Business Commons^™

A Two-Echelon Location-Inventory Model For A Multi-Product Donation-Demand Driven Industry, Milad Khajehnezhad

Theses and Dissertations

This study involves a joint bi-echelon location inventory model for a donation-demand driven industry in which Distribution Centers (DC) and retailers (R) exist. In this model, we confine the variables of interest to include; coverage radius, service level, and multiple products. Each retailer has two classes of product flowing to and from its assigned DC i.e. surpluses and deliveries. The proposed model determines the number of DCs, DC locations, and assignments of retailers to those DCs so that the total annual cost including: facility location costs, transportation costs, and inventory costs are minimized. Due to the complexity of problem, the …

Giving To Be Seen: The Influence Of Facebook Charitable Advertisements On Conspicuous Donation Behavior, Lei Jia

Theses and Dissertations

The arduous financial environments that nonprofit organizations face today motivate nonprofits to continuously search and leverage new communication platforms such as social media to approach a wider individual donor base. This thesis examines whether a Facebook charitable appeal promoting a donation via Facebook Gifts may attract

Facebook users to give for conspicuousness (a public display of a donation behavior). Findings of this thesis revealed a gender difference in responses to the Facebook charitable appeal due to the gender difference in self-construals such that men were more likely to give via Facebook Gifts when the ad promoting the donation via Facebook …

Compelled To Be Connected: An Ethnographic Exploration Of Organizational Culture, Work-Life Balance, And The Use Of Mobile Workplace Technologies, Kristopher J. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

This study is an ethnographic exploration of organizational culture, work-life balance, and the use of information and communication technology ("ICT") in the work and home settings. The researcher was embedded for nine weeks within the Information Technology ("IT") department at the corporate headquarters of a mid-sized manufacturing firm in the upper Midwest. The espoused values of the organization proved contradictory, one favoring work-life balance and the other requiring that employees be available to work anytime and from anywhere. The behaviors observed provided insight as to why employee actually used ICT after hours--because it was required of their role and/or because …

A Study Of Transformational Initiatives And Social Capital, Craig Dean Plain

Theses and Dissertations

A STUDY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL INITIATIVES AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Organizations seek to improve themselves. They do so to become more efficient, to increase sales...indeed, to survive. Many have implemented various initiatives to transform themselves. For some, these efforts have paid off. Companies such as General Electric, Motorola, Allied Signal, and others have claimed billions of dollars in cost reductions and increases in revenue (Altinkemer, Ozcelik, & Ozdemir, 2011; Lucier & Seshadri, 2001). Such successes have driven many others to implement these transformational initiatives. Yet the failure rate hovers around 70% (Kotter J. P., 1995).

This study sought to expand the body …

Examining Generational Differences In The Workplace: Work Centrality, Narcissism, And Their Relation To Employee Work Engagement, Judith L. Fenzel

Theses and Dissertations

In the workplace of today, an unprecedented four generations of workers work side by side. While this blend of generations adds valuable diversity to the workforce, it also adds complexity.

Despite popular interest in the subject of generations in the workplace, systematic research of the specific generational differences of work centrality, narcissism, and their relation to employee engagement is limited. It is vital to examine the possibility of significant generational differences in order for HRD practitioners and scholars to understand the focus and direction of strategies intended to improve individual and organizational performance. Using a quantitative research methodology, an online …

Three Essays On Investor Reaction To Strategic Alliance Announcements, Matthias Bollmus

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT ESSAY 1

RAPID OVER-REACTION: PERCEIVED VALUE CREATION VIA ALLIANCE ANNOUNCEMENTS

The management literature has widely acknowledged the importance of studying and understanding the determinants of the market's reactions to the announcements of strategic alliances. With a focus on dyadic alliances, I ask what types of information signaled to the market by the alliance announcement influence the investors' perception of value. I hypothesize that the type of technical expertise, relationship expertise, and market expertise of each alliance partner, expressed as either explorative or exploitative, sends decodable signals to the investors, which in turn influences their reaction to the new alliance …

Essays On Institutional Trading Around The World, Hui Xiao

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays on institutional trading around the world. The first essay (Chapter 1) investigates the trading behavior of institutional investors from 28 countries around the world. During the period from 1999 to 2008, we find strong empirical evidence that institutional investors tend to move their funds out of volatile foreign equity markets and back to their home markets, particularly following the recent 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Our results also show that institutional investors prefer to hold more liquid stocks in highly volatile markets, suggesting evidence of flight to liquidity. Institutional investors are also inclined to increase …

Three Essays In Labor Economics, Benjamin Jack Van Kammen

Theses and Dissertations

There are three chapters in this dissertation, each of which consists of a journal-length article. They are on the following subjects.

The first chapter uses ordinances in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. to measure the effects of mandated paid sick leave on employment and wages. Using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, an employment increase is observed in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. relative to places without an ordinance. This evidence suggests that sick leave mandates correct a market failure of under-provision of benefits.

The second chapter uses a novel measure of distance based on the O*Net Content Model …

A Review And Analysis Of The Effects Of Financial Slack On Firm Innovation, Tony Croix Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

I analyze the effect of financial slack on firm innovation by reviewing prior research and conducting an empirical analysis. The goal of this paper is to describe, refine and expand research on the relationship between financial slack and innovation. I describe how past scholars' conceptualizations and operationalizations of financial slack vary across studies and are often inconsistent with theoretical definitions suggesting that financial slack is a resource that exists in excess of some foreseeable need. My theoretical analysis suggests that one solution to this problem may be to operationalize financial slack as a proportion of total R&D spending (what I …

Innovation And Commercialization Practices - A Qualitative Analysis Of Novascan Llc, Shabistan Sheerin

Theses and Dissertations

The processes for commercialization of medical devices in healthcare are complex and varied, and it has been difficult to define the ingredients of success. There exists a need to better understand evidence based best practices as there is lack of documented evidence based on best practices for commercialization of medical devices by startups. Commercialization of innovative medical devices in healthcare is in constant demand and the reasons are many fold. Most of the research based startups act as agents of economic development and therefore they need to function more efficiently and effectively. There exists a constant demand from end users …

Essays On Dispersion, Fairness Perception And Partitioning Of Online Prices, Yiyuan Liu

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is primarily on online pricing, by empirically investigating how formats and structures of prices influence consumer responses and subsequent purchasing behavior, brand choice, etc. Currently, three essays of my dissertation explore topics on price fairness perception, price dispersion, as well as price partitioning.

First, although previous researchers have tested effects of price changes on consumer's perceptions on price (e.g., Maxwell 1999, Campbell 2007), little work has focused on the effects of prices/costs levels on online price judgments and virtually none has examined it jointly with both internal/external reference prices from multiple comparison parties. Less work has applied price …

Economic Perspective On Cloud Computing: Three Essays, Abhijit Dutt

Theses and Dissertations

Improvements in Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and standardization of interoperability standards among heterogeneous Information System (IS) applications have brought a paradigm shift in the way an IS application could be used and delivered. Not only an IS application can be built using standardized component but also parts of it can be hosted by different organizations in different locations provided it can be accessed using the Internet. This dissertation is an attempt to uncover unique aspects of this phenomenon known as Software as a Service (SaaS).

The first essay examines design decision making by SaaS providers by analyzing effects of two …

Essays On The Role Of Investment Banks As Ipo Underwriters, Mutual Fund Managers, And Merger Advisors, Tim Mooney

Theses and Dissertations

In my first essay, I examine whether the focus on advisors' merger completion abilities is driven by acquirers seeking to complete mergers unconditionally, regardless of value implications, or if it is driven by value-maximization considerations. Advisors that complete a higher percentage of announced mergers are associated with more certain future merger completion. Results reveal that completion expertise has positive value implications, but only for acquirers with strong corporate governance. Results also suggest that the level of corporate governance of the acquirer determines the value consequences of an advisor's merger completion expertise. In my second essay, I examine the way investment …

An Integrated View Of Personal, Relational, And Organizational Resources: How They Ignite Creative Behavior At Work, Dilek Gulistan Yunlu

Theses and Dissertations

Individual creativity is an important antecedent of organizational innovation (Amabile, 1988; Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin, 1993; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham 2004). In the current hypercompetitive, global work environment, more managers recognize that in order to remain competitive, they need their employees to be engaged in their work and demonstrate creative behaviors (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002). Therefore, it is important to understand the mechanisms by which individuals demonstrate creative behaviors at work, especially by utilizing the resources that are available to them to facilitate creativity and overcoming the demands that hinder their creative behavior at work.

Employing the Job …

Virtual Team Citizenship Behaviors: Scale Development And Validation, Joline Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are the extra-role, voluntary behaviors performed by organization members for the benefit of the organization. These behaviors have been widely studied and several dimensions have been defined. However, the majority of the work on OCBs focuses on traditional organizations where all employees are collocated and can interact on a regular basis. With the changing workplace, employees can now work remotely or across different locations and still be expected to work together. Those employees who are not collocated may not feel the need to benefit the organization, but may feel connected to the team and therefore participate …

Three Essays On Financial Intermediation And Asset Pricing, Ujjal Chatterjee

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays on financial intermediation and asset pricing. In the first essay (Chapter 1), I investigate individuals' consumption-portfolio choices in the presence of financial intermediation. Unlike the existing literature where individuals seamlessly transform their savings to productive assets, I show that individuals employ intermediaries and that individuals' consumption growth is a scaled version of intermediaries' liabilities growth. As a consequence, the growth of intermediaries' balance sheet variables, such as liabilities and assets, determines the stochastic discount factor. That is, it is shown that the stochastic discount factor for asset returns is affine in intermediaries' balance sheet …