Business Commons^™

The Retail Wave: A Look Into The Future Of The Apparel Industry, Sarah Clemens

Honors Program Theses

Where is the apparel industry headed? The need for retailers to diversify and understand current consumer needs will be the focus for survival as we move through the information age. Technology has and will continue to push the market into new ideas that allow niche retailers to stay slightly ahead of the game. Software to meet apparel consumer needs may be the answer for high end retailers. These retailers have an opportunity to embrace the consumers' internal problems by affirming that problems such as anxiety, obesity and depression exist. Software could help reach not only the consumer's money, but their …

Erp Implementation Planning : A Critical Success Factors (Csfs) Approach, Jia Hui Kong

Lingnan Theses

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an integrated set of software modules which are linked to a common database to handle basic corporate functions such as planning, manufacturing, sales, marketing, accounting, distribution, human resource and inventory. When ERP is implemented successfully, it can reduce operating costs, increase productivity, and improve customer services. However, ERP fails to deliver the promised benefits in many companies due to the poor implementation planning. A successful ERP implementation requires a careful thinking, good planning from a strategic perspective.

It is difficult to measure the success of an extremely complex information system such as ERP as it …

Employee Motivation: A Comparison Of Tipped And Non-Tipped Hourly Restaurant Employees, Catherine Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Employee motivation shall be defined by Robbins (as cited in Ramlall, 2004) as: "the willingness to exert high levels of effort toward organizational goals, conditioned by the effort's ability to satisfy some individual need." To engage in the practice of motivating employees, employers must understand the unsatisfied needs of each of the employee groups. This study desires to provide practitioners in the restaurant industry the ability to recognize motivators for these different employment groups and their relationship to organizational commitment. The restaurant industry consists of two types of employees: salaried and hourly. This study focuses on hourly employees, and their …

What Do Physicians Want? Information Technology Acceptance And Usage By Healthcare Professionals, Virginia Ilie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study builds on the theory of planned behavior, institutional and innovation diffusion theories to investigate physicians' responses to introduction of electronic medical records (EMR) in large healthcare organizations. Using a case study methodology, we show that physicians' attitudes towards using EMR are influenced by their perceptions of EMR complexity, relative advantage, compatibility with professional beliefs and individual predisposition to change. Specifically, we found that EMR usability characteristics such as system interface, "navigation," "search" and "speed" are major dimensions underlying physicians' perceptions of EMR complexity. To the extent that navigating and searching for clinical results are seen as difficult, physicians' …

An Empirical Analysis Of Book-Tax Reporting Difference And Tax Noncompliance Behavior In China, Feng Tang

Lingnan Theses

The traditional accounting system in China was directly linked to the tax assessment. The close linkage between the two sets of reporting rules has substantially weakened, as China promulgated a series of accounting standards and regulations in the late 1990s. As a result, accounting for financial reporting purposes does not have to conform to accounting for tax reporting purposes. This divergence between the two measures of income will inevitably cause accounting book income to differ from taxable income. This is because the more the excess of book income over taxable income, the more the magnitude of tax audit adjustments. Mills …

Management Localization And Performance Of Mncs In China : A Contingent Resource-Based View, Shengsheng Huang

Lingnan Theses

Although many foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) and consultants in China put the localization to a strategic level, management localization is still an emerging issue of human resource management in academic research. A few previous studies on management localization focused on the internal efficiency of the subsidiaries or parent-subsidiary relationship. The impact of management localization on the interaction between the subsidiary and local environment has received little attention. Moreover, localization lacks a consistent and valid definition. This thesis attempts to bridge the gap by systematically exploring the strategic impact of management localization. Management localization is defined as substituting expatriate managers with …

Effects Of Goal Interdependence And Social Identity On Departments And Their Relationships In China, Liyan Wang

Lingnan Theses

Synergy among departments is increasingly considered vital for organizations to use their full resources to deal with threats and explore opportunities in the rapidly changing marketplace. Although valuable, developing synergy among departments is a difficult management challenge.

Departments within organizations often have their own business goals, yet the coordination of these goals is a precondition for overall organizational effectiveness. The need for goal coordination makes departments interdependent (Thompson, 1967), but this interdependence may become particularly problematic when the different departmental goals are incompatible (St. John & Hall, 1991).

Because of the value of cooperative goals for coordination, managers want to …

Goal Interdependence And Leader-Member Relationship For Cross-Cultural Leadership In Foreign Ventures In China, Yi Feng, Nancy Chen

Lingnan Theses

This study empirically examines the impact of goal interdependence and leader-member relationship on cross-cultural leadership in joint ventures in China. Its two research questions are how to facilitate leader-member relationships between foreign managers and Chinese employees in joint ventures in China, and how foreign managers and Chinese employees can develop cooperative goals in Chinese contexts.

Four hypotheses were generated. Hypothesis 1 examined the effects of leader-member relationship between foreign managers and Chinese employees on cross-cultural leadership. Hypothesis 2 studied the impacts of different goal interdependence on the leader-member relationship between foreign managers and Chinese employees. Hypothesis 3 and 4 investigated …

The Public Policy Implications Of Audit Regulation: Three Studies Related To The Passage Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Of 2002, Steven Thornburg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation documents and evaluates certain financial and non-financial strategies used by the public accounting profession to influence audit regulation during the policy formation period of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). The dissertation is comprised of three separate, but related studies. Each study uses prior research in accounting and related disciplines to investigate significant aspects the profession's strategies. The first study evaluates the rationality and effectiveness of political action committee (PAC) contributions paid by the accounting profession to members of Congress. The study finds that the accounting profession rationally allocated more PAC contributions to top congressional leaders and to …

Accounting Disclosure At The Organization-Society Interface: A Meta-Theory And Empirical Evidence, Jennifer Ching-Kuan Chen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three studies related to accounting disclosure at the interface of the organization and society. The first study investigates the overlapping perspectives of legitimacy theory, institutional theory, resource dependence theory, and stakeholder theory and integrates these theories into a more cohesive meta-theory of the organization-society interface. The second study examines whether a corporation's charitable contributions represent a corporate social performance strategy or a legitimation strategy. More specifically, study two investigates, from two competing perspectives, how corporate executives rationalize their philanthropic actions. The third study analyzes the relationship between the current tax laws and the fulfillment of corporate …

Adaptive Self-Regulation And Organizational Politics: Investigating The Effects In The Accounting Profession, Sharon Howell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate whether or not perceptions of organizational politics mediate the relationships between accountants' personality and interpersonal traits and their perceptions of a superior's leadership ability and performance. An accountant who has a higher degree of confidence in his or her superior's abilities is more likely to be committed to a given project, resulting in a better project outcome. This benefits the client and ultimately society as a whole. This study contributes to the accounting and psychology literatures because extant research views perceptions of leadership ability and performance from the perspective of the individual …

Preferred Habitat For Liquidity In International Short-Term Interest Rates, Vladimir Valeryevich Kotomin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

U.S. money market securities have been found to exhibit behavior consistent with preferred habitat for liquidity around year-ends (Griffiths and Winters (1997, 2004)). In particular, repurchase agreement and commercial paper yields tend to increase when the security begins to mature across the end of the year, and return to normal levels after the year-end obligations have been paid but before the calendar year-end. The competing hypothesis, window dressing by financial intermediaries around disclosure dates, requires that the increase in yields be sustained until after the turn of the year. This study is aimed at finding whether the behavior of international …

The Trading Volume Trend, Investor Sentiment, And Stock Returns, Yung-Chou Lei

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation relates the information contained in past trading volume to investor sentiment, and investigates its ability in predicting stock returns. Investor sentiment here refers to the enthusiasm of irrational investors on an asset, relative to that of rational investors. Motivated by Baker and Stein (2004) that an increase in trading volume reflects a rise in investor sentiment, I use the change in trading volume per unit of time, referring it as the trading volume trend, as a measure of investor sentiment on individual stocks. I document a negative and significant cross-sectional relation between the trading volume trend and stock …

The Economic Argument Against Estate Tax Repeal, Stephen Paul Skram

Honors Program Theses

The estate tax is scheduled for repeal in 2010 and will be reinstated the following year. Congress is trying to make the repeal permanent, but is running into opposition. The public is becoming aware that only the wealthiest Americans would reap the benefits of estate tax repeal to the detriment of everyone else. This paper finds that estate tax repeal may not have any economic benefits, does not impose high compliance and administrative costs, taxes wealth that would remain untaxed without the levy, does not endanger the ability of small business owners and farmers to survive, encourages charitable bequests, and …

The Free Trade Area Of The Americas: Assessing The Potential Of Hemisphere-Wide Free Trade, Andrea M. Smiens

Honors Program Theses

In December of 1994, the United States and the other thirty-three heads of state from the democracies in the western hemisphere met in Miami to discuss the creation of a hemispherewide free trade area, known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Negotiations for the free trade agreement were set for completion by January of 2005, with implementation by December 31, 2005. Ten years later, the idealistic ambitions seem to have dimmed and the western hemisphere seems as far from agreement as ever. Amidst security concerns, conflicting interests and vastly different levels of development, is there any hope?

Communication In The Accounting Profession, Heidi Beth Weiskircher

Honors Program Theses

The accounting profession's desire to enhance entry-level communication skills is evident in a revised Certified Public Accountant examination (CPA exam) and a continued push for a revamped accounting curriculum. This paper will describe the need for effective communication skills in the accounting profession and the efforts of accounting educators and CPA exam designers to improve the communication skills of accountants entering the field. I discuss the possibilities that revised curricula and examination practices could improve the overall abilities of future CPA candidates. However, I argue that the accounting industry must identify itself as a profession of communication to solve the …

The Lived Experience Of New Graduate Baccalaureate-Prepared Registered Nurses Working In An Acute Care Hospital Setting, Jeannie Ricks Harper

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of new graduate baccalaureate prepared Registered Nurses (RNs) who work in an acute care hospital setting. The study was a phenomenological qualitative research design, with researcher-developed guiding questions to help direct the interviews. Participants had passed the National Council for Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN), and had been practicing from three months to one year. Eight RNs participated in the study, with seven usable interviews. Results found that new graduate RNs experience multiple stressors as they acclimate to their new roles. The primary stressors that were identified by …

Zaghloul's Music: One Business Plan's Writing Process, Jennifer Lynn Dricken

Honors Program Theses

Zaghloul's Music is a retail sheet music store that is 100% dedicated to offering music teachers and their students superb service and unbeatable in-stock selection. As the only one of its class in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Zaghloul's Music is positioned to capture the influx of teachers who are constantly seeking out (but never finding) a knowledgeable and well-stocked resource for sheet music and accessories.

The Evidence For A Nascent Biotechnology Cluster In Cork, John W. Hobbs

Theses

Over the past 30 years, encouraged by Ireland’s low rate of corporation tax (currently 12.5 %), and active promotion of FDI by the IDA, foreign owned pharmaceutical plants have set up and multiplied in the Cork area. To Ireland’s advantages of a low tax rate, an English speaking population, a pro-business environment and membership of EU, Cork offered the added attractions of a deepwater port and large natural harbour, good freight connections, an international airport, an educated workforce and excellent sporting and leisure facilities for sailing, golf, etc. (Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Schering Plough have …

Employee Retention And Customer Relationships In Services Industry, Aileen O'Connell

Theses

The business environment of the 1990s has seen a shift in firms’ emphasis away from recruiting new customers, towards nurturing and retaining those that they currently have (Palmer, 1996). The marketing emphasis has moved from customer acquisition to customer retention. Reicheld, (1996a) has identified a link between customer and employee retention, but this link has not been extrapolated by many researchers. For the purpose of this study, the researcher proposes to examine this link.

A large number of people who work for organisations are no longer what would be termed “traditional” employees of those organisations, i.e. employees for life. These …

A Framework Of Best Practice For Community Based Tourism Inititives, Cornelius O'Sullivan

Theses

This study commences with a detailed analysis of the tourism industry from a global perspective charting its inception through the time of the Persian, Assyrian, Greek, Egyptian & Roman empires to the present elimate, surpassed then by adherence to future predictions. The study then moves to examine the Irish tourism product by acknowledging the individuals who have pioneered & continue to survey its development. The study in response to its principle aim of creating a Framework of Best Practice for Community Based Tourism Initiatives identifies, discusses & evaluates in detail four core fundamental building blocks for such initiatives. These four …

Towards A Best Practice Framework : The Case Of Institutes Of Technology Campus Incubators, Mary Fenton

Theses

Campus incubators catalyse campus enterprise development by encouraging Third Level “spin offs”, commercialisation of research and facilitating “spin-in” enterprises. They provide academic staff, graduates and “spin-in” entrepreneurs with a range of support services including space, advice, training, mentoring and networking opportunities. The real value of a campus incubator location for clients is their association with a reputable Third level Institute and access to the Institute’s resources namely academic staff, embedded knowledge, manager’s expertise and enterprise netvyorks. The researcher explored literature on campus and business incubators and identified a lacuna of research on campus incubation, particularly within Irish Higher Education Institutes. …

Multi-National Project Team Communications And Cultural Influences, Morgan E. Henrie

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This exploratory case study dissertation examined multinational project teams' communication satisfaction as influenced by the project team's cultural attribute of power distance. Utilizing a exploratory case study, semi-guided interview research approach, ordinal scale data and open-ended contextual based question responses was obtained. This data was gathered from United States---Russia and Canada---Angola multi-national, complex, high technology oil transportation project teams. Triangulation data gathering techniques were utilized to obtain empirical data from multiple sources of data and multiple data types. Subsequent data analyses combined descriptive statistical analysis, graphical analysis, cluster analysis, and content analysis techniques to derive a theoretical construct of multi-national …

An Exploratory Analysis Of Post Strategic Plan Implementation Fidelity In Two Urban-Based, Nonprofit Health Education/Advocacy Organizations, Theodore N. Burke

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

This research is a multi case study examining the degree of fidelity (adherence) accorded to strategic plans following implementation in two, urban-based, nonprofit, tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) health education/advocacy organizations. The study was focused on the impetus and goals for strategic planning, the similarities and differences in the implementation processes, adherence (fidelity) to the plan once implemented, and finally what factors prompted the fidelity or lack of fidelity to the plan once implemented. Fourteen respondent participants from the two organizations were interviewed using a semi-structured interview format. Findings of this study indicated that post-strategic plan fidelity following implementation did exist. …

An Empirical Investigation Of The Link Between Market Orientation And New Product Performance: The Mediating Effects Of Organizational Capabilities, Turkan Dursun-Kilic

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In today's business world, one of the most important problems that companies encounter is new product failure. The high product failure rate has been a major concern for practitioners for many years. It was reported that almost half of the new products introduced each year will actually fail (e.g., Sivadas and Dwyer 2000; Zirger and Maidique 1990). Given the fact that the increasing level of technological advancement, consumer expectations, and domestic as well as international competitive pressures continue to shorten the product life cycle for new products, it has become extremely important for companies to understand the critical determinants of …

Do Professional Sports Franchises And New Sports Facilities Have A Postive Impact On The Local Economy?, Kevin Mcdonough

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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The Impact Of The Collaborative Bargaining Process In School Districts In Bergen County, New Jersey, Brian M. Bulger

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Advertising To New Parents -- An Examination Of The Ways Select Children's Product Manufacturers Attract New Parents As Potential Customers, John L. Mccullough Jr.

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Effectively Educating Consumers And Promoting Good Corporate Image Through Financial Literacy Partnerships, Sharon L. Nieuwenhuis

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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A Novel Approach: How E-Book Technology Is Impacting The American Fiction Market, Jodi L. Kastel

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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