Business Commons^™

The Power Of Her Voice: An Interpretative Phenomenological Study Exploring The Career Experiences Of Women Middle-Level Leaders, Cynthia Mako Robinson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study provides a vital contribution to the discourse on women’s career trajectories by amplifying the often-overlooked experiences of women middle-level leaders. Positioned at the intersection of strategic and operational functions, these leaders play a vital role in organizations—developing and motivating employees, driving change, and serving as relationship managers and key connectors to senior leadership. Employing an interpretative phenomenological approach, this study explores the lived experiences of 15 accomplished women middle-level leaders, each with over 15 years of service across private, public, and nonprofit sectors in the United States. Grounded in relational-cultural theory (RCT), career theory, positive work relationships, and …

Did I Buy The Right Gadget? A Methodological Replication Study, Paul A. Weisgarber, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

This study is a methodological replication of Valacich et al.’s (2018) experiment, which investigated the evaluability hypothesis in the context of technology product assessment. The evaluability hypothesis suggests that the evaluation context significantly influences how users assess and perceive technology features. More specifically, it posits that the perception of technology features, as well as the ultimate selection of a technology product, is likely to differ depending on whether a single technology is evaluated in isolation or multiple technologies are evaluated simultaneously. Our replication study consisted of 310 participants who evaluated two wireless internet products with two product features – connection …

Distribution: Understanding Customer-Facing Logistics In Africa, Emmanuel T. Kodzi

Faculty Publications

Companies seeking to do business in Africa often focus more on challenges they need to address, rather than opportunities presented to them. The need to manage their investments across diverse countries, population profiles, infrastructure development levels, and local capabilities is viewed in terms of complexity. However, improved situational understanding will better inform investment decisions regarding product movements among points of origin, production, and consumption. Several aspects of logistics may be considered in this regard, but we focus on customer-facing logistics. We assume that few companies have the capability and resources to both produce and deliver products to end-buyers in a …

Moral Decision-Making In Organizations, Maryam Kouchaki, Isaac Smith

Faculty Publications

Research on moral decision-making in organizations has expanded significantly over the past few decades. In this review, we build on prior comprehensive reviews on the topic to provide an updated view of the field, based on the latest findings. We first provide a brief historical overview of influential theories of moral decision-making and then describe the individual characteristics, interpersonal factors, and organizational factors that have been shown to influence people's morally relevant choices, as well as the cognitive, affective, and even physiological processes at play. We then provide a more critical view of the field and focus on what we …

Student Interaction With Generative Ai: An Exploration Of An Emergent Information-Search Process, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Justin Scott Giboney, Taylor M. Wells, Benjamin Richardson, Tom Meservy, Cole Sutton, Clay Posey, Jacob Steffen, Amanda Lee Hughes

Faculty Publications

ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence, is one of the fastest-adopted tools in history and has quickly become a valued tool in education. This study seeks to understand how generative artificial intelligence has changed the information search process. We collected prompts submitted to ChatGPT and thoughts about ChatGPT responses through a survey of 455 students at a US university. Using thematic analysis, we identified ways that ChatGPT changes the information search process of students by supporting diverse information needs, allowing cycling of prompt adjustments, and promoting easy adoption of results.

The Rise Of Private Equity Continuation Funds, Kobi Kastiel, Yaron Nili

Faculty Scholarship

This Article provides the first comprehensive examination of an emerging practice within the private equity sector: continuation funds. Continuation funds break from the traditional private equity model by allowing sponsors to hold on to assets beyond the typical fund term and, instead of selling the assets to third parties, sell them to their own newly established fund. Lauded by the private equity industry as providing “optionality” to investors by allowing them to cash out or roll over, continuation funds have grown to represent a major segment of investment activity in the United States. Despite their surging popularity among private equity …

The Role Of Trauma-Informed Care In Sustaining The Well-Being Of Refugee Entrepreneurs, Arielle Badger Newman, Lisa Jones Christensen

Faculty Publications

Many international aid organisations encourage refugees to engage in entrepreneurship after relocation to a new host country. Yet, this encouragement may be based on data about entrepreneurship from non-refugee populations, particularly those who do not experience the common traumas of forced relocation. This chapter addresses the topic of trauma and refugee entrepreneurship by asking the following question: How can support organisations encourage well-being (or mitigate ill-being) for entrepreneurial refugees? In doing so, we propose how organisations supporting refugee entrepreneurship can incorporate trauma-informed practices. Specifically, there are four “Rs” to being trauma-informed, which correspond to: realisation, recognition, response, and resistance to …

Detecting Social Desirability Bias With Human-Computer Interaction: A Mouse-Tracking Study, Paul A. Weisgarber, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, David Kim, Manasvi Kumar

Faculty Publications

Social desirability bias undermines self-report accuracy, necessitating novel approaches to detect and mitigate its impact. This study aimed to investigate the influence of social desirability on questionnaire responses by analyzing mouse cursor movements and answering behaviors. Respondents (n=238) completed a health and wellness questionnaire while their mouse cursor data was recorded. The results revealed that individuals under a higher social desirability treatment exhibited significantly longer response times and slower mouse cursor speeds, supporting the hypothesis that they may engage in more cautious and deliberate responding. However, no significant differences were found in terms of mouse cursor deviations or answer switches …

All In One Place: Ensuring Usable Access To Online Shopping Items For Blind Users, Yash Prakash, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Mohan Sunkara, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Perusing web data items such as shopping products is a core online user activity. To prevent information overload, the content associated with data items is typically dispersed across multiple webpage sections over multiple web pages. However, such content distribution manifests an unintended side effect of significantly increasing the interaction burden for blind users, since navigating to-and-fro between different sections in different pages is tedious and cumbersome with their screen readers. While existing works have proposed methods for the context of a single webpage, solutions enabling usable access to content distributed across multiple webpages are few and far between. In this …

Archiving Digital Marketing: Examining Preservation Of Dynamic Content On The Web Through The Lens Of Online Advertisements, Christopher Rauch, Alex H. Poole, Travis Reid, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson, Faryaneh Poursardar, Mat Kelly

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The transition to digital marketing has revolutionized advertising, reflecting and shaping societal norms and trends. The “Saving Ads” project addresses the challenges of preserving these ephemeral digital artifacts, essential for understanding the evolution of advertising and its socio-cultural impact. The initiative focuses on technical solutions for archiving dynamic online ads and enhancing access to these critical resources for future scholarship. By examining the preservation of online advertisements and suggesting improved approaches for archiving dynamic online content, this project contributes to the documentation of digital history.

Forecasting Crude Oil Price Using Multiple Factors, Hind Aldabagh, Xianrong Zheng, Mohammad Najand, Ravi Mukkamala

Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this paper, we predict crude oil price using various factors that may influence its price. The factors considered are physical market, financial, and trading market factors, including seven key factors and the dollar index. Firstly, we select the main factors that may greatly influence the prices. Then, we develop a hybrid model based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) network to predict the prices. Lastly, we compare the CNN–LSTM model with other models, namely gradient boosting (GB), decision trees (DTs), random forests (RFs), neural networks (NNs), CNN, LSTM, and bidirectional LSTM (Bi–LSTM). The empirical …

Quantification Of Landside Congestion In Ports: An Analysis Based On Gps Data, Kumushini Thennakoon, Namal Bandaranayake, Senevi Kiridena, Asela K. Kulatunga

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Hinterland transport is a critical segment in maritime cross-border logistics, which links the end-users of global supply chains to the maritime segment. Truck-based hinterland transport is known to cause congestion in and around ports. This study aimed to quantify the congestion caused by trucks at the Port of Colombo, which has not been a subject of a systematic study. To this end, the study makes use of GPS data. In addition to revealing heavy congestion within the port, the study also reveals significant variations in congestion during different times of the day with the duration of journeys peaking from 1200hrs …

The Ban On Trophy Hunting In Botswana: Local Communities’ Perceptions, Lelokwane Lockie Mokgalo, Peet Van Der Merwe

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Economic pressures on rural livelihoods in Botswana are ever-increasing, especially for peripheral areas where resources harnessed for tourism purposes are prevalent. One of the avenues to achieve this balancing act is the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program of Botswana, which devolved management of resources to local communities to incentivise conservation through hunting tourism. However, due to questions over hunting sustainability as a conservation tool by conservation non-governmental organizations and animal rights groups, trophy hunting was banned in Botswana in 2014. The resultant impacts were felt not only by the hunting industry but also by communities through the loss of …

Self-Exciting Point Processes In Real Estate, Ian Fraser

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis introduces a novel approach to analyzing residential property sales through the lens of stochastic processes by employing point processes. Herein, property sales are treated as point patterns, using self-exciting point process models and a variety of statistical tools to uncover underlying patterns in the data. Key findings include the identification and explanation of clustering in both space and time, and the efficacy of a temporal Hawkes process with a sinusoidal background in predicting home sale occurrences. The temporal analysis starts by employing the state of art techniques for time series data like regression, autoregressive, and autoregressive integrated moving …

Investigating The Use Of Voluntary Furloughs To Reduce Labour Costs: The Effect On Employee Effort, Kelsey Matthews

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

To quickly reduce costs in response to external shocks, firms often implement voluntary furloughs. In a voluntary furlough, employees decide whether to accept a reduction in their pay with a corresponding reduction in work hours. Despite the prevalence of voluntary furloughs in practice, it remains an empirical question how employees will respond to this cost reduction practice. The purpose of my dissertation is to investigate how the implementation of a voluntary furlough affects the subsequent effort of employees who volunteer and those who do not volunteer for a furlough.

I address my research question using two experiments where I manipulate …

Three Essays On Corporate Debt Contracting And Innovation, Olaleye Morohunfolu

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation comprises three essays investigating topics in Corporate Debt Contracting and Innovation. The first essay examines the relation between Passive Institutional Ownership (IO) and debt covenants. Using Russell 1000/2000 annual index reconstitution as a source of exogenous variation in passive IO, I find that passive IO leads to reduced covenants in the bond market. Specifically, I find that passive IO leads to reduced (a) Investment, (b) Dividend restriction, and (c) Subsequent financing restriction. However, I observe weaker results for loan covenants, implying that loans, usually collateralized, are less sensitive to changes in passive ownership. The overall effect of passive …

Stakeholders’ Participation In Pcaob Audit Standard Setting, Xiaoshuai Yang

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Lobbying is an integral part of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s standard-setting process. Although the PCAOB has been drafting auditing standards for over 20 years, there is still much to learn about how stakeholder behavior in submitting comment letters to the PCAOB varies by interest group, comment period (concept release, proposal, and reproposal), the stakeholder’s position on the proposal, arguments used, and emotional strategies. This paper examines PCAOB Docket 034, which proposed audit report reforms, including the auditor’s disclosure of critical audit matters (CAMs). There was strong stakeholder participation and conflicting opinions when this standard was under discussion. To …

Organizational Ghosts: How “Ghostly Encounters” Enable Former Leaders To Influence Current Organizational Members, Jeffrey S. Bednar, Jacob A. Brown

Faculty Publications

Leadership research has assumed that leader group prototypicality enhances leadership influence during a leader’s tenure. Other leadership research has also assumed that leaders, especially founders, can transformtheir leadership influence into a legacy thatwill survive death and departure from the organization and continue to impact followers. However, to understand the historically embedded nature of leadership influence, it is critical to unpack how specific leaders can become group prototypes and influence followers after their departure. We address this opportunity by examining organizational ghosts—former organizational members who become the ideal prototype of an organization’s values and identity. Drawing on qualitative data from an …

Costs And Benefits Of A Risk-Based Pcaob Inspection Regime, Brant E. Christensen, Nathan J. Newton, Michael S. Wilkins

Faculty Publications

We investigate the costs and benefits of the PCAOB’s risk-based inspection regime by studying how auditors respond to engagement-level inspection risk. Using an established inspection selection model, we find evidence that auditors behave consistent with accountability theory when auditing clients with elevated ex-ante inspection risk. Specifically, we observe an increased propensity to report material weaknesses, a decreased propensity to assert that previous material weaknesses have been remediated, increased audit effort, and a decreased likelihood of subsequent financial statement restatement. In general, these outcomes reflect auditors’ attempts to minimize negative inspection outcomes in a way that could be beneficial to investors. …

Artificial Intelligence’S Capabilities, Limitations, And Impact On Accounting Education: Investigating Chatgpt’S Performance On Educational Accounting Case, Xu (Joyce) Cheng, Ryan Dunn, Travis Holt, Kerry Inger, J. Gregory Jenkins, Jefferson Jones, James Long, Tina Loraas, Mollie Mathis, Jonathan Stanley, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

This study evaluates the capabilities of ChatGPT models 3.5 and 4 to provide solutions to eight educational accounting cases. We find that ChatGPT’s ability to provide accurate solutions varies depending on the type of case requirement and topical area of accounting, with better performance on tasks requiring elements that require explanation, application of rules, and ethical evaluation. However, ChatGPT performs poorly on tasks that require financial statement creation, journal entries, or software use. Our study also finds that detection tools provided by ChatGPT's developer are ineffective in identifying text created by Artificial Intelligence Text Generators (AITG). We suggest ways in …

Leveraging Chatgpt For Enhancing The Internal Audit Process – A Real-World Example From A Large Multinational Company, Scott Emett, Marc Eulerich, Egemen Lipinski, Nicolo Prien, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We discuss how the internal audit function (IAF) of a large multinational energy company, Uniper, is starting to use ChatGPT to improve automation of internal auditing. We investigate the benefits and challenges of integrating ChatGPT into internal audit processes and assess its impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the IAF. Uniper has implemented ChatGPT into parts of audit preparation, fieldwork, and audit reporting. On their initial tests, they estimate efficiency gains ranging from 50 to 80 percent for various processes. We report key risks and challenges with using ChatGPT in internal auditing as well as the initial key practices …

Patience Is Key: The Time It Takes To See Benefits From Continuous Auditing, Marc Eulerich, Benjamin Fligge, Vanessa Lopez Kasper, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Despite research showing numerous benefits to continuous auditing, uptake by internal audit functions has been quite slow. Using field data from a multinational company, we study two possible reasons for the slow uptake of continuous auditing—the time it takes for continuous auditing to result in measurable reductions in audit risks and that not every type of risk is equally likely to improve from continuous auditing. Results suggest it takes three years before observing significant risk reductions from implementing continuous auditing. We also find that the benefits of implementing continuous auditing vary by risk factor, ranging in improvement from 0 percent …

Is It All Hype? Chatgpt’S Performance And Disruptive Potential In The Accounting And Auditing Industries, Marc Eulerich, Aida Sanatizadeh, Hamid Vakilzadeh, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

ChatGPT frequently appears in the media, with many predicting significant disruptions, especially in the fields of accounting and auditing. Yet research has demonstrated relatively poor performance of ChatGPT on student assessment questions. We extend this research to examine whether more recent ChatGPT models and capabilities can pass major accounting certification exams including the Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Management Accountant (CMA), Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), and Enrolled Agent (EA) certification exams. We find that the ChatGPT 3.5 model cannot pass any exam (average score across all assessments of 53.1%). However, with additional enhancements, ChatGPT can pass all sections of each …

The Dark Side Of Robotic Process Automation, Marc Eulerich, Nathan Waddoups, Martin Wagener, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Prior research on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has largely focused on how it benefits firms and employees. In contrast, we interview 26 high-profile RPA stakeholders at a Fortune 500 firm to ascertain challenges, drawbacks, or pitfalls of using RPA. We identify five key problems related to RPA usage: (1) RPA is often used as a quick-fix band-aid instead of fixing core system issues, (2) RPA can cause serious control and security issues, (3) the true cost of RPA is often misunderstood and understated, (4) RPA governance is complicated and challenging, and (5) RPA usage can lead to a loss of …

A Demonstration Of How Chatgpt Can Be Used In The Internal Auditing Process, Marc Eulerich, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

For the past several years, internal audit functions (IAFs) have been significantly increasing their digitization efforts to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the IAF. The introduction of ChatGPT has increased the potential for IAFs to have a more significant impact; however, there is little guidance on how ChatGPT can influence the day-to-day work of internal auditors. This paper demonstrates with specific examples how ChatGPT can be used to enhance all aspects of the audit process. While not comprehensive in nature, the detailed, illustrative examples should help internal auditors see actionable steps they can take to be more efficient and …

Gauging Scholarly Engagement: An Investigation Into Topic Popularity Within The Asee Cit Division, Barry M. Lunt, Mudasser Fraz Wyne, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Since 2011, the Computing and Information Technology (CIT) division of the ASEE has had 427 papers presented and published in the proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition. This paper looks at these 427 papers as a whole, providing descriptive statistics, giving the top institutions and authors that have contributed to these papers, and providing information regarding the impact of the top ten papers, as measured by their citations and downloads. We have also used the ChatGPT version 4.0 to provide categories for the 427 papers, providing insight into the most popular topics for papers in the CIT division.

Assessing Virtual Reality’S Influence On Honesty In Reporting, Jeffrey Pickerd, Nathan Waddoups, David A. Wood, Xiaomei (Grazia) Xiong

Faculty Publications

Organizations, businesses, and society are exploring and adopting virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). VR is expected to boost the global economy by $1.5 trillion by 2030. In this study, we focus on the effect of VR on an important accounting variable—reporting honesty. We examine reporting honesty across two tasks, various measures, and various populations, that are commonly used in existing research. In our initial experiment, participants misreported more in a dice rolling task when performing it in a VR setting than in a non-VR setting. However, in a second and third experiment attempting to replicate and extend our …

Improving The Production And Reviewing Of Design Science Research In Accounting, Noah Myers, Mason Snow, Nathan Waddoups, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Design Science Research (DSR) is a rigorous research methodology widely used in other fields like computer science and engineering, but its application in accounting is still relatively limited. This paper reviews the implementation of DSR published in accounting journals and provides recommendations to improve the authoring and reviewing processes. We review 51 DSR articles published in accounting journals between 2011 and 2023. The analysis identified areas where papers excelled and fell short, leading to recommendations in the following key aspects: adherence to a research framework, validation of research questions, defining objectives of artifacts, developing a more diverse set of artifacts, …

Short And Synthetically Distort: Investor Reactions To Deepfake Financial News, Scott Emett, Marc Eulerich, Jeffrey Pickerd, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have led to new forms of misinformation, including highly realistic “deepfake” synthetic media. We conduct three experiments to investigate how and why retail investors react to deepfake financial news. Results from the first two experiments provide evidence that investors use a “realism heuristic,” responding more intensely to audio and video deepfakes as their perceptual realism increases. In the third experiment, we introduce an intervention to prompt analytical thinking, varying whether participants make analytical judgments about credibility or intuitive investment judgments. When making intuitive investment judgments, investors are strongly influenced by both more and less realistic …

Reassessing Assurance In An Automated World: Insights From Board Members, Executives, And Internal Auditors, Scott Emett, Marc Eulerich, Jeffrey Pickerd, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

Technological advances that automate work continue to transform the accounting profession. We examine whether automation impacts resource allocation within the internal audit function (IAF), a unique setting that allows us to compare demand for assurance activities with demand for consulting activities. We conduct an experiment in which experienced board members, executives, and internal auditors make budget recommendations for a company’s IAF that developed automations that improved the efficiency of the IAF. Results show that across all groups, participants respond to these efficiencies by decreasing the IAF’s total budget but retaining the productive capacity of the IAF. The budget cuts are …