Business Commons^™

A Sleeping Giant: Finding An Endogenous Solution For The U.S. Public Pension Underfunding Crisis, Caroline Crawford

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Attitudes, Purchases, And Usage Of Lingerie Among College Women: An Exploratory Investigation, Madison Craig

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Measuring The Intensity Of Mymotivators™ / Whole Brain® Communication In Print Advertising, Tanner Schulz

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Advertising’s purpose is to create a state of mind conducive to purchase (Colley, 1961).

This study seeks to identify, measure, and understand the intrinsic motivators communicated within print advertisements and quantify their intensities. The theory is that ads with more intense motivator content - distributed somewhat evenly across all four quadrants of the Whole Brain ® Model - will be more effective in influencing that state of mind.

This research is the first step in identifying, quantifying, and visualizing motivators communicated within print advertisements. The study analyzed 15 print ads found in contemporary magazines.

The framework for this work is …

The Importance Of Public Space During The Covid-19 Pandemic With A Case Study Of The City Of Kalamazoo’S Kik Pool, Natalie Baker

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Three Essays On Banking And Other Financial Institutions, Xiaonan Ma

Theses and Dissertations

This paper shows that access to payday lending affects societal health outcomes such as opioid-related mortality. I find that states allowing payday lending experience 1.5 lives lost per 100,000 population every year, which amounts to one-third of its mean value. I interpret this result in line with the increased consumption of opioid pills after accessing to payday lending. Accordingly, the effects are more pronounced in areas with low socioeconomic status. Confounding events, time trends, or systematic differences between states allowing and prohibiting payday lending are unlikely to explain the association between payday lending access and opioid mortality. Overall, my findings …

Dissecting Human Capital Resources: Unpacking The Structure And Activation Of Human Capital Resources Within Firms, Caitlin Ray

Theses and Dissertations

Human capital resources (HCR) are often identified by scholars and practitioners as a firm’s most crucial resource. However, the academic use of the HCR construct, which is relatively new addition to the research vernacular, is often described with vague and imprecise terms, challenging the ability for academics and practitioners to clearly understand HCR’s precise impact on firm outcomes. One of the challenges arises because much of the HCR research literature focuses on the processes surrounding HCR without clearly specifying the components that make-up the HCR. Such lack of specificity has resulted in theoretical and empirical work which is often too …

Essays On Delegation Under Migrating Technologies: The Case Of Mobile Network Value Chain, Fan Zou

Theses and Dissertations

The fast expansion of the mobile services market has propelled the growth of MVNOs to reach an expected 7.4% of the global market and, even higher, 8.1% of the North American market by 2022 (Research&Markets 2017), which reaches a total size of 90 billion US dollars. The growth of MVNOs, meanwhile, has complicated implications for MNO market performance because of the fast industry clockspeed, under which new mobile network technologies inevitably overlap with existing technologies (Tilson and Lyytinen 2006). Adding MVNOs to the value chain allows MNOs to develop proper growth strategies by exploring new technologies balanced against exploiting existing …

Essays On Multichannel Retailing, Arkapravo Sarkar

Theses and Dissertations

Many upscale retailers operate discounted versions of their premium stores to engage with value-conscious customers, often as a separate channel. In the first essay, we empirically examine the effects of a high-end department store retailer’s opening of discounted store on customer shopping behavior. Leveraging a unique customer-level transaction dataset that spans pre- and post-opening of multiple discounted stores across the United States by the focal retailer, this essay seeks to disentangle the effects of discounted store opening (DSO) on the incumbent channels, namely the upscale regular physical stores and the online stores and to document the possible mechanisms that …

From An Ambivert's Perspective: The Relationships Between Personality Types, Attachment Styles, And Behavioral Tendencies Of Introverts And Extroverts, Andrew Chang

Senior Theses

Over the years, there has been continuous discussion around the idea that extroverts dominate the business workplace over introverts and vice versa. However, depending on the work setting and skillsets needed, it is imperative to realize how certain business practices, personality styles, and relationship approaches are different in every scenario. For this research thesis, the goal was to compare the personality and attachment styles of students who study in two different cultural environments, seeing if there were any apparent relationships between the two variables and student behavioral tendencies. Previous studies have shown that personality, behaviors, and attachment levels can predict …

The New Frontier Or A Billionaire’S Joy Ride? Artificial Intelligence Driven Analysis Of Twitter Conversations Of The Spacex Company, Meghan Whittle, Miranda Butler

Senior Theses

In recent years, space travel has become less of a vision for select individuals in the field of research and is now on the cusp of becoming an experience available to paying customers. The purpose of this study is to determine Twitter users’ perceptions of SpaceX during the COVID-19 pandemic period from March 2020 to December 2021. We identified Twitter sentiment and emotions regarding such a new and abstract notion of a service that could be more widely available in the future. To achieve these goals, we collected tweets related to SpaceX using Brandwatch – a tool allowing the search …

How The Level Of Firm Support For Employee Volunteering Affects Employee Work Productivity And Altruistic Behavior Inside The Firm, Xiaomei Xiong

Theses and Dissertations

Employee volunteering refers to employees giving time to volunteer for charitable causes with explicit support from their employer. Offering support for employee volunteering is one of the fastest-growing areas of employee benefits. Using a laboratory experiment, I examine the effectiveness of individual employee volunteering programs in motivating employees’ altruistic behavior outside the firm, as well as their work productivity and altruistic behavior inside the firm. I predict and find that the level of firm support for employee volunteering not only affects employees’ volunteering engagement outside the firm, but also affects employees’ work productivity inside the firm. Moreover, I predict and …

Out Of Office: Examining How Remote Auditing Can Affect Audit Quality, Kristen Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Psychological factors bring rise to the potential for differences in audit quality between in- person and remote work. With remote auditing on the rise, I investigate whether an increase in distance between an auditor and their supervisor can increase auditors’ divergent thinking and, in high time pressure, lead to a greater likelihood for auditors to exhibit reduced audit quality (RAQ) behavior. Consistent with prior literature, I find auditors facing high (vs. low) time pressure are more likely to engage in RAQ behavior, consistent with their motivation to speed up testing. More importantly, I find auditors working remotely are more likely …

Innovative Data-Driven Demand Estimation Strategies In Revenue Management, Sanghoon Cho

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding customers’ choice behavior and decision-making process is crucial in many industries, including hotels, airlines, and retail, as it allows firms to offer the right product to the right customer. This has resulted in a growing focus on accurately estimating customer demand for a product or service in the revenue management space, which can serve as a valuable input to optimal pricing, inventory, and assortment decisions. However, much of the existing work in the literature has not been able to comprehensively address some common challenges that are observed in practice: unobservable no-purchases, heterogeneous customer preferences, and the impact of factors …

How Decision Makers’ Career Histories Impact The Gender Diversity Of The Ceo Successor Candidate Pool, Andre G. Havrylyshyn

Theses and Dissertations

Scholars have explored when/why women are chosen as CEOs, and what factors explain the presence of women in the TMT, but little is known about when/why firms have women executives in their internal CEO successor candidate pool. This omission is consequential, since there are firm performance benefits to having a woman CEO who is an internal hire, and because being a CEO successor candidate helps ensure a woman executive has had skill-building opportunities that will help her thrive when she becomes CEO. To address this, my dissertation explores two research questions. First, when and why do women directors positively impact …

The Understanding Of Risk Culture Among Risk Management Practitioners, William L. Raab

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study of risk culture is a recent phenomenon focusing on its impact on risk management programs after organizations continue to experience adverse events when implementing risk management programs. This interpretive phenomenological analysis aims to understand whether risk managers understand the impact of risk culture on their risk management programs through their lived experience. Semi-structured interviews of ten risk managers with at least ten years of experience in the risk management profession provided a rich context to support the findings of this study. Risk managers can identify aspects of risk culture, but they struggle to identify ways to change the …

Millennial Employees In Contact Centers: Leadership Style Preferences Contribution To Job Satisfaction, Dana C. Martin Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Millennials account for the largest generational cohort in the workforce. Their propensity for turnover is costly to organizations, not just monetary impact, but skill development and sustainability as well. This study attempted to understand if leadership and the preferred leadership style of Millennial employees contribute to job satisfaction. This mixed-methods sequential explanatory study examined how leadership and the preferred leadership style of Millennial employees, from the perspectives of Millennial employees and those who manage them, contribute to job satisfaction. The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) was used as the survey tool for the qualitative study (see Appendix A). A questionnaire was …

Essays On Upper Echelons Research In Sales Management, Hao Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role of sales executives in top management teams (TMTs) in driving firm performance. Chapter I offers an overview of the dissertation. Chapter II (“The double-edged sword of sales force power in top management teams”) investigates the impact of salesforce power (i.e., the sales department’s influence in TMT) on organizational performance. The study examines two internal factors (i.e., marketing department power and sales growth) and two environmental factors (i.e., competitive dynamics and market size) that may either weaken or strengthen the influence of salesforce power on organizational performance. Using a panel data set of 10,751 firm-years observations …

Variability In Rice Returns Using A Representative Farm Approach, Adriana Dimas

LSU Master's Theses

Agriculture is a major contributor to the U.S. economy and vital to the continued availability of a safe and inexpensive food supply. Representative farms are virtual farms that represent the production practices of a specific crop and region. Annually, growers face critical management decisions on what crop enterprise selection and combinations will maximize the net returns. Risk for growers comes from the variation in different factors such as yield, market price, production input costs, among others that are required to produce each enterprise. Nine representative farms were established within Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas to evaluate net return variability among different …

How Exemplary Black Women Leaders Use Influence To Achieve Extraordinary Results, Catrena Elliott

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand and describe how exemplary Black women business leaders (BWBL) influence employees through personal motivation, personal ability, social motivation, social ability, structural motivation, and structural ability.

Methodology: This phenomenological study research design identified and explored how 10 exemplary BWBL who have achieved extraordinary results influence employees through personal motivation, social motivation, structural motivation, personal ability, social ability, and structural ability. Participants were selected from exemplary BWBL in Southern California and Northern California who fulfilled the study’s requirements. Interviews, observations, and artifacts were used to gather data. To identify study findings, data …

The Investment Gap: An Exploration Of Why So Few Women Study Finance At Brigham Young University, Elizabeth Anne Pearson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the root cause of the systemic underrepresentation of women in the finance industry by investigating why so few women choose to study finance in college. It looks in depth at why there is a low percentage of women that graduate in finance from Brigham Young University each year by analyzing the survey responses of women in business majors across the Marriott School. The thesis discusses three areas of solutions for greater mentorship, transparency, and exposure that can be implemented through five actionable steps to help shift the dynamic of representation. While I do not aim to make …

The Need To Address Religious Diversity At Work: An All-Inclusive Model Of Spirituality At Work, Ivonne Valero Cázares

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the importance of embracing religion and spirituality in the workplace as an aspect of workplace diversity. This document aims to help us understand the definition of spirituality at the workplace and its constituents.

We conducted a literature review from predominant scholars about the salience of spirituality and religion at the workplace and its relevance to building meaning, connectedness, and a sense of belonging. We will also review Maslow's theory of Human Needs, his research on human peak-experiences, and its correlation to self-actualization and transcendence.

We will present a new model of Spirituality and Religion at the workplace …

Creating A Short, Public-Domain Version Of The Cpai-2: Using An Algorithmic Approach To Develop Public-Domain Measures Of Indigenous Personality Traits, Mukhunth Raghavan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study we aimed to create a short, public-domain analogue of the Cross-Cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI-2; F. M. Cheung et al., 1996). Emic (culture-specific) traits measured by the CPAI-2 are purportedly specific to the Chinese culture and argued to not be fully captured by the consensus Big Five personality trait taxonomy. Research suggests that CPAI-2 traits may have unique predictive power, especially in non-Western contexts. However, research has been hampered by several limitations of the measure. The inventory is proprietary and long, with 341 items forming 28 scales and four factors. Cross-cultural personality research would benefit from …

Comparing Top Industry Demands For Talent To General Studies Curriculum For Competitive Job Acquisition, Gregory Sansone

Dissertations

University General Studies degrees are rapidly increasing in enrollment, driven by an increased focus on college completion. Yet, non-traditional, non-science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees are perceived as less competitive in the job market upon graduation. This study finds that students predominantly acquire skills in three areas, analysis, critical thinking, and communication, regardless of courses taken. Variability in salary suggests that the degree was not a factor in the graduates’ ability for wage earning. Through a combination of skills outcomes for external job postings, natural language processing on course syllabi outcomes, General Studies graduates’ course records, and a survey …

Frequent Top Leadership Transitions And Their Effect On Followers: The Moderating Roles Of Followership Characteristics And Organizational Culture, William Butler

Dissertations

Modern for-profit, large businesses are often organized as a collection of business units, with each unit having a top leader responsible for the unit’s results. While there is much literature about CEO transitions, there is scant literature about leadership transitions at an individual business unit level. Moreover, there is no literature concerning frequent leadership transitions at this level. This study developed and validated a new measure to assess employee perceptions of top leadership transition frequency. To measure employee reactions to perceived top leadership transition frequency, the EVLN scale was utilized. This study identified that employee Exit or Neglect are likely …

More Than Just A Workplace: A Case Study Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Marriott International Inc. Hotels, Julia Selin

Experience Industry Management

Diversity, equity, and inclusion practices are essential for a hotel to function. Having diversity is an important aspect of a company because it allows for multiple perspectives that bring new ideas together, and most importantly multiculturalism. The purpose of this study was to examine the diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in the workplaces of Marriott International Inc. Hotels. Research for this study was conducted using a case study. The results indicated that Marriott values diversity, which is seen though corporate programs and global initiatives. Marriott is an international company that helps create job opportunities around the world and forms mentor …

Managerial, Cultural, Intelligence, Marketing Agility, And Firm Innovation, Zhenzhu Lai,

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation aims to investigate the relationship between managerial cultural intelligence, marketing agility and innovation capability of foreign subsidiaries. Based on upper echelons theory (UET), I argue that managerial cultural intelligence facilitates marketing agility. Moreover, marketing agility is positively associated with innovation capability of foreign subsidiaries. Using two-wave survey data of 110 foreign subsidiaries in China, this study verified the theoretical model. It is found that managerial cultural intelligence is positively associated with marketing agility, and marketing agility is positively related to innovation capability of foreign subsidiaries. Organizational learning climate, market competition, market turbulence, and market complexity have positive moderating …

The Application Of Virtual Reality In Firefighting Training, Dylan A. Gagnon

Theses and Dissertations

Immersive simulations such as virtual reality is becoming more prevalent for use in training environments for many professions. United States Air Force firefighters may benefit from incorporating VR technology into their training program to increase organizational commitment, job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and job performance. With implementing a new training platform, it is also important to understand the relationship between these variables and the perceived benefits and efficacy of the VR training, which has not yet been studied in previous research. This study addresses this issue by gathering data from fire departments currently fielding a VR fire training platform.

"Real" Marketing Within The Fast Fashion Industry: An Analysis Of Internal Vs. External Dei Practices, Marinda Lynn Carlyle

University Honors Theses

This thesis will analyze the social media marketing (SMM) practices of Fast Fashion industry trends that have surfaced due to recent events. Specifically, this work will compare customer-facing SMM efforts related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives against the internal values and practices a company expends towards these efforts. This thesis will use H&M as an illustrative example in representing a company within the Fast Fashion industry. The motivation of this thesis or[i]ginates from the ongoing shifts in corporate SMM practices after the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020 and the corresponding increase in social justice activism …

Examining The Relationship Between An Aging Workforce And Logistics Performance Indicators, Daniel Parkhill

Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day. The subsequent generation born between 1965 and 1976 is significantly smaller, referred to as the baby bust. As a result, this causes a talent shortage as Baby Boomers retire, leaving a workforce gap which the subsequent generation is not large enough to fill. This issue also has been recognized as a potential problem in the logistics community of the United States Air Force. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of workers age on key logistics performance indicators (LPIs) such as aircraft availability, product flow days, …

Emergency Logistics Stochastic Network Optimization With Prepositioning And Distribution Center Support, Christian Graves

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the Air Force Medical Service War Reserve Materiel supply chain management through the use of the supply chain optimization software anyLogistix. The goal is to illuminate potential improvements to policies that effect inventory management and test the effects of specific inputs, such as an influx of network support and capacity expansion, into the models. Network optimization shows the cost benefit analysis of these factors and if demand is satisfied through all demand points. Through three unique wartime scenarios, this study looks at the supply chain management of five prehospital analgesic medications: ketamine, morphine, fentanyl intravenous, fentanyl oral …