Business Commons^™

Digital Financial Services And Strategic Financial Management: Financial Services Firms And Microenterprises In African Markets, Esi A. Elliot, Carmina Cavazos, Benjamin Ngugi

International Business and Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study highlights the impact of digital financial services as enhancing the capacity of development goals as well as social sustainability. The selected emerging markets are Ghanaian financial service providers (FSP)s and microenterprise customers (CME)s, where we examine how “Ubuntu”, an African philosophy of humanism, legitimizes spaces for a more democratic, egalitarian, and ethical engagement of human beings. This study adopts a grounded theory methodology for investigation of the phenomena with a sample size of 70 relationship managers. The findings further existing sustainability literature pertaining to social sustainability and consumer wellbeing. We contribute to theory by presenting a psychological perspective …

Metaverse Marketing: How The Metaverse Will Shape The Future Of Consumer Research And Practice, Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Laurie Hughes, Yichuan Wang, Ali A. Alalwan, Sun J. (Grace) Ahn, Janarthanan Balakrishnan, Sergio Barta, Russell Belk, Dimitrios Buhalis, Reto Felix

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse's impact on users and organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing‐ focused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse. We identify new research directions and propose …

Extending The Diversity Conversation: Fashion Consumption Experiences Of Underrepresented And Underserved Women, Lena Cavusoglu, Deniz Atik

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research brings in the voice of underserved and underrepresented women of various racial or ethnic origins and social classes, who have differing buying powers, sexual orientations, body shapes, and physical appearances, into the conversation of fashion diversity. Through a qualitative inquiry with 38 semi-structured in-depth interviews, the researchers analyzed the consumption experiences of diverse women to expose what the fashion scene is lacking. The study's main contribution is the depiction of overlooked diversity categories in fashion, such as the non-White and non-Black women of color, women of average sizes, and women with characteristics that the fashion industry has long …

How Do Digital Lives Affect Resident Mental Health In The Digital Era? Empirical Evidence Based On Chinese General Social Survey, Yan Chen, Mengyang Wei, Jaime Ortiz

International Business and Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications and Presentations

Having good mental health means we are better able to connect, function, cope and thrive. The widespread application of digital technology in daily life provides new ways and promising tools for residents to maintain their mental health. Given the importance of mental health for everyone, and the fact that mental health problems are prevalent worldwide, this study discusses how digital lives affects the mental health of residents. The results suggest that digital lives are significantly and positively associated with mental health. Mechanisms analysis identifies personal perceptions (self-rated physical exercise and subjective wellbeing) as the important paths for digital lives to …

Examining Users’ Information Disclosure And Audience Support Response Dynamics In Online Health Communities: An Empirical Study, Joseph A. Manga, Francis K. Andoh-Baidoo, Emmanuel Wusuhon Yanibo Ayaburi, Diego Escobari

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Online healthcare communities (OHCs) facilitate two-way interaction. Examining users’ information disclosure-audience support response dynamics can reveal insights for fostering a supportive environment, community engagement, bond formation, knowledge sharing, and sustained participation in OHCs. We propose a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model of user disclosure and response dynamics in OHCs. Based on the health disclosure decision-making model and daily time series data, we examine the two-way interaction of two dimensions of disclosure efficacy with audience support response acceptance. Findings of the impulse response functions reveal that user information density leads to positive support response acceptance, whereas support response acceptance reduces the …

Harnessing The Power Within: The Consequences Of Salesperson Moral Identity And The Moderating Role Of Internal Competitive Climate, Omar S. Itani, Nawar N. Chaker

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this research is to examine the notion of salesperson moral identity as a prosocial individual trait and its associated effects on customer and coworker relationships. In addition, this study examines the underlying processes in which these effects occur as well as the moderating role of internal competitive climate. Our empirical investigation of business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals reveals that moral identity has both direct and indirect effects on a salesperson’s customer- and team-directed outcomes. Specifically, our results demonstrate that salesperson moral identity positively affects both salesperson-customer identification and organizational identification, which, in turn, impact customer service provision and …

Great Recession And Corporate Recovery: Empirical Evidence Of The Impact Of Firms' Internal Control System, Gbolahan Oladayo

Theses and Dissertations

In Previous studies, we are made to understand that recession has a detrimental effect on corporate valves. Hence, I investigate substantial evidence that firms with a good internal control system, even during the financial crisis of 2008, were able to minimize redundancies that could have negatively affected the recovery of their company’s post-recession. Thus, firms with effective internal control systems are able to recover from negative events significantly faster (as measured by the firm’s values) than those without such systems.

Framing Of Covid-19 In Newspapers: A Perspective From The Us-Mexico Border, Rifat Afrin, Ahasan Harun, Gayle Prybutok, Victor Prybutok

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

The degree to which the media report a health emergency affects the seriousness with which the people respond to combat the health crisis. Engagement from local newspapers in the US has received scant scrutiny, even though there is a sizable body of scholarship on the analysis of COVID-19 news. We fill this void by focusing on the Rio Grande Valley area of the US-Mexico border. To understand the differences, we compared such local news coverage with the coverage of a national news outlet. After collecting the relevant news articles, we used sentiment analysis, rapid automatic keyword extraction (RAKE), and co-occurrence …

Engaging With Omnichannel Brands: The Role Of Consumer Empowerment, Omar S. Itani, Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro, Zahy Ramadan

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose

This study aims to integrate brand and retailer levels variables to examine the direct and indirect relationships between omnichannel retailing and consumer engagement.

Design/methodology/approach

Survey data are collected from a sample consumers of different omnichannel retailing brands operating in the skin care industry. Partial least squares structural equation modeling is utilized.

Findings

The study finds brand channels' integrated interactions (process and content consistency) to increase consumer brand engagement. Findings show retailer consumer empowerment to intensify the impact of omnichannel retailing on consumer engagement. Results also show brand channels' integrated interactions to increase consumer brand familiarity, which mediates the effect …

Constructing An Intelligent Model Based On Support Vector Regression To Simulate The Solubility Of Drugs In Polymeric Media, Sait Senceroglu, Mohamed Arselene Ayari, Tahereh Rezaei, Fardad Faress, Amith Khandakar, Muhammad E. H. Chowdhury, Zanko Hassan Jawhar

International Business and Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study constructs a machine learning method to simultaneously analyze the thermodynamic behavior of many polymer–drug systems. The solubility temperature of Acetaminophen, Celecoxib, Chloramphenicol, D-Mannitol, Felodipine, Ibuprofen, Ibuprofen Sodium, Indomethacin, Itraconazole, Naproxen, Nifedipine, Paracetamol, Sulfadiazine, Sulfadimidine, Sulfamerazine, and Sulfathiazole in 1,3-bis[2-pyrrolidone-1-yl] butane, Polyvinyl Acetate, Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), PVP K12, PVP K15, PVP K17, PVP K25, PVP/VA, PVP/VA 335, PVP/VA 535, PVP/VA 635, PVP/VA 735, Soluplus analyzes from a modeling perspective. The least-squares support vector regression (LS-SVR) designs to approximate the solubility temperature of drugs in polymers from polymer and drug types and drug loading in polymers. The structure of this machine …

Value Of Membership-Based Free Shipping In Online Retailing: Impact Of Upstream Pricing Model, Geng Sun, Huseyin Cavusoglu, Srinivasan Raghunathan

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

A consumer-side innovation in online retailing is membership-based free shipping (MFS) in which a retailer bears the shipping cost for purchases made by members that have paid an upfront membership fee. On the supplier side, the agency model of selling, where a retailer allows a third-party manufacturer to sell his product on the site for a commission, has been gradually replacing the wholesale model, where the retailer buys from the manufacturer at a wholesale price and resells to consumers at a retail price. We show that the shift to the agency model enhances the value of the MFS program to …

How Do Consumers In General Evaluate, Judge, And Act Toward Shoplifting? The Moderating Effects Of Personal Characteristics And Motives, Juehui Shi, Ngoc Cindy Pham, Claudio Schapsis, Tofazzal Hossain, Arturo Z. Vasquez-Parraga

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite the seriousness of shoplifting, consumers’ evaluations, judgements, and intentions toward shoplifting remain underexplored by scholars from business ethics, marketing, retailing, and consumer behavior. We propose a new shoplifting ethics model, which integrates Hunt and Vitell’s theory of ethics with Nadeau, Rochlen, and Tyminski’s typology of shoplifting, by incorporating the moderators of consumers’ personal characteristics (i.e., age, gender, marital status, income) and shoplifting motives (i.e., social, experiential, economic, emotional) onto the relationships among deontological evaluation, teleological evaluation, ethical judgment, and intention. Based on a two-by-two randomized experimental design, two shoplifting cases (i.e., swapping price tags, stealing products) are investigated in …

Dual-Class Share Structure And Innovation, Lindsay Baran, Arno Forst, M. Tony Via

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using a sample of dual-class firms matched with single-class firms possessing similar antitakeover protection, we find a positive association between disproportionate insider control and patent output, quality, creativity, research and development efficiency, and chief executive officer innovative risk taking. We also find, however, that the positive effects of disproportionate control on innovation are concentrated in financially constrained firms and firms in highly competitive industries, and that the positive effects dissipate within 10 years after the initial public offering. Most important, the positive effect of dual-class structures for innovation is conditional on the presence of innovative insiders in the firm. These …

What Does Not Kill You Makes You Stronger: Supply Chain Resilience And Corporate Sustainability Through Emerging It Capability, Zhaojun Yang, Xiaoting Guo, Jun Sun, Yali Zhang, Ying Wang

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Global epidemics and international conflicts disrupt supply chain operations. Many enterprises employ emerging information technology (IT) to reduce supply chain vulnerability and enhance supply chain resilience. Technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain facilitate more robust supply chain operations, such as remanufacturing, just-in-time production, and automated workflow, leading to corporate sustainability along economic, environmental, and social dimensions. From a dynamic capability perspective, this article conceptualizes emerging IT capability and investigates its role in helping enterprises survive supply chain disruptions and prosper in the long run. A research model depicts the relationships among environmental uncertainty, supply chain vulnerability vigilance, emerging IT capability, …

Why Do Employees Commit Fraud? Theory, Measurement, And Validation, Bin Lin, Junqin Huang, Youliang Liao, Shanmin Liu, Haiyan Zhou

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Previous research on corporate governance has extensively explored the motives of corporate fraud. However, this research has paid little attention to employees, the real executors of fraud, resulting in the psychological and behavioral decision-making process of employees who commit fraud in enterprises becoming a "black box" that has not yet been opened. Based on the theory of planned behavior, our study integrates the existing research findings on driving factors of employee fraud and anti-fraud practical experience, extracts the key factors of employee fraud motive, and develops a multidimensional scale of employee fraud motive. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) generates three …

Introducing A Linear Empirical Correlation For Predicting The Mass Heat Capacity Of Biomaterials, Reza Iranmanesh, Afham Pourahmad, Fardad Faress, Sevil Tutunchian, Mohammad Amin Ariana, Hamed Sadeqi, Saleh Hosseini, Falah Alobaid, Babak Aghel

International Business and Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study correlated biomass heat capacity (Cp) with the chemistry (sulfur and ash content), crystallinity index, and temperature of various samples. A five-parameter linear correlation predicted 576 biomass Cp samples from four different origins with the absolute average relative deviation (AARD%) of ~1.1%. The proportional reduction in error (REE) approved that ash and sulfur contents only enlarge the correlation and have little effect on the accuracy. Furthermore, the REE showed that the temperature effect on biomass heat capacity was stronger than on the crystallinity index. Consequently, a new three-parameter correlation utilizing crystallinity index and temperature was developed. This model was …

Metaverse Beyond The Hype: Multidisciplinary Perspectives On Emerging Challenges, Opportunities, And Agenda For Research, Practice And Policy, Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Laurie Hughes, Abdullah M. Baabdullah, Samuel Ribeiro-Navarrete, Mihalis Giannakis, Mutaz M. Al-Debei, Denis Dennehy, Bhimaraya Metri, Dimitrios Buhalis, Reto Felix

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight to the potential socio-economic impact of a fully functional persistent cross platform metaverse. Separating the hype and “meta…” rebranding from current reality is difficult, as “big tech” paints a picture of the transformative nature of the metaverse and how it will positively …

A Decomposed Data Analysis Approach To Assessing City Sustainable Development Performance: A Network Dea Model With A Slack-Based Measure, Bowen Sun, Haibo Wang, Jaime Ortiz, Jun Huang, Can Zhao, Zelang Wang

International Business and Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper deals with urban sustainable development in China. We propose a network data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with a slack-based measure (SBM) to analyze the eco-efficiency of 284 Chinese cities, enabling us to find a way to open the “black box” in conventional DEA models and introduce social well-being factors into the model, and depict the role of local government in providing public service and improving social well-beings. We set up a framework of urban development by dividing the process of into two steps. The first stage is a production system translating inputs and natural resources into GDP and …

Antecedents Of High Performance Work Practices In Smes: An Attention-Based View, Javier Martínez-Del-Río, Pingshu Li, James P. Guthrie

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Relative to the large body of work in the broader strategic HRM (SHRM) literature, knowledge about determinants of SMEs’ approaches to HRM remains limited. We argue that heterogeneity in the use of high performance work practices (HPWPs) is influenced by top managers’ exposure and attention to information obtained via environmental scanning. Invoking an attention-based view (ABV), we develop hypotheses suggesting that competition tracking, participation in trade associations, and social network embeddedness will be associated with greater use of HPWPs. We also propose direct and moderating roles for top managers’ perceptions of competitive intensity. We test our hypotheses using a database …

How Does Organizational Justice Work Across National Culture? Effects Of Procedural And Distributive Justice On Information Security Policy Compliance Across National Culture, Maliha Alam, Nan Xiao

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Information security policy non-compliance has been a major issue in organizations. While organizational justice plays an important role in ISP compliance., previous studies have found justice works differently for people in various national cultures. This study investigates how procedural and distributive justices affect information security policy compliance across national cultures.

The Use Of Text Analytics To Investigate Concepts In Intra- And Inter-Disciplinary Software Piracy Research Inter-Disciplinary Software Piracy Research, Jerald Hughes, Juan A. Chavarria, Francis Andoh-Baidoo

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

IS research has linked collaborators from diverse domains. IS research requires selecting and addressing an appropriate intradisciplinary or interdisciplinary scope. Identifying gaps in the current literature and deciding when and how collaborations among different disciplines may be fruitful poses challenges. We propose a process to analyze a corpus of documents from any topic, to identify potential collaboration areas.

A text analytics process is used to find areas of commonality and exclusivity among questions addressed in existing IS work by analyzing abstracts in papers from multiple disciplines studying 'software piracy.' We use term-term co-occurrence to find all the terms used in …

Unraveling Cyberloafing Paradox: Towards A Targeted Approach For Managing Cyberloafing, Bright Frimpong, Fatima Mohammed

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cyberloafing remains an important issue for organizations due to the ambivalent nature of its consequences. There is a need to extend the scope of motives that influence different kinds of cyberloafing to develop a broader understanding of cyberloafing and manage its consequences. Therefore, this study focuses on the triggers of specific cyberloafing behaviors towards developing targeted cyberloafing policies to address their prevalence

What Is Xr? Towards A Framework For Augmented And Virtual Reality, Philipp A. Rauschnabel, Reto Felix, Chris Hinsch, Hamza Shahab, Florian Alt

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality, and Extended Reality (often – misleadingly – abbreviated as XR) are commonly used terms to describe how technologies generate or modify reality. However, academics and professionals have been inconsistent in their use of these terms. This has led to conceptual confusion and unclear demarcations. Inspired by prior research and qualitative insights from XR professionals, we discuss the meaning and definitions of various terms and organize them in our proposed framework. As a result, we conclude that (1) XR should not be used to connote extended reality, but as a more open approach …

Financial Literacy And Consumer Well-Being: Examining The Role Of Gender Role Ideology, Lorena Garcia Ramon

Theses and Dissertations

Financial literacy, or the ability to process economic information and make informed decisions about financial planning, wealth accumulation, debt, and pensions, has been linked to beneficial financial behaviors that support financial well-being. Despite these benefits, consumers tend to underperform in financial literacy tests with women generally faring worse than men. This dissertation draws from gender roles literature and Expectancy-Value Theory to examine how, why, and when traditional attitudes regarding societal gender roles (i.e., gender role ideology) hinder women’s financial literacy and willingness to acquire financial knowledge. Moreover, it examines how financial literacy and willingness to …

La Asignación De Género De Los Préstamos En El Sureste De Tejas [The Gender Assignment Of Loans In Southeast Texas], Elsa Guadalupe Magana Orozco

Theses and Dissertations

En esta investigación se examina la asignación de género de préstamos del inglés al español en el Valle del Río Grande de Tejas basándose en 32 entrevistas sociolingüistas del Corpus bilingüe del Valle (Christoffersen y Bessett, 2019). Se han llegado a reconocer tres posibles factores que determinan la asignación de género (masculino o femenino) de los préstamos, tales como el sexo biológico, el género fonológico y el género analógico (Poplack, 1982; DuBord, 2004; Montés-Alcalá y Lapidus Shin, 2011). Los resultados muestran un total de 692 préstamos la mayoría fue asignado el género masculino un 50%, mientras 33% fue asignado el …

Conspicuous Asceticism: Collapsing Consumers' Hungry Ghosts, Ash Zareian

Theses and Dissertations

The author investigates an emerging construct called conspicuous asceticism expositioned from a narcissism-centric view. The understanding of this construct is approached by drawing an idiomatic semantic parallel in opposition to conspicuous consumption and by utilizing its current theoretical framework of narcissism. Moreover, this paper seeks to extend conspicuous consumption’s theoretical framework as synonymous with the construct of compulsive consumption. Furthermore, I illustrate that consumers must transcend narcissism through engaging in treatment modalities requisite to operationalize a pioneering effort in which consumers can engage in marketing campaign efforts to advertise conspicuous ascetic contexts. This dissertation gleans from extant literature in sociology, …

Entrepreneurial Imaginativeness: A Janusian-Cognition Lens On The Role Of Multicultural Experience, Robert J. Pidduck, Daniel R. Clark, Yejun Zhang

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

A burgeoning stream of research is emerging on the importance of entrepreneurial imaginativeness in the new venture development process. Empirical studies so far have focused predominantly on its ideation-based outcomes—the number and quality of ideas produced. Knowledge remains scant, however, on its antecedent mechanisms and mediating role in nascent venturing. Drawing from a novel Janusian-thinking lens, we integrate another growing research stream in entrepreneurship—multicultural experience—to probe how the creative, social, and practical cognitive schemas underpinning entrepreneurial imaginativeness can be cultivated through dimensions of perhaps the most distinctive form of cultural exposure: living abroad. We find evidence across two studies that …

B2b Ewom On Alibaba: Signaling Through Online Reviews In Platform-Based Social Exchange, Zsófia Tóth, Mona Mrad, Omar S. Itani, Jun Luo, Martin J. Liu

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highlights

• The study explores buyers' signaling of observable and unobservable supplier characteristics on the Alibaba e-platform.

• Key B2B eWOM themes that the study identifies are: product/service quality, human touch, responsiveness, and resilience.

• Findings demonstrate that human touch is vital in B2B e-platform environments too, not only in physical reality.

• Buyers' signals aim at suppliers as well as at prospective buyers and implicitly buyers send signals about themselves too.

• Signaling Theory is applied to address the signaling process, while Social Exchange Theory informs relevant cost-benefit assessments.

Abstract

This study investigates the contemporary role of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in business exchanges through …

Essays On Individuals’ Information Assessment, Information Disclosure, Participation, And Response Behaviors In Online Health Communities, Joseph Ade Manga

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of online health communities (OHCs) has enabled the use of information technologies to address some social and health needs including but not limited to emotional, social, and health-related issues. This information age has encouraged user generated (UG) content, which facilitates both peer-to-peer and business-to-peer interconnections. This rich and active information epoch (i.e., OHCs) is distinct in that value is generated when peers or participants—who may be content generators and/or content consumers—interact together by exchanging information and receiving supports aimed at addressing their specific needs; and this is made possible through the online platforms or support groups acting as …

Self-Service Technologies That Appear Human Interacting With Customers: Effects On Third-Party Observers, Ross Paul Murray

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effects of viewing and hearing service failure and recovery interactions between self-service technologies (SSTs) and customers on third-party observers. Third-party observers are those that observe the actions of other customers as they interact with a firm in some way. These observations could occur in the present (face-to-face) or past (watching a video or listening to an audio recording). Third-party observers provide a unique perspective as they can provide a more neutral perspective of a failed service transaction and recovery as compared to the involved customer and firm.

This dissertation contributes to the SST literature and to …