Business Commons^™

Race And Ethnicity In Hospitality Management: A Review Of Five Major Journals, Shaniel Bernard, Alana Dillette, Stefanie Benjamin

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

Given the large representation of racial and ethnic minorities in the hospitality industry, it is important to understand how race and ethnicity are studied in major hospitality journals, especially due to their influence in informing research fundamental to scientific progress in the hospitality field. Informed by critical theory, this study systematically reviews the evolution of research on race and ethnicity in the top hospitality journals to highlight the possibility of hospitality management research taking a more critical turn to expose potent racial and ethnic counternarratives to the traditional broad scope of diversity management. Three themes emerged from the analysis covering …

Decisive Determinants Shaping Nomadic Tourism Future Development: The Case Of Shahsavan Tribes In Iran, Vali Nemati, Sarasadat Makian, Farid Hanifezadeh, Amir Hossein Qezelbash

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

Nomadic livelihood is one of the earliest human ways of life, still practiced in some parts of the world. Since adventurous tourists are looking for new experiences, nomadic tourism in the postmodern era is gaining attention, considering nomads’ unique lifestyles, customs, clothing, and other cultural features. Consequently, countries with nomads can diversify their tourism industry and the local economy in the future. However, Iran's nomadic community is experiencing unfavorable living conditions and insufficient financial resources, necessitating a shift in nomadic livelihood patterns. This study aims to identify and prioritize the factors that influence the development of nomadic tourism as a …

Determinants Of Food Waste: Tpb And Moderating Impact Of Demographics & Guilt, M Mansha Tahir

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

Increase in number of people dining out significantly contributes to food waste in restaurants. It is crucial to understand the determinants of food waste. Such determinants are influenced by demographics as well as emotional factors. The present study is meant to understand such factors through the lens of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Participants’ intentions are influenced by guilt and this study was conducted to examine the moderating role of guilt. Hypotheses were tested with analysis of data collected from 423 participants. Constructs of extended model were analyzed with AMOS (V.21) for structural equation modeling whereas moderations were tested …

Airbnb Purchase Intentions: How Familiarity And Social Media Impacts Millennials, Jaewook Kim, Wenfang Eris Liu

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

Airbnb is one of the most distinguished sharing economy platforms providing guests accommodations. Despite a high number of individuals who use Airbnb, current behavioral intention model, Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), cannot fully explain guests’ decision-making process to choose such accommodation. Especially, with little to no research being tested on the roles of social media influences and familiarity as information sources associated with the TPB model. The objective of this study is to examine the intentions of millennials to use Airbnb and to investigate TPB model with social media influences and familiarity as mediators on purchasing intentions. Through convenience sampling, …

Inclusive Journeys: Unveiling The Imperative Of Accessible Tourism For People With Disabilities, Faizan Ali

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

This viewpoint delves into accessible tourism, highlighting its significance in the contemporary travel landscape. With a particular focus on disabled tourists, this piece elucidates their challenges during their journeys and advocates for a comprehensive understanding of their unique needs. The discourse emphasizes the long-overlooked nature of this segment and underscores the crucial reasons for studying and prioritizing accessible tourism. Drawing on existing literature and perspectives, the viewpoint concludes by presenting thought-provoking research questions to advance the discourse surrounding accessible tourism.

Adapting To A Renewed Collective Culture Through A Change In Organizational Behavior, Peter Bheda

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

The dynamic interplay between organizational behavior and cultural transformation is paramount in the ever-evolving landscape of hospitality leadership. As the hospitality industry adapts to post-pandemic shifts, executives grapple with managing successful companies while ensuring effective employee engagement. While profitability surged for many, managing employees remains a complex challenge. Cultivating a thriving culture is a critical solution. Toxic cultures incur tangible and intangible costs, impacting revenues, employee retention, and productivity. The pandemic has underscored the urgency of cultural alignment, prompting leaders to rethink behavior patterns. Engaging leaders across hierarchies as "chief culture officers" promotes accountability, openness, alignment, and leverage, fostering a …

Two Essays On Retail Trading, Qiqi Liang

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Essay 1: Retail investors from the discount broker Robinhood swarm into stocks with pending earnings announcements and stay away from them immediately after the announcements. We study four competing explanations for this phenomenon: liquidity provision, informed trading, lottery preference, and attention-induced herding by noise traders. We find strong evidence that, immediately around earnings announcements, Robinhood investors’ behavior is primarily driven by attention-induced noise trading. Our results offer new insights into retail traders’ motivation for trading when they face heightened uncertainty from earnings announcements. Our study also goes beyond Barber et al.’s (2022) limited focus on the top 0.5% of the …

Bayesian Optimization With Switching Cost: Regret Analysis And Lookahead Variants, Peng Liu, Haowei Wang, Wei Qiyu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Bayesian Optimization (BO) has recently received increasing attention due to its efficiency in optimizing expensive-to-evaluate functions. For some practical problems, it is essential to consider the path-dependent switching cost between consecutive sampling locations given a total traveling budget. For example, when using a drone to locate cracks in a building wall or search for lost survivors in the wild, the search path needs to be efficiently planned given the limited battery power of the drone. Tackling such problems requires a careful cost-benefit analysis of candidate locations and balancing exploration and exploitation. In this work, we formulate such a problem as …

Yala Designs Marketing Strategy, Anna Buckley

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper dives into the complexities of a sustainable pajama company's social media marketing strategy. This paper also analyzes the strategies of competitors and market leaders in an attempt to formulate suggested strategies based off their success.

Dynamics Of Mining Markets: Equilibrium Implications For Professional And Casual Miners, Luca Pezzo, Lei Wang, Seungho Shin, Duygu Zirek

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We design a simple equilibrium model to analyze the dynamics of the mining market in the presence of professional and casual miners. The model endogenously recovers two major unobservable drivers: the supply of computing power, and the dynamics of the fixed costs of mining. We calibrate the model to the market of Bitcoin and Ethereum and find that positive shocks to the supply of computing power (technological enhancements) translate into positive price shocks, and the benefits of these hikes are creamed off by professional miners. We also find that fixed costs are inversely related to technological enhancements, decrease at an …

Hibbs Institute Health Index: Examining Health Conditions In The Region (Updated 2023), Manuel Reyes-Loya

Whitepapers and Technical Reports

The Hibbs Institute for Business and Economic Research, a unit of the Soules College of Business at the University of Texas at Tyler, has developed the Hibbs Institute Health Index (HIHI). The HIHI is a tool that allows comparisons among regions, such as cities, counties, or Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) via the examination of local health conditions and their health status performance.

A Phenomenological Study On The Lived Experience And Leadership Of Project Managers In An Agile Transformation, Randall Hopkins

Doctor of Education Program Dissertations

This study employed a phenomenological methodology to investigate the shared experiences of project managers of corporations in the United States during a transition to agile project management methodologies. The project managers’ transformation was noteworthy because agile introduces a change in work structures, processes, and leadership. This study sought to understand how eight project managers described their lived experience and leadership during the transition to agile methodologies. Interviews with project managers uncovered identity facets that evolved with their understanding of leadership. The traditional project managers’ common-sense approach to work served as both a barrier and enabler of a change. Project managers …

2023-August-01-Flo Rida To Headline Etsu Fall Music Festival, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Aug. 1, 2023 – Rapper and electronic pop songwriter Flo Rida, indie-pop duo DOUBLECAMP and rising country singer-songwriter Graham Barham will headline the Student Government Association Fall Music Festival at East Tennessee State University.  

The music festival, embracing three different genres, is set to begin at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 29, at Freedom Hall Civic Center in Johnson City.  

Flo Rida, this year’s headliner, has dominated the hip-hop and pop charts for over a decade. The artist has sold over 100 million records, including Diamond selling record “Low.”  

Since releasing their debut track “Feel Like Me” in 2019, DOUBLECAMP …

Effect Of Hope On Contingent Faculty Members’ Engagement In Professional Development Activities, Jingyi Huang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Employers and employees face new challenges with the rapid increase in contingent employment. This dissertation focuses on career development, one critical challenge contingent employees face. Contingent employees often receive limited resources and employer support, increasing career management's difficulties and uncertainty. As a result, contingent employees may need to exert greater “willpower” and “waypower” in their pursuit of career goals. Snyder’s hope theory (Snyder, 2002) and Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) appraisal theory were employed to explore and explain how hope relates to contingent workers’ engagement in career development activities. Snyder (2002) posited hope as a goal-oriented thinking process involving agency and …

Bought But Never Used: How And When Unused Utility Reduces Subsequent Spending, Shruti Koley, Brandon J. Reich

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Consumers often buy products that they later do not use. How does failing to use purchased products affect subsequent spending? Six experiments demonstrate that when consumers do not use their purchased products, it decreases their subsequent discretionary spending across product categories due to an aversion to wasted money. We find that this effect is driven primarily by perceived money waste and not product waste. Consequently, the effect persists even when consumers avoid product waste, such as by donating their unused products, but is mitigated when they avoid money waste, such as when their unused products are freely acquired. We also …

Sharing Economy Last Mile Delivery: Three Essays Addressing Operational Challenges, Customer Expectations, And Supply Uncertainty, Nicolò Masorgo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Last mile delivery has become a critical competitive dimension facing retail supply chains. At the same time, the emergence of sharing economy platforms has introduced unique operational challenges and benefits that enable and inhibit retailers’ last mile delivery goals. This dissertation investigates key challenges faced by crowdshipping platforms used in last mile delivery related to crowdsourced delivery drivers, driver-customer interaction, and customer expectations. We investigate the research questions of this dissertation through a multi-method design approach, complementing a rich archival dataset comprised of several million orders retrieved from a Fortune 100 retail crowdshipping platform, with scenario-based experiments. Specifically, the first …

‘So What If Chatgpt Wrote It?’ Multidisciplinary Perspectives On Opportunities, Challenges, And Implications Of Generative Conversational Ai For Research, Practice, And Policy, Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Nir Kshetri, Laurie Hughes, Emma Louise Slade, Anand Jeyaraj, Arpan Kumar Kar, Abdullah M. Baabdullah, Alex Koohang, Vishnupriya Raghavan, Manju Ahuja, Hanaa Albanna, Mousa Ahmad Albashrawi, Adil S. Al-Busaidi, Janarthanan Balakrishnan, Yves Barlette, Sriparna Basu, Indranil Bose, Laurence Brooks, Dimitrios Buhalis, Lemuria Carter, Soumyadeb Chowdhury, Tom Crick, Scott W. Cunningham, Gareth H. Davies, Robert M. Davison, Rahul Dé, Denis Dennehy, Yanqing Duan, Rameshwar Dubey, Rohita Dwivedi, John S. Edwards, Carlos Flavián, Robin Gauld, Varun Grover, Mei-Chih Hu, Marjin Janssen, Paul Jones, Iris Junglas, Sangeeta Khorana, Sascha Kraus, Kai R. Larsen, Paul Latreille, Sven Laumer, F. Tegwen Malik, Abbas Mardani, Marcello Mariani, Sunil Mithas, Emmanuel Mogaji, Jeretta Horn Nord, Siobhan O'Connor, Fevzi Okumus, Margherita Pagani, Neeraj Pandey, Savvas Papagiannidis, Ilias O. Pappas, Nishith Pathak, Jan Pries-Heje, Ramakrishnan Raman, Nripendra P. Rana, Sven-Volker Rehm, Samuel Riberiro-Navarrete, Alexander Richter, Frantz Rowe, Suprateek Sarker, Bernd Carsten Stahl, Manoj Kumar Tiwari, Wil Van Der Aalst, Viswanath Venkatesh, Giampaolo Viglia, Michael Wade, Paul Walton, Jochen Wirtz, Ryan Wright

Management Information Systems Faculty Publications

Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistinguishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts for organizations, society, and individuals. Offering multi-disciplinary insight into some of these, this article brings together 43 contributions from experts in fields such as computer science, marketing, information systems, education, policy, hospitality and tourism, management, publishing, and nursing. The contributors acknowledge ChatGPT’s capabilities to enhance productivity and suggest that it is …

A Desire For Success: Exploring The Roles Of Personal And Job Resources In Determining The Outcomes Of Salesperson Social Media Use, Ashish Kalra, Nawar N. Chaker, Rakesh Singh, Omar S. Itani, Raj Agnihotri

Marketing Faculty Publications

Sales researchers have recognized the importance of salesperson social media use in enhancing job outcomes. However, research that considers the influence of salesperson personal factors and the individual's work environment on the impact of social media use on such outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction and salesperson performance) remains neglected in the literature. Leveraging Job-Demand Resource (JD-R) theory, we develop a model that introduces linkages between salesperson social media use, task adaptivity, technology self-efficacy, manager trust, job autonomy, job satisfaction, and salesperson performance. Utilizing a sample of 214 business-to-business salespeople, we find that salesperson social media use positively influences job satisfaction, which …

Stigma, Taboo, And Deviancy: An Anthropological Study Of The Influence Of Sociocultural Worldviews On Entrepreneurship And Innovation, Roary Snider

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Navigating the intricate relationships between cultural factors, entrepreneurship, and innovation remains a challenging task for scholars. While most of the existing research has a strong focus on national-level culture or regional-specific cultural peculiarities, this study explores the application of novel anthropological theory. The objective is to enrich our understanding of how social regulation and group integration can influence individual perspectives on entrepreneurship and innovation. This study draws inspiration from Joseph Schumpeter's idea of the entrepreneur as a deviant who disrupts social norms through entrepreneurial activities. Although results are mixed, the study does indicate the relevance of anthropological approaches and specifically …

Live Music Venue Marketing In A Post-Covid Northwest Arkansas, Griffen Walden

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

What does a medium sized music venue, nearing its centennial in a college town, do when its doors have closed for the first time since a short 2004 renovation, due to the novel Coronavirus Pandemic? George’s Majestic Lounge, the historic live music venue located in the heart of downtown Fayetteville, Arkansas, ceased operation for 134 days, its longest ever closure, and emerged into a climate massively different from what it had entered the pandemic in (Drury, et al. 2021). This venue has stood the test of time; opened in 1927 by George Pappas, it has remained in its railroad-adjacent position …

2023-August-01-Etsu Kicks Off The Fall 2023 Semester With Welcome Week, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

As the sun sets on summer and a new academic year begins, East Tennessee State University is gearing up to host its annual Welcome Week – a period designed to be an exciting start to the fall semester and welcome new and returning students to campus.  

Welcome Week is set to take place from Sunday, August 27, through Friday, September 1. The goal of the week is to help students get settled on campus, participate in activities and events with new friends, learn about campus traditions and resources and get connected to the Buccaneer community.  

Highlights of the …

On Or Off: The Triggering Effect Of Underperformance Duration On Cooperative Innovation, Taoyong Su, Yuzhu Yu, Yongheng Chen, Wanrong Hou

Management Faculty Publications

By complementing performance feedback theory with organizational pressure, we argue that underperformance duration breaks the balance between growth pressure and survival pressure and triggers the shift from “on” to “off” of cooperative innovation, which shows an inverted U-shaped relationship between the duration of underperformance and cooperative innovation. Moreover, compared with firms with historical underperformance, firms with peer underperformance will reach the inflection point of the inverted U-shaped relationship after a longer duration. In addition, we find that managerial overconfidence weakens the above relationship. Our hypotheses receive general support by testing the sample of 70 public biopharmaceutical manufacturing companies between 2007 …

2023-August-01-Distinguished Faculty Award In Research Dr Dawn Rowe, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Since arriving at East Tennessee State University in 2019, Dr. Dawn Rowe has garnered almost $15 million in grant funding. Over her career, fellow scholars have cited her work more than 2,000 times. Across the world, she is recognized as a first-rate researcher on topics ranging from disability related professional development to evidence-based practices in secondary transition.  

A key principle has guided her.  

“For me, it’s all about quality of life for individuals with disabilities and those without,” said Rowe, the James H. Quillen Chair of Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a professor in the Clemmer College of Education …

2023-August-01-Kilaru Appointed To Faculty Fellow Role, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Aruna Kilaru as Faculty Fellow for Interdisciplinary Innovation in the Biosciences.

Dr. Kilaru will continue to serve as Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. However, in her expanded role that begins on August 15, she will begin work to develop a thriving institute or center for innovation that will positively support bioscience-focused growth and opportunity for ETSU students and the region.

In addition to leading and managing a working group that will be charged with creating an institute or center for synthetic biology, she will lead and manage interdisciplinary research …

2023-August-01-Etsu Recognizes Hicks, Northeast Tn Delegation For Historic Funding, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

After years of tireless work to secure state funding for East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy, ETSU celebrated success at a luncheon recognizing and thanking local legislators for their efforts.

Earlier this year, the Tennessee General Assembly approved $2.5 million in annual funding – the first state assistance for the college since its founding in 2005. Those funds enabled ETSU Gatton College of Pharmacy to lower tuition for its students, beginning this fall. For in-state students, the tuition cost to pursue a pharmacy degree is now $27,000 per year, more than 30% less than before. For out-of-state …

2023-August-01-Quillen College Of Medicine Celebrates Incoming Class Of 2027 With White Coat Ceremony, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

(Aug. 1, 2023) East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine presented the 78 members of the Class of 2027 with their white coats last week, one of the first major steps in their journey to becoming doctors.

This year’s incoming class was selected from a record 3,965 applicants and represents 45 undergraduate institutions. All but six students are Tennesseans. Two are children of Quillen alumni, and there are five military-affiliated members of the class.

The White Coat Ceremony is a rite of passage for beginning medical students to help establish a psychological contract for professionalism and empathy in …

What Should I Say? Testing Ways To Reduce Fear And Increase Disclosure Of Incivility In Reference Checks, Benjamin M. Walsh, Brittany Heighton, Chloe Dingens

Open Access Publishing Support Funded Articles

We utilize signaling theory as a foundation for testing ways to decrease reference providers’ fear of adverse consequences and increase disclosure of workplace incivility in reference checks. We focus on three reminders–commonly recommended by practitioners–that may be sent to reference providers in the instructions prior to the reference check: reminders of applicant consent, qualified privilege, and confidentiality. 420 supervisors were recruited via Prolific.co to complete a hypothetical reference check for the employee with whom they least like to work. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions in a two (applicant consent reminder: yes/no) X two (qualified privilege reminder: …

Exploring The Presence Of Nonlinear Deterministic Dynamics In Commodity Prices, Sagar Dahal

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Determining whether commodity prices (and volatility) are driven by linear stochastic processes or low-dimensional nonlinear deterministic dynamics (“chaos”) is crucial for policymaking, forecasting, production, storage, investment, risk management, and hedging decisions. Previous studies that used Lyapunov exponents and correlation dimensions to identify chaotic structures in price series may be unreliable in practical applications because these methods rely on asymptotic properties that require large, noiseless data which is often not available. We applied nonlinear time series analysis approaches to empirically detect the underlying market dynamics using the daily futures prices of ten agricultural commodities. We used phase space reconstruction to reconstruct …

2023-August-01-Why I Teach- Dr. Jessica Burchette, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

When Dr. Jessica Burchette joined Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy faculty in 2012, she was no stranger to the college or its mission.

Burchette had the distinction of being a member of the college’s inaugural graduating class in 2010.

Returning to the college as a faculty member has been rewarding for Burchette, who enjoys connecting with her students in the classroom and at her practice site at Holston Valley Medical Center, where she works with interdisciplinary inpatient family medicine teams.

“When I’m in my practice site at Holston Valley with the students on their fourth-year rotation, I’m able to reinforce …

2023-August-01-Etsu Announces Significant Growth, New Initiatives, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

During a press conference today, East Tennessee State University President Dr. Brian Noland provided updates on ETSU’s enrollment, construction plans, faculty appointments, and strategic initiatives. The university continues to grow, marking record-setting achievements in several areas.

“East Tennessee State University is a place where anyone, regardless of where they came from, can grow, succeed, and compete with the best. Over the next year, you will see us expand our efforts to improve healthcare in rural and underserved communities, increase our support for military-affiliated students and veterans, and intensify our initiatives focused on career readiness and workforce development. Above all, you …