effectiveness need to develop an effective entrepreneurship ecosystem. This ecosystem combines a set of domains and factors that create a healthy environment for entrepreneurs. The analysis shows that there is limited research about structured assessment methods to evaluate the entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Therefore, this research objective is to introduce a universal assessment model that can be adopted in different cities for implementing an effective entrepreneurial ecosystem. This will be achieved by addressing three main research questions. 1) What are …

Maturity Model For Customer-Centric Approach In Enterprise: The Case Of E-Commerce And Online Retail Industry, Soheil Zarrin

Dissertations and Theses

The network technologies are changing the dynamics of the interaction between customer and provider. Customers demand closer relationships and higher investment between partners, as well as cooperation between companies to build supporting technologies for their unique needs. Customer-centricity is defined as interaction with the customer through various touchpoints and aggregating these relations to create a position for the customer. Each Customer has a different need and expectation from the provider or seller, and companies need to be flexible enough to fulfill their needs. One of the reasons organizations invest less in customer experience is that they believe they are already …

Building And Expanding Avestor’S Social Media Presence: A Capstone Review, Hope Foley

University Honors Theses

The Business capstone project involves a small team working directly with a local business to provide assistance in achieving a specific goal the company may have for their future. Through research, informational visuals, and presentations to the client, the team presents a final recommendation as to the best option to achieve the company's goal and the most effective way to implement it.

The Impact Of Effective Leadership In Cross-Functional New Product Development Virtual Teams, Obianuju Obiano

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

The emergence of covid-19 has forced a lot of companies to move to virtual remote work. New product development cross-functional teams who meet often or few times in a year are now compelled to transition fully into virtual remote workplace. The question is how they can function effectively with maximum performance as they did in the traditional environment. This paper's main objective of this paper is to investigate and understand how effective leadership management can influence performance, conflict, and knowledge sharing while enhancing cross-functional new product development virtual teams. An in-depth analysis of literature has been conducted in this to …

On Making Experimental Design Choices: Discussions On The Use And Challenges Of Demand Effects, Incentives, Deception, Samples, And Vignettes, Stephanie Eckerd, Scott Duhadway, Elliot Bendoly, Craig R. Carter, Lutz Kaufmann

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

In late 2018, the Journal of Operations Management published an invited methods article by Lonati et al. (2018) to provide guidance to authors on how to design behavioral experiments to achieve the rigor required for consideration in the journal. That article was written as a response to a number of behavioral research submissions to JOM, each dealing with interesting topics but viewed by the editors to possess poor design choices at inception. While the Lonati et al. (2018) piece provides experimental guidance fitting to certain research agendas, questions have arisen concerning whether and how exactly to implement some of the …

Exploring The Role Of Transformational Leaders In The Mentorship Of Top-Level Administrators: A Case Study Of The Veterans Health Administration (Vha) Visn Lead Program, Frederick Giovanni White Jr.

Dissertations and Theses

Despite the proliferation of studies focused on transformational leadership, there is a lack of clarity related to how transformational leaders are developed in public organizations and the impact of mentors in this process. This is particularly troubling given a 2017 Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate that over 44% of the current U.S. workforce is 45 years or older.

In public and private settings, organizations are challenged to develop the competencies critical at higher levels of management in their future leaders, specifically advanced human and conceptual skills. These skills are most useful for emerging leaders that will have the responsibilities to …

Employee Overqualification And Manager Job Insecurity: Implications For Employee Career Outcomes, Berrin Erdogan, Zahide Karakitapoğlu‐Aygün, David Ellis Caughlin, Talya N. Bauer, Lale Gumusluoglu

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this study, we propose that manager job insecurity will moderate the nature of the relationship between perceived overqualification and employee career-related outcomes (career satisfaction, promotability ratings, and voluntary turnover). We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 124 employees and 54 managers working in a large holding company in Ankara, Turkey, collected across five time periods. The results suggested that average perceived overqualification was more strongly, and negatively, related to career satisfaction of employees when managers reported higher job insecurity. Furthermore, employee perceived overqualification was positively related to voluntary turnover when manager job insecurity was high. No direct or …

B-Line Sustainable Urban Delivery: Can Last-Mile Bicycle Delivery Survive The E-Commerce Minefield?, Madeleine Pullman, Jacen Greene, Wanying Shi, Stephan Kaplan

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

As the population of cities in the western United States continues to boom, the demand for retail and wholesale food has followed suit. To deal with the accompanying increase in traffic and congestion from population and business growth, the city of Portland planned to increase bikeways and reduce the use of single-occupant vehicles to less than 30% of total commuters by 2026. Despite efforts to decrease dependence on vehicles, traffic congestion in Portland
continued to increase, and traditional vehicle delivery in the urban area became less and less efficient. As ride-sharing services and online retailers increased their presence in the …

Paints-R-Us Term Project, Tyler Campbell, Skye Gilbreth, Michael Oluwole, Elijah Raffo, Brad Unruh

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

This project will consider a linear product mix optimization problem for a fictional paint company, Paints-R-Us. Paints-R-Us is a wholesale paint manufacturer located in the Pacific Northwest. The Global Production Manager, Steve Brush, has been tasked with maximizing Paints-R-Us’s profit in the upcoming quarter. Steve Brush oversees the global production plan, and in collaboration with the production planners will develop a production plan which optimizes the profits that Paints-R-Us can create in the quarter accounting for the following criteria:

• Demand in the given quarter for each of the 5 paint types that Paints-R-Us produces • The warehousing storage capacity …

Catsvision: Smart Lens Marketing Plan, Neeti Verma, Mert Cihan Tonkal, Chaitali Sunil Sawant, Poonam Ganoskar, John Tacco-Melendez

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

CatsVision is a new product Samsung is interested in developing for improved visibility in low-light conditions. The product is a set of smart contact lenses with graphene coating technology to help generate sharper image for better vision in the people diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa.

Retinitis pigmentosa is a genetic disease that leads to a breakdown and loss of cells in the retina. It is estimated to affect 1 in 3,500 to 1 in 4,000 people in the United States and Europe. This market segment is chosen to act as a launching vehicle for the product to gain acceptance information from …

Interview With Bill Lemman (2019), Bill Lemman, Clarence Hein

Portland State University Oral Histories

In this interview, former Oregon University System Vice-Chancellor and Portland State University administrator Bill Lemman discusses his career in higher education in Oregon with Clarence Hein.

This interview was held on February 21, 2019, at the Portland State University Library.

W.T. “Bill” Lemman has been affiliated with Portland State from its inception. As a Vanport Extension Center student, he had close relationships with many faculty, including VEC founder Stephen Epler. After earning his degree in Business Administration at the University of Oregon in 1949, he returned to Vanport in 1950 as Assistant Business Manager. He returned again in 1959, eventually …

The Main Sources For Technology Management Research: A Bibliometric Approach, Tugrul Daim, H Yalcin

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this study, it is aimed to determine the main sources of Technology Management (TM) field. Since there are many bibliographic databases, it is important to identify which journal is the most important in T.M., and there are many journals published in this field, it is possible to decide which one is the most important journal for TM, For this purpose, a series of analyzes were performed on bibliographic data of the publications indexed in Web of Science using bibliometrics. The main purpose of the study is to identify and rank the most important journals in the field of TM. …

Using The Hierarchical Decision Model (Hdm) To Select A Sustainable Voice Over Internet Protocol (Voip) Provider, Fayez Alsoubaie

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The continued technological progression has instituted a modification in communication facets. Consequently, the use of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has enhanced and technical researchers believe that this innovation will be at the center stage for future phone engagements. VoIP services are offered by different providers depending on the customer's unique personal or corporate requirement. Therefore, firms should undertake extensive researches to determine the most appropriate service providers that would optimize operations and improve productivity. In most cases, the choice of VoIP in a hierarchical organization is influenced by factors such as the number of users within various protocols, …

An Assessment Of The Factors Influencing The Selection Of The Best Carsharing Alternative In Portland Area Using Hierarchical Decision Modeling (Hdm), Saeed Alzahrani, Ahmed Alzahrani, Xuran Dai, Wei-Chen Hsu, Rashi Tiwari

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Carsharing is a business model of car rentals that allows consumers to benefit from a private vehicle for short periods while being relieved of the costs of the purchase and maintenance. Carsharing is a growing industry and some players are trying to get a hold in the already competitive market. The current transportation market offers consumers many options for buying a vehicle, but fewer practical options for using a vehicle occasionally. Carsharing provides the benefits of allowing easy access to vehicles spread across the city that are rented per an hour or day. It is an increasingly common option for …

Do Pro‐Diversity Policies Improve Corporate Innovation?, Roger C. Mayer, Richard S. Warr, Jing Zhao

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using new product announcements, patents, and patent citations as measures of corporate innovation, we find that corporate policies that promote more pro‐diversity cultures, specifically treatment of women and minorities, enhance future innovative efficiency. This positive effect is stronger during economic downturns and in firms that are more innovative, value intangibles and human capital more highly, have greater growth options, have higher cash flow, and have stronger governance. Pro‐diversity policies also increase firm value via this stimulating effect on innovative efficiency. Our results suggest a channel through which workforce diversity may enhance firm value.

Improving The Candidate Experience: Tips For Developing 'Wise' Organizational Hiring Interventions, Julie M. Mccarthy, Talya N. Bauer, Donald M. Truxillo, Michael C. Campion, Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Michael A. Campion

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Organizations that focus on ensuring a high-quality candidate experience are more likely to attract, engage, and connect with top talent. They are also able to bring more visibility to their brand. This is because when individuals feel connected to an organization, their attitudes and behaviors are more positive. As such, it is critical to ensure that the selection process candidates experience is a positive one. Indeed, a 2017 review of the applicant reactions literature was conducted by McCarthy and colleagues, and findings indicated that when candidates have a negative reaction to the selection process they are likely to report lower …

Best Devices To Replace Laptops At Intel, Aayushi Gupta

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

With the rapid technology changes in today’s world companies that depend on technology need to strategically choose and plan their technology path in order to maintain competitive advantage and avoid any future problems. In this case we have a popular company i.e. Intel Corporation, that provides its employees with a variety of laptops to choose from. We on the other hand, are going to let them choose from the new and advanced Tablets and notebooks so as to provide ease to the employees. We are doing this so as to give more new products available in the market to the …

Accidents Happen: Psychological Empowerment As A Moderator Of Accident Involvement And Its Outcomes, Berrin Erdogan, Adnan Ozyilmaz, Talya N. Bauer, Onur Emre

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research in the occupational safety realm has tended to develop and test models aimed at predicting accident involvement in the workplace, with studies treating accident involvement as the starting point and examining its outcomes being more rare. In the current study, we examine the relationship between accident involvement and a series of outcomes drawing upon a learned helplessness theory perspective. Specifically, we predicted that psychological empowerment would moderate the relationship between prior accident involvement and outcomes. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 392 employees and their 66 supervisors working in an iron and steel manufacturing firm in Southern …

Trust In Organization As A Moderator Of The Relationship Between Self-Efficacy And Workplace Outcomes: A Social Cognitive Theory-Based Examination, Adnan Ozyilmaz, Berrin Erdogan, Aysegul Karaeminogullari

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Drawing on a social cognitive theory perspective, we contend that an employee's trust in oneself, or self‐efficacy, will interact with the individual's trust in the system, or trust in organization, to predict job attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, we expected that self‐efficacy would have stronger effects on job attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intentions) and behaviours (task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours) to the degree to which employees perceive high levels of trust in organization. Using data collected from 300 employees and their respective supervisors at a manufacturing organization in Turkey across three waves, we found that self‐efficacy had more positive …

A Refined Framework Of Information Sharing In Perishable Product Supply Chains, Luluk Lusiantoro, Nicky Yates, Carlos Mena, Liz Varga

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose – This study contributes to our understanding of the relationship between information sharing and performance of perishable product supply chains (PPSC). Building on transaction cost economics (TCE), organisational information processing theory (OIPT), and contingency theory (CT) this study proposes a theoretical framework to guide future research into information sharing in perishable product supply chains (IS-PPSC).

Design/methodology/approach – Using the systematic literature review methodology, 48 peer-reviewed articles are carefully selected, mapped, and assessed. Template analysis is performed to unravel the relationship mechanisms between information sharing and PPSC performance.

Findings – We find that the relationship between information sharing and PPSC …

Tesla Solar Roof Marketing Plan, Mustafa Almuzel, Touraj Goudarznia, Ali Daneshi, Mohammadsaleh Saadatmand, Mufeed Yacoub

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

This marketing plan for Tesla roof has been written to find the best marketing strategies for this new product. Tesla roof was launched in 2017 as part of Tesla’s mission to accelerate the transition of the world into sustainable energy. The objective is to position Tesla roof tile as the first choice for homeowners seeking aesthetics and green energy, gaining market share within three years. The research shows that positioning Tesla roof in the solar market would be the most suitable approach for Tesla. Research and customer interviews analysis implies that the value proposition for this solar roof would be …