Business Commons^™

Precise Nitrogen Recommendations Improve Economic And Environmental Outcomes In Arkansas Rice Production, Cristin Roberts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Soil testing has become an increasingly important tool in making agronomically efficient production management decisions. N-STaR is a N test used in rice production and is unique in its ability to selectively quantify soil organic-N compounds which are readily mineralizable for plant N uptake and contribute to growth and yield. This study uses historical (2002–2018) adoption rates of N-STaR, which is funded through Rice Checkoff funds, to calculate the total cost savings from N-STaR adoption. These cost savings alone would be the “typical” benefits used in a benefit-cost ratio of a public ally funded research program like N-STaR. However, we …

Greenhouse Tomatoes: Process Simulation, Juan Gabriel Marin Jr.

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Growing population demand and challenges brought on by climate change have spurred the need for more resilient fruit and vegetable supply chains. One agricultural technology of significant interest is the use of greenhouses for food production. Greenhouses create a stable and adaptable environment for crops such as tomatoes to grow year-round. Fresh tomatoes are the second most consumed vegetable per capita in U.S. diets, currently averaging 20.7 pounds. The growing consumption of fresh tomatoes has been the result of increasing cultural diversity in the United States.

To meet the growing demand, Venlo-type greenhouses have been frequently used by growers. It …

Remixed, Remastered: Investigating Organizational Adaptation In Higher Music Education, Jacob Bruce Hertzog

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Higher music education presents a unique opportunity to examine change within higher education due to the digital revolution in the music industry over the past two decades. The purpose for conducting this study was to describe, map, and explain the strategies that higher music education programs are using to adapt to the digital revolution in the music industry. This study was grounded in organizational adaptation theory, drawing upon nine well-established theories: population ecology, life cycles, strategic choice, isomorphism, symbolic action, resource dependence, cybernetics, and network theory. Critical concepts of the turbulent environment, environmental perception, and organizational adaptation strategy emerged from …

Applying Artificial Intelligence In The Hotel Industry: Exploring Perspectives Of Employees, Logan O'Hara

Human Nutrition and Hospitality Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Automation, or RAISA, has become increasingly accessible and affordable for a wider demographic of businesses, including hospitality operations, to implement over the last couple of decades. Especially over the past five years, we’ve seen a significant surge of interest in automating within the service industry and a coupled sense of uneasiness that this technological development would in turn displace the human workers, due to factors such as cost of labor and perceived removal of human error; however, this thesis will posit that automation is most effectively used by augmenting the capabilities of the present workforce. …

Exploration Of Small Fashion Retailers' Green Efforts In Supply Chain Management And Their Coping Strategies During Covid-19, Madison Huskey

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current business model of small fashion retailers and their green efforts in supply chain management based on the Six-R framework that consists of recycle, reuse, reduce, re-design, recovery, and remanufacture. This study also investigated the impact of COVID-19 on small fashion businesses. Qualitative data were gathered through in-depth interviews of owners/employees of four small fashion retailers that addressed sustainable supply chain management, customer segments, and challenges and barriers in green supply chain management, and the effects of COVID-19. Interview findings revealed that small fashion retailers are more likely to implement green …

[Dis]Assembling Race: The Fepc In Oklahoma, 1941-1946, Arley Ward

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

On the World War II home front in Oklahoma the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) succeeded in securing defense jobs for African Americans. The efforts of the committee, The Oklahoma Eagle, the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch, and the State Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) advanced civil rights in Oklahoma throughout World War II and beyond. The efforts of the FEPC in Oklahoma connect civil rights efforts in the 1940s directly to Brown v Board of Education, (1954) and the classic civil rights movement.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Compassion Organizing And The University Advancement Workplace, Christina Marie Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Compassion organizing has been described within positive organizational scholarship as an organization’s response to pain and suffering in organizational behavior and also the ability for organizations to flourish and promote joy and fulfillment in the workplace. Compassion organizing has been examined in organizational life through the four areas of noticing, feeling, acting, and sense-making. Previous research has focused on business and healthcare workplaces and has shown that compassion organizing is both an organizational and interpersonal social process. Because of the limited existing research on compassion organizing in the higher education workplace (and none with respect to the university advancement workplace), …

Use Patterns And Influencing Factors Of Irrigation Best Management Practices In The Lower Mississippi River Basin, Merri E. Day

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study uses the 2016 Irrigation Survey from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to document the use of irrigation best management practices (IBMPs), analyze use patterns, and use quantitative methods to determine factors that influence producers’ decisions regarding IBMPs. IBMPs included in the survey can be grouped as: field management practices (zero-grade leveling, precision-grade leveling, end blocking, warped surface, and deep tillage), water flow control practices (computerized pipe-hole selection, multiple-inlet irrigation, surge irrigation, alternate wetting and drying, cutback irrigation, flow meters, and pump timers), water recovery/storage practices (tail-water recovery system and on-farm storage reservoir), and advanced irrigation scheduling practices (soil moisture …

A Focused Evaluation Of Sales Employees' Ethics Training And Its Effect On The Diffusion Of Ethics In A Financial Organization, Justin Luebker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ethical scandals have continued to batter corporate America into the twenty-first century. Companies such as Enron and MCI WorldCom became household names overnight because of ethical issues that shuttered the organizations’ operations and stunned shareholders. Training has served as a primary mechanism for companies to impart ethical values in employees and leadership teams. However, despite the ongoing focus and resources dedicated to education and associate development in this area, historically there appears to be no diffusion of ethical standards within organizations. There is a lack of consensus in current research regarding the effectiveness of organizational ethics training and its ability …

How Bad Do You Want It?: The Personal Motivation Of Joining A Sorority, Garry Butler

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

College campuses provide students with endless opportunities to become members of various student organizations that provide leadership, accountability, a sense of belonging, personal growth, and development. Many colleges have provided students with the opportunities to join social Greek fraternity and sorority organizations. The foundation of social fraternity and sorority organizations are built on principles such as sisterhood, brotherhood, scholarship, service, philanthropy, and leadership. Many traditional college-age women who desire to become members of a social sorority organization all participate in a formal recruitment process. There are various motivations that traditional college-age women have for joining social sororities on college campuses …

Stress Among Ncaa Division Ii Head Coaches, Dee Gerlach

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify factors that create stress among head coaches at the National Association Athletic Association Division II level. Data was collected through a demographic questionnaire and the Coaching Issues Survey (CIS), a tool used to measure specific factors that may create stress among coaches. The factors of the CIS include four subscales: Athlete-Concerns, Time-Role, Program-Success, and Win-Loss. Participants (N=416) consisted of head coaches representing the following sports: baseball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s golf, women’s golf, men’s and women’s golf, softball, women’s tennis, and men’s and women’s tennis. The independent variables for this …

“Arkansas Global Changemakers And The Effect Of Collaborative And Disruptive Strategies”, Laurence Hare, Rogelio Garcia Contreras

Research and Social Innovation Publications

In this essay, we consider the ways in which disruptive strategies align with collaborative strategies to produce innovations aimed at ameliorating global challenges in the twenty-first century. Specifically, we consider how they work through our current initiative, Arkansas Global Changemakers, which creates new international partnerships at the local level in order to challenge long-standing obstacles to global social change.

Heads Up! Arkansas Has A New Llc Act, Carol Goforth

Arkansas Law Notes

This past legislative session Senate Bill 601, sponsored by Senator Jonathan Dismang, was enacted into law, becoming Ark. Act 1041 on April 30, 2021. This act repeals the old LLC Act and adopts the Uniform Limited Liability Company Act (“ULLCA”), with minimal changes from the uniform language. This short piece points out some basic information about the Arkansas ULLCA and some of the major changes in Arkansas law applicable to LLCs. While lawyers will obviously need to consult the new statute when actual issues arise, this article should at least provide a “heads up” notice to practitioners with LLCs or …

Alcohol Advertisements On Social Media: A Study Of How Alcohol Advertisements On Social Media Platforms Appeal To Young People, Alexis Campbell

Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses

Underage drinking is not uncommon and is associated with a number of school, social, legal, emotional, behavioral, health problems, and even death. This research seeks to explore alcohol-related social media advertisements across a variety of alcohol types, alcohol brands, and social media platforms. This was accomplished by a content analysis of the most popular alcohol brands’ advertisements on the Internet that examined the strategies used to appeal to consumers and the overall content patterns and characteristics of online alcohol advertisements. The strategy used differed by brand and alcohol type, but the most common themes included “taste,” “seasonal,” “holiday,” “recipe,” and …

European Union Food Law Update, Emilie Majster

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Nutrition is increasingly important in both the European Union (EU) and in global food-related policy making. Governments, which up until recently have focused on regulating food products based on a food safety perspective, are now turning to regulate from a nutritional aspect.

2+2=Cake: A Book Of Conversations About Possibilities In Business And Art, Elizabeth Ann Alspach

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

2+2=CAKE is a toolkit for people interested in creating their own economic container to support their livelihood. Calling upon the entrepreneurial experience of artists and creatives who founded or run organizations, the book and accompanying workbook and motivational posters serve as an incubator, buoy, and affirming resource for those looking to build the economic container in which they make their livelihood.

Are Rice Markets In Bangladesh Efficiently Pricing Rice Based On Quality? An Empirical Assessment, Indrani Saha

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice is an important staple for more than half of the world’s population and is the main staple in Bangladesh, accounting for 65 percent to 70 percent of the daily calorie intake. The importance of rice consumption and the high level of food insecurity in Bangladesh highlights the importance of having markets that efficiently price rice according to consumer preferences. This study aims to assess how effectively rice prices in Bangladesh are reflective of rice quality. More specifically, we estimate how the rice market is currently pricing selected rice quality attributes, such as broken percentage, chalk percentage, kernel size and …

Analyzing The Mediating Effects Of Social Capital And Sense Of Community Between International Student’S College Sports Fan Identification And Acculturation, Kibaek Kim

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

According to the number provided by the International Institute of Education (IIE), there are over one million international students enrolled in the United States. Although the number of international students is increasing, the incremental rate started to decrease after reaching its peak in the 2017-2018 academic year. While previous studies focused on the role of leisure activities, such as physical activity participation, to analyze how international students can receive social support from their communities to better acculturate in the U.S., this study focused on the role of spectator sports on providing social support and its effect on international student’s acculturation. …

Essays On Managerial Attributes And Corporate Finance, Juntai Lu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, I explore how managerial attributes affect corporate policies.

In my first essay, I examine the effects of public firm CEOs’ prior private equity (PE) target experiences on corporate policies. Based on difference-in-differences and propensity score matching analyses, public firm CEOs previously serving as CEOs in PE targets reduce investment by about 15 percent while enhancing patent values by over 7 percent after taking office compared to CEOs without such experiences. The effects are stronger if these CEOs (1) worked in targets invested by more reputable PE firms, (2) worked in targets invested by PE firms known for …

Centropoly: The Structure Of Educational Failures In The U.S., Martha Bradley-Dorsey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How did a country birthed in individual liberty and voluntary associations create just the opposite in its inflexible, layered, government-controlled public education system? Here, using public choice theory, I explain how near-sighted and unrelated reforms, often based in private motives, gave us what I call the public education centropoly – a hybrid government organization consisting of a set of monopolies layered beneath two additional government levels that especially fails disadvantaged students.

After defending the use of public choice theory (Chapter 1) and summarizing the U.S. public education system formation (Chapter 2), in Chapter 3 I examine the Elementary and Secondary …

A Multicase Study Exploring The Motivation Of Support Staff In The Office Of The Registrar, April M. Martin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although a large body of research exists within higher education that focuses on factors related to faculty motivation and student motivation, there is limited research concentrated on the motivation of college and university administrative staff. This study examined how job duties, work processes, elements of the work environment, and leadership styles are related to employee motivation, specifically the motivation of front-line support staff who work in the Office of the Registrar. Additionally, I aimed to identify any disconnect between what support staff need and want from supervisors in the Office of the Registrar pertaining to motivation and supervisors’ behavior to …

Characteristics Of Face-To-Face Communications In Agriculture Marketing And Customer Service, Ashlyn Ussery

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As communication forms evolve, it is important for business leaders to not only follow the trends, but to be data-driven and make calculated decisions that are beneficial for their businesses. In this qualitative study, the researcher sought to describe how Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation used face-to-face and computer-mediated communication methods to communicate as an organization and the value their employees and members place on each communication method. Uses and Gratifications theory was used to guide this research and evaluate the results. This theory is unique in that it does not describe the effect media has on people, like many human …

Understanding The Importance Of Ambition In The Workplace, Jeff Bean

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Though a common term, ambition is a multifaceted concept that is vastly under researched despite it being labeled necessary for success in the workplace. Of even greater irony is that several sources indicate a significant majority of the reason that employees leave organizations is due to a perceived lack of career development or opportunity, a problem that speaks directly to talent management practices. In light the costly nature of this problem and the presence of sophisticated talent management professionals in large and medium-sized organizations which comprise half or more of the workforce, it causes one to question the assumptions that …

The Value Of Assurance Over Internal Controls: Evidence From Mergers And Acquisitions, Ryan Courtlin Cating

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine the value of assurance over internal controls in the mergers and acquisitions setting. Specifically, I examine the how the existence of an internal control audit mandated under Section 404(b) of SOX affects information asymmetry as proxied for by the likelihood of a company becoming the target of an acquisition. I find that companies with internal control audits are significantly more likely to receive bids than their counterparts that do not have an internal control audit. Upon further investigation, I find that the mechanism by which companies are more likely to become the target of an …

Naturalistic Decision Making In First Sales Calls: A Narrative Study Of Experienced Technical Sales Professionals, Douglas Williams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The first conversation between business-to-business sellers and new customers comes with the potential for both opportunity and risk. Sellers spend substantial effort gaining the right to engage in a first call with a potential customer. This study fills a gap in the literature by exploring the role of Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) and how it impacts the way experienced technology sales professionals navigate first conversations with new customers. NDM explores how experienced professionals make decisions in high-stakes, real world situations that are ambiguous, time-pressured, and have poorly defined goals. While NDM studies have been performed in other professional disciplines, none …

Leveraging The Supply Chain: An Assessment Of Supply Chain Partners' Influence On Organizational Performance, Jordan M. Barker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The supply chain is recognized as an integral part of the value creation process and a critical driver of performance. Indeed, a supply chain relationship grants buyers and suppliers the opportunity to share in the value generated by their partners, access partner capabilities and resources to enact their own strategic initiatives, and jointly generate value above what each firm could produce in isolation. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how firms can leverage the supply chain to attain superior organizational performance. Specifically, three essays, each focused on a distinct organizational process, explore how supply chain partners influence a …

Audit Firms’ Response To Audit Failures: Evidence From Partner Resource Reallocation, Elizabeth Cowle

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I investigate whether audit firms reallocate partner resources following restatement announcements and, consequently, whether a supply-side response is beneficial in mitigating the previously documented implications of realized audit failures. I find a positive association between prior period restatement announcements and the year-over-year percentage change in the number of engagement partners allocated to a local audit office. Further analysis suggests that a supply-side response is beneficial in mitigating the persistence of low-quality audits and lost market share. However, I also find some evidence suggesting that the reallocation of partner resources can be detrimental to audit quality at offices from which partners …

Unintended Consequences Of Public Policy And Government Regulation On Supply Chain Structure, Conduct, And Performance, Jonathan Phares

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Supply chains, and the firms within them, change their behaviors in response to industry conditions so they can provide efficiency, effectiveness, strategic enablement, and customer utility. Social and economic policies enacted to promote social welfare by correcting market failures can alter these conditions. While these policies may serve their intended purposes, they may also create unintended consequences that may make managing logistics, operations, and supply chains more challenging. This dissertation contributes to the nascent body of knowledge concerning the intended and unintended consequences of policy on supply chain management by examining three unique contextual settings using different methodologies and levels …

The First Sign: Detecting Future Financial Fraud From The Ipo Prospectus, Lisa Spadaccini Anderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine whether it is possible to predict future financial statement fraud using disclosure content prior to the fraud. Specifically, I employ a machine learning algorithm to construct a unique measure based on the lexical cues embedded within a firm’s first public disclosure, the Management’s Discussion and Analysis section of the S-1 filing, during the Initial Public Offering process. I use this measure to predict whether a firm that is not already committing fraud will commit fraud within five years of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) that results in an Accounting or Enforcement Release (AAER). I find …

Psychological Scene Gist And The Perception Of Sustainable Business Models Via Digital Media Audit, Shelby Hansen

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

The technology space is giving rise to new business models that impact how we interact with companies, the causes we are interested in, and even our perception of how we process information. Within those contexts, I will be using the psychological concept of scene gist to explore the sustainable business model of clean beauty and investigate the technological ways that these companies interact with Gen Z consumers via social media. Gen Z consumers want to interact with companies who are socially responsible and who contribute to causes they believe in. The clean beauty trend is spearheading efforts to eliminate harmful …