Business Commons^™

Collecting Financial Data From Online Sources: Enhancing Large Language Models With Real-Time Search, Yang Li

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Timely and accurate access to financial data is crucial for empirical research in accounting and finance. However, current data collection processes are often manual, inconsistent, and difficult to scale. This study asks: How can large language models (LLMs) be effectively used to automate financial data collection? Using design science research methodology (DSRM), the author develops a modular architecture that integrates a real-time search API and auxiliary information processing into LLM workflows. The study applies the model to two tasks: extracting ESG report release dates and identifying customer firm tickers from COMPUSTAT. The system achieves 96% and 95% accuracy, respectively, comparable …

Using Blockchain, Non-Fungible Tokens, And Smart Contracts To Track And Report Greenhouse Gas Emissions, J Gregory Jenkins, Eric N. Negangard, Mark D. Sheldon

2025 Faculty Bibliography

Global markets are moving toward requiring firms to track and report greenhouse gas emissions across their value chain. This includes self-generated emissions (i.e., Scope 1), emissions from power providers (i.e., Scope 2), and emissions from upstream suppliers and downstream parties (i.e., Scope 3). Yet, obtaining reliable emissions data is a complex task that often relies on cumbersome legacy processes and becomes especially challenging with upstream and downstream emissions. Using the Design Science Research Methodology, we propose and prototype (early-stage) a technological solution that uses blockchain, non-fungible tokens, and smart contracts to track and report greenhouse gas emissions across a firm’s …

The Economic Impact Of The 2024 Lpga Dow Championship, Grand Valley State University, Christian Glupker

Other Faculty Publications

The 2024 Dow Championship is estimated to have generated or supported economic benefits for the Great Lakes Bay region in the following ways:

• A total economic impact of $16.8 million in economic activity, supporting 128 jobs, and contributing $8.9 million to the regional GDP.
• The increase in economic activity generated $150,000 in tax revenue for local municipalities, $225,000 for special districts, and $142,000 for the Great Lakes Bay counties.
• The event attracted 30,061 spectators and required the assistance of 4,389 staff members and 1,050 volunteers.

The Economic Impact Of The Grand Rapids Area Nonprofit Arts And Culture Sector, Grand Valley State University, Christian Glupker, Paul Isely

Other Faculty Publications

The Grand Rapids area nonprofit arts and culture sector (GRACS) is estimated to have generated or supported economic benefits for the city of Grand Rapids and Kent County in the following ways:

• The total economic impact of this industry is estimated at $298.7 million in economic output, supporting 2,529 jobs. Approximately $195 million in economic output is new to the area.
• The total annual fiscal impact (tax revenue) of all primary visitor spending and GRACS organizational spending is estimated at $821,000 for municipalities and $585,000 for Kent County.
• GRACS events attracted 2.67 million visitors, with 48% visiting from outside the …

Size Premium In Small Business Valuation: Analysis Of Closely-Held Firms, Craig S. Galbraith

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

One of the most misunderstood components of valuing a small closely-held business is how to address the impact of small size. Most closely-held enterprises are relatively small in size, with market values less than $1million. Many small mom and pop operations, or single owner-operator family businesses, often have market values even smaller. The most common method to account for size is to use the size premium reports from Kroll or another financial data service provider. However, these small firm premiums are determined exclusively from publicly-traded firms, where even the category of the smallest publicly-traded firms are still magnitudes larger than …

Reimagining Compliance: Explainable Ai Models For Financial Regulatory Audits, Hrishikesh Desai

Faculty Publications

This chapter develops an analytical model for Explainable AI (XAI) designed to support major types of banking regulatory compliance audits. Financial institutions increasingly rely on AI for efficiency in compliance tasks, but the opacity of complex models creates challenges in meeting regulatory transparency requirements. The proposed mathematical framework incorporates explainability as a quantifiable constraint in the optimization of AI models across five critical audit categories: CAMELS examinations, BSA/AML compliance, Consumer Compliance, IT Audits, and Internal Audits. By quantifying explainability through information- theoretic measures and Shapley values, the model balances predictive performance with regulatory requirements. The methodology is validated through a …

2025 Nebraska Business

College of Business: Trade Publications

2025 Nebraska Business

Exploring The Nexus Of Climate Change, Energy Poverty, And Resilience Through Social Enterprises, Bupe Kunda

Honors Program Theses

This thesis examines how social enterprises address the nexus of climate change, energy poverty, and resilience in Zambia. Despite abundant renewable resources, only 34% of Zambians have electricity access, with stark urban-rural disparities (67% vs 14.5%). Using a qualitative multiple case study approach, this research analyzes ZESCO Limited, Muhanya Solar Limited, and Nyimba Energy Service Company (NESCO) through an integrated theoretical framework combining Social-Ecological-Technical Systems (SETS), energy justice, and social entrepreneurship theories. The study reveals that social enterprises demonstrate innovative approaches including NESCO's energy service company model and Muhanya's prepaid metering system, yet face significant challenges achieving financial sustainability and …

Investing In Leaders To Support Neurodiversity At Work, Beth M. Houran

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Neurodiversity-focused hiring initiatives, such as those pioneered by JP Morgan Chase, DXC Technology, and Microsoft, are addressing talent shortages by harnessing the unique strengths of neurodiverse individuals. This research investigated the role of emotional intelligence, servant leadership, and organizational resources in supporting neurodiverse teams. Grounded in the conservation of resources theory, the findings reveal that EI is a significant antecedent to SL, enabling leaders to foster stronger relationships and engage in extra-role behaviors with neurodiverse employees. Notably, while SL positively impacts leader-member exchange and organizational citizenship behavior toward individuals, the hypothesized moderating role of resources was not supported, suggesting that …

Shaping Strategy In The Digital Age: The Impact Of Consumer Electronic Word Of Mouth On Firm Strategic Emphasis, Brandon Holle, Hang T. Nguyen, Hieu V. Phan

Faculty Scholarship

This research explores how consumer electronic word of mouth (eWOM) influences a firm’s strategic emphasis, focusing on the distinct effects of positive and negative eWOM on value appropriation (e.g., advertising) versus value creation (e.g., R&D). Analyzing over 33 million social media posts covering 39 corporate brands from 2010 to 2020, the authors find that positive consumer eWOM influences firms to prioritize a strategic emphasis on value appropriation, while negative consumer eWOM is associated with a strategic emphasis on value creation. These effects are moderated by product category, market competition, and industry instability. Firms in hedonic categories have attenuated responses to …

Social Media Influencers’ Impact On Curated Subscription Purchases, Ker Xiong

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

Subscriptions gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring that consumers would have access to their products without human contact. As consumers emerged from lockdown, marketers faced the challenge of whether consumers will continue to purchase subscriptions and how to attract customers now that in-store shopping has resumed. The purpose of this study is to investigate how user generated content (UGC), promotion, and trust impact the purchase intention of curated box subscriptions with social media influencers (SMI) serving as a moderating variable. The stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework was used to model how UGC, promotion, and trust can impact curated subscription purchases …

2024-2025 Morehead State University Audit Report, Morehead State University. Accounting And Financial Services Office.

Morehead State University Audit Reports

2024-2025 Audit Report for Morehead State University.

Cybersecurity And Business Analytics: Strengthening Financial And Governmental Digital Defenses, Bushra F. Malik, Ravindar Reddy Gopireddy

Accounting, Business Analytics, Economics, and Finance Department Faculty Articles

The rapid digitization of financial services and federal operations has significantly increased cybersecurity risks. Cybercriminals are continuously evolving their attack methodologies, targeting financial institutions and government agencies to exploit vulnerabilities in digital infrastructures. Business analytics has emerged as a powerful tool in combating these threats by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data analytics to detect, analyze, and prevent cyber threats in real time. This paper explores the convergence of cybersecurity and business analytics, emphasizing their combined role in strengthening threat intelligence, fraud detection, incident response, and regulatory compliance. The research provides insights into emerging security trends, …

Finding Our Way: Three Studies On The Evolving Role Of Arts Nonprofits In Contemporary Society, Trevor Meagher

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

Arts nonprofits play vital roles in defining the character of a community. However, our collective relationship with these organizations is evolving. This article-based dissertation leverages mixed methods to explore arts nonprofits’ evolving relationship with society.

The first article conceptually analyzes historical trends in arts advocacy in the United States. It explores how the arguments organizational supporters make in the hopes of securing financial and public support have developed and shifted in popularity over the past half-century. These streams are thematically connected through an emphasis on utilitarianism and value-extraction, and they have historically been employed in almost completely static proportion to …

Warring Identities: The Transition From Servicemember To Civilian Employee, Michael Beeson

Business Administration Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation explores the role that military service identity plays in the transition to civilian employment. While there is a large volume of research on both the servicemember transition out of the military and military service identity, this dissertation contributes to this literature by examining the intersection of military service identity and the transition to civilian employment. This dissertation is designed to examine the nature of the military identity as servicemembers separate from the military and transition to civilian employment using competing theoretical identity frameworks rooted in identity and social identity theories. First I conduct a survey study that examines …

Navigating Compliance: How Wage Theft Influences Warn Act Decisions, Roberto Gonzales

Accounting Dissertations - Archive

Economic theory suggests that firms comply with regulations when the expected costs of noncompliance outweigh the expected benefits (Becker 1968). Despite minimal enforcement, weak penalties, and strong incentives for noncompliance, some firms comply with the provisions of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which mandates advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings. Using a sample of 7,084 firm-years necessitating WARN Act disclosures from 2000 to 2020, I reassess the cost-benefit calculus by first demonstrating that wage theft violations provide the incentives necessary to compel firms to comply with other minimally enforced laws like WARN. Next, I find …

Reliability Certification Of Supply Chain Networks Under Uncertain Failures And Demand, Ashish Chandra, Jong Gwang Kim

Faculty Publications – Management

In the dynamic and uncertain landscape of modern supply chains, a significant challenge for supply chain network (SCN) architects is ensuring that their designs consistently deliver reliable performance amidst variable traffic demands and unpredictable failures. This assurance is particularly difficult due to the exponential and potentially uncountable set of scenarios that must be considered for evaluation. In response to this challenge, we propose an optimization-theoretic framework to assess the performance of supply chain networks by incorporating flexible routing strategies amid system uncertainties. By modeling network failures and uncertain demand requirements, our methodology tackles the inherent intractability of these certification problems …

Secured Or Unsecured: That Is All Matters - Practical Implications Of New Reference Rates, Tunc Oygur, Alper Kirik, Yaman O. Erzurumlu

Faculty Publications – Finance, Insurance, and Law

EUR and USD overnight risk-free rates (RFRs) have undergone a period of change, with EONIA being replaced with ESTR and Fed Funds Rate (FFR) being replaced with SOFR. We conduct a comparative analysis of the representative power of EONIA vs. ESTR and FFR vs. SOFR regarding market confidence and guidance on market expectations. Our results imply a significant difference between the US and the Eurozone. ESTR-EONIA displays similar characteristics, whereas FFR-SOFR displays different characteristics. SOFR is a superior market indicator to its predecessor and more effectively reflects market confidence than the FFR. However, none of the four RFRs displays forecasting …

Generation Of Family Ceo And Outward Fdi: An Examination Of Indian Family Firms, Arindam Mondal, Somnath Lahiri, Sougata Ray

Faculty Publications – Management

Family firm research has upheld that generation of top family-based executives (including CEOs) plays a significant role in strategy development and governance. A key growth strategy undertaken by family firms around the world, including the Asia-Pacific region, is internationalization. But how generation of family CEO impacts family firm internationalization, particularly outward FDI (OFDI), remains largely overlooked. Drawing on the family firm and internationalization literature and utilizing the socioemotional wealth (SEW) logic, we examine in this study the influence that family CEO generation (founder versus later) has on family firm’s extent of OFDI. We also investigate the extent to which two …

Assessing The Relationship Between Empathy Climate, Motivation To Empathize, Network Ties, And Leader Engagement In Pursuit Of Validating An Empathy Climate Scale, Sarah Gray Shults

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In the current fast-paced, collaborative, and volatile work environment, leader empathy is emerging as a critical leader capability for leaders across all levels. Leader empathy refers to a leader’s ability to understand and relate to the feelings and experiences of another individual or group of individuals while also recognizing that the experience is not their own. In 2018, the European Union cited leader empathy as the top leadership skill; in 2020, Forbes named leader empathy as one of three critical leadership competencies; and in 2023, Harvard Business Review listed it as one of eight essential leader qualities. Leader empathy is …

A Theoretical Framework For Black Women’S Leader Development, Kayla Kai Parker

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the leader development journeys of Black women, identifying key contributors and inhibitors that influence their progression into and experiences within formal leadership positions. This study employed a grounded theory methodology, integrated with an intersectional framework and Black feminist theory. Study data was gathered utilizing three methods: social media listening data points (n = 216), a leadership roadmap survey (n = 69), and structured interviews (n = 15). The open, axial, and selective coding led to the creation of a theoretical framework outlining two pathways to leadership outcomes: one shaped by inhibitors (e.g., identity management, overcompensation, hindrance, resource …

The Role Of Multiracial Identity Integration In Developing Leader Adaptability, Ashley M. Watterson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Today’s global economy and diverse workforce require leaders to navigate complex environments, demanding that they be highly adaptable. However, few studies have examined the cognitive resources needed to support this adaptability. This study examined the relationship between multiracial identity integration (MII) and leader adaptability, exploring the cognitive mechanisms of paradox mindset and attributional complexity. Using a sample of 182 multiracial leaders in the United States, results of a path analysis revealed that MII did not significantly predict leader adaptability, paradox mindset, or attributional complexity when controlling for other factors. Unexpectedly, attributional complexity had a significant but negative relationship with leader …

Organic Social Media Strategy For The University Of Akron, Alexander Busch

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project develops a research-based organic social media strategy for the University of Akron, addressing the growing importance of digital communication in higher education and the need for authentic, student-centered engagement. Although the university maintains an active presence on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X, its current content often reflects a corporate tone that limits relatability and audience connection. This project proposes an alternative content strategy instead: organic advertisements. These are unpaid, and rely on the algorithm to be promoted. The project proposes a five-week content calendar featuring mascot-driven campaigns and event-based initiatives to strengthen brand identity and …

Do Patients Who Receive Dexmedetomidine As An Adjunct To Spinal Anesthesia For Cesarean Delivery Achieve Longer Block Duration Compared To Those Who Receive Spinal Anesthesia With Local Anesthetic Alone?, Liana S. Garrison

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Problem Statement: Cesarean delivery is associated with significant postoperative pain, typically managed with spinal anesthesia using a local anesthetic. While opioids are often added as adjuncts, the addition of dexmedetomidine, an alpha-2 agonist, has emerged as a potential alternative that may enhance the efficacy of the spinal block in terms of pain management, potentially improving block duration and quality compared to local anesthetic alone.

Methodology: A literature review was conducted on the use of dexmedetomidine as an adjunct to spinal anesthesia for patients undergoing cesarean sections. Databases used for the search included PubMed, CINAHL Complete, and MEDLINE. The keywords used …

2025, 2(21)

Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets

Full Issue 2025, 2(21)

On Blockchain As A Tool Against Corporate Corruption, Yannis Normand

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Over the last decades domestic and international legal frameworks have successfully coalesced to limit corrupt behavior worldwide. However, despite their success, current regulatory tools are not sufficiently well-equipped to address corruption in modern economic settings. These mechanisms can often be too costly to implement, too cumbersome to induce compliance, politically manipulatable, and may disincentivize foreign investment and internal corporate monitoring efforts. To address such drawbacks, policymakers should consider the introduction of blockchain-based tools in developing future anti-corruption efforts.

Blockchain can serve as a foundation for structures that can make it more attractive, easier and cost-efficient to monitor economic transactions, to …

Due Diligence Obligations Over State Economic Entities In International Investment Law, Kevin Clement

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The growing importance and sophistication of State capitalism and associated implementation of governmental policies through State economic entities, such as State-owned banks, State-owned enterprises, monopolies, and other entities close to the government, has given rise to a perception that existing international law rules are inadequate to effectively accommodate the activities of such entities. Sole reliance on customary international law principles of attribution has proven particularly problematic where governments maintain links with their economic entities that create a risk of the latter being used as conduits for governmental action. Such links may exist in a variety of forms beyond mere ownership, …

Technology As The Sovereign: A Dual-Path Model Of Managers’ Prioritization Of Technical Tasks, Hesheng Huang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Competitive pressures challenge managers to navigate a multitude of responsibilities. On the basis of Vancouver and colleagues’ (Vancouver et al., 2010; Ballard et al., 2016) multiple-task pursuit framework, Sherf, Venkataramani, and Gejendran (2019) theorized that when faced with competition between technical tasks (e.g., getting things done, meeting assigned goals, promoting quality or accuracy of work, satisfying customer demands, and fulfilling technical responsibilities) and justice tasks (e.g., evaluating employees’ performance, recognizing employees’ achievements, and allocating rewards), managers tend to prioritize technical tasks over justice tasks under high workload demands. On this basis, I aim to examine a model that encompasses the …

Exploring Childcare Leaders’ Perspectives On Program Philosophies At The Intersection Of Care, Education, And Business: A Multi-Method (Qual + Qual) Study Using Simon Sinek’S Golden Circle, Megan Kybartas

Theses and Dissertations

This multi-method (QUAL + qual) study explores childcare leaders’ perspectives on program philosophies at the intersection of care, education, and business, which I call The Childcare Tripartite. Recognizing the significant dependency on high-quality childcare services and the foundational role of program philosophies in achieving this quality, this research addresses a notable gap in the literature regarding how early childhood leaders communicate and prioritize their program philosophies within the complex American childcare landscape. Employing semi-structured interviews, documentary materials, and demographic forms, and analyzed through both thematic and deductive content analysis, drawing on Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, the study uncovers how philosophical …

Dos Hemisferios: Rebranding Strategy For A Nascent Ecuadorian Wine Market, Jacob Massoud, Vafa Saboorideilami

Barowsky School of Business | Faculty Scholarship

The Ecuadorian winery, Dos Hemisferios, had started as a hobby in 1999 but quickly grew into a business and passion for the Wright family. After receiving an international award in 2009 for its cabernet sauvignon-malbec blend called Paradoja, the winery realized its potential and decided to expand its vineyards and production of wines. As part of the strategy to increase sales, Robert Wright, the Dos Hemisferios President, and his father, Guillermo Wright, developed a rebranding proposal for the next board of directors meeting. This rebranding initiative hinged on the belief that people in the Ecuadorian wine market did not know …