Business Commons^™

Three Essays On Banking, Xinming Li

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation includes three essays related to banking. In the first essay, I identify an important channel through which stronger legal enforcement boosts the real economy – by increasing bank liquidity creation. Results suggest that effective enforceability of contracts increases total, asset-side, liability-side, and off-balance sheet- side liquidity creation, implying favorable causal real economic effects.

In the second essay, we conduct the first broad-based international study on bank- level failures covering 92 countries over 2000-2014 and investigate national culture values as bank failure determinants. We find individualism and masculinity are positively associated with bank failure but operate through different channels. …

The Influence Of Consumer Inference About A Company’S Motive On Corporate Social Responsibility (Csr) Evaluation, Taehoon Park

Theses and Dissertations

The author investigates the roles of consumer inferences and consumer suspicion in responses to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities by companies.

Chapter 1 examines how consumers infer a company’s motive for its prosocial activity when the same company is also involved in a socially harmful accident. When a company is involved in both CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and CSI (Corporate Social Irresponsibility), consumers can infer the motive for the CSR campaign from the temporal order of these two events. The author further proposes that this effect will be moderated by perceived invested effort in CSR campaign. Specifically, high effort invested …

Reappraising International Business In A Digital Arena: Barriers, Strategies, And Context For Internationalization Of Digital Innovations, Noman Ahmed Shaheer

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation builds on the eclectic paradigm to explore internationalization strategies in the burgeoning digital economy through a rigorous empirical analysis of a unique big data archive tracking international penetrations of more than 1.5 million mobile apps across 58 countries. While traditional firms internationalize by internalizing physical assets to reap location advantages from foreign markets, many digital businesses internationalize by orchestrating networks of information flows across borders. Such digital internationalization may not be constrained by cross-national distance or lack of resources as digital businesses leverage globally disperse knowledge and innovation networks to develop scale free digital innovations and seamlessly transmit …

A Model Of Impression Formation In Recruitment, Jonathan Levi Hendricks

Theses and Dissertations

Applicant impressions of organizations are a critical antecedent to applicant decisions within the recruitment process. Recruitment research has examined how applicant perceptions are influenced by organization-specific information within a given industry. However, current recruitment models fail to describe the process of impression formation during recruitment, which inhibits understanding of the recruitment process. Specifically, only limited research has considered how applicants integrate context- related associations (such as perceptions about an industry) with recruitment materials in forming initial perceptions about the organization. Over the course of two experimental studies, I integrate social cognitive research on impression formation into recruitment models to develop …

Self-Affirmation And Perspective Taking In Organizations: An Integrated Framework For Examining Process-Oriented Phenomena As Trajectories Of Change, Patrick J. Flynn

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals’ perceptions of their fit within in an organization unfold as a process over time that is subject to influence and change. This dissertation is a program of research that takes a process-oriented approach to understanding change from patterns of outcome trajectories and trajectory changes. Appendix A presents a study that introduces a conceptual framework for a temporal approach to change. Appendix A showed that strong events serve to change the trajectory of individuals’ affective commitment. Appendix B presents a first intervention study with surprising results where instead of self-affirmation, perspective taking appeared to facilitate positive trajectory changes in individuals’ …

Child Sport Fan Behavior: An Examination Of The Effects Of Socialization, Branding, And Alternatives On Children’S Psychological Connections To Sports Teams, Katherine Rose Nakamoto Reifurth

Theses and Dissertations

This three-study dissertation focuses on child fans of professional sport teams and the ways in which they become fans and attach themselves and connect to these sport brands. In Study 1, the researchers focused on the socialization into fandom of young children and the effects of communities and the game-day environment on this socialization utilizing qualitative observations and interviews with children ages 6 to 14 and resulted in an expanded understanding of the dame-day aspects that attract and excite children most. In Study 2, the researchers focused on the aspects of a new team’s brand that children ages 5 to …

Premium Seating In College Athletics: Trends Of Today And The Future, Kendra Holaday

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to assist college athletic departments in attracting more fans to premium seating areas within their football stadiums. Existing research covers professional sporting venues in depth, but lacks volume regarding collegiate athletics. Due to the minimal knowledge and research recorded on premium seating in college football venues, there is a crucial need for the gap in research to be filled. The interviewing method and qualitative research was used to gain information on premium seating within college football venues. During the interview process existing premium seating, renovations in progress, and future addition plans were all explored. …

The Effects Of Product Feature Complexity, Market Activity, And Update Scheduling On Mobile App Life Cycles, Moonwon Chung

Theses and Dissertations

Rapid advancements in telecommunication devices and the emergence of the mobile app ecosystem have immensely impacted our lives. Innovative apps have helped improve market efficiency in agriculture, contributed to environmental sustainability through peer-to-peer sharing services, and stimulated financial inclusion in developing economies. However, mobile app developers have to deal with challenges that can hinder the app to reach its full potential. In order to achieve commercial success in the hyper-competitive business landscape where freemium business models are dominating, developers need deep understanding on how non-price operational levers such as product design, delivery, and continued service lead to user adoption.

From …

Impact Of The Chief Data Officer On Firm Performance, Yu Nie

Theses and Dissertations

With the advent of the Big Data era, Chief Data Officers (CDOs) take on the task of managing all types of data. However, as an emerging position, the roles and responsibilities of CDOs in the organization, and the relationship between the CDOs and firm performance are not yet completely clear. The research in this dissertation provides an analysis of the CDO development stages, the different types of CDO roles and responsibilities, and explores the relationships among the CDO’s presence, the CDO’s characteristics and the firm performance. First, the research shows the development of the CDO can be divided into five …

Humanitarian Logistics: Shipping Designs For The Post Disaster Cargo Surge, Nicholas L. Green

Theses and Dissertations

In 2017 Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The humanitarian aid community scrambled a response to support the 3.4 million people affected by the disaster. In response, thousands of shipping containers filled with supplies were sent to the island. Numerous reports surfaced regarding significant delays in receiving the shipments. This research reviews the historical account of cargo throughput into Puerto Rico following Maria. A computer simulation built in ARENA compares various what-if scenarios based on empirically collected data and interviews with FEMA, port authorities, and commercial cargo carriers to determine how the humanitarian supply chain could improve for future disaster planning. …

Applying The Multiple Multidimensional Knapsack Assignment Problem To A Cargo Allocation And Transportation Problem With Stochastic Demand, Jocelin S. Maus

Theses and Dissertations

The US military relies on airlift to not only deploy and sustain U.S. armed forces anywhere in the world but also to rapidly mobilize humanitarian efforts and supplies. Operations already impacted by the limited capacity of aircraft also fall prey to dynamic requirements and differing priorities of multiple global locations. A growing concern for the modern military budget is how to provide airlift functions expediently and economically while mitigating the costs of shortfalls and overages. Utilizing fiscal year 2017-2018 cargo data published by the 618th Air Operations Center and modeling this problem as a multiple multidimensional knapsack assignment problem (MMKAP), …

Predicting Failures Of The Brazilian Air Force Tucano Fleet Using Survival Analysis, Luciana Mesquita Monteiro

Theses and Dissertations

During the life of an aircraft, several failures may occur causing unplanned maintenance and costs of parts, labor, transportation, lost opportunities, and operations, among others. The prediction of these events becomes especially difficult for new airframes, since they do not have many flight hours or enough data to observe failures. This study analyzes and model the time between failures (TBF) of the Brazilian Air Force T-27 Tucano fleet by applying various non-parametric, semi-parametric, and parametric statistical models, to the TBF, such as the descriptive statistics, Kaplan-Meier estimators, Cox proportional hazards models, with or without frailty, and survival regression models, with …

A Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Pilot Training Next, Talon M. Pope

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force (USAF) is currently facing a 2,400-pilot shortage in an increasingly constrained budgetary environment. Without pilots to engage the enemy, deliver weapons, and provide logistics support for operations, the USAF could lose the ability to fly, fight, and win global engagements and defend the homeland. This study focused on Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) as a means of producing the USAF’s pilots to offset the current shortage. Specifically, this study compared UPT to the recently initiated Pilot Training-Next (PTN) program through a cost-benefit analysis. Like any new technology integration, PTN’s virtual reality training will require further study …

Examining The Express Supportability Module: Implementing An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach With Air Force Maintenance Data, Troy J. St Peter

Theses and Dissertations

Launched in 1996, EXPRESS (Execution and Prioritization of Repairs Support System) is a program integral to the Air Force reparable supply chain. Daily, EXPRESS relies on a number of data sources and individual modules like the Supportability Module to determine which necessary repairs can and should be made. The Supportability Module examines the prioritized list of repairs and checks four constraints in order to decide whether each repair can be made given current resources. According to the logic of the module, a single constraint failure means that subsequent resource checks are not made before evaluating the next repair. Unfortunately, this …

Simulating Maritime Chokepoint Disruption In The Global Food Supply, Ryan B. Walton

Theses and Dissertations

The three food crops of wheat, maize, and rice make up almost two-thirds of the world's dietary energy needs. Of these three, just six countries provide 70% of the global supply. Furthermore, soybeans account for three-quarters of global livestock feed, and only three countries provide 80% of the global supply. Considering over half of the world's exported supply of these four commodities are exported via maritime means, the free ow of marine traffic becomes paramount. Current models lack the ability to capture the inherent variance displayed in the maritime transport system, which can lead to inaccurate assumptions about how the …

Estimating Total Cost Of Ownership For United States Air Force Chiller Assets, William C. Berner

Theses and Dissertations

In order to make the most cost-effective choice when purchasing high-value assets, organizations must be able to quantify and compare the costs associated with acquiring, maintaining and disposing the alternatives. Currently, the United States Air Force (USAF) Civil Engineer (CE) enterprise has no standardized model to accurately and efficiently predict the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the acquisition of new assets. As such, acquisition efforts throughout the enterprise are disjointed and performed without leveraging the considerable buying power wielded by an organization as large as the USAF. This research developed a TCO model using a standard, dollar-based approach that …

Investigating Schedule Length Of Space And Missile Systems Center Contracts, Loyd A. Bradley Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Acquisition reform has long been the goal of the Department of Defense to save, recover and redistribute funds in an efficient manner. The Space and Missile Systems Center Program Management and Integration Directorate (SMC/PI) and Acquisitions Center of Excellence (ACE) have shared the same effort and have made strides to better their acquisition processes. Many different angles have been examined to try to discover cost and schedule growth however, little research has been done to find the drivers of schedule length. This research is aimed at finding contributing factors to the length of schedule of the pre-acquisition process. By using …

Analysis Of Cross-Cultural Training Efforts, Competencies And Implications, And How Cross-Cultural Competency Affects The Success Of Construction Projects On Air Force Installations Overseas, Katie L. Macgregor

Theses and Dissertations

US Air Force (AF) Civil Engineer (CE) Officers stationed at overseas bases lead and manage construction and engineering efforts for projects totaling billions of dollars annually. Budget overruns in the Department of Defense (DoD) and specifically the AF, have been under stringent investigation by government officials in recent years. 92% of CE Officers overseas work with local nationals (LN) and the host nation weekly or daily, but most receive less than 2 hours of formal cross-cultural training prior to arrival overseas. Host nation partners include foreign military, local contractors, LN workforce and local government agencies. Based on a previous Delphi …

Developing Standard Emd Cost Factors For Major Defense Acquisition Program (Mdap) Platforms, Matthew R. Markman

Theses and Dissertations

This research involves the creation of standard factors that more accurately reflect observed outcomes in the development stages of major programs. Traditionally, estimation techniques such as analogy, parametric, engineering build-up, and factors are utilized to develop budgets and serve as the baseline for measuring project progress. This effort accomplishes the development and creation of 443 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 management, systems engineering, data, training or …

An Analysis Of Defense Contractor Profit Margin Percentages, Sara K. O'Connor

Theses and Dissertations

Profit earned by defense contractors is a controversial issue among government officials and the defense industry. It is recognized that profits earned by defense contractors are not strictly the product of the dynamics of a competitive market, but of federal profit statutes, contractual incentive schemes, the quality of government oversight, and in a market of less than full competition. As such, there is always concern of whether contractors are earning “excessive" profit -- through policy or failed oversight. The purpose of this research is to investigate the question of reasonable profits from one particular angle -- whether profit margins differ …

Operations Research Methods For Multi-Domain Campaign Phase Planning, John A. Schlicht

Theses and Dissertations

In "Antiaccess Warfare as Strategy," Tangredi posits the question and need to consider multiple domains and governmental and warfighting functions in various phases of campaign execution. Multi-domain integration within and across various phases of the joint campaign presents a host of non-linear factors that are compounded and amplified by uncertainties. Colonel Blotto is a simple game that is suited to compare traditional force-on-force military engagements where mass wins the day, but have had limited application to more complex military planning. This thesis explores the formulation schema, data-driven parameters, methods of calculation, and scenarios applicable to a generalized Colonel Blotto (General …

Selecting A Construction Contract Acquisition Strategy To Support Foreign Military Sales Facility Construction, Robert H. Shuler

Theses and Dissertations

“Strengthening Alliances and Attracting New Partners” is one of the three Department of Defense’s primary lines of effort as outlined in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate (AFSAC) aides in the execution of this line of effort through the execution of Foreign Military Sales (FMS) cases. FMS cases vary in complexity depending on the type of end-item and the capabilities of the purchasing nation. AFSAC must balance multiple objectives and criteria to ensure the needs of the purchasing nation, the end-item, and U.S. government entities are met. A decision analysis model using …

Commercialization Analysis Of Sbir Funded Technologies, Theodore A. Rask

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program invests $2.2 billion annually into domestic innovation stimulation. The Department of Defense (DoD) contributes almost $1 billion of that investment; of which the Air Force accounts for 25%. Commercialization, either the transfer to programs of record or further industrial investment, is the program’s objective. Data from this research indicates that Air Force programs have a 7.6% commercialization rate; representing an opportunity to improve. Leveraging best practices from industry; this research provides a method to align investments with needed capabilities. This method exploits established user need taxonomies, the DoD Joint Capability Area …

An Analysis Of Estimate Variance In Program Office Estimates, Benjamin J. Bonenfant

Theses and Dissertations

Past research has shown that predicting the cost growth within DoD systems is an important topic. Total program cost growth and predictors of program cost growth have been studied. Kozlak (2017) studied cost growth at four major reviews: Critical Design Review, First Flight, Development Test and Evaluation End, and Initial Operating Capability. This research attempts to assess cost growth and cost variance at similar points in a program life cycle. In the past the majority of studies have been done identifying programs as either: Acquisition Category (ACAT) I and non-ACAT I programs, or Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAP) and non-MDAP …

Comparing Estimated To Actual Development Budgets For Air Force Space Programs, Christopher J. Elworth

Theses and Dissertations

The accuracy of budget estimates is vital in ensuring cost efficiency and decreasing the possibility of budget and schedule growth. The goal of this study was to determine when budget estimates increase and what may cause those increases. Percent schedule and linear interpolation was used to analyze the budget changes. Space program budget growth does not increase at a constant rate between Milestone B (MS B) and Initial Operational Capability (IOC). When an exponential curve was fit to the deviations in budget growth, the mean and median R2 for the programs in this study were .83 and .91, respectively. Many …

U.S. Air Force Maintenance Group Aerial Ports: Strengths, Challenges, Opportunities, And Threats, Parker H. Alford

Theses and Dissertations

In 2005 the Base Closure Realignment Commission and Secretary of Defense recommended joint basing; as an indirect result starting in 2009 and culminating the following year, Charleston, Dover, McChord, McGuire, and Travis maintenance groups (MXG) took command of aerial port squadrons (APS). Various entities have discussed at length the impact; however, there did not appear to be a documented hard look into the strengths, challenges, opportunities, and threats (SCOTs) which emerged. This study utilized the Delphi method to flesh out MXG APS SCOTs by anonymously surveying MXG and APS experts through three panel rounds. This study discovered and documented 24 …

Turbojet Range, Loiter, And Altitude Tradeoff Estimations In Efficient Modeling And Optimization Formulations, Lauren M. Bramblett

Theses and Dissertations

Identifying accurate tradeoffs between loiter time, range, and loiter altitude for jet aircraft are critical for mission planning, but current methods are cumbersome and time and labor intensive. This research introduces a new method for determining tradeoffs between loiter time, range, and loiter altitude for jet aircraft utilizing specific aircraft performance characteristics and the Bréguet range and endurance equations. Results from this new methodology are compared to the existing model used by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center for flight planning. This method is then extended and applied to several routing assignment problems, taking advantage of the incorporation of …

Fuzzy Inference Systems For Risk Appraisal In Military Operational Planning, Curtis B. Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in computing and mathematical techniques have given rise to increasingly complex models employed in the management of risk across numerous disciplines. While current military doctrine embraces sound practices for identifying, communicating, and mitigating risk, the complex nature of modern operational environments prevents the enumeration of risk factors and consequences necessary to leverage anything beyond rudimentary risk models. Efforts to model military operational risk in quantitative terms are stymied by the interaction of incomplete, inadequate, and unreliable knowledge. Specifically, it is evident that joint and inter-Service literature on risk are inconsistent, ill-defined, and prescribe imprecise approaches to codifying risk. Notably, …

Using Simulation To Model Reserve Officer Training Corps Cadet Flow, Marydell V. Westman

Theses and Dissertations

The Army Cadet Command oversees the Army Reserve Officer Training. It receives mission goals every year along with a budget. It is their responsibility to recruit enough cadets to fulfill mission goal and remain under budget, while ensuring the recruited cadets have the correct percentages of race, gender, and majors. This research provides a tool that can change the numbers and percentages of incoming cadets, what year of school they enter, as well as their gender, race, and STEM or non-STEM parameters, in order to explore the composition of graduated commissioned cadets. This study finds that changing the percentage of …

An Analysis Of Profit Margin In Relation To The Better Buying Power Initiative, Jerry (Trey) L. Baker Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Recent Better Buying Power (BBP) initiatives have sought to better contractually align contractor profit with performance. Profit should incentivize efficiency in cost and schedule and only be awarded when earned. The current research seeks evidence that BBP has been effective in improving performance. The first part of the research examines the trends of profit margin and cost growth both before and after the implementation of the first BBP initiative. BBP recommended the use of incentive type contracts over award fee contracts, where appropriate. This research found an increased use of incentive type contracts and a reduced use of award fee …