Business Commons^™

A Cross-Sectional Investigation Of The Relationships Education, Certification, And Experience Have With Knowledge, Skills, And Abilities Among Aviation Professionals, Daryl Watkins, Jason M. Newcomer, Matthew P. Earnhardt, James W. Marion, Rose A. Opengart, Aaron M. Glassman

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The aviation industry is a complex system with many different segments and as such, makes hiring the right person a complicated endeavor. Previous research suggested that knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are composed of elements that include education, certification, and experience (ECE). The relative importance of ECE is dependent on the type of job within the aviation sector. The objective of this mixed-methods concurrent triangulation study was to examine aviation industry professionals’ perceived relationship between their ECE and the development of their KSAs. The convenience sample consisted of 404 professionals in the aviation industry who completed the KSA Composite Measure …

Foundations In Wisconsin: A Directory [35th Ed. 2016], Mary C. Frenn, John Brick, Brittany Carloni, Jeremy Cluth, Kathryn Hendrickson, Sarah Holland, Clare Mcnamara, Katie Murray, Catherine Simmerer, Dominic Zappia

Foundations in Wisconsin: A Directory

The 2016 release of Foundations in Wisconsin marks the 35^th edition of the print directory and the 16^th edition of the online version. The directory is designed as a research tool for grantseekers interested in locating information on private, corporate, and community foundations registered in Wisconsin. Each entry in this new edition has been updated or reviewed to provide the most current information available. Most of the data was drawn from IRS 990-PF tax returns filed by the foundations. Additional information was obtained from surveys, foundation websites, and annual reports.

This edition paints a very positive picture of …

Exploring Supply Chain Relationships And Information Exchange In Uk Grocery Supply Chains: Some Preliminary Findings, Mark Barratt

Management Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

How Do We Communicate Who We Are? Examining How Organizational Identity Is Conveyed To Members, Beth S. Schinoff, Kristie M. Rogers, Kevin G. Corley

Management Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Considerations For Effective Requirements Analysis In Offshore Software Development Projects: Lessons From Multi-Method Research, Vanita Yadav, Dhruv Nath, Monica Adya, Varadharajan Sridhar

Management Faculty Research and Publications

Offshore software development using geographically distributed teams is an accepted practice in software development today. However, software development companies have largely only offshored the software development lifecycle’s coding and testing phases. However, lately, offshoring the requirements analysis (RA) phase has become increasingly viable for several reasons including the software industry’s maturation and improved communication technologies. However, successfully evaluating this highly interactive phase between geographically dispersed client and provider teams requires special considerations. In this paper, we present practical insights garnered from conducting experiments and surveys of IS professionals from the Indian software industry and from extensively examining the literature. Our …

Investigating The Role Of Internal Hospital Factors And The External Environment On Healthcare Quality Outcomes And Patient Choice, Deepa Wani

Theses and Dissertations

The healthcare landscape has been changing rapidly with changes in the reimbursement system, financial incentives for using information technologies, pay for performance programs for quality improvements and increased demand for hospital services from millions of newly insured patients. Understanding the impact of these policy changes in an operations management context has been an understudied area. We contribute to the literature by incorporating research streams from healthcare, economics, marketing and quality management. This dissertation consists of three studies. The first study examines the impact of the mandated use of electronic health records, and finds that such records not only improve the …

Articulating The Balance Of Power: Comparing The Relative Weights Of Human Capital Resources And Organizational Capabilities, Michael D. Ulrich

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have argued the importance of human capital to organizations for many years. Recent theoretical developments have distinguished between human capital, which is owned by individuals, and human capital resources, which are available to units for performance and competitive advantage. This distinction calls attention to different types of human capital, generic or specific. Studies have found positive unit-level effects emanating from both human capital resource types yet few studies have considered multiple types simultaneously, making it challenging to know which has greater explanatory power. Additionally, studies have also not considered the impact of organizational capabilities in conjunction with human capital …

The Unwritten Rules About Breaking The Rules: Collective Frames And The Legitimation Of Contested Practices Within Consumption Communities, Nicholas J. Pendarvis

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the legitimation of contested consumption practices in the context of a highly competitive online gaming community. Building on prior research, which has relied on an institutional perspective to shed light on how perceptions of legitimacy form and evolve in the marketplace, this research explores the role of legitimacy at the level of consumption communities to highlight the ways in which consumers socially construct “collective frames” which give meaning to action and organize these communities. In the empirical context studied here, online gamers have incorporated user-created modifications (e.g., modified game accessories, or "mods") into game play over the …

Ethics At Eastern Michigan University And The College Of Business: A Study Of Academic Dishonesty And Professionalism, Ashley Shahan

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Organizational Correctives For Improving Recognition Of Near-Miss Events, Robin L. Dillon, Catherine H. Tinsley, Peter M. Madsen, Edward W. Rogers

Faculty Publications

Despite decades of research on organizational disasters, such events remain too common. Scholars across a wide range of disciplines agree that one of the most viable approaches to preventing such catastrophes is to observe near-misses and use them to identify and eliminate problems before they produce large failures. Unfortunately, these important warning signals are too often ignored because they are perceived as successes rather than near-misses (or nearfailures). In this article, we explore the effect of a climate for safety on improving near-miss recognition by observers, hypothesizing that safety climate increases the level of attention that observers pay to the …

Airline Safety Improvement Through Experience With Near-Misses: A Cautionary Tale, Peter Madsen, Robin L. Dillon, Catherine H. Tinsley

Faculty Publications

In recent years, the U.S. commercial airline industry has achieved unprecedented levels of safety, with the statistical risk associated with U.S. commercial aviation falling to 0.003 fatalities per 100 million passengers. But decades of research on organizational learning show that success often breeds complacency and failure inspires improvement. With accidents as rare events, can the airline industry continue safety advancements? This question is complicated by the complex system in which the industry operates where chance combinations of multiple factors contribute to what are largely probabilistic (rather than deterministic) outcomes. Thus, some apparent successes are realized because of good fortune rather …

Scaling Up Your Story: An Experiment In Global Knowledge Sharing At The World Bank, Shad Morris, James B. Oldroyd, Sita Ramaswami

Faculty Publications

Timely and effective knowledge transfer is increasingly important in today’s technologically advanced global market. However, a myopic focus on efficiency has frequently rendered most organizational knowledge ineffective. By coupling technology with a formal system that captures informal stories in an engaging and entertaining way, actors within an organization may be more willing to listen to what geographically dispersed colleagues are doing, and may be more likely to ascribe value to that information. Focusing on the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group, we conducted interviews with those sharing and using knowledge, and performed content analyses of 175 knowledge-sharing narratives. …

Firm-Specific Human Capital Investments As A Signal Of General Value: Revisiting Assumptions About Human Capital And How It Is Managed, Shad S. Morris, Sharon A. Alvarez, Jay B. Barney, Janice C. Molloy

Faculty Publications

Research Summary:

Prior scholarship has assumed that firm-specific and general human capital can be analyzed separately. This paper argues that, in some settings, this is not the case because prior firm-specific human capital investments can be a market signal of an individual’s willingness and ability to make such investments in the future. As such, the willingness and ability to make firm-specific investments is a type of general human capital that links firm-specific and general human capital in important ways. The paper develops theory about these investments, market signals, and value appropriation. Then the paper examines implications for human resource management …

Pipes, Pools And Filters: How Collaboration Networks Affect Innovative Performance, Harpeet Singh, David Kryscynski, Xinxin Li, Ram Gopal

Faculty Publications

Innovation requires inventors to have both "new knowledge" and the ability to combine and configure knowledge (i.e. "combinatory knowledge") and such knowledge may flow through networks. We argue that both combinatory knowledge and new knowledge are accessed through collaboration networks, but that inventors' abilities to access such knowledge depends on its location in the network. Combinatory knowledge transfers from direct contacts, but not easily from indirect contacts. In contrast, new knowledge transfers from both direct and indirect contacts, but is far more likely to be new and useful when it comes from indirect contacts. Exploring knowledge flows in 69,476 patents …

Portfolio Spillovers And A Limit To Diversification, Bronson Argyle

Faculty Publications

Securities are exposed to the return shocks of seemingly unrelated securities in common mutual fund portfolios. Shocks to firm returns mechanically affect fund returns that hold these securities, which induce investor-driven flows and rebalancing, resulting in temporary flow-induced price pressure (FIPP) on other firms in common portfolios. Instrumenting to address flow/return endogeneity, a one standard deviation increase in the FIPP corresponds to a 15-60 bps increase in daily abnormal firm returns. This pressure reverses in 5-6 days and is larger for liquid firms and for funds experiencing outflows. Failing to properly estimate this correlation implies that an investor is exposed …

Who Is Easier To Nudge?, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, Sean (Xixiang) Wang

Faculty Publications

Identifying who is more influenced by a default is challenging, since individuals may be more likely to remain at the default either because they are more susceptible to defaults in general or because the default is closer to their preferred choice. We apply a statistical model to ten large companies’ 401(k) plans to distinguish between these two channels. Even after controlling for contribution rate preferences, low-income and young individuals are slower to opt out of contribution rate defaults. The evidence is consistent with the default changing contribution rate preferences, as predicted by anchoring or endorsement effects, and there is weaker …

Integrating Csr And Behavioral Ethics: Csr And Circles Of Moral Regard, Isaac Smith

Faculty Publications

My hope is to highlight a point of intersection between CSR and Behavioral Ethics research that might serve as a “primer” of sorts, encouraging more integration between the two literatures.

Serious Games: An Evaluation Framework And Case Study, David W. Wilson, Jeff Jenkins, Nathan Twyman, Matthew Jensen, Joe Valacich, Norah Dunbar, Scott Wilson, Claude Miller, Bradley Adame, Yu-Hao Lee, Judee Burgoon, Jay F. Nunamaker

Faculty Publications

Serious games show promise as an effective training method, but such games are complex and few guidelines exist for their effective evaluation. We draw on the design science literature to develop a serious game evaluation framework that emphasizes grounding evaluation in each of four key areas— theoretical, technical, empirical, and external. We further recommend that serious game developers assume an iterative, adaptive approach to grounding an evaluation effort in these four areas, emphasizing some areas more than others at different stages of the development cycle. We illustrate our framework using a case study of a large-scale serious game development project. …

How Do Firms Use Cash Tax Savings: A Cross-Country Analysis, Danielle Higgins Green, Jon Kerr

Faculty Publications

Cash tax avoidance activities can serves as a significant source of additional cash flows for firms; how managers utilize this additional cash source and the resulting consequences is an empirical question. To answer our research question, we examine the association between the spread between a country’s enacted statutory rate for the year and the cash effective tax rate, and two uses of cash – investment and dividend payout – for an international sample of firms. In the cross-section, we find the firms are more likely to invest cash tax savings rather than distribute them in the form of dividends and …

Does Use Tax Evasion Provide A Competitive Advantage To E-Tailers?, Jeffrey L. Hoopes, Jacob Thornock, Braden M. Williams

Faculty Publications

Many online retail firms (e-tailers) do not collect sales tax from the majority of their customers. This practice provides these firms with a potential competitive advantage over traditional retailers. We examine stock market returns and analysts' sales forecast revisions surrounding federal legislative proposals, such as the Marketplace Fairness Act, that could erode this alleged competitive advantage for e-tailers. Following events that indicated an increased likelihood of federal sales tax legislation, we find negative abnormal stock returns for e-tail firms relative to traditional retail firms. We also find that analysts forecast a future reduction in sales revenue for e-tailers. These findings …

Assessing Alternative Techniques For Scaling The Family Leisure Activity Profile: Recommendations For Future Family Leisure Measurement, Karen K. Melton, Gary Ellis, Ramon Zabriskie

Faculty Publications

Psychometric properties of the Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP) were evaluated using family leisure and family functioning ratings from 884 parents and children residing in the United Kingdom. Review and critique of the FLAP resulted in identification and evaluation of three alternative scaling techniques. Scaling Technique 1was current practice, Technique 2 focused on family leisure environments rather than family leisure activities, and Technique 3 involved generating an estimate of duration of participation in family leisure in natural units of time. Inter-rater agreement and reliability were strong for all three scaling techniques. Technique 3 yielded the best model fit. Empirical relations …

Assessing Users Satisfaction With Web Digital Library: The Case Of Universiti Teknologi Mara, Mohamad Noorman Masrek, James Eric Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of user satisfaction in the context of academic web digital library (DL). A model based on the re-specified information system success model was developed and tested using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.

Design/methodology/approach – The study employed survey research methodology with self-administered questionnaire as the research instrument. The questionnaire was developed based on the instruments used by previous researchers. The population of the study was students enrolled for the bachelor’s degree in the Faculty of Information Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. These students were chosen because of …

Real-Time Hand Tremor Detection Via Mouse Cursor Movements For Improved Human-Computer Interactions: An Exploratory Study, Parker A. Williams, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Joseph S. Valacich

Faculty Publications

Millions of people experience hand-tremors—rhythmic oscillation of the fingers, hands, or arm that cause shaking in the hand. People who experience hand tremors often experience difficulty in human computer interactions. For example, when browsing a website, people with hand tremors may have difficulty navigating or clicking on links in the website. With sever hand tremors, effective computing is difficult without assistance. Past research has developed interventions that can be automatically deployed by a website to make it more accessible to people with hand tremors. We build on this research by creating a methodology to unobtrusively detect hand tremors, allowing these …

Integrating Facial Cues Of Threat Into Security Warnings–An Fmri And Field Study, David Eargle, Dennis Galletta, C. Brock Kirwan, Anthony Vance, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

Security risks often occur because insiders fail to react appropriately to security warnings, due to inattention to the warnings. This study extends security warning design research that has investigated the impact of different designs, including different symbols of threat such as yellow triangles and exclamation marks.

This work uses media naturalness theory in an attempt to boost user engagement with security warnings. We integrated validated images of facial expressions depicting fear and disgust, which signaled an environmental threat, into a browser security warning. An fMRI study (N=23) revealed activity located in the right amygdala to be differentially associated among warnings …

To Email Or Not To Email: The Impact Of Media On Psychophysiological Responses And Emotional Content In Utilitarian And Romantic Communication, Taylor M. Wells, Alan R. Dennis

Faculty Publications

Lean asynchronous computer mediated communication is often considered poor for communicating emotion, yet individuals continue to use it for business, personal, and even romantic communication.We used a lab experiment to investigate the influence of media (email and voicemail) and task type (romantic and utilitarian) on both the psychophysiological responses of senders and the content of the resulting messages. Message senders had more arousing physiological responses when sending emails than when leaving voicemails. An interaction exists between media and task such that the content of romantic email messages was more positive than romantic voicemails; while the opposite was true for utilitarian …

Corporate Governance And Risk Management In Gcc Banks, Ahmed A. El-Masry, Tarek Abdelfattah, Ehab Elbahar

Plymouth Business School

The current study examines the relationship between corporate governance and risk management in GCC banks. It aims to contribute to the literature by providing empirical evidence from the GCC’s banking industry of the association between risk management and corporate governance characteristics such as role duality, board size and percentage of nonexecutives. Using sample of 900 observations from banks in the Gulf countries, non-parametric regression, Quantile and panel data analysis have been used to test the hypotheses and the proposed model. The study uses data from financial institutions in the Gulf countries over the period from 2003 till 2012. Findings suggest …

Perceptions And Competence Of Turkish Pre-Service Science Teachers With Regard To Entrepreneurship, Isa Deveci

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The aim of this study is both to determine the perceptions of pre-service science teachers towards the concepts of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial characteristics and to investigate the perceptions of pre-service science teachers regarding transferring the entrepreneurial characteristics to students. This study is designed as a qualitative study and a phenomenological research approach is used. A total of 12 pre-service science teachers from grades 5 to 8 participated in the study. Data were gathered through the use of semi-structured interviews. The data were evaluated through both descriptive and content analysis. The results show that the perceptions of the 12 …

Compensation Or Feedback: Motivating Performance In Multidimensional Tasks, Margaret H. Christ, Scott A. Emett, William B. Tayler, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Employees often perform tasks with multiple dimensions. In this study, we examine how employees' performance on multidimensional tasks differs under different control structures. We conduct two experiments in which we manipulate the presence of compensation controls and the presence of feedback controls on multiple task dimensions. Our findings suggest that when employees are compensated on multiple dimensions they commit to multiple goals and divide their attention among those task dimensions. However, when feedback controls are implemented on one task dimension with compensation controls on another dimension, employees can improve performance on individual dimensions as well as their overall task performance. …

Applying Basic Gamification Techniques To It Compliance Training: Evidence From The Lab And Field, Ryan J. Baxter, D. Kip Holderness, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Companies depend on strong internal controls to protect the integrity of accounting information systems. IT security and data privacy training are critical controls to safeguarding company information. However, employees often dislike the training, which can cause a lack of attention to and poor understanding of training concepts, leading to less effective internal controls. To improve the training experience, companies are implementing principles of games into employee training modules; a practice known as gamification. Using a laboratory experiment of data privacy training and a field study involving a publicly-traded bank’s rollout of IT security training, we test whether a training environment …

Do Managers Really Guide Through The Fog? On The Challenges In Assessing The Causes Of Voluntary Disclosure, Travis Dyer, Mark Lang, Lorien Stice-Lawrence

Faculty Publications

Guay e tal. (2016) document that firms with longer and more complex 10-Ks provide  relatively more voluntary disclosure, which they interpret as evidence that managers use voluntary disclosure to mitigate negative effects of complex mandatory disclosure. We review the results of Guay et al. and focus on two main challenges to inferring causality: (1) the coincidence of upward over-time trends in annual report length, complexity, and voluntary disclosure, and (2) the potential for omitted correlated variables, such as changes in firm economics, to drive changes in 10-K textual characteristics and voluntary disclosure. While the results in Guay et al. are …