Business Commons^™

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teri Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Partnerships, Paradigms, And Social-System Change, Patricia Jessup, Beverly Parsons, Marah Moore

The Foundation Review

Social systems structures stem from underlying paradigms that are made up of beliefs, perspectives, and assumptions. Changing paradigms is a powerful way to change social systems. Such change is difficult and old paradigms keep pulling systems back to their former state.

This article examines three types of partnerships that focus on these deep structures and paradigms, and that go beyond implementing a project or initiative to create fundamental, lasting change in the underlying beliefs, perspectives, and assumptions on which such systems are grounded.

The functions of each type – project focused, formal-systems-focused, and community-grounded partnerships – are identified, along with …

Building A Field: Blue Shield Of California Foundation's Strong Field Project Leaves A Legacy And Valuable Lessons, Hanh Cao Yu, Jennifer Henderson-Frakes, Lucia Corral Peña

The Foundation Review

Relatively few comprehensive evaluations have assessed the principles, elements, and impacts of philanthropic organizations’ field-building endeavors. To help fill this gap, this article shares the results of a five-year evaluation of a large-scale field-building initiative: Blue Shield of California Foundation’s Strong Field Project.

The project’s goal was to strengthen the domestic violence field by equipping it with a critical mass of diverse individuals and organizations to lead a stronger movement to end domestic violence in California. Its approach aimed to strengthen field leadership and organizations, and to create vibrant collaborative networks.

Evaluation data show that the project achieved much of …

Developing A Framework For Grant Evaluation: Integrating Accountability And Learning, Shelley Scherer

The Foundation Review

Despite broad consensus among foundations on the value of capturing grant outcomes, there is no consensus on what to evaluate and how to define success, which makes it difficult for staff and grantees to navigate and apply multiple interpretations of evaluation “best practices.”

This article presents three questions designed to help foundations develop a framework for grant evaluation that reflects their beliefs about accountability and learning, balances evaluation costs and benefits, acknowledges the diversity of grants within the foundation’s portfolio, and allows their grantees to understand the foundation’s expectations for evaluation reporting.

A key takeaway from this article, drawn from …

Enhancing Foundation Capacity: The Role Of The Senior Leadership Team, Melissa A. Berman

The Foundation Review

This article examines the issue of foundation organization design and assesses how foundation leaders might think about their organizations as institutions.

Noting that any organization structure inhabited by human beings creates silos and territorial issues, foundation leaders are increasingly using two primary mechanisms to minimize these artificial barriers and maximize collaboration: enhanced headquarters functions to help integrate across the organization, and senior leadership teams.

This article reviews the structure, roles, responsibilities, and value-add of senior leadership teams at 19 foundations. The senior leadership team plays a crucial role in foundations, functioning as an advisory group to the president and chief …

Key Ingredients For School Food Systems: An Evaluation Of The Orfalea Foundation’S School Food Initiative, Holly Carmichael Djang, Barbara Andersen, Tatiana Masters, Jan Vanslyke, Blair Beadnell

The Foundation Review

In 2007, the Orfalea Foundation launched a nine-year strategic effort aimed at empowering public school districts in California’s Santa Barbara County. The purpose was to implement food-service operations that offered nourishing meals and to create a culture that prioritized the health and wellness of children and families.

The initiative, which involved 84 schools and more than 50,000 students, assessed the capacity of the county’s school food services, including existing skill levels and equipment needs. Striving to tailor programming to specific needs, the foundation emphasized stakeholder involvement throughout the process.

The foundation took a number of steps to understand the value …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Critical Team-Building Tools In Philanthropy, Ali Webb, Michael F. Bell

The Foundation Review

Using the experience of a team at a large, U.S.-based foundation over a four-year period, this article examines four essential tools for cultivating high-performing teams in the philanthropic sector.

The tools are giving and receiving feedback, the art of appreciations, organizing meetings to produce accountability, and assessing team communication styles, all applied with a racial equity lens. Use of these tools resulted in a more cohesive team that performed well when buffeted by changing priorities and substantial global problems.

The tools are likely applicable in every sector. But when used by foundations where large-scale social issues are the crux of …

Appendix - Program Officer Practice Profile - Using Implementation Science To Translate Foundation Strategy, Allison Metz, Douglas Easterling

The Foundation Review

APPENDIX Program Officer Practice Profile

The Art And Science Of Place-Based Philanthropy: Themes From A National Convening, Giannina Fehler-Cabral, Jennifer James, Hallie Preskill, Meg Long

The Foundation Review

This article shares insights and implications generated at a convening titled Is This a Better Place? The Art and Science of Place Evaluation. Participants included funders, evaluators, and community partners who came to discuss and share effective learning practices and the role of evaluation in place-based work.

Place-based work requires a long-term investment in collaborative partnerships to create, nurture, and sustain local and systemic changes. In order to support this complex work, partners have to incorporate approaches that are nimble, iterative, and responsive to the changing needs of a “place” over an initiative’s life span.

The convening produced a number …

Using Implementation Science To Translate Foundation Strategy, Allison Metz, Douglas Easterling

The Foundation Review

New strategies sometimes require foundations to shift their staffing, organizational structures, administrative processes, and, possibly, their culture. The field of implementation science offers guidance to foundations as they effectively implement strategies that depart from prevailing practice.

This article focuses on two specific tools from implementation science: the practice profile and the Implementation Drivers Assessment. The practice profile answers the question, "What does the strategy require of particular foundation staff?" The implementation drivers analysis explores the broader question, "What does the strategy require in the way of organizational change within the foundation?”.

These two tools were used by the Kate B. …

The Foundation Review 8.2 Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

An Experimental Investigation Of Product Competition And Marketing In Social Networks, Cen Chen, Zhiling Guo, Shih-Fen Cheng, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We conduct computational experiment using Facebook data to evaluate competing firms’ initial market seeding and subsequent targeted marketing strategies that influence consumers’ new product adoption decisions. We find that firms generally overspend their advertising budget in the market seeding phase. In the subsequent market advertising phase, a coupon strategy (equivalent to price discount) generally yields higher market share than the strategy of distributing free product samples. The effect is more significant when both price and product quality are low. We offer managerial insights into firms’ effective competition strategies for new product introduction in the presence of consumers’ word of mouth …

Demo: Smartwatch Based Shopping Gesture Recognition, Meeralakshmi Radhakrishnan, Sharanya Eswaran, Sougata Sen, Vigneshwaran Subbaraju, Archan Misra, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the current retail segment, the retail store owners are keen to understand the browsing behavior and purchase pattern of the shoppers inside the physical stores. Profiling the behavior of the shopper is key to success for any marketing strategies that can optimize or personalize shopping-related services in real-time. We envision that exploiting the knowledge of real-time behavior of shopper’s in-store activities enables novel applications such as: (a) targeted advertising or recommendations: based on longer term shopper profiles, (b) proactive retail help to assist the shoppers who are confused in choosing between two items, (c) smart reminders that can remind …

The Business Case For Hiring A Veteran: Beyond The Clichés, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This report details the results of a comprehensive review of academic literature from the fields of business, psychology, sociology, and organizational behavior positioned to illustrate the foundational elements around which employers can formulate a research-informed logic for recruiting and developing military veterans in the civilian workforce. The business case is based on 10 research-informed propositions on the value of a veteran in a competitive business environment.

Key Findings: 2016 Atrs Global Airport Performance Benchmarking, Chunyan Yu

Publications

The ATRS Global Airport Benchmarking Project measures and compares the performance of several important aspects of airport operations: Productivity and efficiency, unit costs and cost competitiveness, financial results and airport charges. The report also examines the relationships between various performance measures and airport characteristics as well as management strategies in order to provide a better understanding of observed differences in airport performance. This report includes 205 airports and 24 airport groups of various sizes and ownership forms in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. This presentation highlights key findings on efficiency and cost.

Collaborative Development Of A Small Business Emergency Planning Model, Arthur Henry Hendela

Dissertations

Small businesses, which are defined by the US Small Business Administration as entities with less than 500 employees, suffer interruptions from diverse risks such as financial events, legal situations, or severe storms exemplified by Hurricane Sandy. Proper preparations can help lessen the length of the interruption and put employees and owners back to work. Large corporations generally have large budgets available for planning, business continuity, and disaster recovery. Small businesses must decide which risks are the most important and how best to mitigate those risks using minimal resources.

This research uses a series of surveys followed by mathematical modeling to …

Mediating Chance Encounters Through Opportunistic Social Matching, Julia M. Mayer

Dissertations

Chance encounters, the unintended meeting between people unfamiliar with each other, serve as an important social lubricant helping people to create new social ties, such as making new friends or finding an activity, study or collaboration partner. Unfortunately, social barriers often prevent chance encounters in environments where people do not know each other and people have to rely on serendipity to meet or be introduced to interesting people around them. Little is known about the underlying dynamics of chance encounters and how systems could utilize contextual data to mediate chance encounters. This dissertation addresses this gap in research literature by …

Poitín – A Spirit Of Rebellion And Inspiration, James Peter Murphy

Conference papers

Abstract: Poitín is Ireland’s most ancient spirit distilled in rural locations for many centuries, its dark and chequered history continues to intrigue tourists and people alike, often referred to as Ireland’s Mescal, Cachaca or Grappa. This drink which preserved many rural communities and saved them from falling into poverty, driven underground for over 300 years it is making a significant comeback. This paper will explore the evolution of this ancient Irish spirit from its earliest mentions to its modern day popularity in the world of distilled spirits. Poitín is history in a bottle it is inextricably woven into the fabric …

Volume 21 Issue 4 Introduction (Library Marketing And Communications), Joan Petit

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Oregon libraries provide an incredible array of resources and services, but sometimes we struggle to educate our users and each other about all that is available. Over the past several years, many libraries have become more intentional in our efforts to market and promote our offerings, through traditional PR and advertisements as well as newer approaches like social media. However, we may lack the formal training and expertise to do this well—marketing is not a class offered in all library school programs—and, even with appropriate training, we may lack the budget and staff to implement a large-scale marketing program.

This …

2016-May-31-Ccrhs Hall Of Fame Nominations, University Marketing And Communications, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

No abstract provided.

Positioning The Beneficiary: The Role Of Entwinement In Social Enterprise Impact And Performance Management, Elena Dowin Kennedy

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation extends and contributes to the extant literature on social enterprise by examining the enterprise-beneficiary relationship in social enterprises with particular focus on performance measurement and social value creation. Ironically, while social missions and commitment to beneficiaries is what distinguishes social entrepreneurship from traditional entrepreneurship, little research has been conducted to examine this relationship. Utilizing a portfolio of 101 social enterprises based in New England, this study consisted of two phases: the development of a typology of social enterprise based on the enterprise–beneficiary relationships present in the portfolio, and a comparative case study closely examining six cases of social …

2016-05-29 Letter To The Board Of Regents, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate.

Faculty Senate Records

A letter from the Faculty Senate to the Morehead State University Board of Regents from May 29, 2016.

Endogeneity In Ceo Power: A Survey And Experiment, Zhichuan Li

Business Publications

The endogeneity problem has always been one, if not the only, obstacle to understanding the true relationship between different aspects of empirical corporate finance. Variables are typically endogenous, instruments are scarce, and causality relations are complicated. As the first attempt to summarize different econometric methods that are commonly used to address endogeneity concerns in the context of corporate governance, we explore the relation between CEO power and firm performance, as an experiment, to illustrate how these methods can be used to mitigate the endogeneity problem and by how much. After carefully dealing with the endogeneity issues, we find strong evidence …

2016-May-28-Railroad Museum Events, University Marketing And Communications, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

No abstract provided.

Matthew H. Patton Order Denying Motion For Partial Judgment On Pleadings, Melvin K. Westmoreland

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Advancing Women And Leadership Theory: Moving Forward, Susan R. Madsen

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

2016-May-26-Trained Immunity, University Marketing And Communications, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

No abstract provided.