Business Commons^™

Changing The World From Classrooms To Communities: Designing And Disseminating A Service-Learning Curriculum For Teaching In A Formal Education Setting, Amanda English

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

To change the world is a growing desire among many of today’s student populations, portrayed increasingly across the spectrum of media, social trends and career pursuits. While the demand grows among students for community-oriented and socially-responsible opportunities, the offerings in educational institutions must respond to these emerging requests with new and innovative academic programs. This text emphasizes the role of the developing discipline of service-learning in channeling these energies and providing students with deep and meaningful academic experiences. Its content seeks to combat misconceptions of service-learning as simply an extra-curricular activity and provide tangible methods for incorporating its concepts into …

Information Technology (It) Identity: A Conceptualization, Proposed Measures, And Research Agenda, Michelle Carter

All Dissertations

With increasing embeddedness of information technologies (IT) in organizational processes, and services, individuals' long-term IT use has become instrumental to business success. At the same time, IS research has illustrated that under-utilization by end-users often prevents organizations from realizing expected benefits from their technology investments. Because individual use is the critical link between technology investments and enhanced organizational performance through IT, in recent years, information systems researchers have begun to focus attention on the post-adoption phases of technology assimilation. The overarching goal of this relatively new research stream is to understand factors that influence individuals' attempts to use IT to …

Manufacturing Mississippi's Workforce: An Assessment Of Employability Skills As Perceived By Faculty And Senior Students Of Four Year Manufacturing Related Degree Programs, Mamie Yvette Griffin

Dissertations

A worldwide concern exists that undergraduate programs are not producing graduates with the kind of lifelong learning and professional skills needed for workplace success. Numerous research studies indicate new employees lack needed employability skills such as teamwork, decision-making, and communication.

Similarly, recent national and state findings suggest that graduates of Mississippi‟s manufacturing-related degree programs may not be fully prepared to meet the needs of manufacturers in the state. Hence, this research proposes to determine the degree to which Mississippi‟s four-year manufacturing-related degree programs address employability.

To answer this question, the present study utilizes descriptive non-experimental research to assess the perception …

European Union Food Law Update, Emilie Majster

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Nutrition is increasingly important in both the European Union (EU) and in global food-related policy making. Governments, which up until recently have focused on regulating food products based on a food safety perspective, are now turning to regulate from a nutritional aspect.

It Professionals: Understanding What Impacts Their Desire To Engage In Work, Linda M. Pittenger

Student Scholarship

There is a paucity of literature on Information Technology (IT) professionals that specifically emphasizes how either behavioral competencies and/or the organizational environment influence employee engagement. Employee engagement is described as a positive, work-related state of mind exhibited by high levels of energy, dedication, persistence, and happy absorption (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, & Bakker, 2002) manifested, when coupled with customer loyalty, in business growth and profitability (McEwen, 1998). Half of all U.S. workers are not fully engaged in their work and some are totally disengaged (Balogun & Johnson, 2004). When compared to the general employee population, lack of engagement is more of …

Capitalization Structure: The Effects Of Leverage On Growth Prospects, Laura Cawley, Roers Janku

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In this paper we quantitatively analyzed capital structure to lead to an understanding of the effects of debt within capital structure. Utilizing EBITDA growth as a proxy for the effects of leverage, we quantitatively analyzed the impact of the capitalization decision. Through the use of a model we analyzed 180 companies to come to conclusions about the EBITDA growth rate necessary as determined by leverage.

Short Line Railroading In The Northeastern United States: Its Relevance And Future In Connecting Industry To The North American Rail Network, William Jay Hotaling

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Short line railroads are vital links in the North American rail network. To remain profitable and viable they must keep abreast of technological advancement and increase cooperation both amongst themselves and with large railroads. Short line railroads fulfill a need in the market place: efficiently distributing and collecting freight transferred locally, nationally, and abroad. Their health and success are a vital component to the continued economic viability of industry in the American northeast. This paper examines short line railroading in the northeastern United States and its relevance and future in connecting industry to the North American Rail Network.

To determine …

Governance And Executive Compensation In Nonprofits, Kevin F. Hallock

Economics Faculty Publications

Corporate governance has attracted much attention lately, justifiably many would argue. In the past couple decades, important legislative changes and public pressure have driven rapid changes in board governance and reporting, much focused on executive compensation, in particular. Still, there seems to be less focus on these issues in nonprofit organizations. This despite the fact that more than one-quarter of Americans volunteered through or for an organization last year, with the likely majority of these organizations being nonprofits. Adjusting for organization size, however, cash pay is not that different in for-profits and nonprofits. Resources exist for helping nonprofit boards govern …

Construction Contractors With Conforming Changes As Of May 1, 2012; Audit And Accounting Guide, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants (Aicpa)

Industry Guides (AAGs), Risk Alerts, and Checklists

No abstract provided.

Narrative Identity Within A Workers' Rights Organization, Emily Ann Hallgren

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research includes in-depth interviews and participant observation to examine the construction of narrative identity by the staff members and worker-members of a workers' rights organization in Northwest Arkansas. I seek to understand how the organization negotiates the broader cultural and institutional narrative identities with the personal narrative identities of the worker-members in a cultural context hostile toward undocumented immigrants. Further, I examine how the worker-members themselves both internalize and challenge the organizational, institutional, and cultural narratives about undocumented immigrant workers. Findings reveal that the staff members and the worker-members create different narratives for different purposes, though both are concerned …

High Tech Tethers And Work-Family Conflict: A Conservation Of Resources Approach, Katherine M. Richardson, Cynthia A. Thompson

Publications and Research

This is one of the first studies to empirically examine the relationship between wireless communications technology and work interference with family, and results shed light on the motivating factors that influence individuals to continuously engage with mobile technologies, sometimes to their personal detriment. We draw from Conservation of Resources (COR) theory to examine the relationship between using mobile communications technologies during non-work time (e.g., evenings, weekends, vacation) and psychological variables related to work-family conflict and well being, and whether this relationship is mediated by perceptions of job control and detachment from work. We collected data from 139 full-time working adults …

Sweat Or Threat? A Look Into The Ethics Of Sweatshops, Kristin Wilmes

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

Often times, individuals are faced with situations that present clouded truths of the happenings in business. They must uncover the realities of these situations, most times ending in methods dependent on ethical decision making. The academic world has presented some models to theoretically explain these issues. Its issue-contingent model and behavior add significantly to the understanding of moral processes (Jones 1991). These moral issues can be very difficult to define and explain, considering each individual develops differing approaches to the situations. When given the words “ethics” and “sweatshops,” many people are unable to pair the two words together. The distaste …

Advertising And The Influence On Self-Destructive Behaviors With An Emphasis On Childhood Obesity, Kimberly Moffat

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

As self-destructive behaviors are on the rise across society, research is being completed in order to determine links and causes. From binge drinking to over-eating, American society in particular is having negative behaviors become more prevalent and accepted by the media and pop culture. Links to marketing campaigns have definitely been made in the past, but the following research takes a closer look at the direct corresponding link between marketing advertisements and the increase in childhood obesity. An exhaustive secondary analysis of multiple studies and literature helps prove there is indeed an issue with how advertisements are influencing bad eating …

University Services: Subsidized Or Self-Supported? A Marketing Plan For A Financially Independent University Program, Eric Smith

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

As economic troubles continue to plague both governmental institutions and the private sector, public universities across the nation are being forced to make budgetary cuts. Tuition has risen dramatically, but “students are paying for more while institutions are subsidizing less” (Delta Project). In nearly all cases, non-academic student services are among the first to be cut or have their funding drastically reduced. While academics are most certainly the focus of any university, extracurricular student activities are a vital part of shaping healthy, well-rounded individuals. The common practice in providing services such as an outdoor center for students has been that …

On-Shelf Customer Availability Research: The Effects Of The Day-Of-The-Week, Product, And Category Characteristics On Stockouts, Joseph Lum

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper seeks to examine the causes of stockouts and on-shelf customer availability by examining various product and category characteristics, as well as the day-of-the-week to study their effects on stockouts. Over 8 weeks, data was collected by taking tri-weekly photographs of three product categories at a retail store, and then the data was extracted to a spreadsheet before empirical analysis was done. The results of the study indicated that the probability of a stockout increased when planned facings decreased, the unit price increased, proper on-shelf placement decreased, and when other SKU’s of the same category also stocked out.

Corporate Sponsorship In High School Athletics, Morgan Sherman

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine corporate sponsorship of secondary school athletics. With a decrease of funding for school districts and tightening of budgets across the country, secondary schools have utilized a new major resource of income: sponsorship. Throughout the nation high schools are funding many programs, including athletics through the use of corporate sponsorship. Though previous research has concentrated on sponsorship at either the professional or collegiate level, the focus of this research is to further explore the business model of corporate sponsorship in in interscholastic athletics from the viewpoint of the school districts, understand benefits and …

The Green Shuttle Business Plan, Carter King

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Green Shuttle is a Limited Liability Company (Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada in Spanish) to be established in Costa Rica in September 2012. We are offering an exciting opportunity to two family/friends to invest in a start-up company targeting an underserved market in a developing country. The office for the tourist transportation company will be located in San Jose, Costa Rica. The company is seeking funding of USD $105,000 for the purpose of purchasing machinery, equipment, furniture, and fixtures necessary for operations and to cover estimated operating expenses for the first three months of operations. The investment opportunity offers a …

Market Value In The Lower 9th Ward: Evaluating Reinvestment For The New Orleans Re-Development Authority, Michelle M. Thompson, Patrick Coyle, Kristine Dickson, John Green, Rosa Herrin, M. Johanna Leibe, Michael Lostocco, Adarian Pike, Manyuan Reffell, Tyren Snyder, Sofie Strasser, Jill Zimmerman

Planning and Urban Studies Reports and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Construct Development Of Spiritual Leadership, Emily Rachael Lean

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although the past decade has shown a growing interest in workplace spirituality in the leadership and organizational literature, research in the area of spiritual leadership, is still in its infancy. The goal of this study was to delineate the construct of spiritual leadership and to provide theoretical guidelines for future research. A conceptual definition of spiritual leadership is offered in addition to a list of behaviors relevant to a spiritual leader. This study was the first of its kind to take into account the knowledge and opinions of both academic and practitioner subject matter experts. Furthermore, with regard to developing …

Critical Success Factors Of Location-Based Services, Natalie Jun Pei Chin

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Location-based services evolved with the advancement in mobile technology and wireless technology. Researchers have studied location-based services in terms of privacy, trust, and user acceptance. Statistics suggest the percentage of location-based services users is still relatively low. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to gain a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the critical success factors of location-based services. The electronic brainstorming approach was used to gather the opinions of an expert group of practitioners, researchers, and users on the critical success factors of location-based services. Through grouping similar factors together based on past literature, 15 categories of critical …

Internationalization Into The Gcc: Singapore In Retrospect, Caroline Yeoh, Wilfred Pow Ngee How, Hong Hao Chong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As internationalization becomes, increasingly, the chosen method of (ironically) competing for competitiveness among firms, new and rich frontiers for business come into ever-expanding demand. Among the foremost of these frontiers, the countries of the GCC represent both fertile ground and uncharted waters for internationalizing firms, with cultures as rich as their markets and sometimes byzantine yet fascinating socio-political forces presenting a plethora of challenges to erstwhile investing firms. As a culmination of our research into this region over past years, then, we examine in this paper, as a case study of sorts, the experiences of Singapore firms in the various …

More Than Just The Mean: Moving To A Dynamic View Of The Performance-Based Compensation, Christopher M. Barnes, Jochen Reb, Dionysius Ang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Compensation decisions have important consequences for employees and organizations and affect factors such as retention, motivation, and recruitment. Past research has primarily focused on mean performance as a predictor of compensation, promoting the implicit assumption that alternative aspects of dynamic performance are not relevant. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the influence of dynamic performance characteristics on compensation decisions in the National Basketball Association (NBA). We predicted that, in addition to performance mean, performance trend and variability would also affect compensation decisions. Results revealed that performance mean and trend, but not variability, were significantly and positively related …

Wage-Vacancy Contracts And Coordination Frictions, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a directed search model with risk-averse workers and risk-neutral entrepreneurs who can set up firms that post wage-vacancy contracts, i.e., contracts where firms can make payments to more than one applicant, and where the payments can be different for each applicant and be contingent on the number of applicants. We establish that the type of contracts the literature focuses on are not offered if firms can post wage-vacancy contracts. We show that there exists an equilibrium satisfying a Monotonic Expected Utility property which is efficient. Furthermore, we investigate the role of wage-vacancy contracts on welfare and competition.

Analyzing Financial Data Through Interactive Visualization, Fizi Yadav

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

This investigation explored the role data visualization in the scientific community and its effect on the cognitive ability of an individual. The research attempted to answer the question, “ Whether appropriate data visualization helps in better understanding of corporate financial data?” and used quantitative methods to gain an insight. Participants in the study were divided into two groups of 30 each, with one group receiving the treatment devised for the research and the other using the common prevalent method. Both the groups were subjected to a test, based upon the analysis of which a conclusion was derived. The subjects were …

Organizational Citizenship Behavior, Collectivism, And Job Satisfaction: Evidence From Mexico, Miguel Angel Baeza

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The purpose of this dissertation was to conduct a field study in a Mexican company in several Mexican regions. This study considered administrative professionals as a continuation to assess the validity of a recently developed Mexican Border OCB (MBOCB) scale by Ortiz (2000). This validation/refinement of an MBOCB scale was accomplished by comparing and contrasting results of this investigation, given the name of Mexican OCB (MOCB), with other OCB dimensions studies in other regions in order to evaluate criterion validity (e.g., convergent and discriminat) through factor loadings. Furthermore, this dissertation categorized these MOCB dimensions into more conceptualized terms utilized by …

Business Courts And Interstate Competition, John F. Coyle

William & Mary Law Review

Over the past two decades, specialized trial courts that hear business disputes primarily or exclusively have been established in nineteen states. To explain the recent surge of interest in these courts, policymakers and scholars alike have cited the process of interstate competition. Specifically, these commentators have argued that business courts serve, among other purposes, to attract out-of-state companies to expand their business, reincorporate, or litigate disputes in the jurisdiction that created the business court.

This Article critically evaluates each of these theories. It argues first that business courts do not serve to attract companies from other states because business expansion …

A Study Of The Leadership Code And Employee Engagement, Richard James Stewart

Dissertations

Ulrich, Smallwood and Sweetman’s (2008) leadership code presents a synthesized approach to developing individual leadership ability and forms part of the base for organizational leadership capability. Employee engagement research indicates that effective leaders consider employee engagement as one of their primary focuses (Weichun, Avolio, & Walumbwa, 2009). While studies of employee engagement and leadership approaches are plentiful in the research world, no research on the leadership code and its relationship to employee engagement can be found. Therefore, research to identify a relationship between the leadership code and employee engagement can provide a much needed advancement in the body of leadership …

The Impact Of A Direct Care Training Program On The Self-Efficacy Of Newly Hired Direct Care Employees At State Mental Health Facilities, Marcus Wayne Lewis

Dissertations

Self-efficacy has been shown to be an important element in the success of individuals in a variety of different settings. This research examined the impact of a two week new employee orientation training program on the general and social self-efficacy of newly hired direct care employees at state mental health facilities. The research showed that the training program did not have a statistically significant impact on the social self-efficacy of the new employees after the training or after one month on the job. The research also showed that the two week new employee orientation program did not have a statistically …

The Impact Of Celebrity Endorser Type And Source Credibility On The Advertising Attitudes And Purchase Intentions Of Indian Rural Consumers, Sidharth Muralidharan

Dissertations

India is among the fastest growing economies in the world and has the second largest population out of which 70% are considered rural. The rural consumer has witnessed a lifestyle shift wherein they have become brand conscious, consumption of media content has increased and a rising income has opened up possibilities never experienced before. Understanding the love for cinema, celebrity endorsement has become a popular marketing strategy being employed by advertisers in India. The purpose of this study was to find out which celebrity endorser type (national, regional or non-celebrity) was the most effective on rural consumer’s attitude toward the …

Employee Volunteer And Employer Benefits From Business-Education Partnerships As Perceived By Employee Volunteers, Evelyn Kwan Green

Dissertations

The U.S. is losing global competitiveness in its institutions, higher education, and the casino industry. An industry’s competitiveness depends on its ability to produce a highly skilled workforce, and higher education plays a key role in preparing students with skills critical to workplace success. Business and education entities form partnerships to use employee volunteerism (EV) as a student skill gaps solution and as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. Currently, education entities lack a systematic approach to measure and communicate the benefits of EV to their business partners. Without accountability, education entities may risk the long-term support of business partners. …