Business Commons^™

Nigerian Stock Market Reflection Of The Global Finance Crisis: An Evaluation, Sere- Ejembi A. A.

Bullion

With its roots in banking, the sub-prime mortgage crisis that commenced in the United States in 2007 soon resonated in other sectors of its financial system, and the economy, at large. It spread quickly to the developed economies in Europe, including the United Kingdom, and Asia. In the case of the Nigerian stock market, following initial relative insulation, the speed of contagion and response was comparatively slower. However, the effects began to manifest in the first quarter of 2008. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to review the global financial crisis, in the context of its recent effects on …

Investing Africa's External Reserves In Africa: Issues, Challenges And Prospects, Onwioduokit A. E.

Bullion

The paper underlined the challenges and opportunities for managing Africa's external reserves by Africans after identifying several pre-conditions for an African currency to emerge as international currency and noted that these conditions have not yet crystallized in Africa. Although African external reserves have grown over time the benefits of such growth in terms of facilitation of domestic financial markets and even the earning are not commensurate with the reserves growth rate. The non-convertibility of African currencies, volatile macroeconomic and sometimes volatile political environment coupled with the shallowness of the domestic markets are the main challenges that are faced by the …

Socio-Demographic And Financial Predictors Of Discharged Chapter 12 Bankruptcies For Utah, Idaho, And Wyoming, Jessica Johnson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to examine the socio-demographic and financial characteristics that were associated with the likelihood of a discharge among Chapter 12 bankruptcy filers in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. Previous bankruptcy studies conducted in Utah have looked at the same associations in Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. This study contains individual filer-level data from 158 Chapter 12 bankruptcy cases filed in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming between 1997 and 2005. These cases were accessed through the Web-PACER system, a database of imaged court documents filed in district bankruptcy courts. Free access to this system was given by the …

Does Convergence Of Accounting Standards Lead To The Convergence Of Accounting Practices? A Study From China, Songlan Peng, Rasoul H. Tondkar, Joyce Van Der Van Der Laan Smith, David W. Harless

Accounting Faculty Publications

In this empirical study we examine whether China's efforts to converge domestic accounting standards with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) over the past 15 years have resulted in the successful convergence of Chinese listed firms. This study is unique in that we evaluate convergence of firms' accounting practices from three perspectives: (1) the level of compliance with Chinese GAAP and IFRS, (2) the consistency of accounting choices under Chinese GAAP and IFRS, and (3) identification of significant differences in the net incomes produced under Chinese GAAP and IFRS (earnings gap).

Using the 1999 and 2002 annual reports of 79 Chinese …

The Private Sector And The Questionable Role Of Social Responsibility In Securing The Nation's Infrastructure, James K. Hayes

Student Scholarship

Society faces many common challenges that the corporate sector can play a large role to help address. Security against terrorism is one such challenge and is an important pre-condition to sustainable development. Moreover, since terrorism often operates outside of the jurisdiction of state authorities, it is becoming clear that governments cannot address this issue alone. In the United States, for example, there is a large portion of the nation's infrastructure that owned by the private sector. Using data obtained from 158 survey responses from security professionals in the public and private sector, our structural equation model determined that while prior …

The Relation Between Management's Perception Of Causal Ambiguity In Firm Competencies And Firm Performance: An Empirical Examination In Chile, Richard I. Araya

Student Scholarship

Ambiguity about firm and competitor competencies and resources challenges managerial decision making − especially in developing countries where asymmetric information is higher than in the developed ones. Although a number of scholars have addressed “causal ambiguity” and its relationship with firm resources and competencies, and theorists have suggested a positive relationship between it and organizational performance, these links remain unclear. On one hand, ambiguity may protect a firm because competitors cannot easily imitate it (Alvarez & Antolin, 2005). On the other hand, causal ambiguity may impede imitation of valuable resources within the firm, limiting management ́s ability to manage resources …

Toeing, Blurring Or Crossing The Line? How Highly Regulated Organizations View Compliance And Innovation, Marilyn A. Hosea

Student Scholarship

Highly regulated government funded programs are often more rigidly scrutinized than corporate institutions—with rules, regulations and policies filling nearly every nook of nonprofit organizational life. A concern during this era of scarce financial resources and tight regulatory oversight is that the acceptance of public funds will impede the nonprofit’s ability to implement local innovations that build upon and support the expectations of a variety of key stakeholders (governing boards, service consumers, the public-at-large, and government/private funders). This paper examines ways in which federally funded nonprofit organizations continually strive to improve their organizational performance through innovation—employing practices that conceal, screen, or …

Committing To Engagement? Chinese Protestant Churches In The United States, Cecilia C. Chan

Student Scholarship

How do leaders of non-profit (volunteer-based) faith-based organizations deal with the lack of active engagement on the part of their members? How do Chinese church attendees’ satisfaction with the church and their perception of problems within the church affect their long-term commitment and engagement in the church? This paper focuses on (a) how social influences and perceived church problems influence satisfaction with commitment to the church and (b) how the mediating influences of satisfaction\, commitment\, and affective perception influence the personal engagement of individuals. This study has given insight leading to an understanding of managerial issues relating to the nurture …

Culture Clash - How Socio-Technical Factors Contribute To Enterprise Information Systems Interoperability, Alan Fisk

Student Scholarship

Despite increasing need for interoperable enterprise-level information systems, achieving interoperability is persistently problematical. Our work highlights social factors as a major contributor to good design, development, and operating practices. The research was conducted at a technologically sophisticated Fortune 50 company where design artifacts suggested by the literature were found to be in place yet good interoperability between systems was not consistently achieved. The data suggest boundary spanners can facilitate interoperability by promoting shared meanings and mindsets that advance acculturation among cross-functional groups. Findings contrast with enterprise systems interoperability literature, which has focused mainly on technological factors to ensure good design …

Emotional Intelligence, Shared Vision, And Teamwork Performance: A Qualitative Study, Ed Mahon

Student Scholarship

There is a vast literature on the emotional intelligence (EI) of individuals, but comparatively little on team EI. We report findings of a qualitative inquiry involving 36 members of twelve IT teams--half of them effective and half less so--to explore the relationship between team EI and team performance. Trust, conflict resolution skills and team communication are seen to differentiate effective and less effective teams, as is the ability to adapt shared vision to changes in project specification. The research supports the that teams possess emotional intelligence and that it powerfully influences how they function and to what effect. Our findings …

Employee Volunteerism: Social Benefits Trump Altruism, Donna E. Teeague

Student Scholarship

With over 153 million U.S. citizens in the labor force but only about a quarter of them engaged in community volunteer work (Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, 2006), the workplace is clearly an under-tapped source of volunteer labor. As the need for volunteers accelerates and supply remains stagnant, it becomes imperative to understand how to recruit volunteers from the workplace. Interviews with twenty seven employees of six US corporations were conducted to probe how beliefs about outcomes and consequences of volunteerism, the influence of important social referent groups and self perceptions of relevant skills and …

Environmentally Benign Technologies And Financial Performance: Evidence From The Pulp And Paper Industry In Nigeria, Joseph Akinkugbe Adelegan

Student Scholarship

Addressing a paucity of research about industrial adoption of environmentally benign technologies in Africa and, more generally, in tropical developing countries, we examined the Nigerian pulp and paper industry as a case study. Qualitative interviews with twenty upper echelon executives representing five Nigerian firms challenge conventional expectations that energy intensive industries in developing markets operate amid highly pollution-intensive conditions, within weak or non-existent formal environmental regulatory frameworks, and with limited institutional capacity. Our findings suggest a strong positive relationship between cleaner technology use and corporate financial performance of African industrial firms. Our study also suggests the adoption of classical 'win-win' …

Ingos & Ngos: Work And Workarounds In Rwanda, Cheryl A. Baldwin

Student Scholarship

As the number of International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs) operating in developing countries have burgeoned in recent decades, tension between these mainly Western agencies and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has accelerated. This paper examines, from the perspectives of nonprofit executives in Rwanda, how underlying tensions affect the ability of INGOs and NGOs to advance critical social goals. Qualitative research reveals how and to what extent the work is influenced top down by INGO and/or bottom up by local NGO management mindsets and practices and how inventive "workaround" strategies help both organizations manage tensions that challenge individual goals and collective work.

Ostensive And Performative Routines And Strategies For Institutional Adaptation And Innovation, Jaime Chua

Student Scholarship

Using critical realist research, we sought to understand how nonprofit organizations blend deliberate and emergent strategizing to cope with neoinstitutional dilemmas posed by donors’ competing logics. To gain organizational legitimacy and access to resources, international nonprofits must conform to donors’ normative processes and practices which tend to be ineffectual. An international nonprofit operating in the highly complex international development field provided an ideal setting for investigating how routines blend and moderate deliberate and emergent strategies. Consistent with the view that strategic insights come from different organizational levels, we examined key patterns of interactions and routines between middle and top-level managers. …

Outsider To Insider: Contrasting Routes And Transition Experiences Of New Nonprofit Leaders, Anotinette E. La Belle

Student Scholarship

A leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector is portended by sector growth, turnover at the top and a smaller cohort of leaders coming up from behind. Crossovers from the corporate sector present an alternative source of CEO talent, but a dearth of empirical research about top executives who cross the boundaries of sector, organization, and, at times role, stymies our understanding of the transition process of for-profit to non-profit leaders. In depth interviews with U.S. nonprofit leaders – both crossover CEOs and CEOs hired from within the nonprofit sector − compared and contrasted transition experiences. Rather than significant differences between …

Promises To Keep: Exploring Organizational Trust Repair From A Stakeholder Perspective, Rachel Y. Daniel

Student Scholarship

Organizational trust repair is a burgeoning field of inquiry, due in large part to the ethical and financial failures in U.S. corporations, churches, governments, media outlets, and nonprofit organizations. The subsequent financial, professional, and emotional damage to stakeholders has resulted in a crisis of trust in organizations and their leaders. We explore the trust repair process from a stakeholder's perspective in a qualitative study of executives, employees, and customers of three U.S. institutions: a Fortune 500 corporation, a nonprofit organization, and a government entity. Findings suggest trust repair is not a process-driven phenomenon. The provision of credible reparative information, evidence …

Reluctant Gatekeepers: Influencing Factors In A Small Business Owner's Decision To Not Sponsor A Retirement Plan For Employees, Jill Mccullough

Student Scholarship

In a nation with the lowest savings rate in the industrialized world, nearly 60% of U.S. small business owners do not provide retirement plans for their more than 40 million workers. There is a dearth of formal inquiry about small business owners' perspectives of and attitudes toward retirement and the factors that motivate behavior related to it. Interviews with small business owners revealed that most are not concerned about their own retirements and are ambivalent about the retirement security of their employees. Those who have attempted to implement a plan find the process complex, intimidating and require the assistance of …

Strategizing Routines On The Cusp Of Multiple And Competing Institutional Logics Of Foreign Aid, Jaime Chua

Student Scholarship

Using critical realist research, we sought to understand how nonprofit organizations blend deliberate and emergent strategizing to cope with neoinstitutional dilemmas posed by donors' competing logics. To gain organizational legitimacy and access to resources, international nonprofits must conform to donors' normative processes and practices which tend to be ineffectual. An international nonprofit operating in the highly complex international development field provided an ideal setting for investigating how routines blend and moderate deliberate and emergent strategies. Consistent with the view that strategic insights come from different organizational levels, we examined key patterns of interactions and routines between middle and top-level managers. …

Surgeon Acceptance Of Computer Assisted Surgery, Jonathan B. Brewster

Student Scholarship

The advancement of modern medicine would not be possible without the development, diffusion, and adoption of medical technologies. Few studies have measured technology adoption at the level of the individual physician and fewer of surgeons per se. Computer assisted surgery (CAS), an example of clinically oriented technology, has experienced slow adoption by orthopedic surgeons. Our inquiry, based on semi-structured interviews with practitioners trained to use CAS in knee replacement surgeries, sheds light on how surgeons make decisions to adopt or reject clinical technologies. Findings suggest that classic technology acceptance models, TAM, TAM2 and TAM3, insufficiently explain clinical technology choice. Our …

A New Frontier In Internationalization: Singapore's Gambits In The Middle East, Wilfred Pow Ngee How, Caroline Yeoh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Quality Control Defects Revealed In Smaller Firms' Pcaob Inspection Reports, Dana R. Hermanson, Richard W. Houston

Faculty Articles

The article reports the study of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) on the quality control (QC) defects of small audit firms. Topics including the accounting lapses of small auditing firms, tips on complying QC standards and importance of inspection on the auditing industry are discussed. Study reveals that smaller firms have deficient processes in conducting audit quality. The article notes that PCAOB is expected to increase campaign in assisting audit firms while small audit firms are encouraged to address their QC deficiencies.

Bridging The Great Divide - Moving From Outsider To Insider: How For Profit Executives Become Effective Nonprofit Ceos, Antoinette E. La Belle

Student Scholarship

A leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector is portended by sector growth, turnover at the top and a smaller cohort of leaders coming up from behind. Crossovers from the corporate sector present an alternative source of CEO talent, but a dearth of empirical research about top executives who cross the boundaries of sector, organization, and, at times role, stymies our understanding of the transition process of for-profit to non-profit leaders. In depth interviews with U.S. nonprofit leaders--both crossover CEOs and CEOs hired from within the nonprofit sector--compared and contrasted transition experiences. Rather than significant differences between the two groups, our …

Bridging The Great Divide - Moving From Outsider To Insider: How For Profit Executives Become Effective Nonprofit Ceos, Antoinette E. La Belle

Student Scholarship

A leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector is portended by sector growth, turnover at the top and a smaller cohort of leaders coming up from behind. Crossovers from the corporate sector present an alternative source of CEO talent, but a dearth of empirical research about top executives who cross the boundaries of sector, organization, and, at times role, stymies our understanding of the transition process of for-profit to non-profit leaders. In depth interviews with U.S. nonprofit leaders--both crossover CEOs and CEOs hired from within the nonprofit sector--compared and contrasted transition experiences. Rather than significant differences between the two groups, our …

Constructing A Definition Of And Portfolio Model Of Family Business Success, John E. Neff

Student Scholarship

Our qualitative study sought to understand the meaning of success within the context of the family owned firm. The study, designed to identify success factors that distinguished more successful firms from less successful firms, revealed four significant and three moderate differentiators. Significant among the findings was the role of trust not only within the owning family but also between the family and non-family members of the firm. Implications of the study suggest it may be possible to construct a multi-attribute model of family firm success.

An Examination Of Nba Mvp Voting Behavior: Does Race Matter?, B. Jay Coleman, J Michael Dumond, Allen K. Lynch

Management Faculty Publications

The selection process of the most valuable player (MVP) in the National Basketball Association (NBA) was recently questioned as to whether African-American players were treated unfairly based on their race. Using NBA voting data from the 1995-2005 seasons, we develop two empirical models in order to examine the role that a player’s race plays in the determination of this award. Our estimates imply that after controlling for player, team, and market characteristics, there is no statistically significant effect of race on the likelihood that a player will appear on an MVP ballot or on the number of votes he will …

Managerial Ownership And Firms' Information Environment, Soongsoo Han, Tony Kang, Gerald Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relation between managerial stock ownership and the firm’s information environment. We focus on three dimensions of the information environment: total, public, and private information precision (Barron, Kim, Lim and Stevens 1998). Our results suggest that firms’ total and public information precision are positively related to managerial ownership. In contrast, there is no clear pattern in private information precision across different levels of managerial ownership. We also observe that managerial ownership has a greater impact on the firm’s public information environment after the implementation of Regulation Fair Disclosure, suggesting that the regulation was effective in improving the firms’ …

Conversational Learning And Performance: Interpreting Great Strategic Conversations, Ann Kowal Smith

Student Scholarship

We interviewed seventeen successful leaders to explore their experience of effective strategic conversations yielding innovative outcomes. Although these organizational leaders uniformly espoused emergent conversation, whereby they prefer to collaborate with their teams in an experiential learning process, their conversations were primarily leader-driven directed discussions with specific outcomes in mind. Moreover, they described not single events, but multiple strategic conversations distributed over time, with varied participants and purposes. Successful strategic conversations appear to develop, over time, in a dialectic space formed by the leader's desire for authentic contributions by participants and the experience of organizational and cultural forces that inhibit emergent …

Developing A Grounded Theory Model On Collaboration In Learning, Michelle J. Boese, Hong Sheng, Richard H. Hall

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Purpose of This Research is to Develop a Grounded Theory Model to Explain the Factors Influencing Collaborative Learning in Higher Education, the Role of Technology in Facilitating Collaboration, and the Outcome of Collaboration. We Assigned 28 Participants to Small Groups to Work on Course-Related Questions; Half of the Groups Were Face-To-Face Groups and the Other Half Groups Were Collaborating in a Simulated Virtual Environment with the Aid of Information Technology. Interview Data Was Collected and Analyzed Following the Grounded Theory Approach. Congruent with Distributed Cognition Theories, the Results of Our Study Suggest that Both Social and Technological Factors Were …

A Meating Of The Minds: Possible Pitfalls And Benefits Of Certified Organic Livestock Production And The Prodigious Potential Of Brazil, Adam Schlosser

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Certified organic food represents the fastest growing segment of food production in both the United States and throughout the entire world. This article examines the issues and opportunities facing both large and small-scale farmers who wish to engage in organic livestock production. Organic regulations cover everything involved in production, starting with the organic certification process and concluding with slaughter and the subsequent shipping and sale of the end organic product. The final section of this article addresses the unique ability of Brazil - described alternatively as "the world's warehouse" and the "world's [future] source of food" - to increase the …

Profitability Analysis Of Chinese Listed Firms: 1992-2004, Jianjun Niu, Heng Yue, Guohua Jiang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This research collects and analyses the profitability data of Chineselisted companies from 1992 to 2004. Results show that, on average, theprofitability of Chinese listed companies has declined over the period. Post-IPOearnings also exhibit a downward trend. A further analysis reveals that changes inlisted firms’ profitability ratio follow a strong mean reversion pattern.