Business Commons^™

More Than Just A Tie: The Role Of Content And Context In Firm Alliance Networks, Holly Loncarich

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers often rely on social network theory to understand both the structural antecedents and outcomes of strategic alliances. However, many alliance studies only emphasize the existence of a tie and rarely theorize further about their efficacy. This failure to consider the role and variation of content in alliance ties (e.g. resource commitment, trust, information exchange) may hinder the application of various network theories at the interorganizational level. Further, interorganizational network studies have largely neglected the role of the external environment, or context, in interfirm collaboration and often fail to consider how the external environment shapes firm network actions and outcomes. …

Insider Trading Enforcement And The Private Information Environment: Evidence From The Newman Ruling, Andrew T. Pierce

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I exploit a shock to U.S. insider trading law to investigate whether a reduction in the enforceability of tipper-tippee insider trading restrictions leads to changes in information parity among investors and the efficiency of price discovery. The December 2014 Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in US v. Newman constrained enforcement by restricting the types of exchanges between managers and investors that trigger tipper-tippee insider trading liability. Following Newman, I find that Second Circuit hedge funds experienced a significant increase in their stock picking ability of Second Circuit stocks in terms of preempting future earnings announcement returns and future …

The Effect Of Endorser Credibility On Purchase Intention Based On Golf Products’ Attribute: Elaboration Likelihood Model Perspective. Golf Equipment Vs. Golf Apparel, Jongyeol Yoo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study is to examine the main features of a sport celebrity which make them credible as an endorser such that it influences the consumer’s purchase intention based on the products’ attributes. The study used a non-probability sample, a convenient sample method, limiting the generalization possibilities. A total of 401 surveys were collected for a golf apparel study while a total of 397 surveys were collected for a golf equipment study.

Findings of the golf apparel study indicated that trustworthiness, attitude toward advertisement, and involvement in golf positively influence on purchase intentions. On the other hand, attractiveness, …

Employee Engagement As A Shared Responsibility: A Study Of Engagement Strategies Employed By Legal Assistants, Thomas A. Steele

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify strategies used by legal assistants to engage, stay engaged, and reengage, when appropriate, in their work, in particular when common organizational efforts fall short or do not exist. Constructivism and job demands-resources (JD-R) were the primary frameworks for understanding and analyzing the phenomenon of developing engagement strategies.

Qualitative data were drawn through semi-structured interviews with 16 legal assistants. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Trustworthiness and validity were enhanced by using multiple respondents and allowing each to review the transcripts for accuracy, fairness, and clarity. The transcriptions were then analyzed for themes. …

Let's Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Transparency: Food And Technology In The Information Age, Scarlettah Schaefer

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Food and technology have had a long and tempestuous relationship. Current methods of food production and processing in the industrialized world depend heavily on technological developments. However, all technologies are not created equal. Some can produce food that is safer, more sustainable, more nutritious, or longer lasting. Some can have the opposite effect: increasing opportunities for adulteration, increasing the difficulty in detecting food fraud, and contributing to both foreseeable and unforeseeable health or ecological costs. Increasingly sophisticated technologies often become less apparent to the average consumer. For example, consider irradiated meat or genetically modified foods as opposed to freezer storage …

Preventatitve V. Punitive: How Genetically Modified Rice Litigation Shaped Regulation And Remedy For Genetically Engineered Crops, Allison Waldrip Bragg

Journal of Food Law & Policy

As agricultural technology develops, new issues emerge. While genetically engineered crops can increase yields and productivity, they can also increase new legal concerns that had not previously existed. One such concern is the comingling of non-engineered crops with genetically engineered varieties. The corruption of plants that are not engineered is a problem not only because of the loss of that original plant itself if the entire plant population were to become comingled, but also because of the inability to sell a crop that has been intended as a non-engineered crop when it is infiltrated by genetically engineered material.

Do We Need Kyc/Aml: The Bank Secrecy Act And Virtual Currency Exchanges, Stan Sater

Arkansas Law Review

"Technology is moving faster than government or law can keep up. It's moving faster than you can keep up: you should be asking the question of what are your rights and who owns your data. - Gus Hunt, 2013 CIA Chief Technology Officer1 The Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, commonly referred to as the Bank Secrecy Act (the BSA), is the U.S. government’s 800-pound gorilla when it comes to regulating virtual currency.2 It has been expanded, transformed, and updated since its initial passage in 1970 to keep pace with new developments in global terrorism and money laundering, all the …

Crypto And Blockchain Fundamentals, Mary C. Lacity

Arkansas Law Review

"I believe blockchain will do for trusted transactions what the Internet has done for information." - Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM Since the 1990s, we have had an "Internet of Information" that allows us to seamlessly share information such as documents, images, emails, and videos over the Internet. While most Internet users do not need to understand the details of the technical protocols operating underneath user-friendly software interfaces, it is helplful to understand how they work at a high-level. With the "Internet of Information," copies of information are routed over the Internet. If a sender emails a friend, the sender …

The Case For Preempting State Money Transmission Laws For Crypto-Based Businesses, Carol R. Goforth

Arkansas Law Review

Few industries are evolving as rapidly or as dramatically as those involving payment systems. The recent advent and spread of cryptocurrencies and associated trading platforms and exchanges, as well as ongoing improvements and innovations in FinTech generally, ensure that this is going to continue for the foreseeable future. Along with this rapid change has come a dynamic increase in the number and range of payment startups, a development that has been recognized as likely to redound to the benefit of consumers and the broader economy. The problem is simply that regulation is not keeping up with innovation.

Study On New Sampling Plans And Optimal Integration With Proactive Maintenance In Production Systems, Sinan Obaidat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sampling plans are statistical process control (SPC) tools used mainly in production processes. They are employed to control processes by monitoring the quality of produced products and alerting for necessary adjustments or maintenance. Sampling is used when an undesirable change (shift) in a process is unobservable and needs time to discover. Basically, the shift occurs when an assignable cause affects the process. Wrong setups, defective raw materials, degraded components are examples of assignable causes. The assignable cause causes a variable (or attribute) quality characteristic to shift from the desired state to an undesired state.

The main concern of sampling is …

Buffer Zones And The Recreational Golf Sector: A Negligence Case Content Analysis, Natalie Bird

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Buffer zones are a risk management method used within sport and recreation to protect participants and spectators from avoidable injury. Within the recreational golf sector, buffer zone standards do not exist. This poses a problem as golf courses in the recreational sector serve a wide range of customers in terms of age, skill level, and experience. A legal case content analysis of 1,561 golf negligence lawsuits aimed to answer research questions related to locations of incidents, circumstances that led to injury, and injuries or damages that were the result of errant golf shots. A Westlaw search provided the data for …

Student-Run Agencies: A Guideline For Agency Survival, Brooke Borgognoni

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to study 110 student-run agencies (including advertising, public relations, integrated/digital marketing, communications, and graphics and/or design) in the U.S. by analyzing how they currently operate, what practices exist in the agencies for learning, growth, and continuation and how leadership roles of students and advisors influence the agency. This project built upon past studies of student-run agencies and expanded on the topic using the evolutionary theory of a firm by analyzing factors that determine whether it appears that a student-run agency might dissolve or last. This was determined by measuring the faculty advisor involvement level, …

Merchants Without Borders: Qusman Traders In The Arabian Gulf And Indian Ocean, C. 1850-1950, Mansour Alsharidah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a history of the economic, social, and political life in Arabia, the Arabian Gulf, and the Indian Subcontinent from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. It draws on materials from al-Qasim, Kuwait, Bahrain, Karachi, Bombay, Calcutta, and London, in addition to travelers’ accounts. These materials and accounts are used to explore the extent and significance of al-Qasim’s international trade between Arabia and India through the Arabian Gulf. It further examines how Qasimi merchants mobilized commodities and traded in the port cities of the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, taking advantage of changing regional and global political …

The Relationship Between Leadership Practices And Organizational Commitment Of Telecommunicators, André Lanier

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The performance of 9-1-1 telecommunicators can mean the difference between life and death for the person on the other end of a phone. Effective leadership is critical to the success of the public safety answer point (PSAP) and the organizational commitment of the 9-1-1 telecommunicator. Bass and Riggio’s (2006) Full Range of Leadership Theory (FLRT) is the basis for the current study. The FRLT covers leadership styles from laissez-faire to transformational (Matikainen, 2019).

The purpose of conducting the study was to identify and describe the 9-1-1 telecommunicator’s organizational commitment based on the PSAP leadership categories. The study made use of …

Relationship Marketing And Intercollegiate Sport Promotion, Alison Fridley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The first article, a case study on a NCAA Division I Power Five university in the southeastern United States, employed a case study framework, explored target markets and exposure techniques through both the planned behavior theory and social identity theory theoretical lenses. This study aimed to better understand how university students and booster club members identify as a social group. The data emerged into four distinct themes, including communication, social interaction, connection, and hospitality. The findings suggested booster club members are primary fans and help the team generate fan interest. The importance of sociability was clear and the implications for …

Auditor Information Spillovers And Company Operating Performance: Evidence From Targeted Auditor Switches, Tyler Kleppe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine whether companies realize operational benefits from making “targeted auditor switches” (i.e., engaging a new auditor recently dismissed by a competitor company). While prior work provides evidence consistent with companies perceiving that auditor information spillovers are costly, there is sparse extant evidence as to whether auditors actually do transfer operational information across companies. I find that companies that switch to a competitor’s former auditor realize significant subsequent improvements in operating performance, and I provide evidence that the association between targeted auditor switches and improvements in operating performance varies predictably with several across- and within-market factors. In …

Market Coverage, Franchise Ownership, And Outlet Survival, Jingbo Zhang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the relationships between market coverage, franchise ownership, and franchise outlet survival rate.

In the first essay, I develop a spatial market coverage measure by integrating geocodes of outlets across five fast-food franchise systems. This spatial market coverage builds upon one navigation system algorithm by utilizing geographic coordinates. This measure can be applied by entrepreneurs to examine their geographic coverage and address issues of market oversaturation and lack of coverage.

In the second essay, I extend the spatial market coverage and examine how this spatial market coverage and franchise ownerships affect franchise outlet survival rate, which has not …

Outcomes Of Platform Openness In Complementary Markets, Franck Loic Soh Noume

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mobile platform ecosystems are hyper-competitive environments. They provide important entrepreneurial opportunities for businesses that develop mobile apps. Platform openness is foundational in mobile platform ecosystems as it enables interactions between complements and platform. Although there are several studies on the impact of platform openness, our understanding of the outcomes of platform openness remains limited. In this dissertation, we examine thoroughly underexplored facets of platform openness as well as understudied outcomes. In the first essay, we investigate the impact of platform openness on incumbent complements’ performance outcomes. We unravel important causal mechanisms related to competition dynamics between new entrants and incumbent …

Consumer Food Socialization In The School And Home, Ashley Deutsch Cermin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumer socialization literature has focused on individual socialization agents and their isolated effects. However, as John (1999) pointed out, children do not grow up in a social vacuum. Instead, the multitude of agents socializing children find their narratives interacting and their effects continually shaped and co-created. To understand how school-age children learn about food, I interrogate the complexity of socialization in three essays.

In the first essay, I take an ethnographic approach to investigate the interactive effect peers and adults, namely service workers, have on children’s food socialization in a public-school lunchroom. By combining a Loseke’s (2007) layered narrative model …

Asymmetric Exchange Rate Pass-Through In Southeast Asian Rice Trade, Taylor Wiseman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Asian countries consume approximately 90% of the world’s rice supply. Between 2007 and 2014, Thailand, Vietnam, and India accounted for 60% of the world’s exports of rice. This paper estimates the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on bilateral trade flows in Southeast Asia. Because most Southeast Asian countries have state trading enterprises or agencies controlling rice trade, this analysis will provide insight as to whether these agencies respond to exchange rate fluctuations in a manner consistent with economic theory. Behavior inconsistent with economic theory could provide evidence of stabilizing domestic prices, market power, or export expansion policies. The analysis focuses …

Live Thankfully Little Rock: A Case Study Of Marketing For Nonprofit For Resale Shops, Ann Claire Cook

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the best practices that nonprofit resale shops should follow when marketing.

A Case Study On Whether A Business Should Own Or Lease Its Real Estate, Benjamin Cooper

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Businesses are continually faced with many difficult decisions to make daily that can have a significant impact on their success. Whether it is if they should adopt a new accounting practice, work with a new supplier, or push into a new consumer sector, these decisions will affect their operations and long-term plans. One of these major decisions that a business has to make is whether they should own or lease their real estate. Depending on the size, type, and scope of a business this decision could be made differently but for certain companies there is definitely a correct answer. Buying …

Maximizing The Academic And Professional Success Of First-Generation College Students In Biomedical Engineering, Mona Ahmed

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Although efforts to increase the inclusion, retention, and success of first-generation college students (FGCSs) in research universities have resulted in noticeable progress, FGCSs still feel academically challenged, isolated, and show more anxiety and depression compared to non-FGCSs. Moreover, FGCSs may possess additional underrepresented identities that exacerbates the problem. There is more risk of dropping out of academic programs for FGCSs enrolling in STEM degrees, especially those of more multidisciplinary nature such as Biomedical Engineering. From the overall population of the State of Arkansas, only 23.3% have a bachelor’s degree or higher which is the third least percentage in the United …

Examining Farm Bill Expenditures Over The Last Decade, Bailey Riggs

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

The American Farm Bill is a bill that is passed by Congress every five to six years. This legislation is omnibus, meaning it covers a wide variety of topics such as nutrition, conservation, rural development, crop insurance, and much more. This thesis will study the effectiveness of the allocation of funding covered in the Farm Bill, specifically Farm Bills from the last 12 years. This bill has a significant impact on farmers who need support from the government to remain profitable and continue their operation. This thesis will examine how shifts in funding can affect farmers growing crops, raising beef …

The Economics Of On-Farm Rice Drying In Arkansas, Clayton Parker

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

Globally, rice producers are faced with the temporal problem of deciding the optimal time to being rice harvest. When harvested, paddy rice is typically at a moisture content (HMC) between 15 and 22%. Upon delivery, the rice is subsequently dried by the mill to a moisture content (MC) of 12.5%. Riceland Foods Inc., the largest miller of rice in the world, uses a stair-step pricing model to charge farmers to dry in price/unit as the MC of grain decreases from a range of +22% to 13.5%. This study estimates an alternative linear relationship in the stair-step model to determine MC …

The Political Preferences Of Arkansas Farmers And Ranchers, Rachel J. Barry

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research was conducted to evaluate where farmers and ranchers find political information and assess their political preferences. By conducting a survey of Arkansas farmers and ranchers we were able to determine that they prefer face to face interaction as a source of information by large margins. They typically consult friends, peers, and extension agents where appropriate. Depending on the type of political information they are seeking (information about candidates as opposed to information about policy topics), they often used other types of information sources such as the internet and broadcast media. We also ascertained that farmers and ranchers have …

Accelerating Leadership And Professional Development For Adults: Developing A New Measure For Assessing Kegan’S Constructive Developmental Orders, Tom Pierce Coker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much has been learned and theorized about adult development and its importance in leadership effectiveness and professional development interventions thanks to the framework proposed by Kegan’s Constructive Developmental Theory (CDT). However, research and practice in this area has been hindered by the difficulty of utilizing the current method for assessing constructive developmental Level, the Subject-Object Interview. The present study addresses this problem through the development and preliminary validation of a new self-report instrument that measures the Levels of development described in Kegan’s CDT. This new measure, the Constructive Developmental Self-Report (CDSR), was constructed through theoretical-based item generation that utilized both …

Simulation Modeling Of Cross-Dock And Distribution Center Based Supply Chains, Ghewa Al Chall

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Companies are implementing new strategies to meet the customer requirements in terms of quality, timing, and cost. One of these strategies is cross-docking, which can be defined as the process of consolidating the products coming from different suppliers, but having the same destination, with minimal handling and almost no storage between loading and unloading of the goods. The purpose of this research is to investigate the benefits of having a cross-docking facility in a supply chain. In this research, we focus on developing discrete event simulation models using the opensource Java Simulation Library (JSL). Also, we work on augmenting an …

Follow The Leader: A Followership Perspective In Restaurants, Courtney Troxtel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While leadership has been a popular research topic in the hospitality industry, followership has a limited amount of research contributing to the body of knowledge. Followers are a key aspect of the leadership equation; therefore, it is important to understand their role in the industry. The purpose of this study is to explore the leadership theory of followership in restaurants to examine the connections between followership training, voice behavior and employee turnover rates. The study adds to the existing knowledge of followership in the hospitality industry and provides ideas for future research and practical implications.

A descriptive survey was made …

Data Breach Consequences And Responses: A Multi-Method Investigation Of Stakeholders, Hamid Reza Nikkhah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The role of information in today’s economy is essential as organizations that can effectively store and leverage information about their stakeholders can gain an advantage in their markets. The extensive digitization of business information can make organizations vulnerable to data breaches. A data breach is the unauthorized access to sensitive, protected, or confidential data resulting in the compromise of information security. Data breaches affect not only the breached organization but also various related stakeholders. After a data breach, stakeholders of the breached organizations show negative behaviors, which causes the breached organizations to face financial and non-financial costs. As such, the …