Business Commons^™

The Strength Of Community: The Role Of Social Support Networks In Sport Officials’ Retention, Jacob K. Tingle, Brittany L. Jacobs, Matthew Katz, Stacy Warner

School of Business Faculty Research

Previous researchers have indicated that a sense of community and social support are vital to referee retention; however, little is known about the connection between specific characteristics of sports officials’ networks and retention. To better understand the sports officiating shortage, researchers explored the social support networks of 116 referees utilizing egocentric network analysis. The authors suggest that retention of sports officials depends on the interpersonal ties and network structures within which the referees are embedded. Specifically, resulting hierarchical models confirmed that retention relationships among officials are a multilevel phenomenon, and that outside communication and community were vital network characteristics that …

Exploring The Impact Of Technology Dominance On Audit Professionalism Through Data Analytic-Driven Healthcare Audits, Jared Koreff, Lisa Baudot, Steve G. Sutton

School of Business Faculty Research

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled tools and analytics hold the potential to radically alter audit processes by disseminating centralized audit expertise. We examine this potential in the context of data analytic-driven audits mandated to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in a government-sponsored healthcare program. To do so, we draw on semistructured interviews with healthcare providers (i.e., auditees) subject to healthcare audits. Our work shows how use of paraprofessional auditors guided by AI-enabled tools and analytics reflects a very different audit environment. Specifically, auditees’ experiences suggest paraprofessional auditors lack specific expertise and credentials to conduct data-driven audits, apply judgment in deference to technology, …

"It Was My Story To Tell And I Wasn't Ready To Tell It": Stigma Management Amongst Lgbtq+ Sport Officials, A. C. Baeth, Jacob K. Tingle, B. L. Jacobs, C. C. Zvosec

School of Business Faculty Research

The erasure of marginalized people, especially LGBTQ+ people, is commonplace in sport. As sport has become more commercialized, even at grassroots and youth levels), one group that has become even further marginalized and dehumanized are sports officials. Understanding the intersection of marginalized identities is important; as such, this study examined how homophobia and transphobia interplay with the sports officiating profession. Semistructured interviews with 16 self-identified LGBTQ+ referees revealed a series of organizational and social factors that led officials to either pass as non-LGBTQ+ or to come out as LGBTQ+, leading to the development of the LGBTQ+ Referee Identity Management Process …

The Use Of Disc Behavioral Profiling And Training: An Innovative Pedagogical Strategy To Enhance Learning And Future Career Opportunities In Sport Management And Sport Coaching Higher Education Classrooms, E. Masen, D. Hedlund, Jacob K. Tingle

School of Business Faculty Research

Implementing effective training and education programs is of critical importance for sport management and sport coaching academic education programs. This exploratory ­­­­­research examined the implementation and effectiveness of DISC behavioral profiling in sport management and sport coaching classrooms at the university level. Over four academic years (eight semesters), pre- and post-tests were collected from multiple samples of sport management and sport coaching students (N = 216) at two universities in the United States. Students received a personalized DISC behavioral profile and educational activities were used to enhance the value of the behavioral profiling initiatives. Using pre- and post-activity surveys of …

Is Sophistication Always Better? Can Perceived Data Analytic Tool Sophistication Lead To Biased Judgements?, Jared Koreff, S. Perreault

School of Business Faculty Research

The rise of technology-enabled data analytic tools creates opportunities for firms to improve audit quality related to complex estimates. To combat auditors’ resistance to using technology-enabled tools, firms may promote the sophistication of such tools to their audit staff. However, there is a paucity of research that has examined how auditors’ perceived sophistication of an analytic tool impacts judgments about audit evidence. We conduct an experiment and find that, holding all other information constant, the preferences of an audit supervisor interact with the perceived sophistication of an analytic tool to jointly impact auditors’ anticipated evaluation from a supervisor and, in …

Female Sports Officials And Mental Health: The Overlooked Problem, Jacob K. Tingle, B. L. Jacobs, Lynn L. Ridinger, Stacy Warner

School of Business Faculty Research

Sporting culture often celebrates mental toughness and chides weakness, which can stigmatize mental health issues. While some sport organizations have prioritized addressing mental well-being, referees have been ignored. Referees work in high-pressure environments; thus, the need to understand, destigmatize, and normalize the conversation around mental health within the referee community and the larger sporting system is important. Because the prevalence of stress-related issues is greater for women, this study focused on female referees’ well-being, interviewing 20 female U.S. basketball referees via a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Participants represented various geographical regions in the United States and officiated at levels ranging from …

Are Auditors' Reliance On Conclusions From Data Analytics Impacted By Different Data Analytic Inputs?, Jared Koreff

School of Business Faculty Research

Global stakeholders have expressed interest in increasing the use of data analytics throughout the audit process. While data analytics offer great promise in identifying audit-relevant information, auditors may not uniformly incorporate this information into their decision making. This study examines whether conclusions from two data analytic inputs, the type of data analytical model (anomaly vs. predictive) and type of data analyzed (financial vs. nonfinancial), result in different auditors' decisions. Findings suggest that conclusions from data analytical models and data analyzed jointly impact budgeted audit hours. Specifically, when financial data is analyzed auditors increase budgeted audit hours more when predictive models …

Study Abroad Opportunities: The Impact Upon Learning, Jacob K. Tingle

School of Business Faculty Research

Sport businesses continue to grow beyond their borders. As a result, sport management programmes must prepare students to be more globally aware and culturally sensitive. This chapter presents an overview of the learning possibilities associated with short-term study abroad classes for sport management students. The importance of framing study abroad as a form of experiential learning is described. The chapter also includes a rationale for how short-term study abroad classes can provide access for student-athletes, students in tightly prescribed academic programmes, students for whom equity and access are important considerations, and others for whom a full semester programme might not …

Learning Abroad In Action: A Case Study Of Sport In England, Jacob K. Tingle

School of Business Faculty Research

Many universities have moved towards the faculty-led short-term study abroad model to maximise the student experience and also to be intentional about including student populations who may not study abroad because of some hesitation or barriers. Specifically, these programmes are an effective way to provide students an opportunity to explore international learning in a way that is more accessible. This chapter presents a case study of a successful short-term study abroad model and includes syllabus language and recommendations for faculty who want to create a short-term class. Specifically, information is presented about four distinct elements a short-term class should include: …

Tap ‘Follow’ #Fitfam: A Process Of Social Media Microcelebrity, Dominic G. Morais, Florian Hemme, Camille Reyes

School of Business Faculty Research

The practice of microcelebrity in social media has become part of the internet’s mainstream, and has led to the rise of influencers–trusted tastemakers in an industry niche–who are playing increasingly larger cultural and economic roles. Scholars have examined this topic since Senft introduced it in 2001, shedding light on strategies and practices of popular influencers, as well as the cultural milieu contributing to microcelebrity practices. Missing from the literature, however, is an explanation of how these popular microcelebrities reached their social media influencer status. Thus, through phenomenological interviews with 24 participants in multiple areas of the fitness sector, this study …

Do Different Data Analytics Impact Auditors' Decisions?, J F. Brazel, Efosa Ehimwenma, Jared Koreff

School of Business Faculty Research

Global stakeholders have expressed interest in increasing the use of data analytics throughout the audit process. While data analytics offer great promise in identifying auditrelevant information, auditors may not use this information to its full potential, resulting in a missed opportunity for possible improvements to audit quality. This article summarizes a study by Koreff (2022) that examines whether conclusions from different types of data analytical models (anomaly vs. predictive) and data analyzed (financial vs. non-financial), result in different auditor decisions. Findings suggest that when predictive models are used and identify a risk of misstatement, auditors increase budgeted audit hours more …

Identifying Incident Casual Factors To Improve Aviation Transportation Safety: Proposing A Deep Learning Approach, Tianxi Dong, Q. Yang, N. Ebadi, X. R. Luo, P. Rad

School of Business Faculty Research

Aviation is a complicated transportation system, and safety is of paramount importance because aircraft failure often involves casualties. Prevention is clearly the best strategy for aviation transportation safety. Learning from past incident data to prevent potential accidents from happening has proved to be a successful approach. To prevent potential safety hazards and make effective prevention plans, aviation safety experts identify primary and contributing factors from incident reports. However, safety experts’ review processes have become prohibitively expensive nowadays. The number of incident reports is increasing rapidly due to the acceleration of advances in information technologies and the growth of the commercial …

Transcending Ball And Ballin': Connecting The Jordan Brand And College Football Fans, C. K. Harrison, K. Babiak, Jacob K. Tingle, J. Dickens, W. Griffin, S. Bukstein

School of Business Faculty Research

Michael Jordan is considered by many to be not only the greatest basketball player, but also the greatest athlete of all time. Fans, sports analysts, and former and current players profess feelings of awe when recollecting his elite performance on the basketball court and when discussing his mystique off the court. Air Jordan, the brand bearing Jordan’s name, image, and likeness, is one of Nike’s most successful business units, and yet has received very little attention in the existing literature. Recently, the athletic departments of four large Division I universities have attempted to leverage the connection between Air Jordan and …

Data Analytics (Ab)Use In Healthcare Fraud Audits, Jared Koreff, M. Weisner, S. G. Sutton

School of Business Faculty Research

This study explores how government-adopted audit data analytic tools promote the abuse of power by auditors enabling politically sensitive processes that encourage industry-wide normalization of behavior. In an audit setting, we investigate how a governmental organization enables algorithmic decision-making to alter power relationships to effect organizational and industry-wide change. While prior research has identified discriminatory threats emanating from the deployment of algorithmic decision-making, the effects of algorithmic decision-making on inherently imbalanced power relationships have received scant attention. Our results provide empirical evidence of how systemic and episodic power relationships strengthen each other, thereby enabling the governmental organization to effect social …

Changes In Communication Patterns When Implementing Lean, Jorge A. Colazo

School of Business Faculty Research

Purpose: This paper explores the changes in communication patterns when companies implement Lean, and how those changes relate to Lean implementation success.

Design/methodology/approach: This is a multiple site case study involving four business units of a manufacturing company in South America, including two repeated measurement instances separated 24 months for approximately 600 direct workers and 65 supervisors. The analytical models include Social Network Analysis measures and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression.

Findings: When implementing Lean: 1) teams have a higher frequency of communication among members. 2) Teams become more decentralized 3) Teams communicate more with supervisors and 4) Supervisors communicate …

Train Your Frontline Personnel From Newbie To Master It Users: A Three-Phase Longitudinal Experiment Focusing On Technology Compatibility, J. Song, Suning Zhu

School of Business Faculty Research

Background: Although many decision makers have recognized the importance of training to the success of their frontline personnel and organizations, hidden technological compatibility issues can lead to training failure especially when different generations, or iterations, of hardware and software are involved. In this study, we aimed to investigate the impact of different levels (high vs. low) of compatibility between software and hardware on frontline trainees’ gained understanding of the related IT.

Method: Grounded in experiential learning, we designed a three-stage training experiment that involved the use of cloud-based geographical information systems and radio-frequency identification devices. The experiment included compatibility between …

Creativity As A Reflective Learning Exercise: Informing Strategic Marketing Decisions Through Digital Storytelling, Mario V. Gonzalez Fuentes, Kim R. Robertson, J. Charlene Davis

School of Business Faculty Research

As educators we strive to facilitate knowledge and ways of learning that serve students throughout their lives, but we also recognize their sometimes short retention span. The innovation we present in this article consists of the use of digital storytelling as a conduit for students to construct a narrative of their experience in a marketing simulation throughout the semester. We explain the innovation’s implementation as well as the results observed throughout the years in the digital stories developed by students. Finally, we discuss further applications of this innovation in other courses and future research avenues.

Market Performance Of Spun-Off Subsidiaries: Effects Of Board Independence And Directors’ Industry Experience, Orhan Volkan Ozbek

School of Business Faculty Research

The goal of corporate spin-offs, as a corporate restructuring technique, is to create better value for both the divesting firm and its subsidiary/ division. These corporate transactions lead to the creation of independent, publicly traded entities, which are called spun-off subsidiaries. In this study, we examine the effect of board independence and directors’ industry experience on the market performance of spun-off subsidiaries by setting two main hypotheses. Our sample includes 123 completed U.S.-based spin-off events during a 14-year long time frame. According to our empirical analysis, we find support for both hypotheses, which appear to be significant and positive. In …

A Longitudinal Analysis Of Job Skills For Entry-Level Data Analysts, Tianxi Dong, J. Triche

School of Business Faculty Research

The explosive growth of the data analytics field has continued over the past decade with no signs of slowing down. Given the fast pace of technology changes and the need for IT professionals to constantly keep up with the field, it is important to analyze the job skills and knowledge required in the data analyst and business intelligence (BI) analyst job market. In this research, we examine over 9,000 job postings for entry-level data analytics jobs over five years (2014-2018). Using a text mining approach and a custom text mining dictionary, we identify a preliminary set of analytic competencies sought …

London Calling: A Semester In The World's Sporting Capital, Jacob K. Tingle, Callum Squires, Randall J. Griffiths

School of Business Faculty Research

This case follows four American college students from a small, Liberal Arts institution during a semester-long, faculty-led study abroad trip to London, England. The case presents the experiences of these students as they integrate into London society. Mainly viewed through the lens of sport, the students encounter many differences to their preconceived notion of how sports work, providing an obvious platform for discussion and comparison of how sport is organized in different parts of the world. Specifically, the case offers students the opportunity to learn about new sports they may not have encountered before, evaluate the U.S. system of sport …

A Conceptual Replication Of The Unified Model Of Information Security Policy Compliance, Diana K. Young, D. Carpenter, A. Mcleod

School of Business Faculty Research

Conceptual replications offer robust tests of theory by subjecting the relational notions of a scientific model to evaluation using alternate instruments, treatments, and subject pools. This study performs a conceptual replication of Moody, Siponen, and Pahnila’s 2018 empirical analysis that integrated elements of eleven theoretical models to produce the unified model of information security policy compliance (UMISPC). This replication employed a substantially more parsimonious instrument, using modestly revised treatment scenarios targeted toward a U.S. audience of 218 IT professionals as opposed to the Finnish graduate students used in the original study. Our results indicate that UMISPC is robust across variations …

Exploring Referee Abuse Through The Lens Of The Collegiate Rugby Coach, B. L. Jacobs, Jacob K. Tingle, B. D. Oja, M. A. Smith

School of Business Faculty Research

Referees are valuable contributors to the legitimacy of a sporting contest. Despite this, abuse in sport has become a growing concern and is regularly noted as an obstacle with which referees must contend. Continued abuses have been associated with referee discontinuation and have been noted as a detrimental influence in the recruitment and retention of referees. Sporting organizations, coaches, and players all feel the impact when there is an inadequate supply of referees. Coaches have been noted as a primary perpetrator of referee abuse; thus, in this study, the authors utilize a phenomenological approach to explore perceptions of referee abuse …

The Sentinel Effect And Financial Reporting Aggressiveness In The Healthcare Industry, Jared Koreff, S. W. G. Robb, G. Trompeter

School of Business Faculty Research

The sentinel effect posits that the perception of increased oversight is associated with improved behavior. We consider the association between enhanced government oversight and financial reporting aggressiveness in the healthcare industry. Specifically, we examine the association between criminal cases (pending cases and successful cases) against healthcare providers and the quality of subjective accounts that require significant judgment and have been shown to be linked to healthcare earnings management – revenue accruals and the allowance for doubtful accounts. We find that heightened government oversight is associated with lower financial reporting aggressiveness.

Instant Replay In The National Football League, Jacob K. Tingle, M. Armenteros

School of Business Faculty Research

In this chapter the introduction of the Instant Replay video system in the National Football League (NFL) is analysed. The league started experimenting with video technology in 1986, which means it’s had more than 30 years of experience with a system similar to that approved by IFAB and FIFA in 2016. Although these are different sports, in this work the advent of technology and the evolution in NFL Instant Replay rules can be a roadmap in football. The role of the referee and the communication between coaches, referees, and TV now being discussed in football, has a long trajectory in …

Instant Replay In The National Basketball Association, Jacob K. Tingle

School of Business Faculty Research

In this chapter the use of instant replay in the National Basketball Association (NBA) is described. After detailing the historical evolution of replay in the NBA, the chapter explores the impact of legal and illegal gambling on the expanded use of replay, followed by a section on media perceptions, an explanation of real or perceived bias amongst NBA referees, and concludes with a description of the NBA Replay Center. Similar to the National Football League, the NBA has utilized some form of replay technology for multiple decades, and how the league approaches the use of video technology to train and …

México, The Americas, And Spain Perspectives And Ib Education Innovations: ¿Hacia Dónde Vamos?, Robert F. Scherer, Andres Suarez-Domit

School of Business Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

The Market Success Of Corporate Spin-Offs: Do Ceo External Directorships, Age, And Their Interactions Matter?, Orhan Volkan Ozbek

School of Business Faculty Research

Corporate spin-offs have been a major “preferred” restructuring technique in the previous couple decades in the U.S. This corporate transaction aims to create value for both divesting firm and its subsidiary. This study examines an understudied interaction of CEO external directorships and age (as well as their direct effects) in the strategy literature on the change in market valuation of spun-off subsidiaries. By drawing our cases from the SDC Platinum database, we identified 138 completed corporate U.S. spin-offs that took place between 2000 and 2014. Our empirical analysis indicates that the number of CEO external directorships as well as having …

Individual Goal Orientations, Team Empowerment, And Employee Creative Performance: A Case Of Cross-Level Interactions, Yi Liu, Shuhong Wang, Xiang Yao

School of Business Faculty Research

Intrigued by relationship between team motivational context and individual characteristics in the organizational reality, we developed and tested a cross-level model to investigate the interactive effects of team empowerment and individual goal orientations on individual creative performance through the mediating mechanism of an individual's creative self-efficacy. Using multi-wave multi-source data from 63 R&D teams in three IT companies, we found that (1) team empowerment, individual learning goal orientation, and individual performance orientation are all positively related to individual creative performance through mediation of creative self-efficacy; (2) learning orientation and performance approach orientation could both supplement the effects of team empowerment …

Millennials' National And Global Identities As Drivers Of Materialism And Consumer Ethnocentrism, Mario V. González Fuentes

School of Business Faculty Research

A major effect of globalization is one that occurs on the self-concept. This is especially the case for young consumers, and particularly for millennials. Despite this cohort’s idiosyncrasies, little attention has been paid to the study of their consumer identities, an important aspect of self-concept. The current research addresses this gap by examining the way millennial consumers’ global and national identities help explain two attitudinal outcomes associated with globalization: materialism and consumer ethnocentrism. Data were collected from millennials in two distinct socio-cultural contexts. A key finding suggests that distinct contexts (i.e., collectivist and ethnically homogeneous vs. individualistic and ethnically diverse) …

Millennial Research On Fleek: Suggestions For Improving Generational Research Design, W. I. Mackenzie Jr., Robert F. Scherer

School of Business Faculty Research

This special issue will examine and embrace the uniqueness of millennials. We look at a number of issues related to this generational cohort, examining what makes them unique, challenging and even assets to those they come into contact with in their lives. In our opening article we discuss the unique attributes of millennials, provide researchers a framework for generational research best practices, and provide an overview of the articles featured in this special issue.