Business Commons^™

The Application Of Virtual Reality In Firefighting Training, Dylan A. Gagnon

Theses and Dissertations

Immersive simulations such as virtual reality is becoming more prevalent for use in training environments for many professions. United States Air Force firefighters may benefit from incorporating VR technology into their training program to increase organizational commitment, job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and job performance. With implementing a new training platform, it is also important to understand the relationship between these variables and the perceived benefits and efficacy of the VR training, which has not yet been studied in previous research. This study addresses this issue by gathering data from fire departments currently fielding a VR fire training platform.

Essays On Fake Review Detection, Managerial Response, And Consumer Perceptions, Long Chen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how online reviews and managerial responses jointly affect consumer perceptions. I first examine and compare the outcomes of multiple fake review classifiers using various algorithms, including traditional machine learning methods and recently developed deep learning methods (essay I). Then, based on the findings of the first essay, I examine the interrelationship between fake review detection, managerial response, and hotel ratings and ratings’ growths (essay II).The first essay is a comparative study on the methodology of identifying fake reviews. Although online reviews have attracted much attention from academia and industry for over fifteen years, how to identify fake …

Stock Markets Performance During A Pandemic: How Contagious Is Covid-19?, Yara Abushahba

Theses and Dissertations

Background and Motivation: The coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic, the subsequent policies and lockdowns have unarguably led to an unprecedented fluid circumstance worldwide. The panic and fluctuations in the stock markets were unparalleled. It is inarguable that real-time availability of news and social media platforms like Twitter played a vital role in driving the investors’ sentiment during such global shock.

Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to study how the investor sentiment in relation to COVID-19 pandemic influenced stock markets globally and how stock markets globally are integrated and contagious. We analyze COVID-19 sentiment through the Twitter posts and investigate its …

Two Essays On Leveraging Analytics To Improve Healthcare, Deepika Gopukumar

Theses and Dissertations

The healthcare cost has continued to increase over the past few years despite various policies, efforts, and initiatives taken by the government. It is still projected to grow over the next few years by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Readmissions have been a major contributor to the increase in costs and have always been a contributing factor. To get a perspective, considering the fact that at least 9% of individuals who had COVID-19 were likely to get readmitted shortly, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 response team, along with …

Barriers And Drivers Influencing The Growth Of E-Commerce In Uzbekistan, Madinakhon Tursunboeva

Theses and Dissertations

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become a major retail channel for businesses in developed countries. However, it is still considered an innovation in developing countries. Specifically, e-commerce in Uzbekistan is in the early stages of emergence despite its advance in recent years in terms of Internet penetration, a strong retail sector, new national regulations, and a young population. The study aimed to identify barriers and drivers influencing e-commerce growth in Uzbekistan. A Delphi research design was utilized to answer the research questions of the study, which categorized and ranked factors that Uzbekistani entrepreneurs are facing when engaging in e-commerce processes. A …

Creativity And Engagement In Ideas Crowdsourcing: A Situation Awareness Perspective, James Gitau Wairimu

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the influence of performance feedback in user motivation and creativity development in idea crowdsourcing engagement. Creativity occurs when users of idea crowdsourcing communities engage in direct and indirect interactions that expose them to a pool of knowledge that enhances their cognitive development leading to the contribution of novel ideas for innovation in organizations. Additionally, participant motivation to engage in ideas crowdsourcing is increased through rewards and conditions that make the ideation process more inclusive and enjoyable. An idea network design is developed by applying social network analysis principles. The idea network design consists of mechanisms for motivating …

Reevaluating Order Fulfillment Decisions For E-Tailers Under True Simulated Operating Conditions, Amir H. Kalantari

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation makes both a methodological and an applied contribution. From a methodological standpoint, this is among the very first works in the literature to explore the concepts of true simulated operating conditions and fully embedded decision-making algorithms. We illustrate the effectiveness of these concepts by applying them to an online retailer (i.e. e-tailer) order fulfillment decision making process.

Online shopping has completely transformed retail markets in recent years. For customers, it provides convenience, visibility and choice, and for retailers it provides market expansion opportunities, operational cost reduction, and many other advantages. There are fundamental differences between the supply chain …

Applying Data Organizational Techniques To Enhance Air Force Learning, Jacob A. Orner

Theses and Dissertations

The USAF and the DoD use traditional schoolhouses to educate and train personnel. The physical aspects of these schoolhouses limit throughput. A method to increase throughput is to shift towards an asynchronous learning environment where students move through content at individually. This research introduces a methodology for transforming a set of unstructured documents into an organized TM students can use to orient themselves in a domain. The research identifies learning paths within the TM to create a directed KSAT. We apply this methodology in four case studies, each an education or training course. Using a graph comparison metric and the …

The Impact Of Changing The Size Of Aircraft Radar Displays On Visual Search In The Cockpit, Justin R. Marsh

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in sensor technology have enabled our fighter aircraft to find, fix, track, target, engage (F2T2E) at greater distances, providing the operator with more data within the battlefield. Modern aircraft are designed with larger displays while our legacy aircraft are being retrofitted with larger cockpit displays to enable display of the increased data. While this modification has been shown to enable improvements in human performance of many cockpit tasks, this effect is often not measured nor fully understood at a more generalizable level. This research outlines an approach to comparing human performance across two display sizes in future F-16 cockpits. …

Adapting Financial Technology Standards To Blockchain Platforms, Gabriel Bello

Theses and Dissertations

Traditional payment systems have standards designed to keep transaction data secure, but blockchain systems are not in scope for such security standards. We compare the Payment Application Data Security Standard’s (PA-DSS) applicability towards transaction-supported blockchain platforms to test the standard’s applicability. By highlighting the differences in implementation on traditional and decentralized transaction platforms, we critique and adapt the standards to fit the decentralized model. In two case studies, we analyze the QTUM and Ethereum blockchain platforms’ industry compliance, as their payment platforms support transactions equivalent to that of applications governed by the PA-DSS. We determine QTUM’s and Ethereum’s capabilities to …

Breaking Down The Barriers To Operator Workload Estimation: Advancing Algorithmic Handling Of Temporal Non-Stationarity And Cross-Participant Differences For Eeg Analysis Using Deep Learning, Ryan G. Hefron

Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on two barriers to using EEG data for workload assessment: day-to-day variability, and cross- participant applicability. Several signal processing techniques and deep learning approaches are evaluated in multi-task environments. These methods account for temporal, spatial, and frequential data dependencies. Variance of frequency- domain power distributions for cross-day workload classification is statistically significant. Skewness and kurtosis are not significant in an environment absent workload transitions, but are salient with transitions present. LSTMs improve day- to-day feature stationarity, decreasing error by 59% compared to previous best results. A multi-path convolutional recurrent model using bi-directional, residual recurrent layers significantly increases …

Three Essays On Trust Mining In Online Social Networks, Gelareh Towhidi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research consists of three essays on studying trust in online social networks. Trust plays a critical role in online social relationships, because of the high levels of risk and uncertainty involved. Guided by relevant social science and computational graph theories, I develop conceptual and predictive models to gain insights into trusting behaviors in online social relationships.

In the first essay, I propose a conceptual model of trust formation in online social networks. This is the first study that integrates the existing graph-based view of trust formation in social networks with socio-psychological theories of trust to provide a richer …

Developing A Cyberterrorism Policy: Incorporating Individual Values, Osama Bassam J. Rabie

Theses and Dissertations

Preventing cyberterrorism is becoming a necessity for individuals, organizations, and governments. However, current policies focus on technical and managerial aspects without asking for experts and non-experts values and preferences for preventing cyberterrorism. This study employs value focused thinking and public value forum to bare strategic measures and alternatives for complex policy decisions for preventing cyberterrorism. The strategic measures and alternatives are per socio-technical process.

Consuming Digital Debris In The Plasticene, Stephen R. Parks

Theses and Dissertations

Claims of customization and control by socio-technical industries are altering the role of consumer and producer. These narratives are often misleading attempts to engage consumers with new forms of technology. By addressing capitalist intent, material, and the reproduction limits of 3-D printed objects’, I observe the aspirational promise of becoming a producer of my own belongings through new networks of production. I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the data consumed that perpetuates hyper-consumptive tendencies for new technological apparatuses. My role as a designer focuses on the resolution of not only the surface of the object through 3-D …

Three Essays On The Effects Of Appraisal, Cultural, Emotional, And Cognitive Factors On Information Technologies Acceptance And Use, Chun-Lung Huang

Theses and Dissertations

In essay 1, we propose a model, which utilized Lazarus and Folkman’s Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Emotion or Appraisal Theory (1984, 1987) as a structural foundation to lay out the nomological relationships among a person’s personal, cognitive, and emotional factors in predicting technology use behaviors. Emotion, likes many social and psychological factors, is challenging to give a full-consensus definition, and has been treated as a polar counterpart of cognition. Lazarus and Folkman’s Appraisal Theory suggested that when a person is facing a (disruptive) event, he or she appraises the possible outcomes (we suppose that appraising is a form of cognitive …

Three Research Essays On The Effects Of Culture Across It Diffusion Within Social Networks, Organizations, And Hospitals, Yu Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on two research streams: IT diffusion and culture, and each can be examined in various contexts. Specifically, this study investigates IT diffusion through online social network use, knowledge sharing towards the general organizational information systems, and hospital information systems usage. In terms of culture, espoused national cultural values, IT occupational subculture, and organizational cultural variables are examined in the following essays.

Essay1: Espoused National Cultural Values and Online Social Network Use: Towards an Extension of UTAUT

Prior research has developed a number of models for examining the acceptance and use of technology. This paper extends the unified …

Modeling And Simulation Of Evacuation Plan For Hancock Stadium, Nirmal Neranjan Weerasekara

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to use Modeling and Simulation of Evacuation Plan (MSEP) to support management to execute proper evacuation plan in case of emergency at Hancock Stadium in Illinois State University. Analyses of the research literature and evacuation scenarios are used to build a simulation system that will connect a description of emergency and evacuation situation with its context. It shows how an evacuation plan actually functions. The results of the study will help safety managers to understand the current situations of evacuation according to the specific simulation scenarios. The evacuation simulation is categorized according to the …

Three Essays On Opinion Mining Of Social Media Texts, Shuyuan Deng

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research is a collection of three essays on opinion mining of social media texts. I explore different theoretical and methodological perspectives in this inquiry. The first essay focuses on improving lexicon-based sentiment classification. I propose a method to automatically generate a sentiment lexicon that incorporates knowledge from both the language domain and the content domain. This method learns word associations from a large unannotated corpus. These associations are used to identify new sentiment words. Using a Twitter data set containing 743,069 tweets related to the stock market, I show that the sentiment lexicons generated using the proposed method …

Three Research Essays On The Effects Of Charity Website Design On Online Donations, Dong-Heon Austin Kwak

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation, which comprises three essays, examines the effects of charity website characteristics on people's attitudes and online donation behaviors based on the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Essay 1), the halo effect (Essay 2), and self-schema, congruity, and visual rhetoric (Essay 3).

Essay 1: The Elaborating Role of Personal Involvement with Charity Giving and Helper's High on the Effects of Website Quality: Multiple Roles of Variables

Although the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) has been utilized for decades, researchers have not leveraged its full capabilities and richness in understanding the multiple roles postulate and employing the central and peripheral routes …

Three Essays On The Role Of It In Environmental Sustainability: Motivating Individuals To Use Green It, Enhancing Their User Experience, And Promoting Electricity Conservation, Abdullah Al Bizri

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the role of IT in environmental sustainability and electricity conservation through three research essays. The first essay makes a case for behavior research, with the focus on individuals' use of Green IT. Moreover, environmental studies lack a coherent theory that could identify the motivators of Green-IT beliefs. We develop the hedonic motivation theory, which synthesizes theoretical and philosophical thoughts on hedonism with concepts from environmental research. Using this theory, we develop a conceptual model that identifies the motivators of context-specific beliefs, attitudes, and uses of Green IT. We theorize that there are significant generational differences in …

Scalable, Efficient And Optimal Discrete-Time Rebalancing Algorithms For Log-Optimal Investment Portfolio, Sujit Ranjan Das

Theses and Dissertations

Portfolio rebalancing decisions are crucial to today's portfolio managers especially in high frequency algorithmic trading environment. These decisions must be made fast in dynamic market conditions. We develop computational algorithms to determine optimal rebalance frequency (ORF) of a class of investment portfolio for a finite investment horizon. We choose log-optimal investment portfolio which is deemed to be impractical and cost-prohibitive due to inherent need for continuous rebalancing and significant overhead of trading cost. Optimality of such portfolio is assured only when for very long term investor horizon. We study the question of how often a log-optimal portfolio be rebalanced for …

Economic Perspective On Cloud Computing: Three Essays, Abhijit Dutt

Theses and Dissertations

Improvements in Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and standardization of interoperability standards among heterogeneous Information System (IS) applications have brought a paradigm shift in the way an IS application could be used and delivered. Not only an IS application can be built using standardized component but also parts of it can be hosted by different organizations in different locations provided it can be accessed using the Internet. This dissertation is an attempt to uncover unique aspects of this phenomenon known as Software as a Service (SaaS).

The first essay examines design decision making by SaaS providers by analyzing effects of two …

Establishing The Human Firewall: Reducing An Individual's Vulnerability To Social Engineering Attacks, Jamison W. Scheeres

Theses and Dissertations

Hackers frequently use social engineering attacks to gain a foothold into a target network. This type of attack is a tremendous challenge to defend against, as the weakness lies in the human users, not in the technology. Thus far, methods for dealing with this threat have included establishing better security policies and educating users on the threat that exists. Existing techniques aren’t working as evidenced by the fact that auditing agencies consider it a given that will be able to gain access via social engineering. The purpose of this research is to propose a better method of reducing an individual’s …

Creating An Agent Based Framework To Maximize Information Utility, John M. Pecarina

Theses and Dissertations

With increased reliance on communications to conduct military operations, information centric network management becomes vital. A Defense department study of information management for net-centric operations lists the need for tools for information triage (based on relevance, priority, and quality) to counter information overload, semi-automated mechanisms for assessment of quality and relevance of information, and advances to enhance cognition and information understanding in the context of missions [30]. Maximizing information utility to match mission objectives is a complex problem that requires a comprehensive solution in information classification, in scheduling, in resource allocation, and in QoS support. Of these research areas, the …

Identification Of Command And Control Information Requirements For The Cyberspace Domain, Brian D. Aschenbrenner

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop an information requirements analysis method that would provide the Director of Cyberspace Forces with the information required to support effective command and control of cyberspace. This research investigates the role of information in command and control, information in the traditional war fighting domains, cyberspace as a war fighting domain, and various methods of determining information requirements of organizations. This research produced an information requirements analysis method that is suitable for identifying the command and control information requirements of the Director of Cyberspace Forces.

In Pursuit Of An Aptitude Test For Potential Cyberspace Warriors, Tiffiny S. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force has officially assumed the cyberspace mission. To perform this mission well, it is important to employ personnel who have the necessary skill sets and motivation to work in a cyberspace environment. The first step in employing the right people is to screen all possible candidates and select those with an aptitude for acquiring the skill sets and with the motivation to perform this work. This thesis attempts to determine the necessary skills and motivations to perform the cyberspace mission and recommends a screening process to select the candidates with the highest probability for success. Since this mission …

Factors Impacting Key Management Effectiveness In Secured Wireless Networks, Yongjoo Shin

Theses and Dissertations

The use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) offers a cryptographic solution that can overcome many, but not all, of the MANET security problems. One of the most critical aspects of a PKI system is how well it implements Key Management. Key Management deals with key generation, key storage, key distribution, key updating, key revocation, and certificate service in accordance with security policies over the lifecycle of the cryptography. The approach supported by traditional PKI works well in fixed wired networks, but it may not appropriate for MANET due to the lack of fixed infrastructure to support the PKI. This …

Using Prospect Theory To Investigate Decision-Making Bias Within An Information Security Context, Neil J. Schroeder

Theses and Dissertations

Information security is an issue that has increased in importance over the past decade. In this time both practitioner and academic circles have researched and developed practices and process to more effectively handle information security. Even with growth in these areas there has been little research conducted into how decision makers actually behave. This is problematic because decision makers in the Department of Defense have been observed exhibiting risk seeking behavior when making information security decisions that seemingly violate accepted norms. There are presently no models in the literature that provide sufficient insight into this phenomenon. This study used Prospect …

An Exploratory Analysis Of Factors Affecting Participation In Air Force Knowledge Now Communities Of Practice, David C. Fitzgerald

Theses and Dissertations

As the AF continues to lose its knowledge base through retirements and downsizing, the need to get maximum use from the remaining knowledge base becomes increasingly important. In their efforts to help the Department of Defense and the Air Force Chief Information Officer (AFCIO) meet their knowledge management goals, Air Force Material Command (AFMC) has been working to implement the use of communities of practice. A primary goal of AFMC/DRW , the AF Knowledge Now program office, and the office of the AFCIO is to increase effectiveness and participation within communities of practice. The goal of this research is to …

An Exploration Of Cultural Factors Affecting Use Of Communities Of Practice, Peter L. Hinrichsen

Theses and Dissertations

On-line communities of practice are potentially powerful social learning networks that can improve organizational performance. Unfortunately, administrators of on-line communities of practice report that community members do not take full advantage of this potential. This study used Shaw and Tuggle's (2003) factors of knowledge management (KM) culture affecting organizational acceptance of a knowledge management initiative to explore this issue. It was hypothesized that respondents whose communities of practice possessed higher average community use per member would rate KM culture variables higher than respondents whose communities possessed a lower average community use. An analysis of survey data collected from Air Force …