Business Commons^™

Competencies Of Modern Musician Entrepreneurs: The Role Of Digitalization In The Music Industry, Richard A. Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

The culture creation industries are undergoing a period of accelerated digitization, globalization, and democratization. The 21st century music industry is bustling with lowered barriers to entry, increased knowledge sharing, and direct to consumer models which have resulted in a gold rush of entrepreneurial opportunities for musicians and increased competition to music firms and superstars. The music industry has been subject to innovative disruption providing valuable insight on the nuances of this paradigm shift for music entrepreneurs and scholars alike. Specifically, I explore competency factors in artist’s journey from musicians to entrepreneurs with successful self-managed careers. Employing Lazear’s Theory of Balanced …

Design Thinking & The Entrepreneurial Mindset In The Collegiate Music Classroom, Antonina M.C. Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the implementation of design thinking andan entrepreneurial mindset into a collegiate music classroom, where students have an interest in applying business acumen and entrepreneurship to their future plans as teaching and performing artists. The following questions guided this study: 1) are there benefits to introducing design thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset to music students as they transition from student to professional?; 2) will the addition of these approaches give students greater confidence as arts entrepreneurs?; 3) how can design thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset methodologies be successfully introduced and practiced throughout …

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.

Corporate Venturing In The Media & Entertainment Industry: Contextual Factors That Influence Corporate Venture Decision Making, Graylind R. Wherry

Theses and Dissertations

This research study focuses on Corporate Venturing (CV) within the Media and Entertainment(M&E) industry and investigates factors that influence CV decision-making. CV provides a viable strategy to facilitate innovation and organizational change within companies; however, this area is understudied within the M&E industry. Companies that make up the entertainment industry may not have specific insight into how best to exploit this opportunity. Specifically, this study looks at the influence of firm characteristics, industry characteristics, and other outside factors using the PESTLE strategy model characteristics impacting the parent or venture unit's CV decision-making within the M&E industry. In terms of this …

Performance Of Islamic Stocks Versus Conventional Stocks During Crisis And Non Crisis Period: Evidence From Mena Region., Eshraq Abou El Enein

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the performance of both Islamic and conventional stocks, and to investigate whether the Islamic filtering criteria acts as a shield of protection for investors during crisis or not, based on a panel sample of 12 countries in the MENA region covering 10 different sectors from 1998-2018. Using panel fixed effect regression. We divided out sample into three periods; 1998-2006 pre-crisis period, 2007-2008 crisis period and 2009-2018 post crisis period. Our main finding is that the filtering criteria has a positive relation with the returns significant for the post crisis period and positive …

Big Sister Enterprise: Just Be There, Wai Ying Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

Wai Ying Zhao, an artist and curator, instituted an American company named Big Sister Enterprise in 2018. BSE is a Delaware registered LLC that imitates briefcase companies implemented in order to foster a community of emerging artists with the intent of exhibiting and promoting their works. Zhao’s initiative stems from the awareness that many artists are struggling to continue their studio practices because of unstable income or being overworked in jobs such as art handling, gallery sitting and bartending. Through openings and events held in spaces in both New York and Shenzhen, she aims to create a community where emerging …

Always Already Imprisoned: The Panoptic Power Of Capitalism In American Literature, 1900-1940, Andrew Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

ALWAYS ALREADY IMPRISONED: THE PANOPTIC POWER OF CAPITALISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1900-1940

By Andrew Blair Spencer, Ph.D.

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019

Director: Dr. Richard Fine, Professor, Department of English

By applying the theories of control that Michel Foucault outlines in Discipline and Punish to the capitalist system, I argue that capitalism functions in much the same was as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon in that it perpetually imprisons individuals who live under its purview. As I see it, capitalism works on …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

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 …

Evaluation Of An Adaptive Reading Program At A Title I Public Elementary School, Monica M. Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to evaluate the I-station adaptive reading program and determine its impact on reading proficiency of third-grade students. The school of study was a Title I school with proficiency rates for third-grade students of about 40% annually. The district recommendation for student usage mirrored the recommended minutes per week established by Imagination Station, the I-station parent company.

The program evaluation utilized the context-input-process-product model components, measuring process and product. There were two research questions underpinning the study: 1. Process: Is the I-station program being used with fidelity at the school of study to achieve program intended …

A Model Of Women Entrepreneurs' Well-Being, Dianne Deborah Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

There has been a recent surge in the growth of women entrepreneurs and particularly minority women entrepreneurs in the United States. Women owned businesses play a key role in the United States economy – they are almost 10 million in number and represent over 35% of the total number of firms (U.S. Census, 2012). As the role of women entrepreneurs, and particularly, minority women entrepreneurs, in the U.S. grows, the need to understand this group becomes ever more important. Traditionally, the entrepreneurship literature has assumed the masculine perspective, with much of the foundational theories built upon research based on male …

The Ambience Of Innovation: A Material Semiotic Analysis Of Corporate And Community Innovation Sites, Reed Stratton

Theses and Dissertations

There are unprecedented opportunities in professional and technical writing (PTW) and rhetoric research thanks to a contemporary expansion of rhetorical studies beyond the linguistic/symbolic and into the material, accounting for the rhetorical contributions of “nonhumans” (Latour Reassembling the Social). Material rhetoric frameworks such as Thomas Rickert’s ambient rhetoric and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, provide fertile grounds for PTW/rhetoric research that explores the diffusion of “rhetoric into material space” (Rickert xii) which has especially exciting implications for the study of place and how it embodies values and rhetorically shapes acting, thinking, and the entire spectrum of “human flourishing” (Rickert xii).

This …

Three Research Essays On Human Behaviors In Social Media, Jiao Wu

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media (SM) has grown to be one of the most popular Internet technologies for individual users and has fostered a global community. For instance, recent statistics reveal that monthly active users of Facebook are almost 1.5 billion by Mar 2015. At the same time, 20% of internet users in the US are expected to have Twitter accounts. This figure has grown from 15.2% in 2012, and is expected to rise to 24.2% by 2018 (Twitter 2015).

People like spending their time on SM to track the latest news, seek knowledge, update personal status, and connect with friends. It is …

Operating An Interior Design Firm In Saudi Arabia: Opportunities And Challenges For Professional Female Employees, Najah Alsaffaf

Theses and Dissertations

Empowering women is the aim of the research. Saudi Arabia is the research location and interior design is the subject of the investigation. Saudi Arabia is on the path of empowering women through education and facilitating job opportunities. There is vast research about entrepreneurship and obstacles that women face in Saudi Arabia, but there is no evidence of research on the interior design field in Saudi Arabia in both education and job opportunities. Finding out that the art and design scene is thriving in education indicates that there would be a need for creating jobs and employment options for design …

Transformational Directing: An Analysis On How Leadership Affects The Creative Process, James Clayton Winters

Theses and Dissertations

Leadership is often ascribed as a quality one either possess or doesn’t. We often hear phrases like “She is born leader” or “All eyes are on you”, these are thrown around without discretion in the classroom, conference rooms, social gatherings, and business meetings. This work contends that leadership and in particular leadership that grows and transforms its participants is less an inherent character trait, than an outlook and set of core principles that lead to transformation. Through the application of current and developing business leadership theory and its effect on creativity and a cross analysis of “Best in Class” theatre …

Service Learning In Business Schools: What The H.E.L.P. Honduras Story Teaches About Building, Sustaining, And Replicating International Initiatives In Graduate Programs, Lisa Mali Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This document outlines the foundation and first year results of the H.E.L.P. Honduras organization, which was formed as a student-based, student-governed international outreach initiative at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. Specifically, in its first year the organization focused on providing microcredit and service relief to victims of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras.

After studying the case of H.E.L.P. Honduras, readers should conclude that educators interested in sponsoring sustainable student-run service learning organizations at private universities must address three primary issues: the problem of student selection and turnover, the need for administrative and faculty endorsement, and the need …

The Logistics Of Mobilizing And Supplying The Union Army During The Initial Stages Of The American Civil War, Trey G. Burrows

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the logistics involved in mobilizing and supplying the Union Army at the onset of the Civil War. The main elements discussed are the sources, procedures, and items needed for the mobilization and supply efforts. Initially, the Union relied on the States to mobilize the military with the majority of the military being militia members or volunteers. The number of volunteers declined later in the war and the Union used both the bounty system and the draft for recruitment. Eventually, the Federal Government replaced the States as the primary mobilizing entity. The military needed supplies of weapons, clothing, …

An Analysis Of Tactical Military Airlift, James H. Donoho

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines tactical military airlift operations conducted during three historical battles - Stalingrad, Dien Bien Phu, and Khe Sanh. Aspects of tactical military airlift operations are identified from these scenarios. The list of important issues that results can be considered when employing tactical military airlift in the future. Using inductive reasoning, tactical military airlift operations in each scenario, and their success or failure, are examined to develop a pattern for recognizing and describing similar situations in the future. Experiences at Stalingrad, Dien Bien Phu, and Khe Sanh indicated that there are nine elements that should be considered when employing …

Ranching In Western North Dakota, 1887-1920, Scott R. Neevel

Theses and Dissertations

Several historians have dealt with the topic of ranching in the American West, but generally they have presented a broad overview of what took place over the entire western United States. Those who have dealt with ranching in western North Dakota generally have covered the early 1880s, but they have used the calamitous winter of 1886-1887 as a stopping point.

The period from 1887 on through the first two decades of the twentieth century was an era marked by recovery of the stock industry, the change from open to closed range, and the change from the old open range methods …

A Home Teacher's Training Manual, Daniel M. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of a training program for L.D.S. priesthood home teachers.

A twelve week workshop was written and field tested in the Fullerton California Stake. The evaluation pointed out the need for a structured and ongoing program with emphasis on the fostering of interpersonal communication and relationship skills among individual priesthood home teachers. The outcome of this project was the development of a functional product entitled "A Home Teacher's Training Manual."

Causes Of The Mormon Boycott Against Gentile Merchants In 1866 And 1868, Peter Neil Garff

Theses and Dissertations

In the 1850s and 1860s Gentiles monopolized the mercantile profession in Salt Lake valley. Conflict arose between the Mormons and anti-Mormon merchants for essentially five reasons: Mormon Church leaders believed merchants charged exorbitant prices, encouraged the coming of Johnston's army, falsely accused them for the "assassination" of two Salt Lake City Gentiles, supported Gentiles who were "jumping" Mormon land claims, and supported an adamantly anti-Mormon newspaper. Church leaders maintained that the motive behind these actions was essentially the destruction of their church; therefore, they levied a boycott against the anti-Mormon merchants in 1866.

Because Church leaders felt the coming of …