Business Commons^™

Cultural Issues In Software Estimation: From Intuition To Model Based Estimation In Upgrade Projects, Sanjay Mohapatra

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper discusses issues related to change in culture that happens when software estimation becomes scientific, methodical and predictive. From a person based intuitive approach to model based estimation techniques, the approach necessitates a change in mindset and culture. This change in culture has been noticed in upgrade projects. Upgrades play an important role in product life cycle. A product is released with required features to meet immediate requirements of the customers. Any additional or modifications to features are carried through upgrade projects. These upgrades planned well in advance by the product developing organizations are made available to customers through …

Unibusiness: The Alumni Magazine Of The College Of Business Administration University Of Northern Iowa, 2008-2009, University Of Northern Iowa. College Of Business Administration.

UNIBiz

Inside This Issue:
-- Message from the Dean ••• 1
-- The Road Less Traveled ••• 2
-- A Change for the Better ••• 4
-- Broadening Students' Worldview ••• 6
-- A Great Idea is Hatched ••• 7
-- Faculty Awards ••• 8
-- Celebrating Student Excellence ••• 9
-- New Faculty ••• 10
-- Down But Not Out ••• 11
-- Message from Development ••• 13
-- Annual Report on Giving ••• 14
-- So Many Ways to Give ••• 16
-- Alumni Spotlights ••• 16
-- Focus on Alumni ••• 18
-- Alumni in Residence ••• 24

The Effects Of Activation On Employers Of Reserve And National Guard Soldiers, Lee Lamar Hisey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of military deployment or activation of reserve and National Guard soldiers on civilian employers. Understanding how activation affects the operations of civilian employers will increase awareness of the effects of labor stability on organizations. The study utilizes survey methodology to measure changes in organizational output, customer satisfaction, and employee behavior. In addition, number of employees supervised, strategies employed to adapt to the effects of activation on operations, organizational types, and the amount of time required for the organization to return to pre-activation levels of performance were measured. The sample was …

The Relationship Between Self-Esteem And Academic Success Among African American Students In The Minority Engineering Program At A Research Extensive University In The Southern Portion Of The United States, Sandra Latrice Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between the self-esteem and academic success of African American students in the Minority Engineering Program (MEP) at a research-extensive university in the Southern portion of the United States. The nature of the study required the use of descriptive, comparative, and correlational research methods. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory Adult Form (CSEI-A), a 25-item dichotomous self-report questionnaire was used to measure the level of self-esteem of all respondents. CSEI-A data was collected through the use of an on-line survey program, called Zoomerang©. Data on the specific demographic and academic variables …

Examining Successful Recuritment Strategies Utilized By Volunteer Alumni, James Eric Prudhomme

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to describe the manner in which volunteer alumni recruiters at a flagship institution were able to recruit prospective students both in and out of the formal recruitment setting. Due to the challenges facing Louisiana State University with out-of-state recruitment, volunteer alumni recruiters provide a cost-effective alternative to assist this effort. Findings of this study can be used to expand the current alumni volunteer recruitment effort by providing insight into the strategies that result in success in the recruitment process, all the while encouraging fellow alumni to assist their effort. The methodology for …

Bios: A One-Week Pre-Freshman Biology "Boot Camp" As A Tool To Increase Student Success And Retention In The Biological Sciences Major, Sheri Maples Wischusen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Biology Intensive Orientation for Students (BIOS) Program was designed to assess the impact of a five-day intensive pre-freshman program on success and retention of biological science majors at a large research university. The program combined content lectures and examinations for the Introductory Biology course for Science Majors, as well as learning styles assessments and informational sessions to provide the students with a preview of the requirements of biology, and the pace of college. Students were tracked following their BIOS participation. In the pilot year of the program the BIOS participants performed significantly better on the first and second exams, …

Return-Free Filing: What Is It, And How Will It Affect The Tax Preparer Profession And Taxpayers In General?, John R. Ledgerwood, Jaren J. Braun

Publications

This paper investigates what return-free filing is and how, if it is implemented in the United States, it will affect the tax preparer profession and taxpayers. In this paper we look at two systems, currently in use in other countries, which have been evaluated by the IRS: exact withholding system and the tax agency reconciliation system. Either system, if implemented, will most likely affect only the simplest returns, as anyone who has capital gains, certain credits, business income, etc. will still be required to file a return. The effects of such a system will vary greatly depending on the individual …

An Analysis Of The Intra-Regional Trade In The Middle East And North Africa Region, E. M. Ekanayake, John R. Ledgerwood

Publications

This paper analyzes the intra-regional trade and investment flows in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using an augmented gravity model applied to panel data. The study uses annual trade and investment data for the period 1980-2006. There is a growing awareness among countries in the MENA region regarding the importance of international trade and foreign direct investment for stimulating growth and integrating into the world economy. The research will attempt to achieve the following objectives: (a) analyze the intra-regional trade and investment flows in the MENA region; (b) identify the major determinants of trade and investment flows …

An Integrated Probability-Based Approach For Multiple Response Surface Optimization, Okay Isik

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Nearly all real life systems have multiple quality characteristics where individual modeling and optimization approaches can not provide a balanced compromising solution. Since performance, cost, schedule, and consistency remain the basics of any design process, design configurations are expected to meet several conflicting requirements at the same time. Correlation between responses and model parameter uncertainty demands extra scrutiny and prevents practitioners from studying responses in isolation. Like any other multi-objective problem, multi-response optimization problem requires trade-offs and compromises, which in turn makes the available algorithms difficult to generalize for all design problems. Although multiple modeling and optimization approaches have been …

Football Media Guide 2009, Indiana State University

Intercollegiate Athletics

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of U.S. Senate Web Sites For Disability Accessibility, Joanne M. Kuzma, Gregory Weisenborn, Thomas Philippe, Anthony Gabel, Rachel Dolechek

Applied Business Faculty Publications

U.S. federal government web sites have increased significantly the level of services and information offered to various internal and external stakeholders. The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 amended Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which complemented the intent and aims of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As a result, federal agencies and departments were mandated to provide disabled stakeholders with access to key information from federal web sites. However, since this enactment, some federal web sites still do not meet fully the legal requirements to accommodate users with disabilities. Additionally, web sites of members of the …

Ua68/13/5 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Journalism & Broadcasting Student Organizations, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by School of Journalism student organizations. These include the Advertising Club, PRSSA and ImageWest.

U.S. Business And Global Barriers To Entry, Caitlin Long

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

An exploratory view of barriers to entry in countries of significance to U.S. companies, this thesis provides a comprehensive overview of prevalent business strategies of U.S. trading partners as well as a forecast of their international business policies. Diverse macro-environmental variables, such as economy, culture, and regulations result in varying barriers to entry for U.S. based firms to conduct business in U.S trading partners’ countries. This thesis will determine how these macro-environmental factors foster or stunt growth and strategies governments employ to attract businesses.

Chicago Islamic Microfinance Project, Karen Ahmed, Cynthia Shawamreh

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

No abstract provided.

Where Is Islamic Finance Going? Ethical Investment Strategies, Karen Ahmed

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

No abstract provided.

What Does Islamic Finance Want To Be When It Grows Up?, Karen Ahmed

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

No abstract provided.

"Islamic Banking And Finance: Moral Beliefs And Business Practices At Work", Karen Ahmed

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

The religion of Islam has existed for 1400 years but Islamic economic theory and its financial institutions emerged as an industry only in the 1970s. Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) are designed to help Muslims conduct business internationally while simultaneously upholding traditional Islamic values related to trade finance and currency movement. The basis for their existence is the Islamic moral prohibition on charging interest—interest is a central component of capitalist banking—yet IFIs conduct billions of dollars of business annually in the world economy and the de facto Islamic banking transaction is—in most cases—virtually identical to a capitalist banking transaction. Business practices …

Learning Style Differences Between Students And Facultyo Title, Thomas Berry, Amber Settle

College of Business Faculty and Staff Works

Learning styles refers to the different ways that people process and retain information. Our interest is in discerning differences in learning styles between faculty and students. Just as students vary in learning styles, instructors differ in the methods they use to convey information. Any disconnect between the learning styles of instructors (and hence the methods used to teach material) and the predominant learning styles of the students may result in greater learning difficulties for students. We test the learning styles of three groups: students in the introductory finance course, finance majors, and finance faculty. Significant differences are found between each …

The Winding Stair Dinner Menu, January , 2009, Winding Stair Restaurant

Menus of the 21st Century

The Winding Stair Restaurant is located at 40, Lower Ormond Quay Dublin on the north side of the river Liffey beside the Ha’penny Bridge. The proprietor is Elaine Murphy. The Winding Stair started life as a bookshop and café which was a popular meeting spot in Dublin during the 1970s and 1980s. The café closed in 2005 and in 2006 the current proprietor re-opened it as a restaurant.

“The bookshop, located on the ground floor, was retained as were many of the old bookshelves, photos and memories. The room retains its timeless charm with stripped wood tables and floors, and …

U.S. Energy Policy And The Presumption Of Market Failure, Peter Z. Grossman

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

The article presents an analysis of U.S. energy policy, focusing on the question of whether it is able to correct market failures in terms of alternative energy sources. The question of whether any such market failures exist is said to be a separate question, and an argument is presented that governments generally are not competent to fix such problems even when they do exist. A discussion of U.S. energy policy from the early 1970s to the 21st century is presented. Programs designed to encourage technological innovations such as biofeuls, nuclear fusion, and electric vehicles are analyzed.

Earnings Guidance: How Should Companies Interact With The Market?, Steven D. Dolvin

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Steven Dolvin's contribution to the January/February Edition of BizVoice, magazine of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

A Network Implementation Class Exercise: Businessquest Business Incubator, Llc, Priscilla Arling

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

One way to bring concepts to life in an introductory data networks course is for students to physically build a network that addresses a real business problem. However it can be challenging to find a suitable business problem, particularly if the network can exist only during the class period. This case presents a realistic business scenario and network implementation exercise that can be completed in one or two class periods in any classroom with Internet access. The objective of the exercise is for students to solve a business problem by applying concepts related to basic network configuration, local area networks …

The Impact Of A Computer Proficiency Exam On Business Students' Admission To And Performance In A Higher-Level It Course, Patrick Rondeau, Li Xiaolin

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Many colleges of business now assume incoming freshmen arrive on campus possessing high levels of computer skill and ability. Students are frequently offered the opportunity to take and pass a computer proficiency exam (CPE) in lieu of a freshman information technology (IT) course. While promoted as an efficient alternative, our analysis of the implementation of a CPE as a replacement for the freshman IT course at a small, Midwestern university revealed mixed results. As expected, we found those students who took and passed the CPE generally scored higher in their follow-on, sophomore IT course than those who passed the prerequisite, …

Gender Differences In Communication:Implications For Salespeople, Daniel H. Mcquiston, Kathryn A. Morris

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

As more women enter into the traditionally male-dominated occupations of sales and purchasing, an understanding of gender differences in communication can provide salespeople with added information to increase their effectiveness. 1his paper begins with a review of the research on gender differences in verbal and non-verbal communication and then applies these findings to the field of sales. The paper concludes with managerial implications and recommendations for how salespeople might account for gendered aspects of their communications and by so doing potentially increase the effectiveness of their sales process.

Reit Ipos And The Cost Of Going Public, Steven D. Dolvin, Mark Pyles

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

We examine Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) that went public between 1986 and 2004. Consistent with previous studies, we find that REIT IPOs are associated with lower levels of underpricing relative to traditional issues. We also find that REITs are associated with smaller file price revisions. Both findings are potentially attributable to the lower level of uncertainty associated with pricing REITs. In contrast, using an alternative measure of issuance costs that incorporates the share retention decision by preexisting owners, we find no significant difference between REIT and non-REIT issues, suggesting the results of previous studies …

Three Stories And Their Morals, Robert B. Bennett

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Fundamentally, the common law tradition is a collection of stories. Stories also become the law professor's stock in trade. We tell students stories or have them read stories in the form of cases or hypothetical situations and help them discern the morals to the stories-i.e., what the stories mean in the context of business or in their business lives? In a sense, that is what the Socratic Method is all about: analyzing stories in the form of cases and discerning their greater meaning. In this paper I will relate three true stories within the context of just-in-time production management and …

The Impact Of Cultural Environment On Entry-Level Auditors’ Abilities To Perform Analytical Procedures, James F. Sander, Susan B. Hughes, Scott D. Higgs, Charles P. Cullinan

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

We focus on the impact of three of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism, on the results of analytical procedures conducted by entry-level auditors in Mexico and the U.S. Analytical procedures are ideal for this research as they require auditors to use professional judgment and appropriate levels of professional skepticism, abilities related to all three cultural characteristics. We find no other study investigating the impact of culture on the application of auditing procedures similar across the studied cultures.

We find cultural characteristics do not affect the participants’ abilities to predict income statement balances, but they may influence …

The Bad News And The Good News: The Long-Term Consequences Of Having Used An Alternative Work Schedule, Margaret Padgett, Lynn Harland, Steven B. Moser

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Research suggests that women who adopt alternative work arrangements may be viewed less favorably than women who work a regular schedule. This study examined whether those negative perceptions persist even after the woman returns to a regular schedule. One hundred twenty-five employed MBA students participated in an experimental study in which work schedule was manipulated. Participants reviewed a personnel file for a female employee who was either on a regular schedule or who had previously been on a reduced-workload schedule. They then completed a questionnaire assessing their perceptions of the target employee. Contrary to the authors' expectations, results revealed that …

Critical Accounting Policy And Estimate Disclosures: Company Response To The Evolving Sec Guidance, Susan B. Hughes, James F. Sander, Jillian K. Snyder

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In late 2001, soon after numerous financial reporting failures including the much publicized demise of Enron, the SEC began a series of initiatives to improve critical accounting policy (CAP) and critical accounting estimate disclosures included within the MD&A section of Form 10-K. The first announcement, in the form of cautionary guidance, was issued in December 2001. This was followed by a Proposed Rule in 2002, and additional disclosure guidance near the end of 2003. Combined, the guidance required companies to provide information that would help investors understand the impact of estimates, accounting policies and external factors on financial results. Through …

Venture Capitalists As Catalysts To New Venture Internationalization: The Impact Of Their Knowledge And Reputation Resources, Stephanie A. Fernhaber, Patricia P. Mcdougall-Covin

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Venture Capitalists (VC) play an important role in influencing the strategic direction of the firms in which they invest. The findings of this study reveal that VCs can serve as a catalyst to new venture internationalization through the provision of knowledge and reputation resources. Furthermore, the international knowledge of a VC is more positively related to new venture internationalization when the VC is also reputable.