Business Commons^™

An Experimental Investigation Of The Individual And Joint Effects Of Financial And Non-Financial Incentives On Knowledge Sharing Using Enterprise Social Media, Degan Kettles, Robert D. St. Louis, Paul John Steinbart

Faculty Publications

Many organizations implement enterprise social media (ESM) in an effort to capture and store valuable knowledge that employees possess. Unfortunately, more often than not, employees do not make a large number of knowledge contributions. Using agency theory and contingency theory as foundations, we examine managerial interventions that can improve knowledge contribution rates in ESM. Specifically, we investigate the individual and joint effects of paying people to share knowledge, providing social cues, and having supporting and policing moderators on knowledge sharing. We further examine how two contingency factors—the nature of an employee’s compensation scheme (variable or fixed) for their primary work …

Embodied Conversational Agent-Based Deception Detection, Aaron C. Elkins, Jeffrey G. Proudfoot, Nathan Twyman, Judee K. Burgoon, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr.

Faculty Publications

An Embodied Conversational Agent-based human deception detection system was tested in a laboratory experiment during which some subjects had committed a mock crime and had guilty knowledge of that crime. Sensor signals were analyzed for their ability to discriminate between guilty/deceptive and innocent/truthful examinees and suitability for conducting automated agent-based deception interviews. Electrodermal activity confirmed the presence of arousal during the agent-based interviews.

How Does Intentional Earnings Smoothing Vary With Managerial Ability?, Peter Demerjian, Melissa F. Lewis-Western, Sarah Mcvay

Faculty Publications

We investigate if high-ability managers are more likely to intentionally smooth earnings, a form of earnings management, and when they are more likely to do so. Although prior studies provide evidence that high-ability managers report higher quality earnings, the literature does not indicate whether this behavior is common because of (or happens in spite of) high-ability managers’ intentional smoothing activities. We find that (1) high-ability managers are significantly more likely to engage in intentional smoothing, (2) their intentional smoothing is associated with improved future operating performance, and (3) their intentional smoothing is more prevalent when the smoothing either benefits shareholders, …

The Consequences Of Audit-Related Earnings Revisions, Jacob Z. Haislip, Linda A. Myers, Susan Scholz, Timothy Seidel

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we investigate the consequences that auditors and their clients face when earnings announced in an unaudited earnings release are subsequently revised, presumably as a result of year-end audit procedures, so that earnings as reported in the 10-K differ from earnings as previously announced. Specifically, we examine whether the likelihood of an auditor ‘losing the client’ is greater following such revisions, and whether the likelihood of dismissal is influenced by revisions that more negatively impact earnings, that cause the client to miss important earnings benchmarks, by greater local auditor competition, or by auditor characteristics. We also examine audit …

Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk Taking?, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Many experiments have found that participants take more investment risk if they see less frequent returns, portfolio-level returns (rather than each individual asset’s returns), or longhorizon (rather than one-year) historical return distributions. In contrast, we find that such information aggregation treatments do not affect total equity investment when we make the investment environment more realistic than in prior experiments. Previously documented aggregation effects are not robust to changes in the risky asset’s return distribution or to the introduction of a multiday delay between portfolio choice and return realizations.

Changes In Corporate Effective Tax Rates Over The Past 25 Years, Scott D. Dyreng, Michelle Hanlon, Edward L. Maydew, Jacob Thornock

Faculty Publications

We investigate systematic changes in corporate effective tax rates over the past 25 years and find that effective tax rates have decreased significantly. Contrary to conventional wis- dom, the decline in effective tax rates is not concentrated in multinational firms; effective tax rates have declined at approximately the same rate for both multinational and domes- tic firms. Moreover, within multinational firms, both foreign and domestic effective rates have decreased. Finally, changes in firm characteristics and declining foreign statutory tax rates explain little of the overall decrease in effective rates.

Self-Efficacy Of Risk Taking In Outdoor Recreation As A Predictor Of The Self-Efficacy Of Risk Taking In Essay Writing, Stacy T. Taniguchi, John Bennion, Mat D. Duerden, Mark A. Widmer, Meagan Ricks

Faculty Publications

During two decades of teaching, we have observed that writing students seem more emotionally honest when their writing class is accompanied by an outdoor recreation component. The ability to take perceived risks is important to both outdoor recreation and writing; thus, we postulated that confidence gained in taking risks in outdoor experiences might affect students’ confidence in taking risks in their reflective writing. In this study, we applied Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy theory to two classes of writing students, one that included outdoor experience and one that did not. We examined whether participating in outdoor activities would increase the self-efficacy of …

Creating Experiences For Study-Abroad Tourists, Gary D. Ellis, Patti A. Freeman, Jingxian Jiang

Faculty Publications

Effects of tourist activity type and locus of activity structure on subjective experiences of study-abroad tourists were examined. Subjective experiences measured included perceived value, delight, and prevalence of deep structured experience. These subjective experiences (n = 208) were measured immediately following participation in tourist activities at 13 attractions and settings. Each tourist activity was coded according to (a) experience type, and (b) locus of activity structure. Experience type categories included activities emphasizing narratives (engagement), activities emphasizing sensory stimulation (absorption), activities requiring skill performance (immersion), and familiar activities. Locus of activity structure referred to the source of the primary determinants …

The Impact Of Shadow It Systems On Perceived Information Credibility And Managerial Decision Making, Noah Myers, Matthew Starliper, Scott L. Summers, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Business trends show that more and more employees are creating shadow IT systems—IT systems that are not sanctioned or monitored by the IT department. This paper examines how the use of shadow IT in product costing impacts managers’ perceptions of information credibility and managerial decision-making. Using two experiments, we find that participants view information from shadow IT systems as less credible and they are less impacted by and less willing to rely on costing reports produced from shadow IT systems versus non-shadow IT systems. We also find that although participants are concerned about the credibility of shadow IT systems, they …

The Effects Of Gamification On Corporate Compliance Training: A Field Experiment Of True Office Anti-Corruption Training Programs, Ryan J. Baxter, D. Kip Holderness, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Companies rely on internal controls to comply with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the U.K. Bribery Act. One such control is anti-corruption employee training. Although corporate training is a key component of anti-fraud policies and procedures, it is often perceived as dull by employees. To motivate greater engagement, firms are experimenting with training that involves elements of digital games, known as gamification. We perform a field experiment with 158 employees of a large, multinational bank to examine the effectiveness of gamified anticorruption training. We find that employees strongly prefer gamified training to traditional, nongamified training and that gamified …

Factors Influencing Recruitment Of Non-Accounting Business Professionals Into Internal Auditing, Geoffrey D. Bartlett, Joleen Kremin, K. Kelli Saunders, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

This paper examines factors affecting non-accounting business professionals’ willingness to work in internal auditing. In a 2 x 6 experiment with 502 participants from across the country, we find that, in contrast to prior research examining accountants, business professionals have relatively favorable views of internal audit. Although they hold favorable views, participants were still less likely to apply for a position labeled as internal audit than an identical position with an alternate label. Varying the structure of internal audit, including job responsibilities, career path, and sourcing arrangement, did not affect participants’ willingness to apply for an internal audit position. We …

A Commitment Contract To Achieve Virologic Suppression In Poorly Adherent Patients With Hiv/Aids, Marcella Alsan, John Beshears, Wendy S. Armstrong, James J. Choi, Brigitte C. Madrian, Minh Ly T. Nguyen, Carlos Del Rio, David Laibson, Vincent C. Marconi

Faculty Publications

Objective—Assess whether a commitment contract informed by behavioral economics leads to persistent virologic suppression among HIV-positive patients with poor antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence.

Design—Single-center pilot randomized clinical trial, plus a non-randomized control group.

Setting—Publicly-funded HIV clinic in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Intervention—The study involved three arms. (i) Participants in the provider visit incentive arm received $30 after attending each scheduled provider visit. (ii) Participants in the incentive choice arm were given a choice between the above arrangement and a commitment contract that made the $30 payment conditional on both attending the provider visit and meeting an ART adherence threshold. (iii) The …

Innovation Among Different Classes Of Software Development Organizations, James Gaskin, Nicholas Berente, Kalle Lyytinen, Gregory Rose

Faculty Publications

Software development organizations (SDOs) innovate in diverse ways. In this paper, based on an extensive review of innovation typologies, we develop a theory‐driven typology of SDO innovator classes. We theorize about the driving forces behind these classes, with specific attention given to knowledge‐based dispositions that relate to the SDO's knowledge‐based competencies in technology appropriation, technology generation, and network intensity within ecological niches. Through a survey of 136 SDOs, which adopted Internet technologies during 1995‐2006, we empirically verify that these classes also determine different ways that SDOs innovate around software services they provide to their clients. Our findings suggest that the …

Short And Long Run Uncertainty, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Ian Wright

Faculty Publications

Uncertainty appears to have both a short-run and a long-run component, which we measure using firm and macro implied volatility data from options of 30 days to 10 years duration. We ask what may be driving uncertainty over these different time horizons, finding that oil price volatility is particularly important for short-run uncertainty, policy uncertainty is particularly important for long-run uncertainty, while currency volatility and CEO turnover appear to equally impact shortand long-run uncertainty. Examining a panel of over 4,000 firms from 1996 to 2013 we find that R&D is relatively more sensitive to long-run uncertainty than investment, and in …

Pricing Kernel Monotonicity And Conditional Information, Matthew Linn, Sophie Shive, Tyler Shumway

Faculty Publications

A large literature finds evidence that pricing kernels nonparametrically estimated from option prices and historical returns are not monotonically decreasing in market index returns. We argue that existing estimation methods are inconsistent and propose a new nonparametric estimator of the pricing kernel that reflects the information available to investors who set asset prices. In simulations, the estimator outperforms existing techniques. Our empirical estimates using S&P 500 index option data from 1996 to 2014 and FTSE 100 index option data from 2002 to 2014 suggest that the "pricing kernel puzzle'' is due to flaws in existing estimators rather than a behavioral …

Psychological Resilience Can Help Combat The Effect Of Stress On Problematic Social Networking Site Usage, Xiang-Ling Hou, Hai-Zhen Wang, Cheng Guo, James Gaskin, Detlef H. Rost, Jin-Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

This study was aimed to test the association between perceived stress and problematic social networking site (SNS) usage, and to figure outwhether psychological resiliencemoderated this relationship. The Perceived Stress Scale, Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire were administered to 499 Chinese college students. The results showed that (1) perceived stress was positively associated with problematic SNS usage; (2) psychological resiliencewas negatively relatedwith problematic SNS usage; and (3) psychological resilience moderated the relationship between perceived stress and problematic SNS usage. Specifically, the relationship between perceived stress and problematic SNS usage was statistically significant for students with a lower level of …

The Association Between Family Leisure And Family Quality Of Life: A Meta-Analysis Of Data From Parents And Adolescents, Camilla Hodge, Mat D. Duerden, Eric K. Layland, Andrew Lacanienta, Michael C. Goates, Xiaoyue Maggie Niu

Faculty Publications

The body of family leisure research has grown over the past 25 years; however, efforts to quantitatively synthesize that body of literature have not been made. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis of published and unpublished literature reporting on parent and adolescent child data regarding shared leisure experiences and family quality-of-life indicators across k=23 articles identified from a broad, systematic search of literature. Using random effects, we measured the associations of (a) family leisure participation with family quality of life and (b) family leisure satisfaction with family quality of life. Results indicated significant associations of small to moderate effect sizes in …

Response Pattern Analysis: Assuring Data Integrity In Extreme Research Settings, Lisa Jones Christensen, Enno Siemsen, Oana Branzei, Madhu Viswanathan

Faculty Publications

Research summary: Strategy scholars increasingly conduct research in nontraditional contexts. Such efforts often require the assistance of third-party intermediaries who understand local culture, norms, and language. This reliance on intermediation in primary or secondary data collection can elicit agency breakdowns that call into question the reliability, analyzability, and interpretability of responses. Herein, we investigate the causes and consequences of intermediary bias in the form of faked data and we offer Response Pattern Analysis as a statistical solution for identifying and removing such problematic data. By explicating the effect, illustrating how we detected it, and performing a controlled field experiment in …

The Role Of Context In It Assimilation: A Multi-Method Study Of A Saas Platform In The Us Nonprofit Sector, Ryan T. Wright, Nicholas Roberts, David W. Wilson

Faculty Publications

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) operate in environments characterized by growing competition for resources and greater stakeholder demands for accountability, which makes deploying and maintaining information systems a struggle. In this competitive, resource-constrained environment, enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms offer NPOs a cost-effective way access reliable, low-maintenance information technology services. Thus, the extent to which NPOs assimilate SaaS is an important area of inquiry. Yet despite the wealth of research on organizational IT assimilation, we know little regarding whether, when, and how NPOs assimilate IT innovations. We further our understanding of NPO assimilation of SaaS by conducting a context-based study. To do so, …

Bankruptcy Spillovers, Shai Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Xavier Giroud, Benjamin Iverson

Faculty Publications

How do different bankruptcy approaches affect the local economy? Using U.S. Census microdata at the establishment level, we explore the spillover effects of reorganization and liquidation on geographically proximate firms. We exploit the random assignment of bankruptcy judges as a source of exogenous variation in the probability of liquidation. We find that within a five-year period, employment declines substantially in the immediate neighborhood of the liquidated establishments, relative to reorganized establishments. Most of the decline is due to lower growth of existing establishments and, to a lesser extent, reduced entry into the area. The spillover effects are highly localized and …

Behaviorally Informed Policies For Household Financial Decisionmaking, Brigitte C. Madrian, Hal E. Hershfield, Abigail B. Sussman, Saurabh Bhargava, Jeremy Burke, Scott A. Huettel, Julian Jamison, Eric J. Johnson, John G. Lynch, Stephan Meier, Scott Rick, Suzanne B. Shu

Faculty Publications

Low incomes, limited financial literacy, fraud, and deception are just a few of the many intractable economic and social factors that contribute to the financial difficulties that households face today. Addressing these issues directly is difficult and costly. But poor financial outcomes also result from systematic psychological tendencies, including imperfect optimization, biased judgments and preferences, and susceptibility to influence by the actions and opinions of others. Some of these psychological tendencies and the problems they cause may be countered by policies and interventions that are both low cost and scalable. We detail the ways that these behavioral factors contribute to …

Equity Issuance Of Health Care Firms After The 2007 Market Crash And The 2010 Affordable Ca1·E Act, James C. Brau, J. Troy Carpenter

Faculty Publications

We provide an empirical analysis of 195 initial public offerings (IPOs) and 547 seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) of health care firms that issued between 2008 and October 2016. This period represents eight years after the US financial crisis of late 2007 and also includes all equity issuances since the passage of the Affordable Care Act of late 2010. We compare and contrast our results with those of Brau and Holloway (2009) who study health care equity issuances from 1970-2008. We find that global health care issues in both the IPO and SEO markets are significantly over-represented in both the post-crash …

Final Demand For Structured Finance Securities, Craig B. Merrill, Taylor Nadauld, Philip E. Strahan

Faculty Publications

Structured finance boomed during the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. Highly rated, structured securities offered higher yield than other similarly rated bonds because of their concentration of systematic risk, but regulatory capital requirements did not account for this risk. As a result, regulated entities facing capital constraints had an incentive to invest in them. We show that life insurance companies exposed to unrealized losses from low interest rates in the early 2000s increased their holdings of highly rated securitized assets, consistent with regulatory arbitrage distorting the demand to hold these assets.

The Mediating Roles Of Upward Social Comparison And Self-Esteem And The Moderating Role Of Social Comparison Orientation In The Association Between Social Networking Site Usage And Subjective Well-Being, Jin-Liang Wang, Hai-Zhen Wang, James Gaskin, Skyler Hawk

Faculty Publications

The increased pervasiveness of social media use has raised questions about potential effects on users’ subjective well-being, with studies reaching contrasting conclusions. To reconcile these discrepancies and shed new light on this phenomenon, the current study examined: (1) whether upward social comparison and self-esteem mediate the association between social networking site (SNS) usage and users’ subjective well-being, and (2) whether the association between SNS usage and upward social comparison is moderated by users’ social comparison orientation. Data from 696 participants were collected. Structural equation modeling revealed that upward social comparison and self-esteem mediated the relationship between SNS usage and users’ …

Conceptual Modeling In Accelerating Information Ingest Into Family Tree, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Tanner S. Eastmond, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Joseph P. Price, Scott N. Woodfield

Faculty Publications

Family Tree is a wiki-like shared repository of interconnected family genealogies. Because information ingested into the tree requires human authorization as verified in source documents, ingest is tedious and time-consuming. To significantly increase ingest efficiency while maintaining human oversight, we propose a pipeline of tools and techniques to transform source document genealogical assertions into verified information in the Family Tree data repository. The automation pipeline transforms pages of printed, scanned and OCRed family history books into a GEDCOM X conceptualization that can be ingested into Family Tree. All steps of the pipeline are fundamentally grounded in ontological conceptualizations. We report …

A Theory Of Structured Experience, Gary D. Ellis, Patti A. Freeman, Tazim Jamal, Jingxian Jiang

Faculty Publications

We extend Duerden, Ward, and Freeman’s [2015. “Conceptualizing Structured Experiences.” Journal of Leisure Research 47 (5): 601– 620] ‘structured experience’ framework by proposing a formal theory of structured experiences. The theory advances propositions about how leisure service providers may structure environments and interactions to facilitate specific subjective experiences for guests and participants. Following the Duerden, Ward, and Freeman (2015) paper, the theory of structured experience is an integration of literature from leisure studies, tourism, and marketing. Formal definitions are provided for four co-created subjective experiences: immersion, absorption, engagement, and deep structured experience. Propositions about specific strategies providers can use to …

Paper/Pencil Versus Online Data Collection: An Exploratory Study, Peter Ward, Taralyn Clark, Ramon Zabriskie, Trevor Morris

Faculty Publications

Usage of online data-collection methods are increasing in leisure research. Some potential benefits to using online methods over traditional paper/pencil techniques include financial savings and easier access to large populations. Disadvantages, however, include difficulty in sample selection and variations of the instruments’ reliability. This study explores how subject responses potentially differ when collecting data online versus paper/pencil for six instruments commonly used within leisure research. A repeated measure design with paired sample t-tests and HLM was used with 207 college students to compare these methods of data collection. Responses differed between methods on three of the tested instruments. A general …

In The Green Classroom—Tax Policy Of Environmental Tax Rules And Incentives: New Directions In Teaching And Research, Annette Nellen

Faculty Publications

There is no shortage of tax rules that address energy and natural resources in some manner. There are taxes on most types of fuel, tax credits for energy saving devices, and various tax incentives to encourage specified activities such as use of LED lighting or energy efficient heaters. In addition, numerous proposals are offered annually by lawmakers at the federal, state and local levels that also address conservation, energy and innovation in conservation and energy-efficiencies.How do we know if existing rules and proposals are appropriate for a tax system? Principles of good tax policy can be applied to them to …

Organizational Learning From Failure: Present Theory And Future Inquiries, Vinit M. Desai, David Maslach, Peter Madsen

Faculty Publications

This chapter reviews past and present theoretical perspectives on organizational learning from failure. We begin by describing the organizational learning process and what it means to learn through failure. We outline and describe several challenges for future research: (1) Why do some organizations fail to learn from failures? (2) Why do some organizations fail again after learning from failures? (3) How do some organizations prevent other organizations from learning vicariously through their failures? (4) How can organizations learn from near failures? and (5) How can organizations learn from hypothetical failures? In sum, we hope this chapter motivates and inspires researchers …

Human-Computer Interaction Movement Indicators Of Response Biases In Online Surveys, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Joseph S. Valacich, Parker A. Williams

Faculty Publications

The Information Systems discipline, as well as countless others, rely on surveys to explore hypotheses and answer research questions. All research methods have strengths and weaknesses. A significant threat to the validity of surveys are response biases – i.e., the tendency of people to respond to questions on some basis other than the question content. We propose that by monitoring how a respondent answers an online survey—through monitoring Human-Computer Interaction movement indicators, specifically mousecursor movements—can provide novel information that can be used to statistically detect, understand, and control for many different types of response biases. We explore this proposition in …