Business Commons^™

The Ethical Controversy Around Gene-Editing Technology, Katrina Powers

A with Honors Projects

In this honors project, the author discusses the risks and benefits of using CRISPR to edit genetics.

Role Of Government Initiatives In Shaping Entrepreneurial Intentions: A Canonical Correlation Analysis, Ansar Waseem, Yasir Rashid, Ahmad Ahsan Akbar

Business Review

Although, governments employ different policies to boost entrepreneurial activities in a country, these initiatives would remain futile if they fail to inculcate entrepreneurial intentions among citizens. This study aims to find out how government initiatives shape the perception of its citizens about entrepreneurship. The main idea of this paper is to identify a correlation between government initiatives and entrepreneurial perception using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data. This research uses the parameters of perceived opportunity, perceived capability, and entrepreneurial intention to correlate them with different government initiatives such as supportive and relevant policies, taxes related policies, government entrepreneurship programs, commercial and legal …

Volatility Spillover Between Stock Market And Currency Market Of Pakistan In The Presence Of Structural Breaks, Muhammad Jamil, Hifsa Mobeen

Business Review

This study examines the volatility transmission between the currency market and the stock market of Pakistan in the presence of structural breaks. For this purpose, daily data from the stock market and currency market is analyzed. An empirical investigation is conducted using the bivariate EGARCH model and the test for multiple structural breaks developed by Bai and Perron (2003). This study analyses these markets with the inclusion of sudden changes. Results of the EGARCH model suggest that volatility spillover is positive and bidirectional between these markets of Pakistan.

Individual Privacy Empowerment: Exploring The Trade-Offs Between Information Sensitivity And Compensation, Bright Frimpong, Jun Sun

Information Systems Faculty Publications

To provide personalized services and remain competitive, many online companies depend on individual disclosure of personal information. An emerging common theme, in the quest for privacy solutions, is the idea to empower individuals to control the management of their personal information. This study proposes a third-option design that seeks to empower users when signing up for an online service. We also measure individual privacy empowerment in a 2*2 experimental design study (reward/utility-limit mechanism to high/low sensitivity information context) using the proposed third-option design. Results from the multigroup analysis indicate that respondents prefer the reward mechanism over the utility-limit mechanism when …

Is First Impression Relevant In Online Health Support Communities? Preliminary Investigation Of The Effects Of Social Presence, Joseph A. Manga, Emmanuel Wusuhon Yanibo Ayaburi, Francis Andoh-Baidoo

Information Systems Faculty Publications

Patients’ initial impression can influence the kind of reactions they receive and their subsequent participation. Prior studies use inference models to examine participation as a continuum phenomenon. In the online health supporting communities (OHSCs), distinguishing giving participation from receiving participation provide interesting insights at the granular level. Using social presence theory, this study identifies and uses social presence cues in the initial post of 168 patients to predict patients’ giving and receiving participation in a prominent OHSC. Findings reveal that the social presence cues affected the two participation dimensions differently. Specifically, while intimacy is the most important predictor of giving …

Influence Of Covid-19 On Changes In Dressing Behaviours Of U.S. Adults., Diana Saiki, Jay Kandiah, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, James A. Jones

Publications and Research

The objective of this research was to assess the impact of the currently lived COVID-19 pandemic on dressing behaviours of a cross-section of the U.S. adult population. Participants (N = 844) completed a survey via Amazon Mechanical Turk which evaluated frequency of wearing of eight dressing categories—accessories, informal dress, formal dress, protective dress, hair practices, scent products, appearance enhancement, and make-up (females) prior to and during the pandemic. Physical, emotional and psychological self-care and demographics were also collected. Overall, during the pandemic participants engaged in less dressing behaviours, dressed informal clothing (e.g., jeans, t-shirts) and incorporated protective dress. These findings …

Fmla: A Blessing And Curse To The Hospitality Industry, John Avant

Undergraduate Research Symposium Lightning Talks

No abstract provided.

Assessing Heart Rate Using Consumer Technology Association Standards, Joel D. Reece, Jennifer A. Bunn, Minsoo Choi, James W. Navalta

Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences Faculty Research

It is difficult for developers, researchers, and consumers to compare results among emerging wearable technology without using a uniform set of standards. This study evaluated the accuracy of commercially available wearable technology heart rate (HR) monitors using the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) standards. Participants (N = 23) simultaneously wore a Polar chest strap (criterion measure), Jabra Elite earbuds, Scosche Rhythm 24 armband, Apple Watch 4, and Garmin Forerunner 735 XT during sitting, activities of daily living, walking, jogging, running, and cycling, totaling 57 min of monitored activity. The Apple Watch mean bias was within ±1 bpm, and mean absolute percent …

Venture Acceleration And Entrepreneurial Growth In Central America, Hans Rawhouser, Christopher Sutter, Ian Mcdonough

Management, Entrepreneurship and Technology Faculty Research

Intermediaries such as accelerators support entrepreneurial activity in developing countries by connecting entrepreneurs to critical resources and by reshaping the entrepreneurial ventures so they can better participate in larger markets. Existing research has examined the activities intermediaries undertake and how these activities influence intermediary effectiveness. However, we know much less about which entrepreneurial ventures benefit from intermediation. Using 24 months of pre- and post-intervention sales data for 139 ventures working with a business accelerator in Central America, we find that facilitating resource acquisition is less important than the constraints to change within the entrepreneurial ventures themselves. Thus, our study suggests …

Trust Transfer And The Intention To Use App-Enabled Carpooling Service, Minhua Wu, Stern Neill

Marketing

In China, with the rapid dissemination of mobile communications technology along with congested traffic and increasingly expensive transportation costs, consumers are turning to smartphone-enabled, ride-sharing services. Sharing economy requires trust in strangers. Based on trust transfer theory and a dyadic conceptualization of trust from cognitive to affective, the purpose of this study is to examine trust building through the use of Didi, a third-party, ride-sharing platform that mediates exchanges among strangers.

Reliance On Algorithmic Evidence: The Joint Influence Of Measurement Uncertainty And Algorithm Adaptability, Jenny Ulla

Theses and Dissertations--Accountancy

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems’ capability is rapidly expanding to perform complex tasks once reserved only for humans. With machine learning algorithms, AI can learn and adapt as it encounters more data, which has enabled these systems to improve the quality of accounting estimates that traditionally have been more difficult for humans. Although AI systems’ capability to adapt has potential benefits, these systems also have become increasingly complex, making it difficult for individuals to understand the processes or algorithms these systems use to produce advice. Practitioners worry that when algorithms behave like “black boxes” this opacity may lead to a lack …

Earnings Conference Calls And Lazy Prices, Chuancai Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Accountancy

Changes to the language and construction of financial reports are indicative of firms’ future returns and operations. Investors, however, are often inattentive to these changes; consequently, price reactions to these changes are delayed—resulting in “lazy” prices. This study explores two possible channels through which earnings conference calls may mitigate lazy prices: (1) the topic overlap channel and (2) the comparison language channel. Specifically, I examine whether the topic overlap between conference call transcripts and 10K/10Q filings or the comparison language used on earnings conference call transcripts helps investors understand the nature of the overlapped topics and triggers investors’ attention to …

Critical Audit Matters Requirements And Auditor Reporting Behavior: Early U.S. Evidence, Valbona Sulcaj

Theses and Dissertations--Accountancy

In this study, I examine two research questions related to the reporting requirements of critical audit matters (CAMs) introduced in the Audit Standard (AS) 3101. First, I examine whether auditor’s perceived litigation risk and client’s financial reporting quality are associated with the number and textual attributes of CAMs. Second, I examine whether the number and textual attributes of CAMs are associated with audit effort and costs.

Consistent with the litigation hypothesis (Skinner, 1994), I find a positive association between litigation risk and the number of CAMs in the audit report, suggesting that auditors try to preempt negative consequences from shareholder …

Use Of Factors In Development Estimates: Improving The Cost Analysis Toolkit, Matthew R. Markman, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Edward D. White

Faculty Publications

Factor Estimating is a technique commonly used by defense acquisition analysts to develop cost estimations. However, previous studies developing factors for the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the life cycle are limited. This research expands the current toolkit for cost analysts by developing cost factors in previously unexplored areas. More specifically, over 400 cost reports are utilized to create new standard cost factors that are delineated by five categories: commodity type, contract type, contractor type, development type, and Service. The factors are developed for those elements that are common in a wide array of projects such as program …

A Learning Curve Model Accounting For The Flattening Effect In Production Cycles, Evan R. Boone, John J. Elshaw, Clay M. Koschnick, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Adedeji B. Badiru

Faculty Publications

We investigate production cost estimates to identify and model modifications to a prescribed learning curve. Our new model examines the learning rate as a decreasing function over time as opposed to a constant rate that is frequently used. The purpose of this research is to determine whether a new learning curve model could be implemented to reduce the error in cost estimates for production processes. A new model was created that mathematically allows for a “flattening effect,” which typically occurs later in the production process. This model was then compared to Wright’s learning curve, which is a popular method used …

Quantifying The Effects Of Aircraft Engine Upgrades On Operating And Support Costs, Bradford A. Myers, Edward D. White, Jonathan D. Ritschel, R. David Fass

Faculty Publications

For fixed wing aircraft within the U.S. Air Force, Operating and Support (O&S) costs encompass a large portion of total life cycle costs. O&S costs include fuel, maintenance, and engine upgrades. To the authors’ knowledge, no study to date has attempted to empirically quantify the realized effects of new aircraft engines on sustainment costs. Utilizing the Air Force Total Ownership Cost database, they focused on new engines appearing on the C-5s, C-130s, and C-135s. Although narrow in scope, results suggest newer engines have lower fuel costs. Maintenance costs for newer engines were not consistently higher or lower than the engines …

Collaboration Between Public Health And Marketing Experts As A Response To Covid-19, M. Courtney Hughes, Yihui Tang, Shupei Yuan

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Since the beginning of 2020, as the world’s population has dealt with COVID-19 and abrupt changes to the normal status quo, academic scholars are no exception, experiencing radical changes to their teaching modalities (remote versus in-person) and often major interruptions in their research. One month after the initial shift to working remotely in March, we obtained approval from Northern Illinois University’s Institutional Review Board to conduct a brief survey with recently published academic scholars in the fields of public health and marketing to understand their views of how this unprecedented time may affect their work. In examining patterns in the …

Increasing Cybersecurity Career Interest Through Playable Case Studies, Justin Scott Giboney, Jason K. Mcdonald, Jonathan Balzotti, Derek L. Hansen, Desiree M. Winters, Elizabeth Bonsignore

Faculty Publications

In this paper we introduce an approach to cybersecurity education and helping students develop professional understanding in the form of a Playable Case Study (PCS), a form of educational simulation that draws on affordances of the broader educational simulation genre, case study instruction, and educational Alternate Reality Games (or ARGs). A PCS is an interactive simulation that allows students to “play” through an authentic scenario (case study) as a member of a professional team. We report our findings over a multi-year study of a PCS called Cybermatics, with data from 111 students from two different U.S. universities who interacted with …

A Computational Simulation-Based Framework For Estimating Potential Product Impact During Product Design, Christopher S. Mabey, Andrew G. Armstrong, Christopher A. Mattson, John L. Salmon, Nile W. Hatch, Eric C. Dahlin

Faculty Publications

The impact of engineered products is a topic of concern in society. Product impact may fall under the categories of economic, environmental or social impact, with the last category defined as the effect of a product on the day-to-day life of people. Design teams lack sufficient tools to estimate the social impact of products, and the combined impacts of economic, environmental and social impacts for the products they are designing. This paper aims to provide a framework for the estimation of product impact during product design. To estimate product impact, models of both the product and society are required. This …

What Is Your Status Portfolio? Higher Status Variance Across Groups Increases Interpersonal Helping But Decreases Intrapersonal Well-Being, Catarina R. Fernandes, Siyu Yu, Taeya M. Howell, Alison Wood Brooks, Gavin J. Kilduff, Nathan C. Pettit

Faculty Publications

Individuals belong to multiple groups across various domains of life, which in aggregate constitute a portfolio of potentially distinct levels of experienced status. We propose a two-factor model for assessing the effects of an individual’s status portfolio, based on status average (mean status level across groups) and status variance (degree to which status varies across those groups). Five studies using samples in general-life and work-specific contexts reveal the importance of both status average and status variance, the latter of which has been largely unexplored by status researchers to date. Individuals experiencing higher status variance show greater perspective taking, which in …

Models Behaving Badly: The Limits Of Data-Driven Lending, Itzhak Ben-David, Mark J. Johnson, René M. Stulz

Faculty Publications

Data-driven lending relies on the calibration of models using training periods. We find that this type of lending is not resilient in the presence of economic conditions that are materially different from those experienced during the training period. Using data from a small business fintech lending platform, we document that the small business credit supply collapsed during the COVID-19 crisis of March 2020 even though the demand for loans doubled relative to pre-pandemic levels. As the month progressed, most lenders significantly reduced or halted their lending activities, likely due to the heightened risk of model miscalibration under the new economic …

Marketplace Lending: Matching Small Businesses With Specialized Fintech Lenders, Mark J. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Fintech promises improvements in access to credit for small businesses through more efficient search and better pricing. Using novel data from a marketplace platform of 115,000 loan offers from 46 online lenders I show that the primary contribution of fintech is not in precisely measuring and pricing risk, but rather in facilitating search between small firms and preferred-habitat lenders. Loan rate offers are largely unexplained by firm characteristics and differ substantially even for the same applicant. The dispersion in offers is largely explained by the fact that lenders have preferred habitats -- lending to borrowers of certain risk types and …

Is 2020: Developing An Acm/Ais Information Systems Model Curriculum For Undergraduate Programs, Paul M. Leidig, Hannu Salmela, Greg Anderson, Jeff Babb, Lesley Gardner, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., Brenda Scholtz, Venky Shankararaman, Raja Sooriamurthi, Mark Thouin, Carina De Villiers

Faculty Publications

The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Association for Information Systems (AIS) engaged in a project to revise the Information Systems Curriculum. The IS2010 model curriculum has been widely used for nearly a decade. However, its value may be decreasing as new approaches to model curricula have been introduced. The AIS and ACM established an exploratory taskforce which found there have been substantial changes in the IS field, and that current graduates’ technical skills do not appear to meet industry needs. The IS discipline must express its core in terms of a standard curriculum that meet stakeholder demands. A …

Bolstering Creativity Willingness Through Digital Task Interdependence, Disruptive And Smart Hrm Technologies, Samuel Ogbeibu, Vijay Pereira, Jude Emelifeonwu, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

To sustain competitive advantage, employees must be willing to generate and pursue creative ideas. Sustaining competitive advantage in this way, can put organizational leaders under pressure to ensure smart human resource management technology (SHRMT) is effectively used to drive the exchange of creative ideas in work teams. Though collective creative idea generation could increase task interdependence between teams, we argue that this does not sufficiently guarantee “willingness” to exert increased creative behaviour, especially under disruptive technological conditions. Our study employed a cross-sectional (time lag) survey design with 396 respondents from 56 manufacturing organisations in Nigeria. We utilised partial least squares …

Earnings Announcement Delays And Implications For The Auditor-Client Relationship, Kimball Chapman, Michael S. Drake, Joseph Schroeder, Timothy Seidel

Faculty Publications

We examine whether delays in the expected release of annual earnings have implications for the future auditor-client relationship. Managers have strong incentives to release earnings on schedule and auditors play an important role in helping their clients avoid costly earnings announcement delays. We find an increased likelihood of subsequent auditor-client realignments after earnings announcement delays. We further find that clients changing auditors realign with audit firms that better meet their earnings announcement timing demands without any evidence of a significant compromise to the reliability of the financial statement numbers in the earnings announcement. Our results help inform regulatory concerns about …

Anonymous Equity Research, Travis Dyer, Eunjee Kim

Faculty Publications

Crowdsourced financial information platforms often allow content contributors to publish equity research anonymously. This study examines whether investors value or discount information in anonymous equity research. In the short window around research releases, we find that investors’ stock price reaction to anonymous research is muted in comparison to nonanonymous research. Consistent with credibility concerns influencing investor response, we document that this discount to anonymous research dissipates as the monitoring of content contributors intensifies and as authors develop a reputation for high-quality reporting. In addition, we perform a content analysis on the research reports and find that the muted market reaction …

Factors Affecting The Outcomes Of Legal Claims Against Auditors, Karen D. De Meyst, D. Jordan Lowe, Mark E. Peecher, Jeffrey Pickerd, Andrew Reffett

Faculty Publications

Maksymov, Pickerd, Lowe, Peecher, and Reffett (2020b) draw insights based on interviews with 27 prominent audit litigation attorneys about the factors affecting the initiation of legal claims against auditors and how such factors affect settlement outcomes. We summarize their key findings and discuss important implications for audit practitioners. Specifically, we focus on the key factors that affect plaintiff attorneys’ willingness to pursue legal claims against auditors, including the merits of the claim, size of alleged economic damages, auditors’ ability to pay, and the expected cost to pursue the claim. We also discuss the reasons why most audit disputes settle (as …

The Effects Of High Estimate Uncertainty In Auditor Negligence Litigation*, Jeffrey Pickerd, M. David Piercey

Faculty Publications

We examine how jurors’ negligence judgments and attorneys’ out-of-court settlements are differently impacted by two features of a materially misstated accounting estimate—the amount of estimate uncertainty and whether the misstated account is disaggregated into its own line-item or aggregated with other accounts into a single financial statement line-item. We predict and find that jurors and attorneys react to estimate uncertainty in opposite directions under common conditions. This finding is important because when jurors’ judgments and attorneys’ settlements differ, research into juror judgments alone may not capture a complete picture of auditor liability because the vast majority of audit litigation is …

Corporate Governance And Tax Avoidance: Evidence From Governance Reform, Jon Kerr, Richard Price, Francisco J. Román, Miles A. Romney

Faculty Publications

Prior literature struggles to find evidence in U.S. settings to support the Desai and Dharmapala (2006) theory on how corporate governance affects tax avoidance. Most studies rely on equity incentive compensation as their governance proxy. We use a Mexican setting to examine this association and find firms with stronger governance engage in less tax avoidance. We rely on both a hand-collected governance index and governance reform to show improved corporate governance pushes tax avoidance toward a new equilibrium. Supplementary analyses show associations between governance and tax avoidance are greatest for tax-cost-sensitive familyowned firms and non-cross-listed firms with naturally weaker governance. …

Accruals Earnings Management Proxies: Prudent Business Decisions Or Earnings Manipulation?, Theodore E. Christensen, Adrienna Huffman, Melissa F. Lewis-Western, Rachel Scott

Faculty Publications

Over the last 5 years, the top accounting journals have published 388 articles that incorporate an empirical proxy for accruals-based earnings management. Researchers use these proxies to measure diverse managerial activities that represent fundamentally different constructs (from beneficial earnings management at one end of the spectrum to earnings manipulation at the other). We present a simple framework that defines the specific construct of “earnings manipulation” and places it within the context of the broader concept of “earnings management.” At the construct level, one distinguishing characteristic of earnings manipulation is that accruals reversals cause future earnings to be lower than earnings …