Business Commons^™

The Role Of Peer Irrigators On The Choice And Intensity Of Efficient Irrigation Techniques, Noah Hayward

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

We evaluate the use and the proportion of farmland that uses prominent irrigation practices in Arkansas, USA. A bi-variate sample selection model evaluates the determinants of the share of irrigated land in a farm that uses each practice. We evaluate the relationship between the irrigation practices peers use and the intensity that another farmer utilizes that same irrigation practice(s). So, if a peer of an Arkansas Delta farmer uses center pivot irrigation, for example, it increases the probability that the farmer him or herself will use acreage using center pivot by 66%. Conversely, a peer using surge irrigation only results …

Developing A Food Assistance Informational Graphic And Implementation Plan Based On Consumer Evaluation, Mckenna Cunningham

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

Food insecurity refers to the uncertainty of having or acquiring enough food to sustain all members of a household. In 2019, 10.5% of households in the United States reported being food insecure. Of that number, 4.1% of households reported ‘very low food security,” meaning that there were additional periods of time in which one or more household members restricted or forfeited their food intake due to lack of money or other resources (USDA, 2020). Without access to proper nutrition, the health of both adults and children are put at risk for illness including anxiety, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other …

Conscious Couture: Upcycling And Sustainable Style, Sara Wilson

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The fashion and apparel industry has become synonymously associated with wastefulness and pollution due to the high levels of production, consumption and disposal of the billions of garments produced globally each year. Throughout the industry, brands have continued to set sustainability goals for both efforts to reduce their environmental impacts as well as appeal to the ‘green’ consumer. The power that a consumer holds can be leveraged for driving sustainability related initiatives through an apparel market that is virtually available everywhere. Since the 1990s, the secondhand market has developed from simply an economically friendly place to purchase necessities, to its …

The Effect Of Perceived Justice And Organizational Embeddedness On Employee Morale And Voluntary Turnover Rate After Layoffs In The Hospitality Industry, Jungjoo Bae

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that reduce the detrimental impact of layoffs. This research found that damaged employee morale and increased turnover intention of survivors after layoffs can cause more adverse impact on companies where layoffs were conducted. Also, it was found that perceived justice and organizational embeddedness can reduce the possibility of having destructive outcomes after layoffs. Additionally, the moderating impact of organizational embeddedness on the effect of perceived justice on employee morale and turnover intention was researched. Data were gathered from junior and senior undergraduate students majoring in hospitality management with at least …

Measuring Quality Of Virtual Event: Scale Development And Validation, Sung-Eun Kim

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The unprecedented global pandemic caused by COVID-19 has led to a critical reconsideration of the way humans work and live. In turn, true paradigm shifts are arising across diverse industries based on remote and online communication. Undoubtedly, traditional in-person events are transforming into virtual events through more innovative platforms and safer experiences. The market for virtual events is considerably expanding and promising; thereby, the demand for research on the nature and dynamics of virtual events is increasingly growing. However, research on virtual events and virtual event quality (VEQual) is still in its infancy and has lagged behind, resulting in a …

Factors Influencing Golfers' Intention To Use A Direct Booking Website, Junghoon Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

To find out golfers’ perceived value of a direct booking website, an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT 2) model is adapted to test out golfers’ behavioral intention when they book a tee time via a golf course’s website. The influential factors are Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, Facilitating conditions, Hedonic Motivation, and Price Saving Orientation that predicts golfers’ behavioral intention to use. A sample has chosen through the screening questions that the target sample, who are an adult at age 18 or older, have played golf at a public golf course over the last …

Gambling Behaviors Among Vip Hosts In Macao, Tiange Xu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many studies have shown that casino employees are at-risk gamblers, but limited research on this topic has been conducted in Asia. Given the unique gambling setting of Macao, it would be meaningful to investigate the gambling behaviors among VIP Hosts, who play an important role in the gaming market. Specifically, the present study examined the relationship between problem gambling, cognitive distortions, and potential risk and protective factors. The author used a snowball technique to recruit participants and an online survey to collect data. A total of 41 responses were included in the data analysis. The results showed that VIP Hosts …

Building Foundations Of Opportunity: A Strategic Analysis Of The Stephen Center’S Permanent Supportive Housing Program, Emily Coleman

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

This report delves into the permanent supportive housing program provided by the Stephen Center, a local Omaha nonprofit that provides services to low-income and homeless individuals. While the Stephen Center successfully provides case management and supportive housing for hundreds of clients each year, the rate at which positive housing destinations are achieved is lower than the national average. With a longer than average length of stay in their permanent supportive housing apartments, the Stephen Center is unable to maximize their services to accommodate the needs of additional applicants. After researching industry trends and conducting an internal analysis, I have provided …

How Companies Can Overcome The Barriers To Sustainability In The Fashion Industry, Madison Perreault

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The primary intent of this paper is to explore existing case studies on the barriers to sustainability in the fashion industry as well as incorporate my own contributions by crafting and analyzing the results of a survey. This survey will give insight to the attitudes and behaviors of respondents towards sustainable fashion. I will also investigate government policies on this topic, or the lack thereof. Finally, I will offer my recommendation on how businesses can overcome the barriers to sustainability in the fashion industry.

The Influence Of Peer Irrigators On The Extensive And Intensive Margin Of Irrigation Techniques, Victoria Bailey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We examine how irrigation techniques in use by family and friends influence the use and share of land utilizing different irrigation techniques by Arkansas producers. A bivariate sample selection model simultaneously estimates how farm characteristics determine the use and explain the share of a farm that utilizes an irrigation technique. We find that the irrigation techniques in use by family and friends do affect the irrigation techniques a producer uses and the share of acres utilizing different irrigation techniques. A producer with a family or friend that uses end-blocking irrigation is 41% more likely to use end-blocking themselves. Having a …

Coach Bob Hurley Sr.: A Jesuit Educated Heroic Leader, Francis Petit

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research was to determine if Coach Bob Hurley Sr. (Coach Hurley) was a Heroic Leader. Coach Hurley was the long time Varsity Boys Basketball Coach at St. Anthony’s High School in Jersey City, New Jersey which closed in 2017. Coach Hurley was also inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. The methods of this research included a historical study of the life and career of Coach Hurley as was captured within the traditional media and academic literature. In addition, the methods of this research also included one-on-one phone interviews that Francis …

The Strategic Approach To Internationalisation, Gordon Perchthold

Asian Management Insights

Asia is the global sweet spot for multinationals (MNCs) looking to generate revenue and, over the mid-term, sustained profits.

Balancing Social Impact And Business Outcomes In Turbulent Times, Jaime Augusto Zobel De Ayala, Chin Tiong Tan

Asian Management Insights

Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Chairman of Ayala Corporation, talks about learning and recovering from Covid-19’s impact with Tan Chin Tiong.

Kobe Influencer Marketing: Using Social Media To Promote A Herbal Tea Brand, Patricia Lui, Lipika Bhattacharya

Asian Management Insights

In July 2019, Evangeline Leong, co-founder and CEO of Kobe, a Singapore-based start-up providing influencer marketing services, had a challenging task ahead of her.

Angling For Effective Innovation Governance In Asia: Lessons Learnt From Singapore’S Qian Hu Fish Farm, Thomas Menkhoff, Geok Chwee Ong

Asian Management Insights

Would you feed herbal medication to help fishes heal? This proposition may seem like a wild idea, but it was a calculated act of innovation by Qian Hu Corp Ltd, a Singapore-based Chinese family ornamental fish business.

Helping Organisations Excel, One Breath At A Time: A Meditation Toolkit For Business Leaders, Theodore Charles Masters-Waage, Eva K. Peters, Jochen Reb

Asian Management Insights

Interest in meditation has risen dramatically in recent years, as these practices move beyond ancient monasteries to take root in big cities as well.

Lead With Your Heart, Hyper Innovate, And Make A Difference, Steve Johanns, Singapore Management University

Asian Management Insights

Steve Johanns, founder and former Chairman of Veriown Global, is now taking smart villages into Sub-Saharan Africa through his company Villedge Solutions. He talks about his entrepreneurial journey in the world of hyper innovation and the secrets found in last mile empowerment.

The Expanding Role Of Analytics In Operations, Lauren E. Luechtefeld

Honors Theses

In the competitive business world today, every company must keep up with technological advances and, therefore, incorporate data analytics into their operations. Data analytics are a vital aspect of every department in every company. When these analytics are operationalized, or the analytics are automated and applied to the operational side, companies can increase productivity, efficiencies, and customer satisfaction. Through my thesis, I establish how utilization of operational analytics can provide a competitive advantage for a company. I walk through the history of analytics, the different platforms involved in making an analytics process operational, as well as the decisions involved. Along …

Hedge Fund Performance With The Treynor-Black Model, Gurkamal S. Pannu

Honors Theses

This paper seeks to analyze the information ratio differences between long/short hedge funds over the past two decades using the Treynor-Black model. The Treynor-Black model is a method to derive an optimal portfolio allocation across safe and risky assets, based off of expected alphas of active investments and the unsystematic volatility that can be attributed to each given security. We first developed and implemented a model to forecast information ratios on a database of long/short hedge funds. With the predicted information ratios, we calculated out-of-sample allocation weights from a Treynor-Black active portfolio model. These weights were then tested in a …

How Workplace Attire Affects Employee Perceptions And Organizational Culture, Ethan Surrett

Honors Theses

Companies invest millions of dollars into developing workplace attire policies in their organizations to control outcomes (Rafaeli & Pratt, 1993). This research focuses on seeing the impact that workplace attire plays on employees' perceptions of themselves and their organization's culture. Through Qualtrics, an online survey instrument, information was gathered from respondents in various industries and workplaces all over the United States. These employees answered questions about the attire in their workplace, the impact of attire, the organization's policies, characteristics of their organization, the management of the organization, and execution of policies. Results illustrated that most respondents felt that workplace attire …

The Exacerbation Of Gender Inequality: The Effects Of Overwork On Work Outcomes, Loribeth Fitzgerald

Honors Theses

Gender disparity in the workplace is a pervasive problem that has been widely studied, especially as to why women do not progress in their careers to the same degree as their male counterparts. Measures have been established for work-family conflict, and it has been claimed that this is the main factor that prevents women from advancing in their careers. Research into the unequal distribution of time, labor, and pay has become increasingly popular as a means to understand the forces contributing to women’s stalled advancement. This study furthers this work to determine if gender inequality is a factor in overwork, …

Beyond The Lineup: An Exploration Of Consumer Loyalty At Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Anna Richardson

Honors Theses

The rise of the Internet and the accelerated technological changes associated with the creation of the Internet have led to a restructuring of business structures in the music industry. These changes in technology coupled with changes in consumer preferences have led to a rise in the popularity and profitability of the live music sector, and specifically music festivals. The market for music festivals is becoming more saturated, and festival organizers are having to find new and distinct ways to differentiate their offerings. In order to maintain competitive positioning in a progressively saturated market, festival organizers must rely on differentiation and …

What Consumers Actually Know: The Role Of Objective Nutrition Knowledge In Processing Stop Sign And Traffic Light Front-Of-Pack Nutrition Labels, J. Craig Andrews, Richard G. Netemeyer, Scot Burton, Jeremy Kees

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

Examining the effects of what consumers actually know (i.e., objective knowledge) is an important gap in front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition research. In experiments with over 2,000 primary food shoppers, we examine the moderating impact of objective nutrition knowledge on key FOP nutrition symbols (Stop Sign labels, Traffic-Light labels, and a control) for effects on nutrient perceptions, nutrition use accuracy, disease risk, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions. Results support the effectiveness of the Stop Sign label over the Traffic Light label for key outcome measures, with the Traffic Light label performing better on nutrition use accuracy. Importantly, those with greater objective nutrition …

Consumer Motivations And Perceived Value In Online Second-Hand Luxury Fashion Shopping, Murphy Brianne Aycock

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The second-hand luxury fashion market is growing four times faster than the primary luxury fashion market and already represents a $24 billion market today (Beauloye, 2019; Siwak, 2020). Younger generations such as millennials and Gen Z are buying and selling preowned luxury products almost three times faster than any other age group (Beauloye, 2019). Digital selling platforms such as The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective are fueling the growth of the second-hand luxury fashion market (Beauloye, 2019). Despite the increased consumer interests and sales growth in the second-hand luxury fashion market, existing research has not concentrated on the underlying motivations of …

Social Acceleration In The Marketplace: Three Essays Exploring The Intersection Of Culture And Consumption, Sarah Grace

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumer culture is fast. Goods, services, people, ideas, and values – the material and nonmaterial aspects of culture – are moving more quickly throughout the marketing system than ever before. Such acceleration effects diverse stakeholders: people, public, and planet. This dissertation explores the phenomenon of ‘social acceleration’, and specifically, the ‘acceleration of the pace of life’ which examines the feeling that time is going faster in modern societies as a result of “the increase of action episodes per unit of time” (Rosa 2013, 80). This project develops an understanding of how meanings in marketing are socially constructed in relation to …

Integrating Systems, Processes, And Human Judgment: Three Essays On Value Creation With Supply Chain Analytics, Rebekah Inez Brau

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Big-data, analytics, automation, and machine learning are changing the role of managers in supply chain and operations functions. Extant research indicates that effective value creation by analytics is achieved through careful attention to three components: technology, people, and processes. As such, the purpose of my dissertation is to improve the integration of people in current supply chain and operations management systems with ever-changing technologies and processes. I focus on one critical function—demand planning—since it is increasingly influenced by predictive analytics yet can still require human judgment. My dissertation is comprised of three essays as follow.

In Essay 1, I implement …

Could Sox Be Better? : Exploring The Advantages And Shortfalls Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Christopher Clark

Honors Theses

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was ratified in 2002 to mixed reviews. Over the past 18 years, many researchers have come to different conclusions about the effectiveness of SOX. This paper proposes amendments to make SOX as effective as possible without increasing compliance costs and as cost effective as possible without decreasing efficacy.

Analyzing The Social Aspect Of E-Cigarette Prevention With College-Aged Consumers, Emily Wilson

Honors Theses

This research investigated how social aspects influence college-aged e-cigarette users’ decision to use or quit using these devices. We conducted interviews of 10 young adult e-cigarette users and past users to explore three main topics: their experience with e-cigarettes, their evaluation of selected picture and narrative-based advertisements, and preventative phrasing they would suggest for future advertisements. We identified that social influence on young adults’ e-cigarette consumption/cessation revolved around three primary themes: availability of the device, peer pressure, and change of perspective. More importantly, we discovered that the effect of these themes would differ, and the source of the social influence …

Short Selling Around Reverse Stock Splits, Ryan Voges

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I examine whether short selling increases around reverse stock splits using 2019 daily short selling data instead of bimonthly short interest data required by FINRA. In my difference-in-difference analysis, I find that average short selling increases significantly for firms that reverse split their stock, relative to matched control firms that do not, around the split dates. I also find that firms that reverse split their stock experience negative cumulative abnormal returns in the 20-day period after the reverse stock splits, particularly for those firms that are heavily shorted. These results are in agreeance with existent literature and suggest that short …

Risk_Dash, A Python Framework To Model Portfolio Risk, Alexander Van Oene

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

While there are many Python packages that provide ways to do data analysis, in fact the package utilizes pandas, numpy, and scipy heavily, there are few that apply and handle common tasks that analysts face in quantifying market risk. pyfolio is one of those packages, however it forces you to utilize their infrastructure package Zipline where as risk_dash aims to provide a framework to formalize the data flow while being totally customizable for the analyst. risk_dash is comprised of classes and methods to handle the data flow and calculation of market risk metrics at the asset and portfolio level. In …