Business Commons^™

A Strategic Audit Of Live Nation Entertainment: Industry Position, Competitive Dynamics, And Long-Term Growth Outlook, William H. Wooden Iv, Owen B. Crone, Reece L. Flores, Grace A. Schaefer, Eric M. Jacob, Sydney A. Beck

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Live Nation Entertainment is the dominant global leader in the concert and live events industry, supported by a vertically integrated model that spans artist management, concert promotion, venue operations, ticketing, and sponsorship. This strategic audit evaluates Live Nation’s internal strengths, external threats, competitive position, corporate governance, and long-term strategic prospects based on comprehensive analysis of company reports, industry dynamics, and market trends. Live Nation benefits from unmatched scale, global venue ownership, exclusive artist relationships, and the substantial network effects generated by Ticketmaster, which collectively create high barriers to entry and sustained competitive advantage. The audit also examines significant challenges such …

Advancing Environmental Sustainability In The Uae: The Interplay Of Women’S Empowerment, Financial Development, And Natural Resource Management, Suzanna Elmassah, Eslam A. Hassanein

All Works

This study addresses a critical gap in the literature by exploring the intricate relationships between women’s empowerment, financial development, and natural resource management within the context of environmental sustainability in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Utilizing the Women, Business, and Law Index to quantify women’s socioeconomic empowerment alongside the ecological footprint as a metric for environmental sustainability, this study employs an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to analyze data from 1990 to 2021. The findings reveal that women’s empowerment exerts a significant positive effect on environmental sustainability in both the short and long term. While financial development and natural resource …

The Token-Effort Effect: Trivial Redemption Effort Increases Price Promotions Effectiveness, Kuangjie Zhang, Thomas Allard, Nidhi Agrawal, Rajesh Bagchi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This research documents how introducing redemption tasks requiring a token (i.e., trivial) amount of effort—for instance, by asking the consumer to enter a promo code or solve a CAPTCHA to receive a discount—increases price promotion effectiveness compared with equivalent straight discounts (i.e., applied automatically). Eight studies (including two field experiments) and three additional Web Appendix studies provide robust evidence for the beneficial effect of token-effort requirements on redemption rates. This effect occurs because the easy-to-attain redemption task induces a high perceived return on effort. Thus, this effect only occurs when the redemption task requires token-type effort but not when it …

Riding Attention Spikes: How Analysts Respond To Advertising, Minjae Koo, Annika Yu Wang, Yin Wang, Liandong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Product market advertising, while containing little new information, triggers spikes in investor attention. Using weekly advertising data, we find that sell-side analysts issue optimistic earnings forecasts in response to heavier advertising in the prior week. This effect is not driven by confounding earnings or product news. It is more pronounced for experienced analysts and analysts affiliated with brokerages relying solely on trading revenues. The optimistic forecast bias intensifies the impact of advertising on investor trades, especially on retail buying, of the underlying stock during the following week. Overall, analysts appear to issue optimistic forecasts to exploit retail investor attention spikes …

Designing Payment Models For The Poor, Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Sasa Zorc

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Millions of people in poverty lack access to basic services such as energy, clean water, and cooking gas. Private firms are increasingly delivering these services—for example, by offering solar home systems or clean cooking packages with remote lockout capabilities—through pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) contracts that give consumers flexibility over payment timing and amount to match their erratic cash flows. Because firms cannot observe consumer liquidity, however, consumers may misuse this flexibility and prioritize other needs over repayment. We study how to design contracts that preserve flexibility while creating incentives for timely repayment using an optimal contracting approach. The optimal contract summarizes each …

Riding The Waves Of Power: Power Fluctuation, Cognitive Energy, And Goal Pursuit, Hae-Lueng Rose Kim, Trevor A. Foulk, Michael Schaerer, Jake Gale, Eric A. Anicich

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A central finding in the power literature is that experiencing elevated power facilitates employees’ goal-relevant cognitions and behaviors. In this work, we suggest that the relationship between power and goal pursuit is more complex than previously assumed. Specifically, we examine how experiencing power fluctuation—alternating states of high and low power during the workday—can uniquely promote employees’ goal-relevant behaviors beyond the effect of static power. Integrating insights from the Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Organizing (DEMO) and the Model of Proactive Motivation (MPM), our work demonstrates that power fluctuation can facilitate employees’ cognitive energy, in a way that enhances their goal-relevant cognitions …

Over-Reliance On Aesthetics? The Appearance-Reveals-Character Lay Theory Increases Consumers’ Devaluation Of Unattractive Produce, Shilpa Madan, Krishna Savani, Gita Venkataramani Johar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Approximately 40% of all produce is rejected because it appears unattractive, contributing significantly to food waste. Whereas previous research attributes this devaluation to the ugly-is-bad effect, this research identifies an important moderator of consumers’ reliance on this heuristic: the lay theory that a person’s outer appearance reveals their inner character. Specifically, consumers who believe that people’s appearances reveal their character are less willing to accept unattractive (vs. attractive) produce because they generalize their lay theory to produce and are, thus, more likely to infer that unattractive produce is of lower quality. Consumers who do not hold the lay theory do …

The Persistence Of Homophobia In Men’S Friendship Norms, Sherrie Y. Xue, Stephanie C. Lin, Christilene Du Plessis

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Across five studies and one supplementary study (five preregistered; N = 3,215 adults), we found that men, more than women, avoided shared experiences (e.g., going to the movies, sharing food) with individuals of the same gender. Furthermore, persistent societal expectations that men should be unambiguously heterosexual underpinned this pattern: Men felt more apprehensive about signaling same-gender romance in platonic relationships than women did. In turn, romantic prototypicality drove the pattern of men (more than women) avoiding shared activities, above and beyond differences in how hedonic, enjoyable, and feminine the activities were; our findings further suggested that men’s reluctance to share …

One Size Does Not Fit All: Contract Design In Fintech Lending, Jianfeng Hu, Changcheng Song, Gloria Yang Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many fintech lenders rely on standardized contract terms to support scale and operational speed. This paper examines whether modest tailoring of loan contracts can improve credit market outcomes. We conduct a randomized field experiment with a large fintech lender that varies loan due dates relative to borrowers' salary paydays. Synchronizing repayment schedules with income cycles reduces delinquency by 29.1% in the experiment and 15.7% in the administrative data. Effects concentrate among liquidity-constrained borrowers: young, low-income, and low-creditlimit individuals. Tailored repayment timing generates substantial economic benefits: borrowers save on overdue penalties, lenders accelerate cash flows, and improved repayment increases future credit …

Incident-Driven Esg Engagements, Hao Liang, Yongheng Sun, T. Mandy Tham

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine when and why institutional investors engage portfolio firms on ESG issues using proprietary engagement records from a European asset manager. Salient negative incidents emerge as a powerful trigger—second only to firm size—because they heighten reputational accountability for investors and reveal new information about hidden ESG weaknesses, particularly at firms perceived as ESG leaders. Monitoring also extends along the supply chain: incidents at key suppliers prompt investor engagement with focal firms. Finally, engagement is associated with higher firm value, stronger ESG performance, and increased cash flows. Together, the findings illuminate the drivers and mechanisms of ESG engagement and underscore …

Growing Up Under Mao And Deng: On Politician Ideology And Corporate Policies, Hao Liang, Rong Wang, Haikun Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We provide firm-level evidence on how politicians’ ideologies shape economic outcomes, using a unique setting of ideological discontinuity in China, transitioning from Maoism to Dengism around 1978. We find that ideological exposure during a politician’s early adulthood has a lasting impact on contemporary firm policies in their city. Firms governed by “Maoist mayors” show greater stakeholder spending, lower pay inequality, and less internationalization compared with those governed by “Dengist mayors.” Further evidence suggests that politicians’ ideologies influence corporate behaviors through nonpolicy channels, and these results cannot be fully explained by selection bias, endogenous matching, or the age of the mayor.

Exploratory Innovation: A New Perspective On Family Firms' Under-Diversification Puzzle, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Sterling Huang, Massimo Massa, Yaru Qian, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a new perspective on family firms’ puzzling under-diversification in product spaces: these firms first need to succeed in exploratory innovation so they may diversify into new product markets. We construct a large database of family ownership and patent records of U.S. public firms, and show that family firms produce more exploratory patents than others, a relation that is stronger among under-diversified family firms. In addition, we find that such innovation indeed helps family firms diversify business risks. A causal interpretation of our result is supported by (i) using the property division standard in state-level divorce laws as an …

2025-12-01 Message From The President, Morehead State University. Office Of The President.

Staff Congress Records

A message sent by the Office of the President to the campus community on December 1, 2025, regarding upcoming events on campus, construction progress, Board of Regents meeting, and awards.

2025-12-01 Course Proposal / Course Suspension / Deletion Forms, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate., University Graduate Committee.

Faculty Senate Records

Course proposal, suspension, and deletion forms approved on December 1, 2025 by the University Graduate Committee.

What Do Americans Think About Federal Tax Options To Support Transportation? Results From Year Sixteen Of A National Survey, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Hilary Nixon

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report summarizes the results from the sixteenth year of a national public opinion survey asking U.S. adults questions related to their views on federal transportation taxes. A nationally representative sample of 2,539 respondents completed the online survey from February 3 to February 27, 2025. The questions test public opinions about raising the federal gas tax rate, replacing the federal gas tax with a new mileage fee, and imposing a mileage fee just on commercial travel. In addition to asking directly about support for these tax options, the survey collected data on respondents’ views on the quality of their local …

Purpose And Nonprofit Enterprise, Cathy Hwang, Dorothy S. Lund

Faculty Scholarship

Nonprofit enterprise is responsible for a large share of economic activity across the globe. And yet, leading theories fail to explain why nonprofit business survives and even thrives across a vast number of industries, ranging from artificial intelligence to beer brewing, despite an absence of shareholder control. Indeed, as shareholder ownership and intervention rights have become the core component of successful corporate governance, this success is all the more surprising.

This Essay offers a novel “purposeful enterprise” theory to explain the puzzling success of nonprofit enterprises. Drawing on research in behavioral economics and organizational science, it argues that organizational purpose …

The Discouraged Borrower: How Stereotype Threat Blocks Capital Access For Urm Entrepreneurs, Mauricio Mercado

The Lender Center for Social Justice

Entrepreneurship thrives on access to capital, yet many underrepresented racial minority (URM) founders find themselves discouraged from even applying for loans. This is not simply due to past denials or lack of financial literacy, it is a response to the psychological burden of stereotype threat. Our research shows that the fear of confirming negative stereotypes shifts entrepreneurs into a prevention mindset, leading them to avoid opportunities for growth in order to minimize the risk of rejection. This dynamic makes Black entrepreneurs nearly three times more likely, and Latino entrepreneurs five times more likely, to self-select out of the loan application …

Raising An Innovator: A Parent's Guide To Fostering An Entrepreneurial Mindset, Mauricio Mercado

The Lender Center for Social Justice

Empower your teen to thrive in a fast-changing world by instilling an entrepreneurial mindset. This isn't just about starting a company; it's about cultivating a mindset of resilience, creativity, and proactive problem-solving. An entrepreneurial mindset helps your teen see challenges not as roadblocks, but as opportunities. It teaches them to be resourceful, communicate their ideas with confidence, and understand the basics of financial literacy. These are life skills that will serve them well in any career path they choose. This guide offers practical ways you can nurture that spirit at home, based on a structured curriculum designed for young innovators.

Industry Return Predictability Using Health Policy Uncertainty, Thach Pham, Deepa Bannigidadmath, Robert Powell

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper examines how a change in health policy uncertainty affects US industry returns using monthly data from January 1985 to September 2020. We employ in-sample and out-of-sample analyses, and we find evidence that 25 out of 49 considered industries are predictable during the health crisis periods, including severe acute respiratory syndrome and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The out-of-sample tests corroborate the evidence for the in-sample predictability. Furthermore, using a mean–variance utility function-based trading strategy, we observe that investors can use this simple tool for their trading strategies and make profits from 2.99 to 11.44% per annum. Our findings are …

Trust And Fintech: A Review And Research Agenda, James F. Devlin, Sanjit K. Roy, Harjit Sekhon, S. M.A. Moin, Mehmet Sahiner

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The primary objective of this paper is to formulate a detailed research agenda focussed on trust in the context of FinTech. To achieve this objective, conceptualisations of trust and related constructs are reviewed, and a detailed model of trust is developed. The domain of FinTech is then introduced and is taken to include current and emerging innovations in financial services incorporating aspects of big data and AI, as well as open and decentralised finance and crypto assets. Typologies of FinTech services are also explored. Arguments concerning the importance of trust in financial services are then reviewed, along with prior studies …

Determinants Of Consumers' Mobile Network Continuance Intention: The Mediating Effects Of Cognitive And Affective Inertia, Fazlul Hoque, Pi Shen Seet, Stephanie Meek, Saalem Sadeque

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Despite extensive research on customer continuance intention, few studies have explored the mediating roles of cognitive and affective inertia in shaping continuance intention, particularly in emerging markets. We address this gap in an empirical study, grounded in the SOR (Stimulus-Organism-Response) framework, that investigates how trust, satisfaction, and switching barriers influence mobile network users' continuance intention, with cognitive and affective inertia as mediators. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), we analyzed primary data from 407 mobile phone users in Bangladesh, an emerging economy. The findings indicate that trust, satisfaction, and switching barriers have a significant influence on continuance intention. …

Bank Efficiency And Monetary Policy Transmission, Md Asad Iqbal Chowdhury, Md Harun Ur Rashid, Mohammad Shamsu Uddin

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

We offer new insights into how bank efficiency influences the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel (BLC) in an emerging economy context. The study draws on a balanced panel of 29 banks listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), covering the period from 2006 to 2024. We first measure bank efficiency using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which captures both technical efficiency (TE) and scale efficiency (SE). Subsequently, we employ three regression techniques such as Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Fixed Effects (FE), and the two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to examine the moderating effects of …

Organizational Sustainability In The Face Of Digital Transformation With A Bibliometric And Content Analysis For Future Research Agenda, Rahmanwali Sahar, Md Abu Jahid, Hasan Fauzi, Md Harun Ur Rashid

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This study explores the intersection of organizational sustainability and digital transformation by providing a comprehensive bibliometric and content analysis of existing literature. Using data from the Scopus database, the research employs bibliometric tools such as VOSviewer to analyze trends, identify key themes, and map the intellectual structure of the field. The analysis focuses on publications from 2016 to 2025, highlighting the significant growth of research in this domain, particularly after 2018, indicating a rising scholarly interest in sustainable digital innovation. The Results reveal that most publications are concentrated in high-impact journals, with top contributing countries including the United States, the …

A Configurational Approach To Strategic Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Customer Success In New Ventures In Emerging Economies, Sayuri Wijekoon, Mahdi Vesal, Aron O'Cass

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

New ventures (NVs) in emerging economies often face significant challenges in cultivating quality customer relationships and achieving customer satisfaction. This study applies the strategic entrepreneurship framework and configurational theory to investigate how combinations of strategic behaviors, decision-making logics, resource allocation mechanisms, and leader sociocognitive characteristics influence customer-focused performance. Utilizing multi-informant data from 135 NVs (entrepreneurs and marketing managers) in Sri Lanka, our analysis reveals that NVs employing effectual decision-making and bricolage resource allocation achieve stronger alignment between entrepreneurial and market orientations, resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and stronger relationships. Additionally, the study identifies entrepreneurs’ long-term orientation and managers’ perfectionism as …

Is Complexity Virtuous?, Ryan Elmore, Jack Strauss

Business Information and Analytics: Faculty Scholarship

(Kelly et al., 2024) show that increasing complexity in linear models, with potentially thousands of predictors, is "virtuous". Their work contradicts the dogma of model selection, including the Principles of Parsimony and Occam's Razor. They find that when the number of predictors far exceeds the number of observations, the bias-variance trade-off breaks down, the variance declines, and the Sharpe ratio increases. In the context of ridge regression, we find that very high complexity coupled with large penalty terms (excessive shrinkage) generate forecasts that converge to a rolling window of past returns. For example, we show the past twelve-month moving average …

Do Growth Partnerships Improve Early-Stage Startup Performance? An Investigation Into Revenue Growth, Operational Efficiency, And Investor Attraction, Brendan P. Drew

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

This research investigates how teaming up with seasoned advisors affects young startups’ success, judged by sales gains, smoother operations, or drawing in backers. New companies tend to spark innovative ideas and hiring, but a sizable chunk fails before standing on their own. Weak planning, tight funds, or struggling to impress investors usually spell trouble early on. While programs like startup boosters got loads of attention in past reports, deeper ongoing alliances - where founders partner firsthand with outside mentors, are still barely touched upon in scholarly work.

The study uses both numbers and personal views, pulling data from eight new …

Exploring Communication Strategies With Esports Fans: Signaling Physical Location And Popularity, Gavin Nolin, Ismail Karabas, Skylar King

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Purpose

Using signaling theory as a theoretical foundation, this study aims to investigate how consumers respond to message framing emphasizing physical location and popularity of an esports team. Additionally, this research looks at how power distance belief, need for uniqueness, sense of power and pride in community are associated with consumer intentions (e.g. support likelihood, watch likelihood, follow on social media likelihood) as a function of physical location versus popularity-signaling in team communication with prospective fans. Design/methodology/approach

This research uses an experiment to test the effects of physical location and popularity-signaling on consumer intentions toward an esports team, as well …

Transdisciplinary Perspectives On Ai: The Fourth Annual Conference Of The European Culture And Technology Laboratory, Connell Vaughan, Ioana Madalina Moldovan, Silivan Moldovan, Noel Fitzpatrick

Books/Book Chapters

The fourth annual conference of the ECT Lab+ was hosted by Technical University of Cluj-Napoca over two days in October 2024 at the Cluj Innovation Park. The conference brought together experts from the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Technology, and other fields to discuss and reflect on the advent of Artificial Intelligence and how the associated technologies are transforming how we live, work and study. Under the title Transdisciplinary perspectives on AI: Alternative Histories, Current Practices and Possible Futures the conference moved beyond simplistic technophila and technophobia to consider whether we can co-evolve with these new technologies which combine machine learning …

Financial Decision-Making In Arab Family Businesses: Culturally And Institutionally Driven?, Oumaima Quiddi

Audio & Video by Faculty: Webinars, interviews, documentaries, etc...

This study investigates the financial behavior of family businesses in the Arab world through an institutional perspective. While previous research has extensively examined financial decision-making in family firms, existing insights remain largely centered on Western contexts and overlook the influence of the institutional, cultural, and religious environment specific to Arab economies. Addressing this gap, the study explores the following question: What institutional and contextual factors shape the financial behavior of Arab family businesses? Drawing on institutional theory, the research examines how formal institutions—such as legal frameworks, regulatory systems, and financial market structures—and informal institutions— such as family dynamics, cultural norms, …

Intergenerational Differences In Environmental Awareness Within Family Businesses: A Conceptual Model For Understanding Strategic Impact, Omnia Khaled

Audio & Video by Faculty: Webinars, interviews, documentaries, etc...

Purpose: Sustainability is gaining increasing importance, and family businesses—with their unique characteristics such as long-term vision and the influence of family values— play a crucial role in this context. However, generational dynamics within business families (founder, current leader, rising generation) can significantly shape the firm’s approach to environmental issues, given the differences in perspectives, values, and experiences. Existing literature, though expanding, has not sufficiently explored how these internal generational differences interact to form the collective environmental awareness of business families and how this is reflected in the firm’s strategic direction and actual environmental performance. There is a lack of conceptual …