Business Commons^™

Three Essays On Anti-Consumers: Conpcetualizing, Envisioning, And Expanind Based On Self-Construal And Political Ideology, Soochan Choi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The current dissertation is designed to contribute to our understanding of anti-consumers and their behaviors. Although past literature on anti-consumers gets attention from researchers and marketers, it lacks a deeper understanding of who and how anti-consumers behave societally and ideologically against targeted companies. Given this lack of understanding of anti-consumers, this dissertation conceptualizes anti-consumers, develops anti-consumer measurements, tests marketing strategies to attenuate their behaviors, and adds additional type of anti-consumption behavior, switching behavior, for marketers to maximize profits. The first essay develops a typology of anti-consumers by drawing on the literature on political ideology and self-construal. The essay suggests that …

Ethics-Related Cheap Talk In 10-Ks, Sedat Erdogan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this study, I investigate the existence of direct ethics-related cheap talk in 10-Ks. Firms can utilize ethics-related language in 10-Ks to emphasize the importance of ethics or ethical behaviors. Direct ethics-related language in corporate financial disclosures may increase the stakeholdersâ?? expectation that firms act ethically. However, ethics-related language in 10-Ks shows cheap talk characteristics since it is qualitative, unaudited, not binding, and not costly to generate. As a result, firms may increase the extent of direct ethics-related language in 10-Ks to obfuscate corporate financial disclosures to confuse stakeholders. I focus on regulatory and financial pressure sources to understand ethics-related …

Online Food Delivery Platforn Use By Restaurants, Jessica Felix Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

During the COVID-19, many restaurants were forced to adopt online food delivery platforms such as Door Dash, Uber Eats to serve their clientele. In this dissertation, I examine the following research question: what challenges and benefits did restaurant managers consider to adopt online food delivery platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic? To answer this question, I present three essays. In the first essay, I reviewed the existing academic and practitioner literature on the research context, identified the major players in the food delivery industry, and summarized the challenges that restaurants faced during the pandemic. In the second essay, I identified what …

Performance Classification Of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck-Type Models Using Fractal Analysis Of Time Series Data., Peter Kwadwo Asante

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims to assess the performance of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck-type models by examining the fractal characteristics of time series data from various sources, including finance, volcanic and earthquake events, US COVID-19 reported cases and deaths, and two simulated time series with differing properties. The time series data is categorized as either a Gaussian or a Lévy process (Lévy walk or Lévy flight) by using three scaling methods: Rescaled range analysis, Detrended fluctuation analysis, and Diffusion entropy analysis. The outcomes of this analysis indicate that the financial indices are classified as Lévy walks, while the volcanic, earthquake, and COVID-19 data are classified …

Ceo Political Ideology And Risk Factor Disclosure, Jiwoo Seo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

I examine whether and how CEO political ideology affects risk factor disclosure. Since 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has required U.S. firms to disclose risk factors in their 10-K filings. While prior studies document that this required disclosure increases the information content of financial reports, there is limited evidence on how Chief Executive Officer (CEO) personality traits influence risk factor disclosure. In this paper, I focus on CEOs' political ideology to proxy for their personality traits. Using CEOs' personal political contributions data to capture their political ideology, I find that firms with Republican-leaning CEOs provide less risk factor …

Essays On Reit Founder Ceos, Michael Mcgonigle

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

I explore how founder CEOs influence the firm. In my first chapter I examine how founderCEO risk-aversion affects firm capital structure. Using book and market leverage ratios to proxy for risk aversion, I show that REITs with founder CEOs have less leverage than other REITs. This result holds when controlling for firm size, firm age, tangibility, profitability, growth potential, diversification strategy, property-type fixed effects and year fixed effects. I use a propensity score matching methodology to examine whether the reduced leverage is due to factors other than a CEO's founder status. The results do not support that notion. I use …

Effects Of Ceo Social Networks On Firm Innovation Strategy, Jinxin Yang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Prior research studying the effects of CEOs on innovation are primarily based on Upper Echelon Theory, which indicates the intrapersonal characteristics among executives in their experiences, values, and personalities could be indispensable antecedents for firm innovation, while the implications of their interpersonal differences have hardly yet received enough attention they deserve. To advance CEO social networks and innovation research, therefore, we attempt to provide some insightful findings through this dissertation series with two papers. In the first paper, we examine the general relationships between two important CEO social network characteristics (network centrality and structural holes) and firm exploratory innovation, and …

Veteran Workplace Identity: Conceptualizing And Measuring Veteran Identity In The Organizational Context, Sarah Villanueva

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Military veterans make up just 5% of the U.S. workforce, but their outcomes are of particular interest to society and business organizations. Despite social concern and respect for veterans, little management theory explains veteransâ?? differentiated outcomes in employment experiences and labor market outcomes. This dissertation considers the fundamental question of what it means to be a military veteran in the workplace context and uses mixed methods techniques to consider veteran workplace identity (VWI). Through qualitative analysis, I found VWI was a multi-dimensional, work-related identity. This definition was then used to develop a twelve-item scale and assess its psychometric properties as …

Essays On Employee Litigaiton Risk, Adrian Tippit

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the valuation effects of a legislative shock to employee litigation rights, as well as the mediating effects of pre-existing employee rights.The first chapter examines the valuation effects of the Passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, an act that increases employee litigation rights related to demographic-based discriminatory compensation filings. We find that firms with relatively fewer women in their workforce exhibit a significant negative three-day abnormal return of 0.61% around the passage of the Lilly Act. In contrast, we find that firms with relatively more women in their workforce do not exhibit a significant abnormal return. …

Not All I-Deals Are Same: Examining A Process Model Linking Content-Specific I-Deals To Employee Performance Outcomes, Yilu Wang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Integrating i-deals theory and job demands and resources (JD-R) theory, I propose to investigate whether and how content-specific i-deals differ in their effectiveness in individual performance outcomes. Consistent with the early conceptualization of i-deals contents, I specifically compare the impact of task and work responsibility, financial incentives, schedule flexibility, and location flexibility on employees' engagement and performance outcomes. I suggest that content-specific i-deals have different relationships with physical-, emotional-, and cognitive-engagement, and the three types of engagement mediate the relationships between content-specific i-deals and performance outcomes (operationalized as task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and creativity). Multilevel modeling and relative weights …

A Machine Learning Approach To Stochastic Optimal Control, Pablo Ever Avalos

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Merton's portfolio optimization problem is a well-renowned problem in financial mathematics which seeks to optimize the investment decision for an investor. In the simplest situation, the market consists of a risk-less asset (i.e. a bond) that pays back a relatively low interest rate, and a risky asset (i.e. a stock) that follows a geometric Brownian motion. The optimal allocation strategy of the investor's wealth is found by optimizing the expected utility along the stochastic evolution of the market. This thesis focuses on several different applications of this optimization problem. We look at pre-constructed analytical solutions and showcase the results. We …

Essays On The Economic Consequences Of Regulatory Monitoring, Yicheng Zhu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation studies the economic consequences of regulatory monitoring in two chapters. In the first chapter, using hand-collected data on Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) violations, I examine how enforcement actions on financial institutions affect their investment bankersâ?? role as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisors. I document that FINRA violations in the current year lead to a loss of M&A market share in the following year. I further find that client performance improves in future M&A deals advised by the sanctioned banks. Specifically, I document that future bidder (client) cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) are positively related to both the number …

Human Resource Management Systems And Firm Innovation: A Conceptual Exploration And Meta-Analysis, Yang Zhang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation includes three essays. Essay 1 is a literature review of human resource management (HRM) systems and firm innovation. Essay 1 reviewed different dimensions of firm innovation and key supporting theories that explain why human resource management systems can influence firm innovation in the literature. Essay 1 classified firm innovation into three categories: innovation in people and organizations, innovation in processes, and innovation in products or services. Essay 1 presented a list of mediators that explain how HRM systems influence firm innovation, and a list of moderators that show when HRM systems influence firm innovation. Essay 1 also found …

Intraorganizational Adaptiveness: Conceptual And Empirical Examination Of Salespeople's Adaptation Within Their Firms, Gabriel Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The role of salespeople in their firms has evolved drastically in the past two decades, especially in the amount of knowledge and skill required to contribute to their firms’ success in the contemporary B2B marketplace. Salespeople are increasingly considered as strategic employees who can provide a competitive advantage for their firms by providing intelligence gathered from their deep engagement in the marketplace. Modern salespeople act as consultants, relationship managers, and solution specialists, among many other roles. Due to the marked changes in the roles carried out by salespeople today, this investigation sets out to examine the most current developments in …

Green Gains Green: A View Of How Sales Is Affected By Sustainability And Innovation In A B2b Setting, Justin Ruben Munoz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Dissertation topic that I have chosen to study places both a prominent topic currently making waves in marketing with the field of marketing that has quickly become my specialty and my focus of research going forward. I have chosen to study green and sustainable measures that organizations currently put into practice along with how those sustainable initiatives affect the sales and revenue of that organization. The context of the study is in business-to-business (B2B). Specifically, this current research takes place in a new context that has seldom seen research in the current decade, as most of the research on …

Essays On The Financial Implications Of Economically Linked Firms, Chao Wei

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation consists of two topics on the financial implications of economically linked firms. The Chapter 1 examines the impact of supply chain concentration on purchasing firm's financing costs. I find that purchasing firms engaging in less concentrated supply chain structure are subject to higher risk and cost of equity. This effect is more pronounced when the supplier's financial performance deteriorates or when the purchasing firmâ??s purchase demand is large. I also provide evidence that lower supply chain concentration increases purchasing firm's cost of debt. Lenders charge higher interests on the corporate loans as their compensation for the additional risk …

Stochastic Modeling Of Earthquakes And Option Pricing Using Bns-Gamma-Ou Model, Mandela Bright Quashie

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

High frequency data are becoming increasingly popular these days. They are fundamental in basically every facet of people’s lives. They are the determining factors in hedging in the field of finance. In geology, they help in the accurate prediction of earthquakes’ magnitude which goes along way to help save lives and properties.

High frequency data are also used more and more frequently for speculations. For this reason, it is important not only for scientists to apply models allowing correct quantification of these data, but also to improve the eciency of these models.

The Black-Scholes model, which is widely used because …

Who Is Willing To Speak Up And Why? Examining Individual And Organizational Predictors Of Employee Voice Behavior In Higher Education Institutions, Jessie Socorro Arellano

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Employee voice behavior is central to the effectiveness, the development, and the adaptability of organizations to their environments. However, there is currently limited organizational research and knowledge on the factors that influence employee voice behaviors, especially in the context of higher education institutions. As such, the purpose of this study is to examine the predictors of employee voice behaviors in institutions of higher education. Specifically, this study examines the impact of key individual and organizational factors such as alumni status, organizational commitment, work motivation, communication climate, and organizational politics on employees' expression of promotive and prohibitive voice in higher education …

Lévy Processes: Characterizing Volcanic And Financial Time Series, Peter Kwadwo Asante

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this work, we use the Diffusion Entropy Analysis (DEA) to analyze and detect the scaling properties of time series from both emerging and well established markets as well as volcanic eruptions recorded by a seismic station, both financial and volcanic time series data are known to have high frequencies (i.e they are collected at an extremely fine scale). The objective is to determine the characterization i.e whether they follow a Gaussian or Lévy distribution. If they do follow a Lévy distribution we are then interested in finding if they are characterized by a Lévy walk which has a finite …

Proprietary Costs Of Financial Reporting, Country-Level Attributes, And Financial Statement Comparability, Jangho Gil

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates the impact of country-level attributes on the relationship between proprietary costs of financial reporting and financial statement comparability. Given that managers use discretion in financial reporting, proprietary costs of financial reporting and country-level attributes could play a role in shaping managers' financial reporting behavior, which, in turn, could have an impact on financial statement comparability. For international study, I use four country-level latent factors, suggested by Isidro et al. (2019), that categorize most country-level features that affect financial reporting practices. I find that the negative relationship between proprietary costs and comparability is stronger in countries with relatively …

Achieving Effectiveness And Innovation In U.S. Public Organizations Through Ability-Enhancing And Opportunity-Enhancing Soft/Commitment High Performance Work Practices, Kingshuk Saha

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

It is well-established in the management literature that HPWPs improve productivity in the private sector. But does HPWPs work in the public sector? A thorough literature search revealed only 45 HPWPs studies done in the public sector. The first purpose of this Dissertation is a thorough literature review of these 45 studies. Out of these 45 studies, only 12 had samples obtained from the U.S. Hence, it can be argued that there is much to be discovered about HPWPs in the U.S. public sector. The second purpose of this Dissertation is to categorize HPWPs in the U.S. public sector based …

Essays On The Spillover Effects Of Whistleblowing On Peer Firms, Emmanuel Joseph Sequeira

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation examines the spillover effects of media reported corporate whistleblowing on industry peer firms in two essays. The first essay examines peer firm risk-taking and firm efficiency following a whistleblowing allegation. I find that peers significantly reduce their risk-taking following the allegation. They also increase their efficiency following the allegation and increase their market share at the expense of the whistleblowing firms, leading to increased profitability. My second essay examines peer firms' earnings management choices following a whistleblowing allegation. I find that peer firms significantly reduce their manipulation of real activities and reduce their use of accruals-based earnings management …

Managerial Entrenchment And Financial Reporting Comparability, Qifeng Wu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study examines whether managerial entrenchment has an association with firms' financial statement comparability. I find that managerial entrenchment has a significant negative association with financial statement comparability, providing a new notion about the management influence on financial reporting quality. Moreover, by using the business segment as a proxy for business complexity, I find that the variation of accounting comparability with its peer firms mainly stems from managers' investment choice. This finding supports FASB's assertion that financial statement comparability is a reporting quality that should be enhanced among firms with similar economic events. Lastly, I test if managerial entrenchment mitigates …

Target Accounting Quality And Merger Consideration Design, Yuyun Zhou

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study examines how accounting quality of target firms relates to the design of merger consideration in acquisition agreements. Prior literature suggests that acquirers mitigate adverse selection problems by making the value of merger consideration sensitive to the acquirers' merger announcement returns. Using a large sample of acquisition agreements of public merging parties between 1996 and 2017, I investigate whether high-quality accounting information of target firms helps acquirers mitigate adverse selection problems and in turn affects the sensitivity of merger consideration to the acquirers' merger announcement returns. I hypothesize and find that accounting quality of target firms is negatively related …

A Social Network Perspective Of Employee Overqualification To Outcomes Relationships In Workgroups, Farid Jahantab

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Integrating overqualification research with the social network perspective, and emphasizing social exchanges among organizational members, I propose to examine how social networks unpack the relationship between perceived overqualification and organizational outcomes. Specifically, I suggest that perceived overqualification (POQ) has implications for employees' centrality in a friendship network and that friendship network centrality (FRDNC) mediates the relationships between perceived overqualification and organizational outcomes (operationalized as organizational citizenship behaviors directed at coworkers [i.e., OCBI] and turnover intentions). Further, adopting a contingency approach to overqualification, I propose to identify contextual variables that determine the strength of perceived overqualification-social network-outcomes relationships. Social comparison theory …

Market Effects Of Local Media Employment Reductions On The Idiosyncratic Risk Of Nearby Firms; Returns, Valuation, And Debt; And Firm Meet-Beat Behavior And Ceo Turnover And Compensation, C. Kyle Jones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research examines the effects of reductions in local and regional media employment on firms' information environment. A reduction in the number of local media employees available to provide coverage of firms is associated with persistent levels of increased idiosyncratic risk. The source of that firm-level risk appears to be increased estimation risk among investors, rather than decreased awareness about the investment opportunities or real effects on firms' product market competition. I also demonstrate that overall levels of local media coverage are associated with differences in returns similar to those associated with coverage in national outlets. While a reduction in …

Two Essays On Executive Compensation, Michael Abrokwah

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation examines the effect of an exogenous event on Executive compensation and the relationship between executive compensation and earnings management undertaken by the firm.

My first essay presents evidence that natural disasters have an effect on CEO compensation. Our main findings are that option compensation is lower for CEOs in counties where a natural disaster occurred. Furthermore, in the year of the disaster, stock compensation is higher among CEOs in natural disaster counties when compared to those in non-disaster counties. When considering liquidity, option compensation levels are lower for firms with below average liquidity levels but stock compensation …

Bribery And Export Intensity: The Role Of Formal Institutional Constraint Susceptibility, Randika Eramudugoda Gamage

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study explores the influence of home country formal institutional constraints on firm bribery payments and export intensity. Distinguishing between forms of formal institutional constraints based on their susceptibility to bribery, this study highlights the different mechanisms through which formal institutional constraints impact export intensity. I propose that highly susceptible formal institutional constraints will behave as incentives leading to increased bribery payments. In contrast, less-susceptible formal institutional constraints will act as an added cost, ex-post to bribery payments, in the bribery-export intensity relationship. These less-susceptible formal institutional constraints will further decrease export intensity. Utilizing a firm-level dataset from 25 countries, …

Spurring Tensions At The Workplace And The Moderating Role Of Psychological Resilience: A Paradox Theory Perspective, Rawia Ahmed

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Paradoxes are integral parts of our work lives. In this paper, I tested workplace triggers of four different categories of tensions: belonging, learning, organizing, and performing tensions, and I offered a theoretical framework on how these types of tensions affect employees' wellbeing negatively by examining stress. Further, I presented psychological resilience as a contingency variable that reduces the experience of stress at the workplace. I also created the organizing tensions instrument. I validated the scale and tested the model with three different samples: Sample 1 (125 MBA students), sample 2 (time 1 520 Qualtrics Panel respondents), and sample 3 (time …

Information Content Of Revised Earnings Forecasts, Market Learning, And Analyst Behavior, Lifei Xue

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In my first essay, I examine how the quality of private information and the quality of public information contained in analyst revised one-year-ahead earnings forecasts issued right after a quarterly earnings announcement affect the post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD). I find that high precision of private information contained in revised forecasts reduces the level of PEAD and that the precision of public information contained in the revised one-year-ahead earnings forecasts partially offset the reduction in PEAD. Moreover, I find the effect of precision of private information on PEAD decreases after Reg FD, which required in the year 2000 that analysts could …