Business Commons^™

Corporate Social Responsibility In The Nigerian Banking Sector, Cecily Joy Adeleke

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Corporate social responsibility is presently defined by the World Business Council of Sustainable Development as persistent commitment by businesses to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while also increasing the quality of life of employees, their families, and the community. Guided by Freeman's stakeholder theory, this study examined the relationship between corporate social responsibility and the Nigerian bankers' reported satisfaction with the Nigerian banking sector. Survey data were collected from a convenience sample of 99 Nigerian bankers, including branch managers, zonal managers, tellers, marketers, and investors. A single-stage sampling procedure was used to elicit their satisfaction with the Nigerian …

Business Drivers For Environmental Regulations Compliance In Ghana's Mining Sector, Georgina Angorkor Ahorbo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Ghana's mining sector is a significant contributor to the national economy; however, environmental degradation continues to stigmatize the sector. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore experiences and perspectives of middle managers on how to drive compliance with EPA regulations and standards in Ghana's mining sector. Ajzen's theory of planned behavior was the conceptual framework for this phenomenological study. A purposive sample of 20 middle managers from Ghana's mining sector participated in interviews, which were transcribed and then coded to generate common themes. The primary research question involved exploring factors that promote employee compliance in Ghana's mining sector. …

The Effect Of Macroeconomic Variables On Stock Market Returns In Ghana (2000-2013), Charles Barnor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Variations in macroeconomic indicators affect the performance of the stock markets. In Ghana, although the performance of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) has been affected by macroeconomic variables from January 2000 to December 2013, the mechanisms of these relationships have not been studied. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationships between selected macroeconomic variables and their effect on the stock market returns on the Ghana stock market. The research questions addressed whether macroeconomic variables had significant effect on stock market returns in Ghana within the specified period. The target sample was all 36 listed firms on the …

Modelling Risk Management In Banks: Examining Why Banks Fail?, Daniel Onyebuchi Okehi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The persistent bank failures in the Nigerian financial system have been a major concern of the government, depositors, shareholders, and the general public because of the important roles banks play in the economy. The aim of this research was to determine why there have been persistent bank failures in Nigeria and to investigate whether ineffective risk management in banks, coupled with poor corporate governance practices and nonadherence to regulations (independent variables), play a significant role in the banks' performance(dependent variable). The variables were operationalized by taking VaR as the proxy for risk management, having CRO as proxy for ERM , …

Organic Farming In France: À La Mode Or A Mode Of Life?, Ellen L. Mallette

Honors Theses

Organic farming, as opposed to conventional or traditional farming that employs the use of chemicals, is a method that was begun in the middle of the twentieth century, shortly after the end of World War II. In many ways it is a return to farming practices that were conducted for centuries until about the late 1800's when pesticides and fertilizers were introduced. The rise of organic farming has been occurring all over the world to varying degrees over the past few decades. The French have always had a strong connection to agriculture, food, and the preservation of tradition, so organic …

North-African Immigration To France: Economic Benefit Or Burden?, Adam Weaver

Honors Theses

Over the past several years, France has had a steadily increasing immigrant population. Most of these immigrants come from fellow European nations, but North-Africans follow closely behind as the second largest group of French immigrants. The ever-increasing Maghrebian population in urban areas has caused hostility from French natives as social unrest rises in response to the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008. The goal of this thesis is two-fold. First, it aims to show the growing intolerance that North-Africans are experiencing in French society. And second, it will examine the consequences of North-African immigration on the labor market outcomes of …

Valuation And Financial Statement Analysis For Activision-Blizzard, Inc., Stephen Wittmann

Honors Theses

Activision-Blizzard (ATVI), a market-leading publisher and developer in the videogame industry, represents a fascinating case study of a player in a relatively new industry as it struggles to find a permanent place among entrenched entertainment staples such as music, television, and movies. The company in its present form is the product of a 2008 merger between Activision Inc. and Vivendi Games, thus creating a massive publisher with rights to several of the industry's most popular franchises, including World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Call of Duty. This industry domination has not gone unnoticed, and as of March 2013, ATVI's share price …

Fraudsters, Churches, Economy, And The Expectations Gap: Applying Trends Of Occupational Fraud To An Assurance Engagement Team Plan And Fraud-Prevention Client Proposal, Jenny Trout

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to present an overview of fraud, including concepts, trends, and controls to in turn, develop an effective assurance work plan as well as a fraud-prevention proposal to a potential client. When KPMG collected data from 348 of their company fraud investigations in 2011, an average of 87 percent were male (3). Around thirty-two percent of fraudsters usually worked in a finance role which gave them access to assets and financial statements. According to Donald Cressy's research, it takes all three elements to be considered fraud: a triangle of motivation, opportunity, and rationalization. However, in …

Making Healthy Food Choices: Factors Affecting Healthy Eating In The Context Of The Nashville Mobile Market., Laura Walton Fenelon

Honors Theses

Food deserts are areas that do not have full grocery options, resulting in a lack of healthy foods. These areas are generally low-income, with an abundance of unhealthy convenience stores and chain restaurants. A non-profit organization, The Nashville Mobile Market, was established to combat food deserts in Nashville, TN. This market conveniently provides healthy foods for consumers at low prices. However, The NMM was not utilizing marketing techniques, specifically relationship marketing techniques. A survey was administered to residents in the food desert areas. From this survey, data was collected pertaining to which factors most affected why these consumers do not …

The Effects Of Population Disbursement, Percentage Of Medicare Beneficiaries, And Per Capita Income On Medicare Fee Schedule Prices, Ann Marie Mercier

Honors Theses

The thesis is an overview of the existing pay disparity in the fee-for-service billing amounts for professional medical services provided by physicians to Medicare patients in the United States. Will improvements in the per capita income, percentage of Medicare participants, or change in the population disbursement result in higher Medicare fee-for-service billing amounts for healthcare providers? Mississippi has one of the fewest primary care physicians per capita rates than any other state. One reason may be the Medicare fee-for-service prices paid to physicians. This paper will show Mississippi Medicare fee-for-service fee schedule prices for a sample of HCPCS codes compared …

Ethics And Executive Compensation, Brittany Silvey

Honors Program Theses

To investigate the ethics behind compensation plan calculations, to determine if unaudited measures are being used in publicly traded companies, and how often unaudited measures are being used I considered twenty-six companies from a variety of industries. These included technology, agriculture, retail, finance and insurance, health care, natural resources, and others. Industry leading companies were selected to be studied as well as some of personal interest. Companies that have been speculated by financial analysts, recent published articles, or studies as companies that have unethical compensation plans and have used unethical accounting practices in determining executive compensation were also considered. These …

Management Information Systems: An Information Portal For A Major With Limitless Interpretations, Benjamin Richard Lahue

Honors Program Theses

Management Information Systems often referred to as MIS is the people-oriented use of computers in business. MIS is both a field of study and a career path. It combines the foundations of computing, analysis, and business in to one field of study. MIS is a major that is growing in popularity; however, it is still unknown to many undergraduates. This thesis includes both research and creative aspects. The information gathered by research was used to generate the requirements for an information portal relating to the MIS program at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). A portal is a one stop …

Public Accounting Recruiting: Implications Of The Antecedents And Consequences Of Organizational Identity On Hiring, Ariana Marie Aquilani

Honors Program Theses

Unfortunately, the industry of public accounting has been plagued with a high turnover rate. Recent studies show that around fifteen percent of staff leave the industry each year with a large portion of these professionals only having spent between three and five years in the profession (Platt Consulting Group, 2013). This problem leads to a constant demand for new hires in public accounting firms, especially recent college graduates entering the job market. As a result, the recruiting process has become the primary way of attracting these new hires in order to continue to replace staff moving to new positions outside …

Facility Matters: The Perception Of Academic Deans Regarding The Role Of Facilities In Higher Education, Wallace Harris

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how academic deans perceived the characteristics of facility built environment and its impact on learning in higher education. Q methodology was used as the means to explore the subjective opinions of academic deans within the State of Florida regarding the facility built environment’s impact on learning in higher education. For this Q study, the concourse statements were the result of communications taken from the subject literature and participant responses to this study’s online concourse questionnaire. The resulting 32 item Q sample was sorted online by 43 academic deans, associate and assistant deans. …

Individualized Consideration: Poverty Countermeasure, Lawrence Wilson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite more than $1 trillion spent annually on poverty remediation, impoverishment in the United States persists unabated. With a U.S. poverty rate greater than 10% for more than 4 decades, economics are neither poverty's cause nor cure. As such, non-economic poverty remedies require exploration and expansion. Linking greater leadership and poverty theories, this non-experimental, cross sectional, quantitative, survey-based research effort correlated individualized consideration's (IC) practice with collegiate athlete graduation rates in order to identify and isolate possible leadership based social poverty remediation measures. Leveraging a two-stage random sample, this research effort correlated student athlete Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (form 5X) responses …

Perceptions Of Higher Education Online Learning Faculty In Lebanon, Noha Adib Haidar

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this case study was to explore faculty attitudes toward online learning in a Lebanese Higher Education Institution (HEI). The research problem addressed the disinterest among faculty at the Arts, Sciences, and Technology University of Lebanon (AUL) in enhancing learning using online technology. The research questions for this study explored the attitudes of the faculty toward applying online learning and the extent of the faculty readiness to adopt this technological change. A qualitative case study design was used that employed multiple sources of information including semi-structured interviews and existing literature. The target population was AUL faculty including full-time …

A Correlational Analysis Of Empowerment And Experience With Resistance To Change, Rita Elizabeth Burgess

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite more than 60 years of research about the nature of change, resistance to change remains a problem across industries. Health care leaders have limited knowledge of how health care managers' perceptions of empowerment, years of experience, and resistance to change (RTC) relate. The purpose for this nonexperimental correlational study was to examine the relationship between empowerment, years of experience, and RTC among managers via an online survey. The theoretical framework incorporated Kanter's structural empowerment theory and Kotter's change theory. The sample included 245 out of 1,181 health care managers from Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals in the New York metropolitan …

Essays On Earnings Quality: Evidence From Net Share Issue, Put Option Sales, And Hedging, Jagadish Dandu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There are three essays in this research. The main objective of the research is to extend the literature in corporate finance by investigating the quality of earnings around corporate events like net share issues, put option sales by firms on their own stock, and hedging commodities by high input cost group of firms.

The first paper is "Does Earnings Quality predicts Net Share Issuance". This paper investigates whether quality of earnings predicts net share issuance by corporations. Pontiff and Woodgate (2008) show that annual share issuance (ISSUE) measure is a better predictor of future cross-sectional returns and we use this …

Institutional Context And Entrepreneurial Dynamism: Corruption, Distance To Frontier, Perceived Opportunity And Entrepreneurial Activity, Thaung Han

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation hypothesizes that corruption has both beneficial and detrimental effects on the entrepreneurial opportunity, and that such relationships is contingent on different levels of overall regulatory condition in ease of doing business. Beneficial effects and positive relationship can be seen in countries with poor regulatory procedures and the opposite is true for the countries with well-established ones, a complex relationship which could be visualized as a U-shaped relationship. This Dissertation further proposes that entrepreneurial perceived opportunity in turn positively relates to entrepreneurial intention, and this relationship is moderated by the facilitating effects of corruption to overcome the uncertainties and …

Too Much Of A Good Thing? The Effect Of Internal Control Monitoring System Alerts On User Perceptions Of Task-Technology Fit, Julia Kokina

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Anecdotal and field study evidence points to both positive and negative effects of alerts produced by technology-enabled internal control monitoring systems (ICMS) (Alles et al. 2006, 2008; Debreceny et al. 2003, 2005; Perols and Murthy 2012). An important unanswered question is how those alerts impact users who process them and decide whether any corrective action should be taken. In this study I surveyed financial executives and accounting professionals to examine the impact of alerts on user perceptions of task-technology fit (TTF) (Goodhue and Thompson 1995). Alerts generated by ICMS can bring to the attention of company leadership indications of errors, …

The Big [Motion] Picture: Analyzing The Factors Affecting The International Motion Picture Industry, Dalila Salazar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The motion picture industry is one of the largest private sector employers in the United States, supporting 1.9 million jobs, and providing its workforce approximately $104 billion in total wages in 2011 (Motion Picture Association of America, 2012b). With U.S. films distributed in over 140 countries, not only is the industry successful domestically, it is one of the country's leading exports, reaping more than $23.9 billion in 2012 (Motion Picture Association of America, 2012a). Despite the importance of the global marketplace, we know very little about the factors that influence the success of movies internationally. My study partially addresses this …

Idiosyncratic Deals To Employee Outcomes: Mediating Role Of Social Exchange Relationships And Social Comparison And Moderating Role Of Unit Climate, Satvir Singh

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The individualized work related agreements known as idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), that are negotiated between the employee and the employer has been shown to affect employee outcomes. Researchers have used social exchange theory to explain the relationship between i-deals and outcomes. In this study, I suggest that social comparison theory, in addition to social exchange theory, can be used to explain the effect of i-deals on employee outcomes. Because i-deals are different for each employee, the social comparisons employees make, affect their work attitudes and behaviors. This study explains the process through which i-deals lead to positive employee outcomes in the …

Turnaround Response To Performance Decline In Family- Controlled Publicly-Traded Firms: A Three-Essay Investigation, Giacomo Laffranchini

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation investigates the first strategic response to performance decline (i.e., the retrenchment stage in the turnaround process) in family-owned businesses (FOBs). Specifically, I study how the interplay between financial and non-financial objectives in FOBs affects the strategic preferences of family-owners when circumstances put the wealth (financial and non-financial) of the family at stake. In this three-essay Dissertation, I employ the behavioral agency model (BAM) or the socioemotional wealth (SEW) preservation perspective to explain and predict the effect of SEW on an FOB's retrenchment strategies. While the SEW construct was used by previous studies, its direct measurement and the methodologies …

The Role Of Social Norms In Consumers' Evaluations Of Brands From Emerging Countries, Shuang Yang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In prior studies, the effects of country of origin (COO) on purchase intention have been explained by signaling theory, the elaboration likelihood model and categorization theory. However, none of these theories explains the role social norms play in COO effects. Applying the theory of reasoned action (TRA), this study proposes that COO influences purchase intention through attitudes and social norms. This proposed model explains the joint effect of quality perceptions, consumer animosity, and perceived social pressure on purchase intention. The moderation effect of collectivism/individualism culture is also tested.

The research findings support the proposed model. Specifically, the results suggest that …

An Exploratory, Correlational, Self-Rater Study On Authentic Leadership Values Of Adventist Local Conference Chief Financial Officers In The United States, Juan R. Prestol-Puesán

Dissertations

The Problem

Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) local conference treasurers, or Chief Financial Officers, are trusted by church members to manage the finances of the church and provide financial leadership, yet the denomination does not know how treasurers develop their values and leadership capacity as financial administrators. This study examined how treasurers compare with the leadership values of morality, integrity, and fairness prevalent today in positive forms of leadership theories. It explores SDA treasurer or financial officer self-assessment with the rating that their team members provide, allowing us to know the authenticity of their values as leaders.

Method

This is a census …

Major Gifts To The Seed Company : Who Gives Them And Why, Michael E. Toupin

Dissertations

The Seed Company, a faith-based organization committed to Bible translation projects for hundreds of minority language communities, depends upon major donor support for its success and growth. There is a dearth of research available regarding philanthropic characteristics of major donors within The Seed Company resulting in a significant knowledge gap for healthy major donor programs based upon objective data. This study confirmed the value of several development approaches, particularly the importance of intentionally building a sense of community and relationship around the cause of the organization.

The study analyzed relationships between demographics, experiences related to the organization, and six independent …

Potential Influences Of Compliance For Short-Term Recovery From Sports-Related Concussion, Erin R. Ewing

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Currently, treatment of sports-related concussion dictates the prescription of physical and cognitive rest to allow the injured brain to recover and for concussion-related symptoms to subside. However, clinicians who prescribe rest are often met with resistance from athletes who do not recognize its therapeutic value in the recovery process. Research has shown that athletes often fail to comply with rest recommendations, resulting in protracted recovery and the persistence of symptoms. Method: This study employed a three-group pretest-posttest experimental design to compare the effects of three different concussion management protocols. Participants were recently concussed athletes ages 18-25 seen in the UTEP …

Using Fair Division Methods For Allocating Transportation Funds, Edith Montes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Current transportation funding allocation methods are very complex due to limited budgets and conflicting interests. In order to maintain an efficient infrastructure transportation system, agencies must balance the allocation of funds required either to increase the roadway capacity or to preserve the existing roads in service. Depending on the target objectives and specific constraints, the funding allocation process is approached using different methods. The funding allocation process is usually addressed using expert judgment which involves subjective criteria, weighted formulas with pre-established priorities, or a combination of both. However, formula-based funding allocation methods may lead to the public's disagreement if final …

Tax Compliance Determinants: A Proposed Model For Cross-Country Analysis, Denise Bowen O'Shaughnessy

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The issue of tax compliance has been identified world-wide as a significant problem. The importance of understanding tax compliance behavior is essential to government policy makers, tax enforcement agents, citizens, and businesses (Hite & McGill, 1992; Joulfaian and Rider, 1998; Internal Revenue Service, 2008; Chau and Leung, 2009). Insight into the decision making process of taxpayers is crucial to researchers in assisting governments as they struggle to meet new challenges of a growing global economy while trying to balance increasing deficits and infrastructure demands. This Dissertation investigates the determinants of tax compliance behavior at an international level in an attempt …

Public Social Network Sites And Social Recruiting, Abby Peters

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Social network sites (SNSs) are an increasingly popular form of social media used by individuals and organizations. As these platforms continue to transform the way people communicate with one another, they are simultaneously revolutionizing the way individuals interact with organizations. Part of this dramatic change is apparent in the processes by which organizations are recruiting employees and job seekers are pursuing employment. To investigate these phenomena, I employed the diffusion of innovations theory in a SNS context to examine the relationship between organizations' use of their corporate career website and their use of SNSs as recruiting sources. Subsequently, I used …