Business Commons^™

Manager's Toolbox: Ethics And Values, Ratan Tata, Philip C. Zerrillo

Asian Management Insights

Ratan Tata zeros in on ethics and values as part of the science of management, and India's current economic journey, in this interview with Philip Zerrillo.

Surviving Beyond A Third Generation, Andreas Raharso

Asian Management Insights

Family-owned businesses’ continued survival is unsure. Research indicates the most likely cause is their pursuit of professionalisation.

Improving Financial And Personnel Management At Petsfirst! Wellness Center, Andrew Arveseth

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A part of my coursework in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, I was able to participate in a management internship at PetsFirst! Wellness Center. This internship provided me with the opportunity to really evaluate and understand multiple elements of a management position. I specifically focused on client incentives, cost management, and human resources during the course of my internship project at this veterinary clinic. My responsibilities in each of these business functions helped me develop the skills necessary to effectively hold a management position after graduation.

A Management Buyout In The Lower Middle Market, James Kenneth Allred

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

ABC Inc., "ABC" or "The Company", is a leading manufacturer of precision rotary valves, feeders, screw conveyors, and components found in industrial material handling systems. Due to their proprietary products, exceptional durability, and custom design and manufacturing processes, ABC has developed a reputation as a premium manufacturer and supplier of choice across various industries. ABC initially targeted the wood products industry, and pulp and paper remains its largest industry segment today, but The Company has since expanded its services to mining, cement, chemical companies as well as coal and biomass burning plants. In addition to its proprietary products, ABC provides …

Matching Staff And Projects, Ruth E. Bryan

Library Presentations

No abstract provided.

A Multilevel Analysis Of Problem-Based Learning Design Characteristics, Kimberly S. Scott

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

The increasing use of experience-centered approaches like problem-based learning (PBL) by learning and development practitioners and management educators has raised interest in how to design, implement and evaluate PBL in that field. Of particular interest is how to evaluate the relative impact of design characteristics that exist at the individual and team levels of analysis. This study proposes and tests a multilevel model of PBL design characteristics. Participant perceptions of PBL design characteristics are used to examine PBL reactions and perceived learning outcomes. Findings affirm the importance of problem design characteristics and effective team facilitation, while raising new questions about …

April 2014, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

News and Features

Protecting Your “A” Factor: 16 Accountability

Killers to Avoid Most of us are guilty of small

behaviors that crack our accountability façade and

hurt us, both personally and professionally, far more

than we realize. Julie Miller and Brian Bedford

examines what can happen when businesses, teams,

families, and individuals shirk accountability. . . . . . . . 3

Five Ways to Use Your Brain to Build a Better

Business Michael Vaughan shows us why business

owners and managers should use their brains to

understand what employees need psychologically

in order to excel and perform, and gives …

The Story As A Cultural Transmitter: Applications For Business Education, Carol Blaszczynski, Ph.D.

International Journal for Business Education

Stories assist in transmitting cultural wisdom, including wisdom about the business community. The role of stories in various contexts such as education (including international management), management, and marketing, as well as the job search is explained. The article concludes by presenting instructional activities for business education that develop cultural competence through stories.

Loyalty Programs: An Examination Of The Best Practices In Selected Luxury Chain Hotels, Julie Poincenot

Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration

Loyalty programs enable companies to reward their return customers. In the hotel industry, a loyalty program is a useful and beneficial tool to improve their customer service and entice their guests to stay with them on return visits. The purpose of this study was to conduct a best practices study on loyalty programs in luxury hotel chains. The researcher used a best practices matrix to examine the loyalty programs of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Omni Hotels and Resorts, and Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants. The study found that companies should benchmark their programs by aligning their benefits with companies similar to …

March 2014, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

News and Features

The Way You Do Anything Is the Way You Do

Everything (and Nine More “Tough Love” Truths

for Business Owners) Suzanne Evans says that you,

and you alone, are the source of your success or failure.

She gives us 10 inconvenient but ironclad truths that

all business owners should take to heart. . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Will Your Social Security Check Be in the Mail

Come 2015? Economist Allen W. Smith says there is

no trust fund, and a number of elected officials,

including former President George W. Bush, …

Waste Management And Energy Recovery: A Significant Business Issue, James Peter Murphy

Conference papers

Waste Management and energy recovery has become a significant business issue for hospitality establishments in recent years. Hospitality establishments have to be more concerned about waste in their businesses and be able to adopt systems to reduce, reuse and recover waste. This challenge is the result of a variety of factors, most notably the charges involved in waste removal and cost of every businesses energy needs. Costs have grown dramatically, landfill capacity has become increasingly scarce and expensive. Stringent legislation has been introduced around the world to ensure optimum waste management and energy recovery practices in hospitality businesses. Opportunities have …

The Dark Side Of Leadership: Dealing With A Narcissistic Boss, Thomas W. Camm

Mining Engineering

Some of the defining characteristics of narcissists include a grandiose sense of self-importance, preoccupation with success and power, a sense of infallibility, and a supreme confidence in their ability and intelligence. Ironically, many of these characteristics are rewarded in business organizations, which may explain why there seems to be so many narcissists in management positions. Assuming we will be dealing with narcissists throughout our career, it makes sense for us to understand what makes them tick, and more importantly what we can do to work with them in a constructive manner.

Mining For Gold Inside Your Organization, J. Scott Dutcher, Dr. William H. Baker

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Making the most of the information that is available to you is what data mining is all about. Surprisingly, large numbers of organizations have yet to incorporate data mining techniques that drive many of their operations and decisions. Instead, upper management is trying to solve many puzzles without looking at the pieces. For those organizations that currently use data mining strategies, better mining methods can always be found. These missed mining opportunities have resulted in poorer service, lost revenue, security threats, and more. Data mining will be essential for the survival of businesses and organizations in the 21^st Century. …

January 2014, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

News and Features

Four Critical Actions Leaders Can Take Now

to Build a Culture of Accountability in 2014 Julie

Miller and Brian Bedford offers a proven process

for installing an accountability-based culture, a

platform for success in business and in everyday

life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Are You Penny-Pinching Yourself Out of Business?

Sean C. Castrina outlines five expenses a business

should never ever skimp on. …

Follow Me! Followership, Leadership And The Multigenerational Workforce, Ronald M. Johnson

HCBE Theses and Dissertations

This research was designed to develop an understanding of today's multigenerational workforce with respect to a preferred styles or characteristics of followership and leadership. Specifically this research sought to determine if there was a relationship between an individual's generational cohort and the preferred styles of leadership and followership, as measured by implicit theories of leadership and followership. Therefore, this study draws upon generational theory (Mannheim, 1952), implicit theories of leadership (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004) and implicit theories of followership (Sy, 2010). The changes in the composition of the US workforce which have occurred, and which will continue to occur in …

A Review Of Business Communication Under The Leadership Function, Clive Muir

Faculty Publications

An effective way to perpetuate an academic discipline is to identify and to define its intellectual and historical roots, then to set such roots in the foundation textbooks and courses of the discipline. In that regard, Business Communication still struggles to establish its roots when compared to other disciplines in business schools, particularly Management. For this study, we undertook an extensive review of significant scholarly works on Business Communication as a discipline. We discovered there are prevalent themes in the broader context of rhetoric, technology, culture, dissemination, and impression; and this was confirmed by our examining the tables of contents …

Generational Cohort Differences In Types Of Organizational Commitment Among Nurses In Alabama, April Lavette Jones

Presidential Alumni Research Dissemination Award

In hospitals in the United States, the ratio of nurses to patients is declining, resulting in an increase in work demands for nurses. Consequently, organizations face challenges with nurses' organizational commitment. Studies have revealed generational differences, as determined by birth year, in employee levels of organizational commitment in a number of organizational settings. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding the impact of generational cohorts on the organizational commitment of nurses. The purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental, cross-sectional design was to address whether generational cohorts of nurses differed in their levels of organizational commitment, and to investigate whether …

Historical And Modern Management Practices Applied At Disney World: Out With The Old And In With The New?, Sarah Patterson, Bahaudin G. Mujtaba

HCBE Faculty Articles

In today's expanding and ever-evolving global marketplace, managers are beginning to be required to work with their companies and employees in entirely different ways. Explained in-depth throughout the entirety of the article is the 20th century management techniques pioneered by Taylor, then reformed by Weber and Fayol, contrasted against the ahead-of-its-time behavioural management and the 21st century market-based management styles. Credit will, of course, be given where earned to the first style since it is focused on a centralised and bureaucratic method that worked extremely well in the Industrial Revolution time period. Nonetheless in today’s market place it is no …

A Distributed Consensus Algorithm For Decision Making In Service-Oriented Internet Of Things, Shancang Li, George Oikonomou, Theo Tryfonas, Thomas M. Chen, Li Da Xu

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

In a service-oriented Internet of things (IoT) deployment, it is difficult to make consensus decisions for services at different IoT edge nodes where available information might be insufficient or overloaded. Existing statistical methods attempt to resolve the inconsistency, which requires adequate information to make decisions. Distributed consensus decision making (CDM) methods can provide an efficient and reliable means of synthesizing information by using a wider range of information than existing statistical methods. In this paper, we first discuss service composition for the IoT by minimizing the multi-parameter dependent matching value. Subsequently, a cluster-based distributed algorithm is proposed, whereby consensuses are …

An Investigation Into The Importance Of Organisational Public Relations For Live Music Festivals In Ireland, Paying Particular Attention To Organisational Identity, Image And Reputation, David Mahy

Theses

This research is concerned with Image and Reputation creation and management within the entertainment sector, specifically with regard to live music festivals and how a Public Relations campaign can successfully create a favourable image with its main target demographics and maintain a positive reputation and corporate identity.

The literature on the subjects of reputation, identity and event management revealed that relationship building and image management with primary groups of stakeholders can be very significant contributors to the success of live music festivals. Successful two way engagement with customers and perspective attendees of the festival can ensure the continued existence of …

Facilitating Successful Failures, Michelle M. Harner, Jamie Marincic Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

Approximately 80,000 businesses fail each year in the United States. This article presents an original empirical study of over 400 business restructuring professionals focused on a critical, arguably contributing factor to these failures—the conduct of boards of directors and management. Anecdotal evidence suggests that management of distressed companies often bury their heads in the sand until it is too late to remedy the companies’ problems, a phenomenon commonly called “ostrich syndrome.” The data confirm this behavior, show a prevalent use of loss framing, and suggest trends consistent with prospect theory. The article draws on these data and behavioral economics to …

Does An It Organization Transform Its Identity When Engaged In Outsourcing?, Carol Mcguire

Student Scholarship

Firms have outsourced since the infant days of manufacturing. Many firms find that the ability to fill gaps in their expertise or gaps in human capital with individuals outside the organization is crucial to keep pace with customer demand. Much has been published about the decision making process and resulting impacts of outsourcing from business operations point of view, with financial considerations being extensively explored. But less has been published about the relationship between outsourcing and the identity of the organization engaged in outsourcing. Worldwide IT spending was estimated to be $2 Trillion in 2013 with approximately 12% directed to …

A Web-Based Knowledge Management Tool Utilizing Concept Maps For On-Line Student Advising, Jay M. Lightfoot

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Increasingly complex program offerings by universities combined with on-line educational opportunities have created a situation where students must deal with an extremely complicated array of curriculum decisions. At the same time, many universities are moving away from the traditional one-on-one advising model toward one that relies heavily on web-based resources. The result of this is that students are often forced to self-advise using complicated and often poorly structured websites. This paper describes a knowledge management tool to mitigate this problem by creating an intuitive, web-based interface to help students navigate directly to the Internet advising materials that are most applicable.

A Tribute On The 25 Th Anniversary To The International Information Management Association (Iima) And Its Co-Founders: C. E. Tapie Rohm Jr., Patrick J. Mcinturff Jr. And Walter T. Stewart Jr., Warren Adis, Joseph O. Chan, Xin James He, Tanya Goette, Frank Lin, Emmanuel Uzoma Opara, Trevor Rohm, Gerhard Steinke, Jake Zhu

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

IIMA is a special place for all of us. For twenty-five years, it has served as a forum for all of us to gather together to engage in intellectual conversations, to disseminate knowledge, and to renew our profession. Over the many years, IIMA has helped many us with our tenure and promotion, and has made our manuscripts available worldwide through our publication outlets, the three IIMA journals and the seasonal conference proceedings. Also for many of us, IIMA is not only a forum for academics, but also a place for friendship, family and fun. Many of us have become life-long …

When Google Meets Xiaomi: Comparative Case Study In Western And Eastern Corporate Management, Yu-Feng Lin Lee

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Google Inc. of the West and Xiaomi Inc. of the East are recognized as ‘flat organizations’. They exercise ‘flat management’ in their corporate culture, wherein mid-level management is abridged, leaving the corporate structure less-bureaucratic, top-down-and-less-hierarchical, and more laissez-faire. Using the Confucian criteria of Wu Yu, namely morality (or, virtue), intellectual (or, wisdom), physical ability (or, sportsmanship), groupism (or, cooperation), and aesthetics (or, elegance), this paper assesses managerial philosophy and corporate practice of Google and Xiaomi. It is found that under flat management, although each company nevertheless reveals its corporate idiosyncrasy, they achieve business success and sustainability through adopting small-team orientation, …

Sustainability Efforts Of One Oil Company In Niger Delta Of Nigeria, Charles Afam Anosike

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Environmental degradation and socioeconomic dilemma continue to stigmatize oil production in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Sustainability programs of oil companies often determine the improvement of living conditions in the region. This explanatory qualitative case study, guided by systems thinking theory and sustainable value framework, explored practitioners' perceptions of sustainability programs to identify its impact on business and the host communities. The research question was designed to address how sustainability efforts of a single oil company in the Niger Delta contributed to the business performance and the livelihood of the local people. Research data were gathered from a sample of …

December 2013, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

News and Features

The Good Ol’ Boy Decline: 8 Tips to Help Women

Take Over the C-Suite Vickie Milazzo argues that

every coporation can benefit from a touch of estrogen

and the feminine qualities associated with it. The

almost constant changes to the way we communicate,

interact, innovate, and do business are setting up an

opportunity-filled future for women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Knowledge ISN’T Power: How to Stop Gathering

Info, Weighing the Evidence, Chasing New Ideas….

and Just Execute Already! Moran and Lennington’s

new book, “The 12 Week …

Culture And Innovation In Peru From A Management Perspective, Gregory J. Scott, Ian Chaston

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Political stability, macro-economic caution, and the aggressive pursuit of free trade have enabled Peru to emerge as one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. This economic expansion has created heightened interest in the evolution of corporate culture and its influence on firm performance. This paper examines organizational performance in relation to the influence of cultural values on innovation by means of a survey of upper level managers. Analysis of the survey results indicates that there was a positive relation between innovation and power distance and uncertainty. Survey findings show no relationship between innovation and individualism nor innovation and …

Beyond Problems And Cases: Discussion Materials For Accounting In Executive Programs Business School, Sharon M. Bruns, William J. Bruns

Journal of Executive Education

Selection or development of classroom materials for an accounting class in an executive program is complicated by the fact that some students enter the program with a substantial knowledge of accounting while others may have no background at all. Furthermore, general management programs do not usually focus on making all students equally knowledgeable about what accountants do and how to use the information that accounting provides. Problems and cases are sometimes not successful as discussion materials in the mixed audience class because some students are not challenged while others are overwhelmed because of their lack of exposure to the methods …

October 2013, Inland Empire Business Journal

Inland Empire Business Journal

News and Features

How to Address Rampant Employee

Disengagement? Recognized Human Equity

Gallup poll shows that most American workers

either hate their job or don't care one way

or the other about them. Trevor Wilson says

it's time to focus on individual's strengths

in the on-going search for the best talent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Your Customers Are Smarter Than You and

Three Other Awkward …