Business Commons^™

Applied Optical Character Recognition And Large Language Models In Augmenting Manual Business Processes For Data Analytics In Traditional Small Businesses With Minimal Digital Adoption, Jose Ramon S. Ilagan, Joseph Benjamin R. Ilagan, Zachary Matthew Alabastro

Business Insights Laboratory for Development (BUILD)

The local business landscape in the Philippines presents a slow adoption to digitization. There are fears of inaccurate results and limited technical proficiency. Data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are crucial for business growth. By understanding the performance of stock-keeping-units (SKU) with technology, businesses can find better ways to handle products to increase profitability. In exploring optical character recognition (OCR) and large language models (LLM), a software pipeline can help businesses analyze handwritten sales data for business intelligence. The research aims to develop a system for translating logbooks into metrics by augmenting manual business processes performed by staff. The application …

Unlocking Private Equity Investing: A Primer, Yin Wang, Steve Balaban

Asian Management Insights

Private equity might provide higher returns, but investors should be aware of the associated risks.

Bogging Down Investors: An Unintended Consequence Of Litigation Risk, Siwen Fu, Ke Wang, Liandong Zhang, Liu Zheng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Securities litigation risk is a well-recognized yet underexplored source of financial reporting complexity or unreadability. This study examines the effect of litigation risk on the readability of corporate financial reports. The 1999 Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) court ruling unexpectedly reduced litigation risk for firms within the Ninth Circuit Court's jurisdiction. Using a difference-in-differences design centered on the SGI court ruling, we find that, while the readability of financial reports generally declines over the sample period, treated firms in the Ninth Circuit experience a comparatively smaller decline in readability than control firms in other states after the ruling. Put differently, treated …

Institutional Dual-Holders And Corporate Disclosures: A Natural Experiment, Lin Cheng, Qiang Cheng, Liwei Weng, Mark Yuzhi Yan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines the impact of the presence of institutional dual-holders, whose portfolios hold both loans and equity securities of the same firms, on those firms' voluntary disclosures. Using mergers between institutional shareholders and lenders to the same firms as exogenous shocks to identify firms with institutional dual-holders that have high relative equity ownership, we document that such firms are less likely to provide management forecasts and disclose fewer voluntary 8-K items. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that the reduction in voluntary disclosures is more pronounced when institutional dual-holders have higher board representation and when firms have lower litigation risk. …

Exploring How The High Or Low Of Firm Transparency And Speed Of Adjustment In Its Capital Structure Relates To The Implied Cost Of Capital Of A Firm, Yung Chee Leong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation tackles a core challenge in corporate finance — how firms can optimise both their capital structure decisions and the way those decisions are communicated to investors. It shows that while financial responsiveness (SOA) and transparency each help lower a firm’s implied cost of capital (ICC), the most meaningful reduction occurs when both are present and working together. For CFOs, the research offers a practical way to connect capital structure planning with communication strategy to improve market understanding and reduce financing costs. For investors and analysts, it introduces the idea of a transparency–SOA alignment measure to better assess firm …

The Association Between Different Succession Methods And Innovation Investments In Family Businesses In China, Lei Wu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Amidst the deepening of economic globalization, countries around the world are being progressively steered toward paths of innovative development, laying a solid foundation for enhancing national comprehensive strength and elevating international standing. Especially after the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in our country, technological innovation has become the main direction of our transformation. According to the requirements of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, innovation-driven development will be fully applied to the country's development, creating favorable conditions for the realization of strategic development goals. National development and social progress are directly linked to corporate …

Essays On Empirical Asset Pricing, Ruxue Gong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The dissertation consists of three chapters on behavioral finance, arbitrage activities, cryptocurrencies and ETFs. The first chapter examines the existence and trading behavior of triangular arbitrageurs in cryptocurrency markets. Using a novel account-level orderbook dataset from an Indian cryptocurrency exchange, we document persistent price deviations between USD- and INRquoted token pairs, and use the triangular arbitrage opportunities to identify arbitrageurs and noise traders. Our results show that arbitrageurs significantly outperform noise traders on their holding-based returns, after adjusting for market returns and trading fees. However, arbitrageurs are not immune to behavioral biases when making trading decisions. Using a composite behavioral …

Using Multiculturalism To Combat The Negative Creativity Effect Of Cultural Tightness: How It Is Done Matters, Jung Kiu Choi

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This study investigates the multifaceted influence of cultural tightness and multiculturalism on the global commercial success of pop music. Addressing an under-explored moderating effect of multicultural factors on creative output under tight culture, this research analyzes Billboard Global 200 and Spotify Top 50 chart data from 2013-2021. The empirical analysis reveals that cultural tightness negatively impacts pop song’s success. Conversely, multiculturalism, specifically through diverse languages and performance teams, generally enhances global success. A key finding is that while multicultural production teams do not directly correlate with success, they critically moderate the detrimental effects of cultural tightness, a buffering effect unique …

Staff Matters: The Transformative Power Of Mentoring In The Workplace, Jodi Schafer Sphr, Shrm-Scp

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This article advocates for implementing mentoring programs in dental practices to support new employees beyond traditional onboarding. The author emphasizes that mentoring is particularly valuable for early-career professionals and resonates strongly with Millennials and Gen Z who prioritize learning opportunities. Statistical evidence from Harvard Business Review shows that 76% of professionals consider mentoring crucial for growth, 74% attribute career success to mentoring relationships, and 89% of mentees become mentors themselves. The article provides practical implementation guidance, suggesting practices start with informal programs matching new employees with seasoned staff members. Key recommendations include establishing clear expectations, providing financial support for mentor-mentee …

Mda Insurance: 5 Reasons You Need Life, Disability Insurance, Craig Start Mba

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This article outlines essential insurance protections for dental professionals and their practices. The five key reasons include: life insurance providing survivor income for family maintenance and lifestyle continuation; life insurance serving as an investment vehicle with cash value for practice ownership or business goals; decreasing term life insurance covering business mortgages with reducing benefits as equity increases; disability insurance providing income replacement through age 70 for "own-occupation" coverage when unable to practice dentistry; and business overhead expense insurance covering practice expenses during disability periods. The author emphasizes that these insurance products are often overlooked despite being critical for financial security. …

Be Aware Of These Hazard Communication Standard Changes, Jennifer Cosey

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Executive Summary: This regulatory update outlines OSHA's revised Hazard Communication Standard published on May 20, 2024, with staggered compliance dates ranging from 18 to 42 months after publication. The changes primarily affect manufacturers and distributors, who must now provide Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) with their first shipments and updates. For dental practices, the standard applies to products containing 1% hazardous ingredients or 0.1% carcinogens, such as disinfectants, medications, amalgam, and adhesives. Key changes include new definitions for liquids, solids, and physical hazards, updated labeling requirements for small containers (≤100 ml), and improved accessibility requirements for SDSs. Manufacturers must now provide …

Endorsed Program News, Reva Darling

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This Month's news from MDA Endorsed Programs advises early-career dentists on how to navigate real estate challenges during a practice transition. It cautions against relying on generic market comparisons, making emotional decisions, or bypassing expert real estate coordinators. It recommends working with dental-specific real estate advisors like Bridge Commercial Realty to ensure fair valuations and smooth transactions. Additional endorsed services are highlighted, including cyber insurance (Coalition Active), PPO negotiation, reputation management, and cost-saving credit card processing.

Dentistry And The Law: Can I Use Patient Information To Respond To Internet Criticism?, Daniel Schulte J.D.

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This legal guidance addresses dentists' inability to respond to negative online reviews using patient information. The article explains that HIPAA and Michigan's Dentist-Patient Privilege Statute prohibit healthcare professionals from disclosing patient information without authorization, even when defending against false or defamatory online posts. Unlike patients who can freely share information about their treatment, dentists face significant legal restrictions. The author notes that legal recourse is often difficult due to challenges in proving poster identity, distinguishing factual statements from opinions, and demonstrating specific damages. The recommended approach is to avoid responding to negative posts and instead focus on reputation management through …

The Mda's Impact: Going Beyond Insurance Reimbursements, Todd Christy D.D.S.

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Dr. Todd Christy, MDA Immediate Past President, acknowledges that inadequate insurance reimbursement rates are a major concern for dental practices. He explains that federal antitrust laws restrict the MDA from directly intervening to "fix" these rates. However, the article emphasizes that the MDA provides significant value and advocacy in many other areas crucial to dentists. Key achievements include eliminating the tax on dental prosthetics, legislating network leasing protections, expanding kindergarten oral health assessments, and regulating mobile dentistry. The MDA also offered vital support during the COVID-19 pandemic, advocated for increased Medicaid facility fees for anesthesia procedures, and assists members with …

Getting Help When The Going Gets Tough, Michelle C. Dziurgot D.D.S.

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

In her editorial, Dr. Dziurgot emphasizes the importance of emotional support and mental health resources for dentists. She shares her own experiences of turning to family in tough times and offers practical alternatives for those without such support. Strategies include journaling, creative expression, and seeking professional counseling through programs like the MDA Member Assistance Program and ADA Talkspace. She encourages open dialogue and mutual support within the dental community.

News You Need: It's Mid-Year: Are You Taking Advantage Of Your Mda Member Benefits?

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This comprehensive overview highlights numerous MDA member benefits available to Michigan dentists. Key offerings include practice guidelines on various topics, a formal mentor program, DiSC training for staff development, social media support kits, extensive continuing education programs, and student debt resources. Additional benefits encompass ADA resources, contract analysis services, radiography training programs, job board access, legal assistance, regulatory compliance support, insurance services, and human resources guidance. The article also announces MDA Dental PAC competition winners who contributed $23,000 for advocacy activities, reports on staff departures including HR director Brandy Ryan and Medicare expert Rick Seely, and recognizes table clinic winners …

Mda Foundation: Scholarship Awardee Hopes To Expand Access To Care With Free Clinical Services, Anne Berquist

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This profile features Morgan Sherrard, recipient of the $4,000 MDA Foundation/Dr. and Mrs. Gary Jeffers scholarship, who developed her passion for dentistry while volunteering at Holland Free Health Clinic. Her experiences witnessing patients choose between dental care and basic necessities inspired her career direction toward serving underserved populations. Currently completing her second year at University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry, Sherrard envisions establishing a comprehensive clinic offering free or low-cost holistic health services. Her ambitious plan includes potentially partnering with her twin brother Mitchell, a medical student at Michigan State University, to create a combined medical-dental facility. During her …

Tread: A Digital Solution For Sustainable Travel, Audrey Claire Talmi, Amy Besford

Graphic Communication

This senior project aims to create an eco-tourism website that promotes sustainable and ethical travel by connecting users with local businesses, communities, and culturally respectful experiences. As mainstream tourism increasingly contributes to environmental degradation and social displacement, this platform will provide responsible alternatives by avoiding over-touristed destinations and favoring underrepresented areas. It will allow users to book flights, lodging, and activities while educating them on the consequences of over-tourism. Through a combination of intuitive user interface, thoughtful user experience, engaging visual design, and curated educational content, the website will serve not only as a booking platform but as a digital …

Seattle's New Edition, Kyle Gray

Graphic Communication

My project is to create and develop the branding of the NBA's newest franchise: The Seattle Grunge. Grunge is a genre of alternative rock that emerged in the mid-1980s particularly in the city of Seattle. With my team, I am looking for seamless cohesion with other logos in the Association while establishing an emotional connection between the fanbase and its city. The project will consist of a complete creation of the team’s logo/branding, court, 3 jersey designs (home/away/city connect), merchandise, season ticket packaging, and a full marketing report (team logo exposure/connection to the city).

Conducting Background Checks In The Corporate Security Environment, Alan Saquella

Publications

In the current threat landscape, the background check has become a critical frontline defense in protecting corporate assets, brand integrity and personnel safety. But as any security leader will tell you, the traditional background check — focused on criminal history, employment verification and references — has limitations, especially in today’s regulatory environment.

Federal and state restrictions continue to erode the depth and scope of what can be legally reviewed, and meanwhile, insider threats and deceptive candidates are becoming more sophisticated. In this context, it's no longer about whether to conduct background checks — it's about how to conduct them effectively, …

Mentoring: An Evidence-Based Approach To Leader Development, Robert J. Chico, Sophia R. Thoma, Tejal Wagadia, S. R. Aurora

Management Faculty Publications

Mentoring is vital for fostering the qualities and abilities necessary to expand employees’ capacity to lead. We highlight the aspects of mentoring and key considerations for implementing a mentoring program in organizations and educational institutions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of mentoring in developing emerging leaders and offer resources for readers to learn more about mentoring and implementing mentorship programs. We trust readers will understand mentoring’s benefits and acquire useful insights for establishing a mentorship program.

Chatgpt On Chatgpt: An Exploratory Analysis Of Its Performance In The Public Sector Workplace, Jieshu Wang, Elif Kiran, S. R. Aurora, Michael Simeone, Jose Lobo

Management Faculty Publications

This study explores the impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), in particular, ChatGPT, on the public sector workforce in the United States, focusing on task replacement, assistance potential, and the evolving landscape of skills. Utilizing GPT-4 to evaluate 1,022 core tasks across 51 public sector occupations, we provide an exploratory analysis of the roles susceptible to ChatGPT automation and those in which ChatGPT can augment human efforts. Our findings reveal that while 63% of tasks are resistant to ChatGPT replacement, primarily due to their requirement for physical presence, emotional intelligence, and complex decision-making, tasks that are routine, rule-based, and involving …

On Sgx’S Voyage To Corporate Sustainability: Exploring Emerging Topics In Multi-Industry Corpora, Xinwen Ni, Min Bin Lin, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Wolfgang Karl Hardle

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Topic modeling and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) have proven valuable in various fields as an innovative approach to studying areas of interest and identifying topics in a dynamic content. The underlying assumption is that techniques like LDA can swiftly capture emerging topics in textual documents compared to other categorization tools. These unsupervised approaches have been used to identify new industries and technological domains. However, our study on the nascent topic of “sustainability” within the corpora of SGX-listed companies highlights clear limitations in employing techniques like LDA on sparse data. The dynamic LDA approach, also called DTM (Dynamic Topic Modelling),based on …

Transmission Effect Of Contributory Pension Scheme To Economic Growth In Nigeria: Structural Vector Autoregressive (Svar) Approach, Iortyom Udaah, Sunday E. Akiri

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study examines the transmission effect of contributory pension scheme on Nige ria’s economic growth using quarterly data from 2010 to 2023. Thestudyis grounded in the Solow growth and Harrod–Domar models as its theoretical framework and employs a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) approach for data analysis. The results show that economic growth responds positively to changes in pension fund assets and contributions. It also reveal that pension fund assets respond positively to changes in pension fund contribution in Nigeria. The study recommends that gov ernment should intensify efforts to encourage employers and employees in the in formal sector, as well …

Adaptive Expectation, News Impact And Lending Rate Behaviour In Nigeria: Evidence From Garch Models, Innocent Chile Nzeh

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study investigates how adaptive expectations and news impact shape lending rate behavior in Nigeria within the framework of both symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models. Using monthly data spanning 2006M1 to 2024M5, the paper analyzes the persistence, volatility, and responsiveness of the prime lending rate to positive and negative news shocks. Three error distributions (Normal, Student’s t, and Generalized Error Distribution (GED)) were employed to ensure robust estimation. The findings reveal that, in all models, the recent past value of the prime lending rate has a positive and sig nificant impact on the current value, indicating the presence of adaptive …

Relative Price Changes And Monetary Policy Stance In Nigeria, Elijah A. Udoh, Ibrahim D. Mohammed, Yakubu M. Sanusi, Philom Ena Y. Oksakei

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study estimates a baseline Taylor Rule and an augmented Taylor Rule incorporating relative price movements (RELP) using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) on Nigerian data. The baseline model shows weak and statistically insignificant responses of the MPR to inflation, the output gap, and crisis conditions, confirming earlier findings that inflation and output in Nigeria do not have contemporaneous effects on the MPR. By contrast, the augmented model reveals that the relative price level positively and significantly influences the policy rate, indicating that the CBN raises interest rates when domestic prices rise relative to external or bench mark prices. Across …

The Dead Internet Theory: A Survey On Artificial Interactions And The Future Of Social Media, Prathamesh Muzumdar, Sumanth Cheemalapati, Srikanth Reddy Ramireddy, Kuldeep Singh, George Kurian, Apoorva Muley

Faculty Publications - The LeMoyne Smith School of Business

The Dead Internet Theory (DIT) suggests that much of today’s internet, particularly social media, is dominated by non-human activity, AI-generated content, and corporate agendas, leading to a decline in authentic human interaction. This study explores the origins, core claims, and implications of DIT, emphasizing its relevance in the context of social media platforms. The theory emerged as a response to the perceived homogenization of online spaces, highlighting issues like the proliferation of bots, algorithmically generated content, and the prioritization of engagement metrics over genuine user interaction. AI technologies play a central role in this phenomenon, as social media platforms increasingly …

Rethinking Assessment In Asynchronous Learning: A Benchmark Portfolio For Mngt 301, Pedro J. Agüero Arroyo

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This teaching portfolio evaluates the instructional redesign of MNGT 301 Introduction to Management at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, focusing on improving student learning outcomes, addressing performance disparities across demographic groups, and enhancing assessment alignment with course goals. The redesign primarily involved modifying assessment types and implementing clearer structure and grading expectations. The analysis compares student performance data from Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, disaggregated by demographic indicators including gender, race/ethnicity, parent education, neighborhood opportunity index, and rural/urban background. In addition, student perceptions were assessed through a midsemester Keep-Stop-Start survey. Findings suggest that redesign elements enhanced student engagement and equity by …

2025 June, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for June of 2025.

Adaptive Volatility Forecasting Models, Jeffrey K. Tan

Master's Theses

In finance, risk is often quantified by volatility, and computing accurate volatility forecasts — while vital to financial decision making — remains one of the most challenging tasks in financial modeling. This thesis, motivated in part by the Black-Scholes-Merton Model and its limitations, adopts a statistical approach to volatility forecasting. The two main models of interest are the Exponential Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) model and the GARCH(1,1) model. Specifically, this work expands upon a potential adaptive lambda algorithm for EWMA models first proposed by Bernard Bollen (2014), and this work also utilizes the Momentum of Predictability (MoP) to generate adaptive …