Business Commons^™

Discerning The Effects Of Timing Of Different Alliances: Similarities And Differences On New-Venture Survival, David Gomulya

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

New-venture survival has greatly interested many scholars. While different alliances have beenshown to increase survival, the literature remains virtually silent regarding the effect of timing ofdifferent alliances. Yet, such timing can significantly affect survival. Should a new venture formtechnology alliances, or marketing and distribution alliances, earlier and reap any potential benefitsearlier, or should they form them later? How would similarities and differences between differentalliances influence the effect of their timings? In this study, I examine these questions.

Content Contribution In Social Media: The Case Of Youtube, Qian Tang, Bin Gu, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social media allows individuals and businesses to contribute contents for public viewing. However, little is known about the underlying incentives that why content providers derive utilities from such activities. In this study, we build a dynamic structural model to recover the utility function for content providers. Our model distinguishes short-term payoffs based on ad revenue sharing from long-term payoffs driven by content providers' reputation. The model was estimated using a panel data of 914 top 1000 video providers on You Tube from Jun 7th, 2010, to Aug 7th, 2011 since top providers are more likely to be encouraged by these …

Preface, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As late as 2001, Indian outward investment was less than US $1 billion. Instead, India, like all developing countries, was actively courting foreign investment into the country. By 2006, India had reached the tipping point. For the first time, Indian outward investment of US $10 billion had outstripped foreign investment into India. The spending spree continued unabated in 2007. Indian companies arranged or concluded US $21 billion in 40 foreign investment deals in January and February of 2007 alone. Moreover, Indian foreign investment in the financial year closing 31 March 2007 exceeded the cumulative total foreign investment by Indian companies …

The Competitive Dynamics Of New Dvd Releases, Anirban Mukherjee, Vrinda Kadiyali

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the U.S. motion picture industry, DVDs are increasingly a major source of revenue for moviestudios. Two important strategic decisions for DVDs are the release date and price. Industry evidencesuggests studios consider various release options as evidenced by their pre-release announcements. Whendeciding DVD release dates and prices, studios must consider the following. First, weeks of high demandpotential, increase sales. Second, intense competition in weeks of peak demand might reduce marketshare, lower margins and lead to higher costs of release. Third, deferring a DVD release (e.g. to a nonpeakdemand week) after the movie’s theatrical run reduces the potential sales of the …

What Are Analysts Really Good At?, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi. Zach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Sell-side analysts employ different benchmarks when defining their stock recommendations. Forexample, a ‘buy’ for some brokers means the stock is expected to outperform its peers in the same sector(“industry benchmarkers”), while for other brokers it means the stock is expected to outperform themarket (“market benchmarkers”), or just some absolute return (“total benchmarkers”). We use thesebenchmarks to analyze the role of stock picking, industry picking and market timing in contributing to theperformance of stock recommendations. We are able to do so given that different benchmarks suggest theuse of different sets of abilities. Analysis of the relation between analysts’ recommendations and theirlong-term …

The Effects Of Political Connections On The Level And Value Of Cash Holdings: International Evidence, Yuanto Kusnadi, K.C. John Wei

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we examine the role of political connections on corporate liquidity policies and their consequences in an international setting. We find that managers of politically connected firms have a tendency to hoard more cash than their non-connected counterparts. Moreover, presence of political connections reduces the value of cash holdings. Further analysis reveals that our main findings are more pronounced for firms in emerging markets as well as for firms in countries with weak legal protection of investors and high levels of corruption. Overall, our empirical results corroborate previous findings on the agency cost explanation for corporate cash holdings.

Front Matter Of Volume 7 Number 1, Tufail A. Qureshi

Business Review

IBA Business Review Front Matter

Financial Reforms And Corporate Finance In Emerging Markets: An Analysis Of Dividend Policy Among Public Listed Firms In Pakistan, Mohammed Nishat, Wali Ullah

Business Review

This paper analyzes the dividend behavior of 535 Pakistani listed companies during 1988 to 2005 using the Probit regression model. The findings validate the theoretical prediction for positive and significant impact of last year dividend on the current year dividend decision. More profitable and liquid firms have a higher probability to declare the dividends. Furthermore, firm size, ownership, equity and tax are positively related to the dividend declaration decision. The firms' dividend behavior differs significantly across Industries. The secondary market development has a significant effect on dividend decision and financial liberalization has been associated with shift of firms from debt …

A Comparative Study Of Leading Business Schools Of Pakistan: The Market Acceptability Of Iba Business Graduates In The Corporate Sector, Yaseen Ahmed Meenai, Rizwan Raheem Ahmed

Business Review

In Pakistan, establishing and running business schools in private sector flourished because of the increasing propensity of students for business studies to commence their career as executives in corporate and other sectors. But, this has become a commercial activity. There are only few public and private institutes which are the role model for others. The mushroom growth of private and public business schools all over Pakistan has opened the possibilities for businesses/industries to have an access to qualified business graduates, at the same time students also have a wide range of choice of business institutes both from private and public …

Mathematical Modelling Of A Low Approach Evaporative Cooling Process For Space Cooling In Buildings, Medhi Nasrabadi, Donal Finn, Ben Costelloe

Conference Papers

This paper describes a mathematical model of a low approach open evaporative cooling tower for the production of high temperature indirect cooling water (14-16°C) for use in building radiant cooling and displacement ventilation systems. There are several potential approaches to model evaporative cooling, including: the Poppe method, the Merkel method and the effectiveness-NTU (ε-NTU) method. A common assumption, applied to the Merkel and ε-NTU methods, is that the effect of change in tower water mass flow rate due to evaporation is ignored, which results in a simpler model with reduced computational requirements, but with somewhat decreasedaccuracy. In this paper, a …

Multi-Party Multi-Period Supply Chain Coordination, Thin Yin Leong, Michelle Lee Fong Cheong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We apply combinatorial auction as a coordination mechanism to smooth demands placed on suppliers' limited production capacities, allowing several manufacturers to share common suppliers effectively. Products are bidders bidding for parts from suppliers, consuming their capacities in different time periods. The fourth party logistic (4PL) provider acts as the auctioneer to coordinate bids and perform price iterations. We leverage on the strong links between the Lagrangian relaxation method and combinatorial auction, where the Lagrange multipliers serve as the supply capacity reserve prices, to balance the demand and supply of capacities. To prevent cyclic behaviour and to increase convergence speed, we …

A Sentiment Analysis Of Singapore Presidential Election 2011 Using Twitter Data With Census Correction, Murphy Junyu Choy, Michelle Lee Fong Cheong, Nang Laik Ma, Ping Shung Koo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sentiment analysis is a new area in text analytics where it focuses on the analysis and understanding of the human emotions from the text patterns. This new form of analysis has been widely adopted in customer relationship management especially in the context of complaint management. However, sentiment analysis using Twitter data has remained extremely difficult to manage due to sampling biasness. In this paper, we will discuss about the application of reweighting techniques in conjunction with online sentiment divisions to predict the vote percentage that individual presidential candidate in Singapore will receive in the Presidential Election 2011. There will be …

Optimal Decision Making For Online Referral Marketing, Zhiling Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Widely available web 2.0 technologies not only bring rich and interactive user experiences, but also easily help users advertise products or services on their own blogs and social network webpages. Online referral marketing, for example, is a business practice that rewards customers who successfully refer other customers to a website or upon completion of a sale usually via their own social contacts. The referral rewards come in different forms such as shopping vouchers, redeemable points, discounts, prizes, cash payments, etc. We develop an analytical model to evaluate the business potential of incorporating an online referral marketing program into the firm's …

A Fuzzy Logic Multi-Criteria Decision Framework For Selecting It Service Providers, Amir Karami, Zhiling Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Selecting IT service providers in information systems outsourcing involves both qualitative and quantitative evaluations. This paper proposes an integrated multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework to effectively handle uncertainty and subjectivity in the vendor selection process. The proposed methods apply fuzzy logic approach to integrate qualitative survey data into traditional multi-criteria decision models such as data envelope analysis (DEA), analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methods, and TOPSIS. Based on case studies from Iranian banking industry, we empirically test the proposed framework and show it is superior to existing methods. We demonstrate that the fuzzy logic approach provides a robust analysis for vendor selection …

Independent Financial Advisers’ Opinions For Public Takeovers And Related Party Transactions In Singapore, Wai Yee Wan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines the role and utility of opinions (IFA opinions) rendered by independent financial advisers (IFAs), who are required to be appointed in connection with takeovers of, and related party transactions entered into by, companies which are listed in Singapore. Three main problems are identified: (1) data from 122 IFA opinions issued between 2008 and 2010 in connection with takeover offers of Singapore-listed companies show that there are a significant number of IFAs who do not use the standard of “fair and reasonable” in assessing offers and instead use tests that are more equivocal, rendering the opinions less helpful; …

Will It Be A Tough Year?, Daniel D. Selby, W. Darrell Walden

Accounting Faculty Publications

While there may be some glimmers of hope about a turnaround to the U.S. economy, such as decreasing unemployment, Virginia CPAs aren't betting on a huge recovery in the next year.

The second annual VSCPA Economic Outlook Survey reveals Virginia CPAs are more pessimistic about the United States and Virginia economies than they were last year, but they are actually more optimistic about Virginia's economy compared to the United States as a whole. Likewise, VSCPA members continue to feel good about the economic outlook in Virginia relative to neighboring states.

Accounting Comparability, Audit Effort And Audit Outcomes, Joseph Hongbo Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The paper investigates the usefulness of accounting comparability for audit engagement. Comparability among peer firms in the same industry reflects the similarity and the relatedness of firms’ operating environment and accounting reporting. From two perspectives of “inherent business risk” and “external information efficiency”, comparability is helpful for auditors to assess client business risk and lowers the cost of information acquisition, processing, and testing. For a given firm, I hypothesize that the availability of information about comparable firms is helpful for auditors by improving audit accuracy and audit efficiency. The comparability proxy is based on a variety of measures including pair-wise …

An Administrative Mess: A Case Study From The Officiating Community, Stacy Warner, Jacob K. Tingle, Pamm Kellett

School of Business Faculty Research

This case is written for instructors of classes focused on strategic management, organisational behaviour, human resource management, and/or an officiating course. The case highlights the numerous administrative processes a new employee in a sport organization would face. Although the case is fictional it is based on the authors’ personal and professional experiences in athletics administration and officiating, and further draws upon the authors’ research in the area of officiating. Consequently, this case study was constructed based on first-hand observation, interviews and conversation with numerous officials and administrators, and through the examination of documents frequently used to manage officials. As a …

Assessing Intention Of Volunteers To Develop Their Leadership: Creation Of An Instrument Using The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Janina Marie Fuller

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

During the current tough economic times volunteers are playing an increasingly important role in making human services widely available and in building collaborative community partnerships. Volunteers are most likely to be productive, to be satisfied with their experience, and to sustain their volunteer service when the opportunities provided to them are aligned with their motives for volunteering, which may include building the kinds of knowledge, skills, and interpersonal awareness that are the cornerstones of leadership. Organizations that purposefully recognize, support, and develop their volunteers’ leadership potential generate positive outcomes not only for themselves and their volunteers, but also for the …

Why Did Financial Institutions Sell Rmbs At Fire Sale Prices During The Financial Crisis?, Craig B. Merrill, Taylor Nadauld, René M. Stulz, Shane M. Sherlund

Faculty Publications

Much attention has been paid to the large decreases in value of non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) during the financial crisis. Many observers have argued that the fall in prices was partly caused by fire sales. We use capital requirements and accounting rules to identify circumstances where financial institutions had incentives to engage in fire sales and then examine whether such sales occurred. For financial institutions subject to credit-sensitive capital requirements, capital requirements increase as an asset’s credit becomes impaired. When accounting rules require such an asset’s value to be marked-to-market and the fair value loss to be recognized in …

Soft Strategic Information And Ipo Underpricing, James C. Brau, James Cicon, Grant Mcqueen

Faculty Publications

Using content analysis we measure the impact of soft information, derived from words in IPO registration documents, on IPO pricing efficiency. First, using 2,298 U.S. IPOs from 1996 to 2008, we find that an IPO document’s strategic tone correlates positively with the stock’s first-day return; more frequent usage of positive and/or less frequent usage of negative strategic words lead to more IPO underpricing. Second, we find that an IPO document’s strategic tone is negatively correlated with the stock’s long-run return. Together, these findings imply that investors initially misprice soft information in registration statements, which mispricing is eventually corrected. Additionally, we …

How Faith And Leadership Are Connected: A Study Of Catholic Women Administrators In A Southern Public Institution Of Higher Education, Mary Blanchard Wallace

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Studies concerning spirituality and higher education, particularly for the college student, are beginning to appear in journals, conference papers, and presentations. However, there is little research conducted with professionals in higher education on the construct of spirituality. Spirituality has so many different definitions in the literature, it is difficult to define, and perhaps even more complex to study academically. Using a research-based conceptual model for religious faith, developed within the study of family sciences, this study examines the lived experience of how and why Catholic women administrators connect their faith and leadership in a setting of public institutions of higher …

Inefficient Labor Or Inefficient Capital? Corporate Diversification And Productivity Around The World, Todd Mitton

Faculty Publications

I study the relation between corporate diversification and labor productivity in a sample of over 500,000 firms from 46 countries. Across the entire sample, greater diversification is associated with significantly lower labor productivity. The negative relation between diversification and labor productivity is not stronger in countries with more burdensome employment regulation, but it is significantly stronger in countries with better financial development. In addition, the negative relation is stronger in industries with high capital/labor ratios. Overall, the results suggest that the lower productivity in diversified firms is due more to the misallocation of capital than to the inefficient use of …

Unpacking The Privacy Paradox: Irrational Decision-Making Within The Privacy Calculus, David W. Wilson, Joseph S. Valacich

Faculty Publications

Understanding privacy is important to individuals and organizations. This research in progress develops a theoretical model that incorporates both actual disclosure behavior and the potential for irrational behavior induced by overriding situational factors presented at the time of the privacy disclosure decision. Actual disclosure behavior is seldom measured in privacy research, and most prior work has assumed the disclosure decision to be a fully rational one. This research challenges that assumption, and the eventual completion of the project will contribute uniquely to our understanding of the privacy calculus in online transactions.

An Investigation Of Internal Control Related Frauds And Auditor Litigation: Pre- And Post- Sarbanes-Oxley, Section 404, Ifeoma Udeh

Theses and Dissertations

Using 629 observations of U.S. publicly listed firms with internal control related frauds from 2000 to 2006; this study investigates the change in auditor litigations in the Post- Sarbanes Oxley, Section 404 period. To the extent the conditions of the internal control in place are inadequate or non-existent, the possibility of the occurrence of internal control related fraud heightens. Thus, the inability of auditors to detect a financial statement misstatement due to internal control fraud in a timely manner exposes auditors to litigation (Barra, 2010; Heninger, 2001; Caplan, 1999). This situation was prevalent in the recent notable corporate failures that …

Robust Distributed Scheduling Via Time Period Aggregation, Shih-Fen Cheng, John Tajan, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we evaluate whether the robustness of a market mechanism that allocates complementary resources could be improved through the aggregation of time periods in which resources are consumed. In particular, we study a multi-round combinatorial auction that is built on a general equilibrium framework. We adopt the general equilibrium framework and the particular combinatorial auction design from the literature, and we investigate the benefits and the limitation of time-period aggregation when demand-side uncertainties are introduced. By using simulation experiments on a real-life resource allocation problem from a container port, we show that, under stochastic conditions, the performance variation …

Cycles Of Electronic Health Records Adaptation By Physicians: How Do The Positive And Negative Experience With The Ehr System Affect Physicians' Ehr Adaptation Process?, Cherie Noteboom, Dhundy Bastola, Sajda Qureshi

Research & Publications

The integration of EHR in IT infrastructures supporting organizations enable improved access and recording of patient data, enhanced ability to make improved decisions, improved quality and reduced errors in patient care. Despite these benefits, there are mixed results as to the use of EHR. The literature suggests that the reasons for the limited use relate to policy, financial and usability considerations, but it does not provide an understanding of reasons for physicians’ limited interaction and adaptation of EHR.

Following an analysis of qualitative data, collected in a case study at a hospital using interviews, this research explains how physicians interact …

Global Csr And Photographic Credibility: Exploring How International Companies Portray Efforts Through Photographs In Csr Reports, Janel Lynn Norton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We are living in the age of the visual. Imagery is an important element in constructing and deriving meaning through symbols, colors, and context. Images may hold persuasive power, be used as evidence, or simply provide a moment of beauty. Organizations rely on photographs to help them convey an image to their stakeholders within annual reports. Telling an organizations' story through photographs has become an intrinsic part of their efforts to convey sustainability. We live in the age of transparency, and organizations that construct an image that is not truthful will face consequences in today's socially connected and conscious world. …

Trust Development In Distributed Teams: A Latent Change Score Model, Evgeniya Pavlova

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Advances in collaborative work tools and communication technologies have made computer-mediated teams a part of virtually every organization. One of the challenges for members of virtual teams is the development of trust. This study examined the reciprocal relationship between trust and effectiveness in virtual teams, employing an input-process-output-input approach. Data were collected from 183 individuals comprising 61 teams. Teams participated in a computer-simulated search and rescue mission. Three alternative latent change score structural equation models were fit to the data to examine the bidirectional relationships between trust and effectiveness. Results revealed that the two

factors of trust, cognition-based trust and …

The Effect Of Mortgage Liberalization On Housing Patterns In Tampa Bay, Jason Richardson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to determine whether the process of mortgage finance liberalization, manifested in concurrent activities of securitization, deregulation, and neo-liberal policy, have resulted in changes to the tenure of residents in neighborhoods in Tampa Bay. It makes use of existing literature on gentrification and mortgage finance and compares those findings with three sample neighborhoods in and around the city of Tampa. To do so the thesis employs data collected from lenders pursuant to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, court records of sales and mortgages filed with the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Hillsborough County, and interviews with stakeholders …