Business Commons^™

Capturing Visuals In Hospitality: A Multi-Dimensional Exploration Of Photographs In Interdisciplinary Research, Ningqiao Li

Theses and Dissertations

The widespread practice of photo-taking and sharing behavior fosters research on photographs to probe into consumer behavior and business strategies. Consequently, the critical role of photographic research has been acknowledged in the fields of marketing as well as tourism and hospitality. To delve deeper into understanding photographs, this dissertation carried out three independent but interconnected studies to examine photographs from both macro and micro perspectives.

The first study systematically reviews photographic research across sociology, marketing, computer science, and tourism and hospitality. It explores key topics, methodologies, and theories, and compares the merits and drawbacks of various research methods employed in …

Managing Risks At Early-Stage Investment - An Information Asymmetry And Signaling Perspective, Vineet Malhotra

Theses and Dissertations

Venture Capital (VC) funding for entrepreneurs has traditionally been examined independently without considering risk differentials or idiosyncratic information gaps at various funding stages. As a result, these studies carry either a survival bias (only successful ventures), confirmation bias (interpreting information partial to decisions), or an assumption of information homogeneity across the funding stages. Without tangible and performance-related information at the early funding stage (seed), VCs rely on indicators or signals that create unimpeachable logic for investment. The paper explores VCs’ criteria to manage investment risks through an information asymmetry and signaling perspective and leveraging phenomenological research. The study was conducted …

An Exploratory Study Of The Impact Of Quality Management Practices On Data Integrity Fda-483 Observations Received By Pharmaceutical Manufacturers In Florida, Sarah Mary Christie

Theses and Dissertations

Quality management systems and regulatory compliance have been studied in academic and practitioner settings (Andersson et al., 2006; Beattie & Sohal, 1999; Berrouiguet, 2013; McDowall & Ratcliff, 2016; Unger, 2019; Wechsler, 2019). While research has been performed on both topics independently, there has not been a definitive analysis of the relationship between quality management practices and regulatory compliance, especially in an FDA-regulated manufacturing environment. This research study attempts to link quality management practices and regulatory compliance and provides valuable insights for working managers on the practitioner level.

Complexity Leadership Theory: The Influence Of Enabling Leadership And Experiential Learning On Emergent Outcomes And Organizational Knowhow, Bruce William Rideout

Theses and Dissertations

As technology advances, businesses find that today's information age is increasingly complex. If an enterprise can prepare the workforce to succeed in a complex environment, it will have a competitive advantage. Complexity is characterized by unpredictability, no recognizable patterns, and nonlinear causes and effects, creating unique challenges for today's workforce. The core or overarching research question that guides the research is: In complex environments, what are the experiences of leaders and team members who use enabling leadership and experiential learning to influence emergent outcomes, and how does it create organizational knowhow? In this constructivist grounded theory study, the efficacy of …

Optimizing Repayment Strategies For Egyptian Construction Companies With Multiple Loans, Moataz Elkady

Theses and Dissertations

Optimizing Repayment Strategies for Egyptian Construction Companies with Multiple Loans is of utmost importance to efficiently allocate monthly income for loan repayment. The conventional practice of paying the minimum balance due each month leads to increased interest charges and prolonged repayment periods. In response, this research proposes a model for multiple loan repayment that considers the computational complexity involved.

The model is built on the foundation of mixed integer linear programming and aims to establish an optimal repayment schedule by minimizing the total cash required to repay the loans, prioritizing the repayment of loans before personal expenses. The implementation of …

Assessing The Effect Of Fintech Adoption On Country's Productivity, Mai Metwally

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between total factor productivity of countries, for both low-income and high-income countries, and Fintech adoption will be examined in this paper. Also, a background on Fintech history will be discussed and explored briefly along with Fintech future risks and opportunities. Starting off with the importance of TFP, it is also known to be "Solow residual" (named after American Economist "Robert Solow"). TFP shows and examines the performance along with efficiency of the entity or country. It shows how well and efficient the firm or country in transforming its inputs to the desired outputs. Moreover, it is the ratio …

Fintech Companies Valuation Using Real Options: Fawry Empirical Study, Yassmen Abou Elwafa

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an improved valuation approach for Fintech companies, which are high-growth technology-based firms. We first identify the shortcomings of traditional valuation methods in valuing high-growth technology firms. Then, an alternative valuation technique based on real options theory is discussed to value fintech companies. The relevance and validity of using real options valuation to value fintech firms are also discussed. We propose a new flexible framework for valuing fintech companies by extending the Schwartz-Moon (2001) model to include various types of real options. To validate the practical application of the Extended Schwartz-Moon model, we conduct an empirical study to …

Modeling The Financial Signaling Of Zero-Default Debt: Empirical Study On The Firms Listed In Djia30 And Nasdaq100, Ahmed Salah Zaki Saeed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the financial factors that corporate planners must consider to reach a zero-default debt. The thesis examines the financial fundamentals associated with zero-default debt along with the size and industry effects. The data includes quarterly financial indicators for the non-financial firms listed in DJIA30 and NASDAQ100 for the period 1990-2018. The results conclude that the fixed assets turnover is the only robust variable that can be optimized to reach zero-default debt and has positive and significant signaling effect.

The Effect Of Bilateral Investment Treaties On The Correlation Between International Stock Markets, Nourhan Elshenawy

Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of this paper is to assess the effect of the Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) on the correlation between international stock markets on a sectorial level. The paper attempts to identify the most affected sectors, besides highlighting the highly impacted countries by BITs signing, to compare the intensity of the effect based on the nature of the business operation. Analyzing the synchronization between international stock markets has been a crucial topic in the literature due to its criticality in grasping the benefits of international portfolio diversification. The extensive historical literature demonstrated and reviewed the co-movements between multiple global …

Portfolio Optimization Using Value Focused Thinking, Tyler Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the application of Value Focused Thinking (VFT) and multi-objective portfolio optimization to create a well-aligned portfolio for an organization faced with over 50 alternatives and limited funding. A novel technique is proposed to develop an optimized portfolio based on VFT scores, utilizing heuristic approaches like evolutionary algorithms. The research outcomes include an optimized portfolio, the total value evaluation of alternatives, and a sensitivity analysis. The new approach outperforms the organization’s previous method, resulting in a portfolio that better addresses the organization’s core values and objectives, scoring 21.21% higher.

Navigating Uncertainty: The Role Of Gold, Silver, Oil, Cryptocurrency, And Esg Indices In The Mena Region, Rahaf Zakaria Sakr

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effectiveness of various financial instruments as hedges and safe havens during different market conditions in the MENA region. It compares traditional safe-haven investments ( gold, silver, and oil) and non-traditional safe-havens (cryptocurrencies and ESG stocks) to determine which investments function better as hedges and safe havens during different market conditions. The data covers eight years, starting in 2015 and ending in early 2023. DCC GARCH is utilized to examine time variation in conditional correlations. This study finds that Gold, Silver, and cryptocurrency can be considered strong hedges to the MENA market on average and weak safe …

The Ties That Blend: Social Capital And Family Firm Innovation, Dustin L. Odom

Theses and Dissertations

The research project empirically assesses the influence of an under-researched aspect of social capital on the family firm’s entrepreneurial behaviors. Specifically, blending social capital, which consists of bonding social capital and bridging social capital that develops between family firms and external family stakeholders, is considered in examining the family firm’s engagement in innovation efforts. Additionally, familial tie strength and outside business ownership of external family stakeholders are argued to moderate the proposed relationship between blending social capital and family firm innovation. The surveying methods for assessing the hypothesized relationships included conducting a two-wave study with adapted, modified, and validated scales. …

An Electric Commerce Platform For Material Testing Laboratories, John Ferris Mitchener

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of the Internet has allowed businesses to create new sales and marketing channels to provide value for their customers in the marketplace. Engineering manufacturers and suppliers have taken advantage of the internet to automate the customer service aspects of their businesses as well as to market their services in a cost-effective but widespread manner. This work aims to apply the practices and benefits of electronic commerce (e-commerce) to a material testing laboratory through the creation of a functioning website with e-commerce features. The effects of Search Engine Optimization, website accessibility issues, marketing considerations, security concerns, and common business …

Two-Essay Based Exploratory Research On Service Robots’ Anthropomorphized Voice Types, Accents, And Speaking Styles, Jutong Wen

Theses and Dissertations

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, service robots play an increasingly important role in frontline service across various industries. However, many questions surrounding service robots as a novel service option are still less studied, and thus, remain uncertain to marketers. Therefore, this dissertation investigated and addressed some of these questions, by assessing the potential advantages of service robots, not only as compared to human employees, but also among service robots’ different humanlike vocal features, including voice types, accents, and speaking styles. Specifically, to address the research gaps identified through an in-depth literature review conducted in Chapter 2, a series …

Endeavors Of Large Family Firms: A Property Rights Perspective Of Internationalization, Vitaliy Skorodziyevskiy

Theses and Dissertations

A large number of firms around the world are family firms. Many of these family firms are involved in internationalization strategies. Despite the breadth of knowledge on the internationalization of large family firms, not enough attention has been paid to some of the aspects of internationalization. Specifically, the literature is scarce with respect to understanding the mechanisms that may help or harm family firms in their internationalization strategies and the impact of these strategies on firm performance. In my dissertation, I use property rights theory to argue that family firms are able to minimize their negotiating and policing costs, allowing …

The Effect Of Four Decades Of Deregulation On Competition And Productivity Of The U.S. Freight Transportation Industry, Seungjae Shin

Theses and Dissertations

This study reviews the competition and productivity of the U.S. freight transportation industry for the past 41 years. This study investigated the trends of HHI market concentration index values and labor productivity values of rail and truck sectors and tried to find any relationships between the two values in the separate periods before and after the abolishment of the ICC. This study also investigated how the existence of a regulatory body impacted productivity of the freight transportation industry by using a Cobb Douglas production function on annual financial statement data in the U.S. stock exchange market. This study found that: …

Three Essays On New Issues In Corporate Finance, Abdullah Shoeb

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on three new issues in corporate finance, each aiming at different aspects of a firm's behavior. First, I propose a novel way to classify domestic manufacturing firms based on their level of financial constraint. Using the operating cash flow ratio as my new measure, I find that the behavior of constrained and unconstrained firms differ significantly, unlike existing constraint measures from the literature. My results indicate that constrained firms cannot engage in equity recycling, have a higher sensitivity to cash flow, use the proceeds from the sales of their fixed assets in R&D, and cannot change leverage …

Tied Together, Eiko Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

The paper is about a site-specific installation that questions a viewer’s norms and perspectives, through the use of multilingual newspapers as a sculptural material.

Stock Splits And Corporate Peer Effects, Albert J. Saad

Theses and Dissertations

We find that a company’s decision to execute a stock split is affected by the number of stock splits carried out by its peers. Through the use of a broad peer group construction methodology, we also reveal the presence of asymmetric effects with regard to companies of different market capitalization size. In the periods of 1983–1996 and 1997–2009 we find that firms are more likely to split their stock if more of their peers have recently done so. However, in the period of 2010–2019 we see that the opposite is true. These results provide further evidence on social learning from …

Lobbying – A Financial Perspective, Sean Byrne

Theses and Dissertations

U.S. based bank holding companies (BHCs) exert influence at every step in the legislative process where financial regulatory reforms are enacted into law, such as the Dodd-Frank Act, to promulgation of regulations. In Chapter II, we maintain that BHCs, upon facing salient regulation, lobby regulators to have their opinions heard with the goal of favorable regulatory change and to increase non-traditional revenues. We undertook a novel collection of political and financial data from 2003 to 2018, matching 180 pairs of parsed proposed and final regulations. BHCs that participated in commenting on proposed rules are highly successful at having their views …

A Focus On Followers: Examining Relationships Between Elements Of The Leader-Follower Relationship From The Follower’S Perspective, David James Ross

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines followership style, leadership behaviors, and LMX-quality from the follower’s perspective. This research used Kelley’s followership framework, the full range leadership model, and the LMX-6 instrument to analyze each dimension of the leader-follower relationship. Using a sample of 89 followers from various backgrounds, the study collected data regarding each of the followers’ unique relationships with their leader. These data provided insights into the followers’ current followership style (i.e., their current levels of independent critical thinking and active engagement), their leaders ‘behaviors, and the quality of their individual leader-follower relationship. The researcher used the statistical program JASP to measure …

Essays On Behavioral Decision Making In Crowdfunding Environments, Bright Frimpong

Theses and Dissertations

Crowdfunding has revolutionized the world of financing. From entrepreneurs to financially excluded individuals seeking funding for essential projects, crowdfunding provides an expansive platform for project founders to raise needed capital for pending or ongoing projects. In addition to raising capital, founders also use crowdfunding to test market an idea, gain exposure for future funding, gain validation, and build trusting relationships with backers (Zhou et al., 2018). However, the success of crowdfunding is dependent on crowd participation- backer support and funding. The importance of crowd participation in crowdfunding is not limited to project funding, but also building public involvement and support …

Organizational Culture During The Era Of A Black Swan: A Phenomenological Examination Of New Hire Sales Training Within A Medical Diagnostic Company, Maelyn Zweben Lessard

Theses and Dissertations

Traditional sales training in a medical diagnostic organization takes place in multiple locations over the period of many months. New hires attend classes with a set group of other new hire employees establishing a cohort. It is the responsibility of the sales training department and the new hire’s direct supervisor to incorporate training into the organizations culture. This is done by bringing the new hire into the corporate office and, through the months of training, exposing the new hire to leadership, support functions, manufacturing, and multiple departments that will support their job moving forward. COVID-19 created a rapid market increase …

The Role Of The Similarity Between Suppliers' And Buyers' Sustainability Practices In Improving Suppliers' Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Kwanheui Cheon

Theses and Dissertations

Sustainability has become an essential component of corporate survival and prosperity. As a result, companies are eager to introduce sustainability to every part of their businesses. In addition, because stakeholders' interest has spread from companies to their entire supply chain, companies must manage their relationships with other supply chain members regarding sustainability. Consequently, there has been an interest in investigating the implementation and management of sustainability along supply chains. However, there are still voids in sustainable supply chain management research. For example, scholars have pointed out the need for research on sustainability from a supplier perspective as opposed to the …

The “Made In Egypt” Label Effect On Egyptian Consumers’ Purchase Intention, Mirna Ibrahim Khela

Theses and Dissertations

This study employed a survey to investigate the Country of origin (COO) effect of the “Made in Egypt” label on Egyptian consumers’ purchase intentions of products and services. By using the conjoint analysis, the study was able to test the purchase intention process. The study tested high durability, low durability, and service industry, with attributes (price, specs, and COO) and levels (within attributes). Respondents were given several combinations of those attributes and levels through the survey design. They were asked to trade off the least important attributes for the most important ones to reach a final purchase decision. Previous studies …

Human Capital Advantage From Fortitude, Resilience, And Perseverance Of Minority Ceos In Stem Organizations: A Phenomenological Study, Torin Mordel Malone

Theses and Dissertations

This research study explored how the inherent lived experiences of minorities can foster the attributes of strength and stamina, collectively referred to as the fortitude, resilience, and perseverance (FRP) of minority executive-level leadership. Specifically, this research considered the lived experiences of ten minority CEOs and assessed the influence of how they lead and communicate within their organizations. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to discover if and how the attributes of FRP could distinctively serve as a human capital advantage for organizations to consider with regard to utilizing minority executive-level leadership. The implication is that the greater understanding …

Artificial Intelligence Superteams & Augmentation Strategies: Increasing Performance Of High-Functioning Virtual Team Members Via Human Machine Teaming Enhancements, Eric Lawrence Demirjian

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial intelligence (AI) can impact future workforce business operations in extraordinary ways through human-machine teaming. A human-machine teaming revolution will unleash enormous change upon businesses by merging humans and AI. For years, scholars and mainstream thought leaders have argued that firms must embrace AI and human-machine teaming to advance employee performance and deliver a high-performance, cost-effective, comprehensive business strategy (Raisamo, Rakkolainen, Majaranta, Salminen, Rantala, & Farooq, 2019). The era of human inadequacy, human-only teams, and human performance ceilings is disappearing as AI rapidly augments work and teams (Ashley & Sahota, 2019). AI augmentation and human-machine teaming will drive tomorrow’s blended …

Themes And Participants’ Role In Online Health Discussion: Evidence From Reddit, Massara Alazazi

Theses and Dissertations

Health-related topics are discussed widely on different social networking sites. These discussions and their related aspects can reveal significant insights and patterns that are worth studying and understanding. In this dissertation, we explore the patterns of mandatory and voluntary vaccine online discussions including the topics discussed, the words correlated with each of them, and the sentiment expressed. Moreover, we explore the role opinion leaders play in the health discussion and their impact on participation in a particular discussion. Opinion leaders are determined, and their impact on discussion participation is differentiated based on their different characteristics such as their connections and …

High-Functioning Virtual Team Members & Quality Of Work Life: A Mixed Methods Analysis Of Subgroups, Performance, And Standard Occupational Classification Factors, Kate Ashley Hill

Theses and Dissertations

Historical events such as industrialization, the advent of computers, and the dawn of the internet have consistently impacted the employee workforce and created risks and opportunities for increased performance and quality of work life (QWL) (Guest, 2014; O’Halloran, 2015). Modern worldwide businesses are increasingly turning to virtual team members (VTMs) to create efficiencies, lower costs, and adapt to the changing implications of the COVID-19 and worker environment (Garro-Abarca, Palos-Sanchez, & Aguayo-Camacho, 2021). At this intersection between global change and altering work practices, the VTM faces changing societal views on QWL. Therefore, the individual VTM is the unit of analysis and …

Exploring The Role Of Soft Skills Amongst African American Women Navigating Barriers To Achieving Corporate Leadership, Latoya Newell Burke

Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to explore the role of soft skills in African American women's ascension to corporate leadership as they navigate and overcome barriers. The disparity of African American women in corporate leadership is longstanding. African American women's corporate American experience is distinct and often fraught with difficulties. In order to overcome the obstacles they encountered while pursuing executive leadership, this study investigated if soft skills were thought to be a crucial skill required. The study fills a gap in research that addresses African American women specifically. Previous studies have addressed the barriers that African American women face in corporate …