Business Commons^™

A Quantitative Investigation Exploring Illicit Drug Use Inside And Out Of The Foodservice Industry, Kristen Kaminski

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to perform a follow-up quantitative investigation of foodservice employees’ illicit drug use behaviors, experiences with illicit drug use prevention efforts, and perceived negative outcomes associated with illicit drug use as compared to the non-foodservice labor force. An online survey was designed for this study to collect data and independent t-tests were conducted to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. Results indicated foodservice employees are more likely to use illicit drugs and are more concerned with short-term negative outcomes as a result of illicit drug use than the non-foodservice labor force. Furthermore, illicit …

Facilitators For Software Development Agility, Shekhar Rathor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Software development methodologies provide guidelines and practices for developing information systems. They have evolved over time from traditional plan-driven methodologies to incremental and iterative software development methodologies. The Agile Manifesto was released in 2001, which provides values and principles for agile software development. Over the last few years, agile software development has become popular because its values and principles focus on addressing the needs of contemporary software development. IT and Business teams need agility to deal with changes that can emerge during software development due to changing business needs. Agile software development practices claim to provide the ability to deal …

Patient-Centered Care Process Enabled By Integrative Social Media Platform In An Outpatient Setting, Inkyoung Hur

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As an effort to guide patients toward being more informed and more involved as healthcare decision makers in the clinical processes, health care organizations have adopted a new technology referred to as an integrative social media platform (ISMP). This ISMP combines features of mobile technology and those of social media technology, integrating healthcare systems in order to support a more patient-centered healthcare process. However, users, both physicians and patients, have showed varied usages of ISMP, as a results, have shown mixed results of ISMP. To provide a better understanding of the use of ISMP, especially the interaction between patients and …

Relevance Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: Design Principles For The Extraction Of Context-Aware Information, Arturo Castellanos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the1970s many approaches of representing domains have been suggested. Each approach maintains the assumption that the information about the objects represented in the Information System (IS) is specified and verified by domain experts and potential users. Yet, as more IS are developed to support a larger diversity of users such as customers, suppliers, and members of the general public (such as many multi-user online systems), analysts can no longer rely on a stable single group of people for complete specification of domains –to the extent that prior research has questioned the efficacy of conceptual modeling in these heterogeneous settings. …

Qualities Of Informal Leaders, Factors Influencing The Formation Of Informal Leadership, And The Paradox Of Formal Power, Kyungchool Joe

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Informal leaders can have similar effects on firm performance as formal leaders. Although informal leadership can play a critical role in organizational functioning, empirical research concerning this issue is scarce. I conceptualized informal leadership as a continuous variable, and tested the relationship between informal leadership and the following variables. First, this study examined how informal leaders can influence over other members, even though they do not possess formal power. Five indicators, i.e., performance, turnover intention, career satisfaction, work engagement, and optimism were selected to assess the qualities of informal leaders as role models. Second, this study advanced our understanding of …

Essays On The Effect Of Board Gender Diversity On Firm Risk, Performance, And Institutions' Ownership Preferences, Jodonnis Rodriguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effect of gender diversity on firm risk and financial performance, and on the stock ownership preferences of institutional investors. For the firm risk and financial performance analysis, we use U.S. firms listed on the S&P 500 and NSE-listed Indian companies. The two samples provide our study with the ability to study gender diversity in a developed and emerging market with distinct economic frameworks, cultural traditions, and legal environments.

Our empirical tests show that firms with more gender diversity are less risky and have higher financial performance than firms with less gender influence. These results are consistent …

Cfo Turnover, Firm’S Debt-Equity Choice And Information Environment, Muhammad Bakhtear U. Talukdar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The CEO and CFO are the two key executives of a firm. They work cohesively to ensure the growth of the firm. After the adoption of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002, the importance of CFOs has increased due to their personal legal obligation in certifying the accuracy of financial statements. Only a few papers such as Mian (2001), Fee and Hadlock (2004), and Geiger and North (2006) focus on CFOs in the pre-SOX era. However, a vacuum exists in research focusing exclusively on CFOs in the post-SOX era. The purpose of this dissertation is to delve into a …

Essays On The U.S. Gaap-Ifrs Convergence Project, The Nature Of Accounting Standards, And Financial Reporting Quality, Assma M. Sawani

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the changes to the nature of the accounting paradigms of U.S. GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) over the course of the U.S. GAAP and IFRS convergence project. I further examine whether the changes to the nature of IFRS following convergence impacts the financial reporting quality. The motivation for this study is to provide an initial review of the progress of the convergence process between U.S. GAAP and IFRS that aims to converge both sets of standards towards more principles-based paradigms. The ultimate goal of the convergence process was the development of globally recognized …

Earnings Management To Achieve The Peer Performance Benchmark, Sheng Yi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Other than three extensively researched earnings thresholds, avoiding earnings declines, avoiding negative earnings and avoiding negative earnings surprises (Burgstahler and Dichev 1997; Degeorge, Patel, and Zeckhauser 1999), peer performance is an additional threshold that is often mentioned in news reports, compensation contracts and analysts’ reports, while largely ignored in the academic research. Thus, I examine whether firms manage earnings to achieve peer performance. First, I examine accruals-based earnings management to achieve peer performance. The empirical results show that firms exhibit more income-increasing accruals management in the current year under the following situations: 1) when firms’ prior year performance is below …

The Association Of Real Earnings Management With: Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, Audit Effort, And Future Financial Performance, Angel Arturo Pacheco Paredes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emerging research on real earnings management [REM] has expressed the concern that firms deviating from normal business practices may endure a negative impact on future cash flows and performance. This dissertation (in three essays) investigates the phenomenon of real earnings management in its association with: 1) enterprise resource planning systems [ERPs]; 2) audit report lags [ARLs]; and 3) future firm performance. In the first investigation I hypothesize that the increased monitoring associated with the implementation of an ERP will result in a decline in REM. In the second investigation I hypothesize that higher levels of REM will evoke greater auditor …

Institutional Investors, Insiders And The Firm, Vinh Huy L. Nguyen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three chapters that focus on three topics related to institutional investors’ and registered insiders’ trading activities around corporate announcements. The purpose of the research is to provide more insights into the trading behavior of institutions and insiders around corporate events when they are influenced by the anticipation and arrival of new information. Data samples are stratified, regression models are estimated, and control variables are added to ensure the results are significant and robust.

The first chapter discusses the information signaling hypothesis around share repurchase announcements. I examine if institutions can trade profitability around the announcement …

Essays On Volatility Drivers, Transmissions And Equity Market Correlations In A Global Setting, Antonio M. Figueiredo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Volatility is a fascinating and important topic for financial markets in general, and probably the single most important issue in financial risk management. Although volatility itself is not synonymous with risk, it is closely associated with it in the realm of risk management. In this study, I focus on the volatility in the foreign exchange markets and investigate the spillover of volatility from this market to equity correlations and its impact on global equity markets’ bid-ask spreads as a proxy for market quality. I also explore the role that accounting earnings quality play in subsequent volatility in U.S. equity markets. …

The Effect Of Shortened Reporting Lag On The Usefulness Of Form 20-F, Zhenfeng Liu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the impact of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to accelerate the Form 20-F (20-F) filing deadline on the usefulness of 20-Fs. I find that only the large and medium firms experienced a significant increase in market reaction when they accelerated their 20-F filing deadlines to four months after the year-end, while no significant change in market reaction is detected for small firms. I also find that the market did not appear to have reacted to firms who voluntarily further shortened their 20-F reporting lag to less than four months after the year-end. Finally, I find …

Authentic Servant-Leadership Exemplified By Early Childhood Educator David Lawrence Jr.: A Case Study, Blanca Correa-Cespedes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Advocacy and leadership style are essential concepts in education. This qualitative case study was undertaken to demonstrate how Robert K. Greenleaf’s servant-leadership framework could be a useful framework to adopt by educational leaders and child advocates. Servant-leadership identifies the needs of others as a primary goal of leadership. The study contributes to understanding the value of exemplary servant-leadership and advocacy in public education as demonstrated by David Lawrence Jr. The researcher addressed questions regarding how Lawrence embodies servant-leadership traits and explored how a servant-leader has been positively influencing early childhood public educational policy in Florida to benefit all children.

There …

Strategies To Succeed In An Increasingly Technology-Based Environment: A Study Of The Automotive Industry, Jose Geleilate

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how firms embedded in an increasingly technology-based industry change their vertical integration and product development strategies in order to remain competitive and increase value capture. The first essay is a theoretical development integrating concepts of industry structure, organizational governance form and innovation in order to disentangle past research’s disagreements and guide future studies. Firms are seen as proactive actors that also have their decisions strongly shaped by structural (architectural) factors. The second essay focus on analyzing how module suppliers achieve a sustained competitive advantage by increasing their focus on modular products and innovations as well as managing …

Leadership Competency Builder, Nathan Hiller, Sibel Özgen Novelli, Ajay Rama Ponnapalli

Center for Leadership Current Research

The Leadership Competency Builder© was built on an extensive literature review of top-tier academic research on leadership up to mid-2015, conducted by a team of researchers at the FIU Center for Leadership. This list of 45 leadership competencies was then thematically categorized into 5 “meta-competencies”: Leading Self, Proving Strategic Focus, Connecting with Others, Leading Others, and Delivering Results. This tool can help organizations by making evidence-based research more accessible and applicable. Once critical competency gaps are identified, organizations can then take the necessary steps to develop those competencies to their full potential.