Business Commons^™

Family As A Source Of Inequality Reproduction In Organizations: The Role Of Family Impact On Work In Explaining The Class Ceiling, Pooja Mishra

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Being born into a poorer family is associated with lower socioeconomic attainment even when people are provided with identical educational and job opportunities, a pattern known as the “class ceiling.” The class ceiling is generated within organizations, but specific reasons causing this effect are not well understood. I propose that one important explanation why employees from poorer families do not fare as well as their more fortunate co-workers concerns differences in families themselves. I integrate research from sociology and psychology explaining challenges faced by families with scarce resources with organizational research on specific pathways through which families can interfere with …

Role Of Financial, Human And Social Capital In Survival Of Start-Ups, Tiong Kiat Wong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In new business ventures, growth in itself is often not the main intention in the beginning, but rather a mean to ensure survivability first, follow by sustainability and secure profitability. Not all small businesses survived over time and are always confronted with the liability of newness and contending externalities such as fierce competition and internal limitations like resources to survive. Only about half of newly founded start-ups survived after 5 years.

The presence or absence of resources and the critical role it plays on the effect of venture’s survival, provides substantive advancement in understanding of organisational theory and management practice …

Finding The Perfect Match: Dimension Analysis And Development Of The External Sponsorship Congruence Scale, Kelly Evans

Theses and Dissertations

The biggest problem interfering with effective sport sponsorships is marketing clutter and the negative impact it has on sponsorship recall accuracy (Cornwell & Relyea, 2000; Rumpf, 2012; Seguin & O’Reilly, 2008). Previous research shows that external sponsorship congruence plays an important role in how consumers remember and recall sport sponsors (Cornwell et al., 2005; Fleck et al., 2012; Jagre et al., 2001; Olson & Thjømøe, 2011; Solomon, 1996; Stangor & McMillan, 1992), ultimately influencing consumer attitudes and behavior (Close & Lacey, 2013; Gwinner & Bennett, 2008; Lee & Thorson, 2008; Simmons & Becker-Olson, 2006). Great strides have been made in …

Measuring Long-Term Advertising Effects In The Tourism And Hospitality Industry, Rui Qi

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the intangible characteristics of the service product, the tourism and hospitality industry relies heavily on advertising. This dissertation is composed of three interrelated studies, with the overall purpose to investigate advertising effectiveness within the tourism and hospitality industry from a firm-level perspective. Longitudinal and time-series models were employed to analyze firm-level accounting, finance, and marketing data. Overall, results provided supports for the strategic value of advertising in the airline, hotel, and restaurant firms. The first study’s findings indicate that the economic benefits from advertising expenditures, unlike other expenses, do not expire in the current period. In addition, advertising …

Two Essays On Market Entry And Exit: Empirical Evidence From Airline Industry, Sina Aghaie

Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of low-cost competitors has increasingly eroded incumbent firms’ market shares and profitability in recent decades. However, incumbents are still uncertain about how to handle this new challenge. The two essays in this dissertation aim to contribute to the marketing strategy and competitive dynamics literature by exploring the link between incumbents’ marketing-mix activities and low-cost rival’s market entry, exit, and the threat of entry decisions.

In the first essay, I study a common and important phenomenon – the marketing tactics that incumbent firms employ to drive new low-cost entrants out of the market. Specifically, I investigate how incumbents’ price, …

Two Essays On Limiting The Negative Impact Of Product Recalls, Seyyed Amirali Javadinia

Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation is composed of two essays. In the first essay, authors conceptualize recall environment, test its effect on post-recall stock returns and identify the role of recall and product characteristics in moderating this relationship. The authors test their hypotheses on a sample of 90 recall announcements in the automobile industry from 2011 to 2016. The results show that on average, announcing a recall in an intense environment aggravates negative stock returns accruing from the recall. Further, while low reputation brands are mostly prone to this negative impact of recall environment, high reputation brands are less susceptible to this negative …

Selling Rooms And Making Money In The Lodging Industry: Analyzing The Effects Of Revpar And Goppar Together, Thomas Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Based on previous research, revenue management now focus on alternative benchmarks for assessing bottom-line performance. The advent of alternative benchmarks leads to increased analysis of the relationship between revenue and profitability within hotel management. This thesis builds on previous research of revenue and profitability with RevPAR and GOPPAR acting as proxies for revenue and profitability to determine the relationship between the two variables as well as identifying their roles and analysis within revenue management as revenue management maneuvers toward a more strategic outlook. Also, this thesis identifies whether affiliation (independent vs. chain-affiliated) and hotel service levels directly affect the correlation …

The Importance Of Twitter To Destination Marketing Organizations, Tatiana Allgeyer

Theses and Dissertations

Social media has experienced quick and expansive growth since its beginnings. While the initial users were individuals, social media has become a melting pot of businesses, brands, and celebrities all vying for engagement from followers in the hopes of increasing likes, engagement levels and sales.

Destination marketing organizations (DMO’s) have been slow to adopt social media platforms and integrate them into their marketing strategies. The goal of this study is to analyze what kinds of social media content produces the highest levels of engagement in order to make specific social media strategy recommendations to the Columbia DMO, Experience Columbia. An …

Two Essays On The Consumer Acculturation Process – A Need For And Development Of A Consumer Acculturation Measure, Kristina Marie Harrison

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The United States is becoming increasingly multi-cultural and there are various new immigrant consumer groups that businesses try to reach through ethnic-based segmentation and targeting. Often, businesses offer accommodation strategies to their ethnic consumer groups through language or other cultural accommodation tactics. There are inconsistencies in the literature for the efficacy of ethnic-based targeting and accommodation strategies: often these do not have the desired results and there is evidence that ethnic identification may be fading over time for many immigrant groups.

There is evidence that acculturation may be a better predictor of consumer behavior such as preferences for brand, services, …

Two Essays On Bitcoin Price And Volume, Mohammad Bayani Khaknejad

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Bitcoin is a decentralized peer to peer digital transactions system that was introduced in 2009 in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Since its introduction, it has had a volatile journey, being adopted by computer programmers, cyber punk enthusiasts, criminals, and financial investors. While the future of bitcoin is still not clear, it has been widely adopted by many, not necessarily as a new method of transactions, but rather as a new investment vehicle. Being a new asset class, there are many unknown financial characteristics to be investigated about bitcoin and in this dissertation, we try to explore two of …

Success Factors Impacting Artificial Intelligence Adoption --- Perspective From The Telecom Industry In China, Hong Chen

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

As the core driving force of the new round of informatization development and the industrial revolution, the disruptive achievements of artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly and comprehensively infiltrating into various fields of human activities. Although technologies and applications of AI have been widely studied, and factors that affect AI adoption are identified in existing literature, the impact of success factors on AI adoption remains unknown. Accordingly, the main study of this paper proposes a framework to explore the effects of success factors on AI adoption by integrating the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. …

The Importance Of Leadership Motivational Activities In Encouraging International Students To Return To Their Tier 1 Universities, Eric Hall

Dissertations

Abstract

The problem is international students are not returning to their undergraduate Tier 1 institutions during a period when quality student enrollment is essential, and there is scant research on academic advising strategies that can be used to combat international student attrition at these universities (O’Keefe, 2013). Studies have often lumped all international students together and made efforts to attract more international students, but the reasons why international students chose research universities, and returned, were not being investigated in this manner (Hegarty, 2014).

The purpose of this proposed study was to gain an understanding of the decision-making and reasoning processes …

An Exploration Of The Relationships Between Sense Of Community, Park Benefits, And Neighborhood Park Use, Kimberly Tilford Centers

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between park use by residents that live within a ¼ to ½ mile radius of their neighborhood park, perceived benefits from neighborhood parks, and neighborhood sense of community (SOC) in three Norfolk, Virginia neighborhoods. The neighborhoods included Titustown, Colonial Place, and Edgewater. There is a lack of research regarding the relationship between neighborhood parks, perceived recreation benefits from neighborhood parks, and their relationship to neighborhood SOC (Gómez, Baur, Hill, & Georgiev, 2015). Participants completed a questionnaire that included the Sense of Community Index-2 (SCI-2), demographic questions, park usage questions, and …

A Case Study Of Participant Responses To Organizational Change Involving Technology In The National Security Domain: How Informal Processes Iterate Structure And Outcomes, Brian E. Martinez

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Nuanced differences between organizations and the pace of change within the national security domain have routinely produced equivocal results involving information and communication technology (ICT) development. These results are characterized by unpredictable costs, unrealistic delivery schedules, and dubious ICT performance in-use. This research is a case study exploration of organizational change involving technology (also referred to as ICT) in the national security domain of the public sector.

This research used machine learning and manual content analysis to compare the results of three experiments on interview transcripts. The first experiment investigated linkages between empirical and interpretive elements of organizational change. Empirical …

Two Essays On Investor Attention, Investor Sentiment, And Earnings Pricing, Qiuye Cai

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation proposes novel direct measures for both firm-level and market-level investor attention and investor sentiment and provides new empirical evidence on the effects of investor attention and investor sentiment on earnings pricing.

The first essay proposes novel direct measures for both market-level and firm-level attention using user activity data from StockTwits.com. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first direct measure of market-level attention. By measuring market-level and firm-level attention separately, I am be able to not only distinguish between attention allocated on market level and firm level but also detach attention from equilibrium outcomes. I document …

Situational Judgement Selection Test Utility: Implications For Police Turnover, Marshall Alan Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Police agencies increasingly find attracting, recruiting, selecting, and retaining police officers challenging. Officer candidates selected can have up to a 25 percent fail rate in basic police training, while probationary officers in field training can fail to complete training with rates as high as 40 percent. Police selection batteries often include situational judgment tests (SJTs) designed to help ensure legal and proper hiring standards. The scores of SJTs, and other selection battery scores, are often filed once the hiring process is complete. This study explored the potential SJT selection battery scores may have in the prediction of field training and …

Distributed Team E-Leadership: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Subordinate Perceptions Of Career Development, Coby Andrew True

Theses and Dissertations

As changes in the global economy coupled with fast-paced advancements in technology continue to evolve and merge, the need to deploy a distributed workforce becomes increasingly important to remain competitive. Just as managers adapt traditional leadership styles to meet the needs of the distributed environment, individual team members must also overcome the challenges of increased geographic proximity, or physical distance between team members and team leader. As distributed teams continue to become more prevalent in the work environment, adaptations of traditional leadership styles must evolve to account for the unique conditions. The increasing use of Advanced Information Technology (AIT) has …

Does Organizational Culture Serve As An Antecedent To The Dynamic Capability Of An Automated Customer Relationship System As An Example Of A Big Data Analytics Program In A Firm? A Case Study, Franklin Gregory Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to determine if and how organizational culture can be an antecedent to the formation and exploitation of a dynamic capability at the firm level. This proposed study method is a holistic single case study of a privately owned multi-state regional independent insurance agency to determine the relationship between organizational culture and the dynamic capability of an automated customer relationship management system (ACRMS). The theoretical framework used in this study is dynamic capabilities developed by Teece, Pisano and Shuen (1997) and further modified and refined by Teece (2014). This framework is based on the premise of the ability …

Little To Be Gained From Dth Without Prior Industry Regulations, Syeda Raza-E-Masooma

MSJ Capstone Projects

In absence of proper legislation prohibiting monopoly & vertical integration of satellite companies and TV channels, DTH TV will cause more harm than good to media in Pakistan. DTH might finally come to Pakistan – legally. It seems a possibility now, a far-fetched one but nevertheless a possibility. It might be noteworthy, that it is already on its way out in our neighboring India, being taken over by mobile apps.

Is Pakistani State At War With Free Press?, Umer Bin Ajmal

MSJ Capstone Projects

Pakistan’s media scene today depicts a similar picture where many journalists say they have been “conditioned” to self-censor news. But unlike Pavlov using a sound as a stimulus, certain “powers that be” use threat and violence to intimidate journalists and force them to behave in a certain way. Psychologists around the world say there is a lesson in this experiment: it demonstrates that human behavior, too, can be manipulated or maneuvered through conditioning.

Gilgit-Baltistan At The Cross Road Of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (Cpec), Zulfiqar Ali Khan

MSJ Capstone Projects

This capstone project focused on the in-depth analysis of the role and impact of this multi-billion-dollar project on the politically deprived region of Gilgit-Baltistan. This region is the gateway to CPEC as it is the only region of Pakistan that shares border with China. The geographical ties, tributary and trade relationship and even family relationships between Gilgit-Baltistan and the Xinjiang region of China dates back centuries before the creation of Pakistan and the post revolution China.

The project has been designed and implemented in a way that GB’s role is to provide the services of road and some other services …

Womenpreneurs In A Digital Environment: Utilizing Instagram To Build A Personal Brand, Michelle N. Nuñez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Personal branding on social media is a growing and expanding field. The present research works to uncover the processes and practices of womenpreneurs and the ways in which they utilize social media, specifically Instagram, to build and maintain their personal brands. Grounded theory is used to underpin the research and provide a basis of which the study is conducted. The review of literature provides the context necessary to support the methods of a content analysis and semi-structured interviews. There is a gap in research as it pertains to the conceptualization of personal branding practices on Instagram and the present study …

Two Essays On Supply Chain Variations : Evidence From Cost Behaviors And Audit Outcomes, Ho Yin Wong

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

Recent researches shed light on the information role of major customers of the supplier firms on a variety of users, including shareholders (Dhaliwal et al., 2016), debtholders (Campello and Gao, 2017) and analysts (Guan et al, 2015). However, scarce researches are developed to address the influences of major customers information on corporate managers’ and auditors’ decision-making.

My thesis is composed of two essays. The first essay examines if characteristics in terms of length (the layers of intermediaries in the supply chain) and width (customer concentration) influence the extent of responsiveness in adjusting corporate capacity. Using a sample of non-financial U.S. …

Aging In The Workplace: A Cross Case Analysis In Jamaica's Finance Sector, Malaika Tahirah Edwards

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Along with the increase in the number of older people globally, is an increase in the number of older people in the labor force. Older adults increasingly represent a large segment of the working population. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore workplace aging, with specific reference to Jamaica’s finance sector, in relation to organizational preparedness for the aging workforce.

This study examined aging from an organizational perspective, a national perspective, and an individual perspective, through the lens of Baby Boomers. The study was framed through the lens of the Four Frames Model, and the Metaperspectives Theory, which …

Strategic Location And Dispatch Management Of Assets In A Military Medical Evacuation Enterprise, Phillip R. Jenkins

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers the importance of optimizing deployed military medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) systems and utilizes operations research techniques to develop models that allow military medical planners to analyze different strategies regarding the management of MEDEVAC assets in a deployed environment. For optimization models relating to selected subproblems of the MEDEVAC enterprise, the work herein leverages integer programming, multi-objective optimization, Markov decision processes, approximate dynamic programming, and machine learning, as appropriate, to identify relevant insights for aerial MEDEVAC operations.

Big 4 Office Personnel And Audit Quality, Jacob Gatlin

PhD in Business Administration Dissertations

Because U.S. Big 4 audit quality is inconsistent between office locations within the same firm, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has maintained a standing Audit Quality Indicator Project designed to assist academics, practitioners, and its own inspection teams in identifying specific areas in which high audit quality may fail to be achieved. While many of the PCAOB audit quality indicators have been examined in prior research, information regarding the personnel comprising each office audit department has been difficult to glean because personnel data is not publicly disclosed by the Big 4.

This study examines certain personnel inputs and …

The Impact Of Internal Auditors' Professional And Social Affiliations On Financial Reporting Quality, Reanna Berry

PhD in Business Administration Dissertations

The internal audit function is a critical component of strong corporate governance, along with firm management, the audit committee, and the external auditor (Hermanson & Rittenberg, 2003; Gramling, Maletta, Schneider, & Church, 2004). A potential threat to this strong corporate governance is professional and social affiliations. Accordingly, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX, 2002) limits some professional affiliations among management, the audit committee, and the external auditor (S206; S301), but only provides one limitation related to the internal auditor, which is that an external auditor cannot simultaneously provide internal audit consulting services to its audit client (S201(a)). Professional and social affiliations among …

Trends In The Study Of Indirect Procurement, Daniel Israel

Honors Theses

Indirect procurement has largely been ignored in scholarly research due to only representing a small portion of a firm’s expenditures, and suffers from a confusing nomenclature that makes drawing conclusions difficult. However, indirect procurement is a diverse and crucial component of purchasing that allows for sustainable competitive advantages and reduced costs, if managed properly. By performing a keyword search in the ABI/INFORM database, we analyzed, consolidated, and summarized the current areas of research as it pertains to indirect procurement. We also identified suggested further areas of research, as educated by our previous analysis. We find that the majority of the …

The Development Of Orphan Drugs; A Financial And Ethical Decision, Emmett S. Worth

Honors Projects

This paper explores the decision faced by a firm to invest in an orphan drug development project. Two primary areas of concern are considered: financial and ethical. In order to properly understand these two areas, the paper first summarizes the current development landscape for non-orphan and orphan drugs. Once the basic development structure is established, a discussion regarding the differences in the Net Present Value equation for a non-orphan and orphan product may occur. Once the differences in the financial decision are established, the paper will discuss the ethical considerations surrounding drug development and drug pricing. The combination of the …

The Personalization-Privacy Paradox Explored Through A Privacy Calculus Model And Hofstede’S Model Of Cultural Dimensions, Kellen M. Schwartz

Honors Projects

The Personalization-Privacy Paradox is a relevant issue for companies today, as it deals with the paradox of customers who on the one hand want to keep their personal data private, but on the other hand desire the personalization benefits that can be gained by giving up that privacy. Many studies in the past have observed the Personalization-Privacy Paradox, but not thoroughly through the lens of a privacy calculus model. This paper uses a privacy calculus model to examine the Personalization-Privacy Paradox using Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of Culture and examines the United States, Germany, and China as case studies of three …