Business Commons^™

The Effects Of Pornography On Unethical Behavior In Business, Nathan W. Mecham, Melissa F. Lewis-Western, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Pornography is no longer an activity confined to a small group of individuals or the privacy of one’s home. Rather, it has permeated modern culture, including the work environment. Given the pervasive nature of pornography, we study how viewing pornography affects unethical behavior at work. Using survey data from a sample that approximates a nationally representative sample in terms of demographics, we find a positive correlation between viewing pornography and intended unethical behavior. We then conduct an experiment to provide causal evidence. The experiment confirms the survey—consuming pornography causes individuals to be less ethical. We find that this relationship is …

Implicit Attitudes And U.S. Tax Professionals’ Reliance On Offshore Tax Professionals’ Recommendations, Brian C. Spilker, Bryan W. Stewart, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Large accounting firms offshore a significant amount of tax work to professionals in India. Prior research suggests that individuals can have negative implicit attitudes toward people from different nationalities and that negative implicit attitudes can have undesired consequences. In this study, we measure a sample of U.S. tax professionals’ implicit attitudes toward Indian persons using an implicit association test (IAT) and assess whether the U.S. tax professionals respond differently to work produced by Indian versus U.S. tax professionals and whether implicit attitudes affect the U.S. professionals’ assessments of Indian tax professionals’ work product. We document that participants in our study …

Are Internal Audits Associated With Reductions In Perceived Risk?, Joseph V. Carcello, Marc Eulerich, Adi Masli, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We examine whether internal auditing provides value to organizations by reducing risk. We compare the changes in risks between audited business units and matched non-audited units within the same company. This design allows us to isolate the importance of an internal audit while holding constant changes in risk due to the organization and time period. Based on ratings from the heads of audited and non-audited units, we find that managers of audited units perceive a greater decline in risk as well as a greater increase in performance compared to managers of non-audited units. We also find that companies that have …

Use Of Factors In Development Estimates: Improving The Cost Analysis Toolkit, Matthew R. Markman, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Edward D. White

Faculty Publications

Factor Estimating is a technique commonly used by defense acquisition analysts to develop cost estimations. However, previous studies developing factors for the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the life cycle are limited. This research expands the current toolkit for cost analysts by developing cost factors in previously unexplored areas. More specifically, over 400 cost reports are utilized to create new standard cost factors that are delineated by five categories: commodity type, contract type, contractor type, development type, and Service. The factors are developed for those elements that are common in a wide array of projects such as program …

Quantifying The Effects Of Aircraft Engine Upgrades On Operating And Support Costs, Bradford A. Myers, Edward D. White, Jonathan D. Ritschel, R. David Fass

Faculty Publications

For fixed wing aircraft within the U.S. Air Force, Operating and Support (O&S) costs encompass a large portion of total life cycle costs. O&S costs include fuel, maintenance, and engine upgrades. To the authors’ knowledge, no study to date has attempted to empirically quantify the realized effects of new aircraft engines on sustainment costs. Utilizing the Air Force Total Ownership Cost database, they focused on new engines appearing on the C-5s, C-130s, and C-135s. Although narrow in scope, results suggest newer engines have lower fuel costs. Maintenance costs for newer engines were not consistently higher or lower than the engines …

Agile Software Development: Creating A Cost Of Delay Framework For Air Force Software Factories, J. Goljan, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Scott Drylie, Edward D. White

Faculty Publications

The Air Force software development environment is experiencing a paradigm shift. The 2019 Defense Innovation Board concluded that speed and cycle time must become the most important software metrics if the US military is to maintain its advantage over adversaries.¹ This article proposes utilizing a cost-o­f-d­elay (CoD) framework to prioritize projects toward optimizing readiness. Cost-­of-d­elay is defined as the economic impact resulting from a delaying product delivery or, said another way, opportunity cost. In principle, CoD assesses the negative impacts resulting from changes to the priority of a project.

A Learning Curve Model Accounting For The Flattening Effect In Production Cycles, Evan R. Boone, John J. Elshaw, Clay M. Koschnick, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Adedeji B. Badiru

Faculty Publications

We investigate production cost estimates to identify and model modifications to a prescribed learning curve. Our new model examines the learning rate as a decreasing function over time as opposed to a constant rate that is frequently used. The purpose of this research is to determine whether a new learning curve model could be implemented to reduce the error in cost estimates for production processes. A new model was created that mathematically allows for a “flattening effect,” which typically occurs later in the production process. This model was then compared to Wright’s learning curve, which is a popular method used …

A Cross-Country And Country-Specific Modelling Of Stock Market Performance, Bank Development And Global Equity Index In Emerging Market Economies: A Case Of Brics Countries, Ebere Ume Kalu, Augustine C. Arize

Faculty Publications

This study investigated in cross-country and panel form the interactions of bank development, stock market development and global equity index, focusing on the BRICS countries covering the period 1990 to 2018. We found a bidirectional causation between bank development (CPSGDP) and stock market performance as proxied by the depth of the markets (MCAPGDP) in the BRICS countries. Cointegration was also found using the panel cointegration framework and the bounds test for the ARDL estimators. This largely proves that a long-run relationship of both direct and reverse nature exists between bank development and stock market performance. For the bank development and …

National Income Inequality And International Business Expansion, Nathaniel C. Lupton, Guoliang Frank Jiang, Luis F. Escobar, Alfredo Jiménez

Faculty Publications

We examine the extent to which host country income inequality influences multinational enterprises’ (MNE) expansion strategy for foreign production investment, depending on their specific strategic objectives. Applying a transaction cost framework, we predict that national income inequality has an inverted U-shaped relationship with foreign production investment. As inequality increases, MNEs accrue lower transaction costs arising from interactions with various local actors, leading to higher probability of investment. As income inequality increases further, its effect on location attractiveness will become negative, as its attraction effect is increasingly offset by additional monitoring, bargaining, and security costs owing to the more fractious nature …

A Theory Of Multiformat Communication: Mechanisms, Dynamics, And Strategies, Jordan W. Moffett, Judith Anne Garretson Folse, Robert W. Palmatier

Faculty Publications

Extant communication theories predate the explosion of digital formats and technological advances such as virtual reality, which likely explains their predominant focus on traditional and format-level (e.g., face-to-face, email) rather than digital or characteristic-level (e.g., visual cues, synchronicity) design decisions. Firms thus lack insights into how to create and use emerging digital formats, individually or synergistically. To establish a holistic framework of bilateral multiformat communication for relationship marketing, this article reviews communication theory to establish a foundation for understanding multiformat communication and to identify any gaps (e.g., AI agents, simulated cues). The authors then review bilateral communication research in light …

Establishing The Foundations To Measure Organizational Agility For Military Organizations, Jeremy R. Geiger, John J. Elshaw, David R. Jacques

Faculty Publications

There is an ongoing demand for organizations to become more agile in order to prosper amongst their competitors. Many military organizations have declared a renewed focus towards organizational agility. The goal of this research is to isolate the variables needed to measure organizational agility (OA) in military organizations, allowing for the future development of a suitable method to measure OA without the need to interact with outside organizations. This article begins by providing a suitable and formal definition of organizational agility by exploring and analyzing relevant scholarly literature on the subject. Related terms, such as organizational resiliency, flexibility, robustness, versatility, …

Revisiting The Purpose Of Business, Joseph Bamber, Andy Borchers

Faculty Publications

While it is easy to see the ways that business has gone global today, it is less easy to see how scriptural ideas for holistic business are currently put in practice. We have outlined themes related to business found in Scripture and used them to create a holistic scorecard for businesses. We also compare recent views on the purpose of business and some businesses that follow these models using the scorecard. We include the classic 1970 essay by Milton Friedman (“The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits”) and continue through John Elkington (Cannibals with Forks), Mackey & …

A Predictive Analytics Approach To Building A Decision Support System For Improving Graduation Rates At A Four-Year College, Xuan Wang, Helmut Schneider, Kenneth R. Walsh

Faculty Publications

Although graduation rates have interested stakeholders, educational researchers, and policymakers for some time, little progress has been made on the overall graduation rate at four-year state colleges. Even though selective admission based on academic indicators such as high school GPA and ACT/ SAT have widely been used in the USA for years, and recent statistics show that less than 40% of students graduate from four-year state colleges in four years in the US. The authors propose using an ensemble of analytic models that considers cost as a better form of analysis that can be used as input to decision support …

Individual Performance And Taking On Firm-Specific Roles: The Case Of Business School Associate Deans, Jeff Dyer, David Kryscynski, Christopher Law, Shad Morris

Faculty Publications

The firm-specific human capital dilemma suggests that firms generally want employees to make firm-specific investments but that employees prefer not to make them. We suggest that individual performance may moderate this dilemma such that the dilemma increases as individual performance increases – i.e. firms may prefer high performers in firm-specific roles while high performers may resist these roles more than their lower performing counterparts. We examine our extended firm-specific human capital theory in a context where the classic firm-specific human capital dilemma likely exists: business academia. Using a unique dataset of 4,164 business school professors from 39 of the top …

The Pull-To-Stay Effect: Influence Of Sales Managers' Leadership Worthiness On Salesperson Turnover Intentions, Vishag Badrinarayanan, Aditya Gupta, Nawar N. Chaker

Faculty Publications

Given that salesperson turnover is a significant problem for sales organizations, sales researchers have devoted a lot of attention toward explicating various drivers and mitigators of salesperson turnover intentions. Within this domain, consistent with the popular sentiment "employees don't quit their jobs, they quit their bosses," scholars have explored sales manager-related triggers such as leadership style, salesperson - sales manager relational exchange, and several managerial characteristics. We extend this stream of research by developing and testing a framework of salespersons' perceptions of their manager'sleadership worthiness- a higher-order construct comprising of competence, charisma, and behavioral integrity - and its subsequent impact …

Under Pressure: Time Management, Self-Leadership, And The Nurse Manager, Elizabeth Goldsby, Michael Goldsby, Christopher B. Neck, Christopher P. Neck

Faculty Publications

Decision making by nurses is complicated by the stress, chaos, and challenging demands of the work. One of the major stressors confronting nurses is perceived time pressure. Given the potential negative outcomes on nurses due to perceived time pressures, it seems logical that a nurse manager's ability to lead nurses in moderating this time pressure and in turn to make better decisions could enhance nurse well-being and performance. Paralleling research in the nursing literature suggests that, in order to improve patients' judgement of the care they received, nurse managers should embrace ways to lower nurses' perceived time pressure. In this …

The Impact Of Service Firm’S Environmentally Friendly Reputation In The Context Of Revenue Management, Choongbeom Choi, Miyoung Jeong Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In revenue management practice, customers’ perceived fairness is a critical issue. Prior research examined the effect of revenue management on customers’ perceptions of fairness by implementing two different conditions: fencing and framing. In this study, the authors evaluated the role of a service firm’s environmentally friendly reputation under the conditions of fencing and framing. Results indicated that an environmentally friendly reputation only moderated the effect of framing on perceived fairness. In particular, when the firm had a poor reputation, framing as a discount rather than framing as a surcharge increased customers’ fairness perceptions. When the firm had a good reputation, …

To Share Or Not To Share: The Optimal Advertising Effort With Asymmetric Advertising Effectiveness, Qingying Li, Hao Ding, Tianqin Shi, Yanli Tang

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we study a two-stage model in which a manufacturer expands to a new market through a local retailer and has private information on the advertising effectiveness. The manufacturer chooses the information sharing format with the retailer, either no information sharing or mandatory information sharing. Under no information sharing format, the manufacturer and the retailer play a signaling game. We derive both separating and pooling equilibria and conduct equilibrium refinements for the signaling game. Under mandatory information sharing format, the manufacturer simply informs the retailer the advertising effectiveness. We also establish the stylized model and derive the optimal …

Applications Of Open Innovation To The Supply Chain System In The Smes, Taeho Park, Tianqin Shi, Ming Zhou, Shu Zhou

Faculty Publications

The close-knitted structure of a supply chain seems to leave no room for the word 'open'. Closeness builds trust, enables information sharing, benefits transportation and more. Somehow, openness started to benefit supply chain management recently, through a trend called 'open innovation'. Based on gathered anecdotes and our interviews of industry professionals, we attempted to present a more complete picture of open innovation in supply chain management, including its potential benefits, major concerns, adoption hurdles, and future solutions. Our findings identified current perceptions of supply chain practitioners on open innovation and major hurdles and difficulties of implementing open innovation in supply …

Distribution Channel Choice And Divisional Conflict In Remanufacturing Operations, Tianqin Shi, Dilip Chhajed, Zhixi Wan, Yunchuan Liu

Faculty Publications

We consider a firm consisting of two divisions, one responsible for designing and manufacturing new products and the other responsible for remanufacturing operations. The firm will sell these new and remanufactured products either directly to the consumer (direct selling) or through an independent retailer (indirect selling). Our study demonstrates that a firm’s organizational structure can affect its marketing decisions. Specifically, a decentralized firm with separate manufacturing and remanufacturing divisions can benefit from indirect selling with higher firm profit, supply chain profit, and total consumer demand than direct selling. Moreover, this structure also induces a remanufacturable product design. In contrast, a …

Testing For Complete Pass-Through Of Ex Ass-Through Of Exchange Ra Ange Rate Without Trade Barriers, Tengfei Zhang, Tianxiang Li, Tomas Baležentis

Faculty Publications

The objective of this paper is to test whether the complete pass-through of exchange rate exists when there are almost no transaction costs and in the environment of competitive market. In general, the literature claims that the pass-through of exchange rate is incomplete due to imperfect market, i.e. the presence of transaction costs and imperfect competition. The quasi-experimental case of the food import to Hong Kong from Mainland China is considered in the analysis. The results show that the pass-through of the exchange rate of Chinese RMB against to US dollar to Hong Kong's food import price is complete in …

The Impact Of Innovative Executive Servant Leadership On Organizational Citizenship, And Organizational Cynicism, Jerry L. Chi, Grace Chi, Nile M. Khanfar, Gabriel Gao, Belal A. Kaifi

Faculty Publications

Have you ever wondered how your employees complained to their friends about how things happened in your organization? The most challenging part for Servant Leadership is to reduce organizational cynicism and nurture organizational citizenship. The major research interest for this study was to discover whether the bottom-up servant leadership theory to “serve” first and “lead” second can be truly practiced by the president of a university and whether it is valid and effective in reducing employee’s organizational cynicism and enhancing employee’s organizational citizenship. The results showed that the goodness of fit (GFI) was good and sufficient and adequate. The null …

Underwriting Crowdfunding, Darian M. Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

Crowdfunding has more in common with an initial public offering (IPO) than may be readily apparent. Both are coordinated sales of securities to public investors (in crowdfunding's case, the "crowd"). Both rely on disclosure to mitigate information asymmetries between a company and its investors. Yet IPOs protect investors better for two reasons. First, companies undertaking an IPO have significant track records to disclose, unlike nascent startups. Second, IPOs are underwritten, meaning a reputational intermediary vouches for them.

This Essay considers applying underwriting to Regulation Crowdfunding (Regulation CF) to allow crowdfunding to mimic an IPO. It tackles questions such as: Who …

The Analytics Managers Ultimate Guide For Working With Universities, Robert J. Mcgrath

Faculty Publications

The challenges organizations are having related to finding (and retaining) deep analytical talent did not materialize out of thin air…or overnight. Analytics and Data science – and the role of the analytics professional – has evolved over the last several decades and has been fueled by our ability to capture and process increasingly larger and more complex variations of data and our desire to gain increasingly granular insights to fuel innovation and creativity. While many organizations recognize that a partnership with a university can be a resource to many of these challenges, the best way to start a conversation with …

U.S. Fdi And Shareholder Rights Protection In Developed And Developing Economies, Vishaal Baulkaran, Nathaniel C. Lupton

Faculty Publications

We examine the impact of shareholder rights protection on U.S multinational firms’ Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). We hypothesize that the expropriation of wealth is less likely to occur in countries with strong shareholder rights and hence, these countries will attract more FDI relative to countries with weaker shareholder rights protection. We also hypothesize that this relationship will be more important for developing countries compared to developed countries. Based on an analysis of US FDI data over the period 1997-2016, we find support for our predictions. These findings emphasize the importance of institutional development for economic development, via the attraction of …

Covid-19 In Indigenous Communities: Five Protective Factors Of “Exercising” Sovereignty, Kelsey Leonard, Natalie Welch, Alisse Ali-Joseph

Faculty Publications

Indigenous Peoples have an inherent responsibility and right to “exercising” sovereignty - the practice of sport and physical activity in performance of our cultural, political, and spiritual citizenship (Ali-Joseph 2018). During the COVID-19 pandemic, access to and equity (inequity) in sport and physical activity has been felt (physically, spiritually, politically) within Indigenous communities. We implement an abundance-based Indigenous approach to understanding Indigenous Peoples’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic through sport and its far-reaching ramifications in Indian Country. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen Indigenous Peoples utilize social media such as Facebook and TikTok to reimagine Indigenous sport …

Effects Of Facial Features And Styling Elements On Perceptions Of Competence, Warmth, And Hireability Of Male Professionals, Marc Fetscherin, Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, Arne Klumb

Faculty Publications

Few studies investigated the effects of facial characteristics on stereotyping in the business context. Using a 2 (beard/no beard) x 2 (acne/no acne) x 2 (tie/no tie) x 2 (eyeglasses/no eyeglasses) between subjects’ design, two representative samples of 364 and 711 participants rated different stimuli of male subjects on dimensions of competence, warmth and hireability. Based on 4,215 observations, results show acne has a negative and eyeglasses a positive effect on both competence and warmth. Wearing a necktie has a positive effect on competence and a negative effect on warmth. Finally, beardedness has a negative effect on warmth. We also …

Organizations And Communities: A Symbiosis View, Hani Safadi, Richard Watson, Tanner Skousen

Faculty Publications

How can organizations and communities engage in mutually beneficial relationships? We develop a framework that explains how an open community’s engagement with an organization can be mutually beneficial to both in the long-term. We theorize how a symbiotic relationship between organizations and communities can be achieved by nurturing various forms of capital flow between organizations and communities as well as creating virtuous feedback loops within each other’s capital creation systems.

Building Emergency Savings Through Employer-Sponsored Rainy-Day Savings Accounts, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Mark Iwry, David John, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, carry revolving credit balances, and have little liquidity to absorb financial shocks. One consequence of this financial vulnerability is that many individuals use a portion of their retirement savings during their working years. For every $1 that flows into 401(k)s and similar accounts, between 30¢ and 40¢ leaks out before retirement (Argento, Bryant, and Sabelhaus 2015). We explore the practical considerations and challenges associated with helping households accumulate liquid savings that can be deployed when urgent pre-retirement needs arise. Automatically enrolling workers into an employer-sponsored “rainy- day” or “emergency” savings account—terms that we use …

Leisure As Immediate Conscious Experience: Foundations, Evaluation, And Extension Of The Theory Of Structured Experiences, Gary D. Ellis, Jingxian Jiang, Patti A. Freeman, Andrew Lacanienta, Tazim Jamal

Faculty Publications

The nature, causes, and effects of immediate conscious leisure experiences have long been central interests of scholars. Significant contributions to the field include Abraham Maslow’s studies of ecstasy and peak experience, Sigmund Koch’s descriptions of two forms of consciousness, John Neulinger’s classification of immediate conscious experiences based on their motivational contexts, Michael J. Ellis’ application of arousal theory to play, Howard and Diane Tinsley’s theory of the leisure experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s career of inquiry into the “flow” phenomenon, and recently, the theory of structured experience (TSE). This paper reviews research on leisure as immediate conscious experience relating to development of …