Business Commons^™

Analyzing Social Media Content Strategies That Drive Engagement For Independent Hairstylists, Aurora Batts

Honors Theses

This study explores how social media, has changed the way independent hairstylists market themselves and connect with clients. Social media has become a huge tool in the beauty industry, allowing stylists to showcase their work, build their brand, and attract new clients. Because platforms like Instagram act as a digital portfolio, clients are making decisions based on what they see online rather than just location or recommendations.

Due to this shift, it is important to understand which types of content perform well and generate engagement. This study focuses on identifying the specific content characteristics that lead to higher engagement for …

Green And Clean: Case Studies Featuring The Shift Toward Healthier Consumption, Mckay Orwig

Honors Theses

This thesis is composed of eight accounting case studies investigating the impact of the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement on corporate operations, and other narratives. Dr. Dickenson assigned and advised the case studies throughout the course of Honors Accountancy 420. During the fall semester, we were assigned several individual case studies that broadened our background knowledge on legislation and the MAHA movement, as well as having the opportunity to hear from professionals from leading firms.  During the spring semester, Dr. Dickenson placed us in groups to research our assigned companies, my group ultimately assigned the international snacking company, Kellanova. …

2026-04-16 Information On Hb 490, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate.

Faculty Senate Records

Information related to Kentucky House Bill 490 and its impact on the removal of faculty for financial reasons at Morehead State University, submitted on April 16, 2026.

2026-04-16 Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University. Faculty Senate.

Faculty Senate Records

Faculty Senate meeting minutes from April 16, 2026.

Eleven Major Challenges Utah Girls And Women Face: A 2026 Update, April Townsend, Susan R. Madsen

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

Decades of research—across Utah, the nation, and the globe—consistently show that reducing the challenges girls and women face begins with clearly identifying the issues.¹ Greater awareness lays the groundwork for meaningful, effective solutions. In Utah, the Utah Women & Leadership Project (UWLP) serves as the state’s primary entity for this work, producing hundreds of research reports that illuminate the barriers, challenges, and opportunities shaping the lives of girls, women, and families.

Modeling Flood-Induced Cascading Disruptions In The Indian Electronics Supply Chain Using Influence Network Analysis, Surendra Orupalli, Hiroki Sayama

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

This study investigates flood induced disruptions in the Indian electronics supply chain using influence network analysis. Monsoon floods are recurring hazards that significantly impact economic activities, logistics, and industrial productivity. This study integrates district-level rainfall data (2020 to 2025) with supply chain network models to quantify cascading failures. The methodology applies rainfall thresholds (≥ 300 mm/month) to identify flood-prone districts and constructs a stochastic influence matrix representing inter-firm dependencies. Flood propagation dynamics are modeled iteratively with a propagation coefficient (α = 0.6) and convergence threshold (ε = 10⁻⁴). The resulting disruption profiles are mapped onto company-level revenues calibrated to India-specific …

Rethinking Consumer Data And Behavior, Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Michael L. Smith, Erin Robinson

Purdue University Press Books

Today’s food and agricultural consumers are driven by more than just price—they are influenced by trust, values, and perceptions that are often difficult to measure. Rethinking Consumer Data and Behavior explores what truly shapes consumer choices and how businesses can respond effectively.

This book utilizes research on loyalty, risk, sustainability, and ethical considerations, revealing how these factors influence purchasing decisions in ways traditional data often misses. It examines consumers’ willingness to pay for local and organic products, the impact of food labeling and safety messaging, and the surprising role of sensory cues such as appearance and taste. The book also …

Sba Lending And Enterprise Creation, Jason Ashby, Arturo Rodriguez

Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship

The United States Small Business Administration (SBA) was established as a federal agency to support Americans in launching and growing resilient business ventures. This paper employs time series analysis and simple linear regression to examine the relationship between the SBA’s 504 and 7(a) loan programs and key economic indicators—specifically, business formation and employment figures. Using quarterly data spanning 15 years from 2008 onward, the analysis reveals that while the total funding available through these programs has increased, the number of loans issued has remained relatively stable. During the same period, both business creation and employment levels have shown upward trends.

Visual Attention And User Satisfaction In Ota Platforms: An Eye-Tracking And Big Data Approach, Aura Lydia Riswanto, Seieun Kim, Hak-Seon Kim

Faculty and Student Publications

Purpose – This study aims to investigate how visual attention to online travel agency (OTA) app elements influences user behavior and satisfaction by integrating experimental and real-world data.

Design/methodology/approach – This study used a multi-method approach combining an eye-tracking experiment with 40 participants, a post-experiment survey on usage intention and big data analysis of 5,547 Google Play reviews from five major OTA platforms, using text mining and regression techniques.

Findings – The eye-tracking results showed that users focused most on user reviews and app information, rather than logos or app names. Visual attention to reviews significantly predicted higher usage intention …

Ownership Duration In The U.S. Business Jet Market, Yuchen Hu

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

This study analyzes ownership duration in the U.S. business jet market using FAA registry data as of February 16, 2026 (N=12,359). The analysis reveals a structured distribution with a mean of 5.86 years and a median of 5.00 years. Crucially, retention varies by acquisition status: new aircraft owners exhibit an average hold of 7.36 years, whereas pre-owned aircraft holders show a significantly higher turnover of 5.11 years, with most resales occurring within a 3–7-year window. These findings suggest that ownership behavior is driven by structured asset management and lifecycle planning, providing a predictive framework for identifying aircraft replacement and trade-in …

Modeling Bitcoin Dynamics Using Differential Equations, Boone M. Fleenor

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In this thesis, we develop and analyze two nonlinear systems of ordinary differential equations to model Bitcoin price dynamics. Analytical techniques are used to obtain exact or approximate solutions where possible. Then, numerical simulations using a fourth-order Runge–Kutta method are employed to explore system behavior beyond analytically tractable regimes. Finally, model outputs are compared to historical Bitcoin price data using normalized and resampled time series. These results suggest that deterministic models can provide meaningful insight into the structural behavior of Bitcoin markets, while highlighting the need for stochastic or time-dependent extensions for more realistic modeling.

2026-04-14 Minutes, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.

Staff Congress Records

Staff Congress meeting minutes from April 14, 2026.

Top Management Team (Tmt) Demographic Characteristics, Remuneration And Esg Performance In China, Liu Huajie

Student Works (2020-2029)

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance has emerged as more prominent in the contemporary business environment, serving as a non-financial key performance indicator besides classical financial indicators. Among the factors influencing ESG performance, the top management team (TMT) demographic characteristics have become an important determinant. Drawing on Upper Echelons Theory (UET), this study explores how the demographic characteristics of the top management team, specifically diversity in gender, age, and functional background, as well as the degree of professionalism indicated by the level of educational background influence firm ESG performance. Furthermore, it examines the moderating effect of TMT remuneration on these …

Developing Strategies For Pce Outreach, Mariah Blankenbaker, Gordon Carlson, Daniel Adesoji, Levi Eck

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

In collaboration with Professional and Continuing Education (PCE), we produced projects to automate their internal tasks, as well as to promote their services. By taking advantage of software techniques, we bridged live-action footage with 2D and 3D computer visuals for promotional material. In addition, we researched the capabilities of creating a custom Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) and trained it to analyze and interact with thousands of industry datapoints.

Application Identification With Pfsense, Snort, And Openappid In Academic Lab Networks, Minh-Khanh Vu

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This paper evaluates the practical capabilities and limitations of a widely used open-source network security stack—pfSense firewall, Snort Intrusion Detection System (IDS), and OpenAppID detectors—in academic cy- bersecurity laboratories and small-to-medium enterprise (SME)-like environments. In a controlled virtual testbed, we measure application-level and feature-level identifi- cation performance for major applications (Facebook, YouTube, Zoom) using the pfSense/Snort/OpenAppID configuration. The stack achieves 97% application-level identification accuracy for these applications in our lab dataset, drawing on a library of 3,374 OpenAppID detectors. However, our experiments reveal a substan- tial feature-level detection gap: specific functions such as Zoom file transfers and Facebook messaging can- …

Ethical Decision-Making Frameworks In Ai-Driven Pharmaceutical Research & Development, Dhaval Dinesh Panchal, Osama Mohd Hash Ansari, Sudha Divya Madhuri Kallam

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being utilized in pharmaceutical research and development to speed up drug discovery, enhance clinical trial design, and support regulatory decision-making. However, the increasingly rapid adoption of AI in the pharma industry has outpaced the development of consistent ethical governance, raising concerns related to data privacy, transparency, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder trust. This study explored the methods by which project managers could develop and utilize ethical decision-making frameworks to facilitate responsible AI implementation in pharmaceutical research and development. Guided by the Responsible Innovation framework, this research employed a mixed-methods design combining semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys with …

Project Management For Urban Resilience: A Comparative Study Of Governance, Financing, And Risk Reduction Strategies In New York City, Miami, Rotterdam, Venice, And Tokyo, Mirko Viola

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

Urban resilience initiatives are central to climate adaptation, yet cities continue to face persistent implementation challenges related to governance, financing, and project management. This study examines how these three dimensions influence the effectiveness of resilience initiatives using a qualitative comparative case study design across five cities: New York City, Miami, Rotterdam, Venice, and Tokyo. The analysis is based on eleven semi-structured interviews with practitioners across four cities, complemented by document analysis.

The findings show that resilience initiatives are shaped by the interaction of governance coordination, financing structures, and project management practices. Governance systems are complex and fragmented, financing is often …

The Sixth Sense Garment: A State-Of-The-Art Framework For Sustainable Neurofashion, Andrew Burnstine

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.

Digital Touchpoints: Investigating Contact Page Accessibility And Visual Authenticity Within Medical Tourism Health Websites, Alicia Mason, Elizabeth Spencer, Kristen Livingston, Treyton Meyers, Sakshi Bhati, Himika Akram

Faculty Submissions

This study examines two critical digital touchpoints on medical tourism provider (MTP) websites: (1) the accessibility of contact pages which often function as entry points for inquiries, scheduling, and pre-travel coordination, and (2) the authenticity of visual imagery used to shape expectations about care environments, personnel, and technological capacity. A sample of 105 MTPs across all six World Health Organization regions were analyzed using quantitative web accessibility testing and qualitative visual analysis. Results indicate pervasive accessibility errors on contact-page touchpoints and extensive reliance on inauthentic imagery to depict patients, providers, and medical technologies. Together, these practices may distort user expectations …

The Driving Forces Of Relative Ceo To Employee Pay, Yixi Ning, Xavier Garza-Gomez, Hongxia Wang

Finance and Economics

In this paper, we examine the driving forces of CEO to median employee pay ratios from a macro-perspective using a sample of large corporations included in the DJIA index from 1949 to 2022. We find that CEO-employee pay ratios increase with the Industry Production Index and inflation rate, but decrease with GDP per capita growth rate, unemployment rate, stock market, and industry trends. Our results also show that CEO pay structure changes from salary and bonus-dominated to option and stock-dominated pay enable CEOs to enjoy a much better pay package compared to lower-level employees, while executive pay-related regulations in the …

Enterprise Risk Management And Firm Performance In China: The Moderating Role Of Risk Management Committee, Liang Yankun

Student Works (2020-2029)

Risk management has increasingly become an interesting topic among the academicians and industry practitioners, following the 2008 global financial crisis. Motivated from the growing evidence of the significant role of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) in improving firm performance, this study examines the relationship between ERM and firm performance in the context of China. Furthermore, this study explores the moderating role of risk management committee (RMC) on the relationship between ERM and firm performance in China. Drawing upon 94 public listed firms on the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2018 to 2021, this study finds that ERM has significantly and positively affects …

Essays On Innovation And Financial Markets Cryptoassets And Other Financial Technologies, Zachary Ethan Glatzer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this manuscript, I present essays that examine the role of innovation in financial markets. The first essay introduces a classification framework for cryptoassets. Existing approaches either apply overly broad economic-function criteria or rely on narrow legal definitions, neither of which adequately captures the diversity of digital assets. This essay proposes a two-track framework that integrates both functional roles and technical structure. By bridging the gap between traditional asset categories and emerging digital instruments, this framework offers actionable guidance for policymakers assessing regulatory treatment, practitioners evaluating risk profiles, and academics engaged in research at the intersection of digital finance and …

Health Insurance Literacy Among College Students At The University Of South Carolina, Emma J. Smith, Lorie Donelle Phd, Rn, Fcan, Robin Dawson

Caroliniana Undergraduate Research Journal

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the health insurance literacy skills of graduate college students and undergraduate college students.

Methods: A cross-sectional research design incorporated a 20-item questionnaire to examine college students’ knowledge of common health insurance terms and definitions, as well as their perceived understanding of health insurance. Descriptive analyses were conducted of participant demographics, health insurance literacy scores were summarized, and common health insurance policies were tested through a readability checker.

Results: The majority of students were between the ages of 18-25 and undergraduate students. More than half of the participants were female, and more …

A Dynamic Systems Framework For Customer Lifecycle Management: From Latent State Discovery To Robust Control Policy, Ali Nasirzonouzi

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

Traditional marketing often relies on static strategies that fail to capture dynamic customer behavior. This paper introduces an integrated framework to model and control the customer lifecycle, bridging the gap between empirical data and computational simulation. Using the Customer Personality Analysis dataset, we implemented a five-stage methodology. We first identified three distinct customer segments (At-Risk, Standard, High-Value) using Gaussian Mixture Models. To address the lack of longitudinal data, we calibrated a normative transition model based on customer inertia principles. Our analysis revealed that marketing effectiveness is highly state-dependent; notably, At-Risk customers exhibited a 33.5% lift when targeted with catalogs. Leveraging …

Older Adults And Emerging Technology Fraud In The Ai Deepfake Era, Thiago Neves

Research Days

Artificial intelligence has accelerated faster than society's ability to adapt, leaving older adults extremely vulnerable to AI-generated fraud. Americans over age 60 lost $4.9 billion to scams in 2024, 43% more than the previous year. In this research, I investigate how digital illiteracy, combined with AI-generated deepfakes, creates this crisis. Older adults struggle with three principal vulnerabilities: distinguishing legitimate sites from scams, judging whether online information is truthful, and understanding how algorithms use their data. AI weaponizes these gaps through voice clones, synthetic video calls, and personalized phishing emails that avoid the trust cues seniors tend to rely on. I …

Business Ethics Index 2026, Qiaoqiao Chen, Hainan Xiang, Weihui Fu

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

This study introduces and measures the Business Ethics Index (BEI), a framework adapted from consumer sentiment indices to assess consumer attitudes toward business ethical practices. Using a convenience sample of 91 respondents, we collect quantitative and qualitative data across four BEI dimensions: Personal/Past, Vicarious/Past, Personal/Future, and Vicarious/Future. The overall 2026 BEI score is 107.29, indicating a generally positive attitude. Personal experiences show a positive sentiment (117.6), while Vicarious/Past perceptions are negative (85.15). Future expectations are optimistic across both personal (117.05) and vicarious (109.35) dimensions.

Finding A Home Away From Home: An Accessible Hotel And Short-Term Rental Guide, Atley E. Livingston

Entry-Level Occupational Therapy Doctorate - Doctoral Capstone Symposium

Travel has become a significant part of today’s social culture, allowing individuals to connect with family and friends, explore new environments, and engage in meaningful experiences. However, many wheelchair users report that traveling is often frustrating, inequitable, and difficult. To better understand the limitations of travel on this population, a needs assessment was conducted through a collaboration with a nationwide organization that supports the wheelchair community. Participants identified travel accommodations and the barriers they present as a major limitation to travel. The purpose of this capstone project is to analyze lodging and housing accessibility through the lens of the population, …

A Counterfactual Analysis Of The Impact Of Stock Market Absence On Economic Growth In Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries, Etsub Tekola Jemberu, Adriana Knápková, Bruce Dehning

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

Despite the global expansion of financial markets as a strategy for financial reform over the past century, around one-sixth of the world’s countries lack a formal stock market. This paper provides novel evidence from nine sub-Saharan African countries on how the absence of stock markets impacts economic growth. Using the synthetic control method (SCM), we estimate the counterfactual GDP per capita these countries would have experienced had they established a stock market during 1993–1995. The findings reveal that the absence of a stock market resulted in substantial losses for most countries, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Comoros, Guinea, …

Inflation And Interest Rates, Consequences And Prospects For Marketing, Francis R. Whitehouse Jr.

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Brand Voice: A Proposed Integrative Model Approach, Stephen Carlson

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.