Business Commons^™

B2b Ewom On Alibaba: Signaling Through Online Reviews In Platform-Based Social Exchange, Zsófia Tóth, Mona Mrad, Omar S. Itani, Jun Luo, Martin J. Liu

Marketing Faculty Publications

Highlights

• The study explores buyers' signaling of observable and unobservable supplier characteristics on the Alibaba e-platform.

• Key B2B eWOM themes that the study identifies are: product/service quality, human touch, responsiveness, and resilience.

• Findings demonstrate that human touch is vital in B2B e-platform environments too, not only in physical reality.

• Buyers' signals aim at suppliers as well as at prospective buyers and implicitly buyers send signals about themselves too.

• Signaling Theory is applied to address the signaling process, while Social Exchange Theory informs relevant cost-benefit assessments.

Abstract

This study investigates the contemporary role of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in business exchanges through …

Incorporating A Machine Learning Model Into A Web-Based Administrative Decision Support Tool For Predicting Workplace Absenteeism, Gopal Nath, Yawei Wang, Austin Coursey, Krishna K. Saha

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Productivity losses caused by absenteeism at work cost U.S. employers billions of dollars each year. In addition, employers typically spend a considerable amount of time managing employees who perform poorly. By using predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms, organizations can make better decisions, thereby increasing organizational productivity, reducing costs, and im-proving efficiency. Thus, in this paper we propose hybrid optimization methods in order to find the most parsimonious model for absenteeism classification. We utilized data from a Brazilian courier company. In order to categorize absenteeism classes, we preprocessed the data, selected the attributes via multiple methods, balanced the dataset using …

2022-July-01-Meet Francis Murillo, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

“They fought for us. We should be fighting for them.” 

East Tennessee State University graduate student and United States Army veteran Francis Murillo has always had her sights set on helping others. While she is currently working on her master’s degree in clinical mental health, the story of her passion traces its beginning to nearly a decade ago. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in social work from the College of Arts and Sciences, Murillo felt called to join the Army.

“I didn’t know I wanted my master’s until I deployed,” recalled Murillo. “But when I …

2022-July-01-Colleges Inform Discussion That Led To Tobacco Regulation Bill, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – Faculty in East Tennessee State University’s College of Public Health and College of Business and Technology helped inform discussions leading to the recent passage of SB 2219/HB 2705 in the Tennessee legislature.

This bill, which took effect July 1 after receiving Gov. Bill Lee’s signature on June 1, removes preemption of tobacco regulation in the state and exemption of age-restricted venues, such as bars, from smoke-free policy. Removal of preemption allows local governments to regulate the use of smoking and vapor products in age-restricted venues that are not retail tobacco stores. Previous law allowed local …

2022-July-01-Etsu's Archives Of Appalachia Digitizes Black History Collection, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – There’s a 47-minute VHS recording that features an interview with the 1964 class of Langston High School, a now closed institution that served Johnson City’s Black students beginning in the 1890s. A 1985 masonic newsletter, as well as a 1981 Kingsport Times-News article about the Pro-To Club, a non-profit corporation aimed at promoting the welfare of the region’s Black population, is there, too.  

Given to the university more than 20 years ago, the Langston Heritage Group Collection includes a wealth of historical information about Black churches, schools, civic clubs and organizations throughout Washington County from the end …

Detecting And Resolving ‘Dirty’ Data: Ten Steps To Better Business Insights, Dana R. Hermanson, James G. Lawson Iii, Daniel Street

Faculty Journal Articles

Although business’s increasing utilization of technology to drive operational decisions has meant a greater reliance on data, it is exceedingly rare that an entity possesses a perfectly clean set of data. Some of it is inevitably invalid, incomplete, or inaccurate—in other words, “dirty.” In order to address the issues caused by dirty data, the authors provide a 10-step program CPAs in any setting can use to help businesses make better decisions.

Passive Institutional Ownership, Firm Disclosure, And Post-Earnings Announcement Drift, Jingxin Hu

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of four chapters. Chapter one is the introduction. Chapter two examines the impact of passive institutional ownership on firm disclosure. Passive institutional investors favor more information to minimize monitoring and trading costs. However, passive institutions' diverse holdings make it costly to collect individual firms' private information, so they demand more public information. Managers are likely to supply more firm material information because passive institutions can exert influence by using their sizeable ownership stake. More firm disclosure is related to a better firm information environment and higher stock liquidity. To test the hypothesis, I choose the S&P 500 …

Does Corporate Lobbying Benefit Society?, Rami Kaplan, David L. Levy, Kathleen Rehbein, Brian Kelleher Richter

Management Faculty Research and Publications

Lobbying, defined as an effort to influence policy through strategic communication, has grown dramatically in recent years. This paper presents three viewpoints regarding the societal impact of corporate lobbying on society: one perspective argues that lobbying will be primarily beneficial, an alternative perspective contests this viewpoint and suggests that it is generally harmful, and the third argues that the impact is contingent on a number of factors. Proponents of lobbying argue that it is a vital mechanism to transmit valuable information and expertise to policymakers, leading to substantive legislative solutions for resolving complex societal issues. Critics, on the other hand, …

Culture And Covid-19: Impact Of Cross-Cultural Dimensions On Behavioral Responses, Nisha Nair, Patturaja Selvaraj, Ranjeet Nambudiri

Management Faculty Publications

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has impacted every sphere of human life across all nations of the world. Countries adapted and responded to the crisis in different ways with varied outcomes and different degrees of success in mitigation efforts. Studies have examined institutional and policy-based responses to the pandemic. However, to gain a holistic understanding of the pandemic response strategy and its effectiveness, it is also important to understand the cultural foundations of a society driving its response behavior. Towards that end, this entry focuses on a few key cultural dimensions of difference across countries and proposes that national culture …

Between The Public And The Private Interest: The Interrelationship Of Intermediary Roles Of Environmental Nonprofits In Coastal Resilience, Marina Saitgalina, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Taiwo Olanrewaju-Lasisi

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Government regulators cannot mitigate the loss of wetlands and coastal erosion alone. Nonprofits, uniquely situated between coastal property owners with personal interests and governments with regulatory interests, are positioned to mediate the interests of different parties while considering local context and individual circumstances. However, it is unclear what roles environmental nonprofits play within the network of actors. This study asks: (1) What roles do environmental nonprofit organizations play in local stakeholder network arrangements for wetlands conservation and shoreline management? (2) How are these roles interrelated? We use two frameworks describing the roles of nonprofits to examine the roles of environmental …

Commercial Short-Haul Flight Or Autonomous Mobility-On-Demand: Modeling Air Passengers’ Modal Choice, Agatha Kessler Fentress

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Commercial short-haul flights (SF) are vital to airports and airlines because they account for one-third of hub traffic and have higher profit margins than the long-haul market. While U.S. commercial air passenger travel has increased steadily over the past decades, SF has been declining and was doing so before the unprecedented decrease in air travel caused by restrictions related to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Once autonomous mobility-on-demand (aMoD) is more viable than the human-driven car, demand for SF could be negatively impacted. Although there is published research on SF and aMoD, studies on factors influencing the choice between SF and …

Essays On Supply Chain Optimization: Operational Decisions With Corporate Social Responsibility Implementation And Live-Streaming Channel Introduction, Haiying Yang

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation, we study a supplier's operational decisions for supply chain optimization considering corporate social responsibility implementation and live- streaming channel introduction. Both essays start from analytical models that are inspired by observations, and we explore how different parameters affect the supplier's decisions through extensive numerical studies. In the first essay, we notice that cost auditing is becoming an increasingly important tool to improve supply chain efficiency and mitigate the influence of information asymmetry. We study how cost auditing indirectly influences retailer and supplier's behavior in social responsibility. We also discuss the potential negative social responsibility externalities of conducting …

The Effect Of Chief Executive Officer And Board Prior Corporate Social Responsibility Experiences On Their Focal Firm’S Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moderating Effect Of Chief Executive Officer Overconfidence, Marwan Al-Shammari, Hussam Al-Shammari, Soumendra Nath Banerjee, D. Harold Doty

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research aims to examine how the prior experiences of the chief executive officer (CEO) and board influence the focal firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Further, the present study examines how CEO overconfidence influences the diffusion of CSR activities. The authors theorize that overconfident CEOs are influenced more by the corporate strategies they experienced on other boards and less by the corporate strategies experienced by other directors. Through longitudinal analyses of the CSR profiles a sample of S&P 500 companies for the period 2006-2013, the study shows that CEO and board prior CSR experience are positively related to the …

Advocacy Spotlight: Are You An Advocate?, Vincent Benivegna Dds

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Advocacy is crucial for dentists in Michigan, as they face a unique opportunity to impact Medicaid dental benefits positively. Governor Gretchen Whitmer's budget proposal for 2023 includes a substantial $240 million investment to revamp dental Medicaid benefits, a historic move for the state. The Michigan Dental Association (MDA) has actively engaged with government offices and legislators to ensure this opportunity is not missed. However, despite the MDA's efforts to mobilize members through action alerts, response rates have disappointed. The article emphasizes the importance of consistent advocacy, as it has the power to influence dental practices and the well-being of patients …

J Mich Dent Assoc July 2022

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Monthly, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association brings news, information, and feature articles to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. No publication reaches more Michigan dentists! In this July 2022 issue, the reader will find the following original content:

• A cover feature on negotiating reimbursement rates with PPO contracts.
• A cover feature on guarding against employee embezzlement.
• A 10-Minute EBD on rampant caries management and prevention with ADHD patients taking stimulant medications.
• A Back Page look at the 2022 MDA award winners.
• News you need: an Editorial, guidance on dental practice cybersecurity, and regular department …

Staff Matters: Independent Contractor Or Temporary Employee?, Jodi Schafer Sphr, Shrm-Scp

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Determining whether temporary hygienists should be classified as independent contractors or employees requires careful consideration. While treating them as independent contractors offers advantages, such as avoiding payroll taxes and paperwork, it must align with specific IRS criteria. The classification hinges on the degree of control the practice exerts over their work, encompassing behavioral and financial control. If the practice significantly controls aspects like duties, hours, and business aspects, it may be wiser to classify them as employees. The IRS provides a form (SS-8) to assess the relationship in-depth. Additionally, if hygienists request employee status and you cannot definitively prove otherwise, …

Editor's Note, Marites Tiongco

DLSU Business & Economics Review

No abstract provided.

The Competitiveness Of Qatari Tourism: A Comparative And Swot Analysis, Ghialy Yap, Shrabani Saha, Saif S. Alsowaidi

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Purpose: Qatar has placed its tourism sector as one of the main strategies of economic diversification to achieve sustainable tourism goal. The country aims to develop diverse tourism products, ranging from cultural, urban, and nature tourism to education. The government has invested a huge amount in designing and building tourism infrastructures such as the eight new stadiums to host the 2022 World Cup, the national museum, Museum of Islamic Art, Katara Cultural Village, Souq Waqif, and many resorts and high end hotels. Given these significant tourism investments, it is unquestionable that the country reaps commensurate long-term benefits in terms of …

2022-July-01-Etsu Dean Participates In Harvard Program, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – Dr. Janna Scarborough, dean of the Clemmer College at East Tennessee State University, recently participated in a management development program at Harvard University.

Harvard University’s Management Development Program intends to help higher education administrators and senior leaders develop skills in management, administration and strategic direction. Topics of the program include leadership effectiveness, fiscal decision-making and equity and inclusivity.

“It was exciting and an honor to connect with so many dedicated higher education professionals from across the country and world, “Scarborough said. “The presenters were world-class and provided experiential opportunities to apply new ideas rooted in the challenges …

The Paradoxical Effects Of Covid-19 Event Strength On Employee Turnover Intention, Hui Deng, Wenbing Wu, Yihua Zhang, Xiaoyan Zhang, Jing Ni

All Faculty Open Access Publications

As a global pandemic, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has brought enormous challenges to employees and organizations. Although numerous existing studies have highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic is a stressful event and empirically proved its detrimental effect on employee turnover intention, few scholars have noted that this pandemic can deteriorate the external economic and employment environment simultaneously, which may further complicate employees’ intentions to leave or stay in the current organization. Drawing on event system theory and social cognitive theory, this study aims to uncover two potential cognitive mechanisms of the complex impact of COVID-19 event strength on employee turnover intention. …

Patents And Market Research: Librarians Partnering To Assist Bioengineering Senior Design Teams, Jennifer L. Groff, Meredith Futral

Journal of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association

Clemson’s business and engineering librarians have partnered to create a two-step, efficient process to assist Bioengineering Senior Design students in understanding patents and patent searching and market research. Clemson University’s required two-semester Bioengineering Senior Design program matches teams of students with regional clinicians to develop biomedical devices that they research, design, prototype, and test. In the first semester of the program, in which the business and engineering librarians are involved, students take BioE4010-Bioengineering Design Theory. BioE4010 is offered in both the Fall and Spring semesters, but enrollment is significantly higher in the fall. For example, in the Fall of 2021 …

2022-July-01-Etsu Ballad Health Announce Buccaneer Building Blocks, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – A baby’s first steps, a sweet smile or first words are among the milestones families will always cherish. Those treasured moments are just the beginning of so many dreams and new goals to achieve. Today, East Tennessee State University and Ballad Health held a news conference at Niswonger Children’s Hospital to announce a partnership that aims to create a foundation for the success of all children and their families across the Appalachian Highlands called Buccaneer Building Blocks. Welcome to the ETSU family.

 The initiative is dedicated to developing a strong support system for lifelong learning, …

2022-July-01-Etsu Professor Aiming To Enhance Basic Understanding Of Universe, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

(Johnson City) East Tennessee State University’s Dr. Robert Pattie has won an impressive grant ultimately aimed at enhancing humanity’s basic understanding of the universe. 

The $320,000 grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation, will allow Pattie and several students in the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy to travel to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Detector testing built by ETSU students

But a considerable amount of the work – building equipment, simulating experiments and analyzing data – will happen on ETSU’s main campus over the next three years.   

Pattie works in the world of subatomic physics, and has …

2022-July-01-Etsu Scholar Publishing On Trauma During Covid-, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are working through an important question: How do we teach and learn during a crisis?  

Scholars at East Tennessee State University are at the forefront of that conversation.

Dr. Phyllis Thompson

 A “gift to higher education,” as one reviewer put it, the book “Lessons from the Pandemic: Trauma-Informed Approaches to College, Crisis, Change” is garnering acclaim. Most recently, it was featured in an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This timely work is edited by Dr. Phyllis Thompson, an associate professor in the Department of Literature and Language …

Strategies For Sustaining Automotive Dealerships Beyond 5 Years, Lyndon Fitzgerald Taylor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small businesses in the United States employ 48% of the workforce, and only 50% percent of small businesses survive beyond 5 years. Business leaders are concerned with strategies to retain and expand their customer base to mitigate business failure and enhance survivability. Grounded in the leader-member exchange theory, the purpose of my qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies automotive dealership business leaders used to sustain their businesses beyond 5 years. The participants comprised five business leaders in the automotive industry in the Central and Southwest U.S. State of Michigan. Data were collected using semistructured face-to-face interviews and a …

Female Sports Officials And Mental Health: The Overlooked Problem, Jacob K. Tingle, B. L. Jacobs, Lynn L. Ridinger, Stacy Warner

School of Business Faculty Research

Sporting culture often celebrates mental toughness and chides weakness, which can stigmatize mental health issues. While some sport organizations have prioritized addressing mental well-being, referees have been ignored. Referees work in high-pressure environments; thus, the need to understand, destigmatize, and normalize the conversation around mental health within the referee community and the larger sporting system is important. Because the prevalence of stress-related issues is greater for women, this study focused on female referees’ well-being, interviewing 20 female U.S. basketball referees via a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Participants represented various geographical regions in the United States and officiated at levels ranging from …

2022-July-01-Wykoff Named Journal Of Appalachian Health Editor, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – The dean of East Tennessee State University’s College of Public Health is the new editor-in-chief of the Journal of Appalachian Health.

The first issue edited by Dr. Randy Wykoff is forthcoming. The online journal publishes quarterly and has featured numerous articles by ETSU faculty since its inception in 2019.

The journal contains peer-reviewed research articles, as well as editorials, commentary, book reviews, letters to the editor, news briefs and more focused on work being done to improve the health of people throughout Appalachia. It is available to read without charge. Dr. Randy Wykoff, founding dean of the …

An Assessment Of Requirements In Investments, New Technologies, And Infrastructures To Achieve The Sdgs, Peter Yang

Faculty Scholarship

Background: The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires much planning and the provision of resources, especially regarding the necessary investments, technologies and infrastructures needed. Yet, it is presently unclear how available these elements are, what gaps exist, what changes have taken place in terms of their availability since the adoption of the SDGs and what their requirements will be in the future. The knowledge gap has become even more concerning because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a bibliometric analysis, an assessment of the global progress of SDG implementation and requirements, identifying challenges through the development …

The Examination Of Psychophysiological Effects Of Multisensory Imagery Marketing Strategy. A Triangulation In 3 Studies, Sasawan Heingraj

Theses and Dissertations

Multisensory imagery marketing strategy has been extensively suggested to be one of the advertising strategies that can generate long-term brand awareness, brand image, and authentic experience in a highly competitive market condition. This dissertation explored the psychophysiological effects of multisensory imagery marketing strategy on consumers' attitudes. Results from study 1 suggested that consumers’ masculine-feminine self-concept played an important role when evaluating multisensory imagery marketing messages. Specifically, consumers who exhibited a lower degree of masculine self-concept and those with feminine self-concept were likely to evaluate multisensory imagery marketing messages more positively than their higher masculine self-concept counterparts. We also found that …

Essays On Individuals’ Information Assessment, Information Disclosure, Participation, And Response Behaviors In Online Health Communities, Joseph Ade Manga

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of online health communities (OHCs) has enabled the use of information technologies to address some social and health needs including but not limited to emotional, social, and health-related issues. This information age has encouraged user generated (UG) content, which facilitates both peer-to-peer and business-to-peer interconnections. This rich and active information epoch (i.e., OHCs) is distinct in that value is generated when peers or participants—who may be content generators and/or content consumers—interact together by exchanging information and receiving supports aimed at addressing their specific needs; and this is made possible through the online platforms or support groups acting as …