Business Commons^™

Essays On Agricultural Commodity Processing, Bin Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation investigates two important issues in agricultural commodity processing: (i) biomass commercialization; that is, converting organic waste into a saleable product, from economic and environmental perspectives, and (ii) optimal procurement portfolio design using multiple suppliers and spot market, and the impact of by-product introduction on this optimal portfolio.

The first chapter examines the economic implications of biomass commercialization from the perspective of an agri-processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and biomass. We characterize the value of biomass commercialization and perform sensitivity analysis to investigate how spot price uncertainty (input and output spot price …

Firm Characteristics, Capabilities And Productivities: A Study Of Malaysian Food Manufacturing Sector, Tien Hong Lim

Student Works (2020-2029)

This research establishes and examines a set of firm productivity measures for the Malaysian food manufacturing industry. The research further examines the differences in productivity based on the firm’s characteristics and consequently examines the empirical relationship between firm capabilities namely marketing, ICT, R&D and human capital on labour productivity. The research uses cross sectional data comprising 1020 firms. Various methods were used in the research. Non-parametric analysis was undertaken to compare the productivity levels across firm characteristics while in examining the impact of capabilities on labour productivity the research uses quantile regression analysis. The finding shows that productivity differs based …

Digitalisation Of Smes In Singapore: An Institute Of Higher Learning-Enterprise Partnership Model, Benjamin Huan Zhou Lee, Gary Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

An SME had commissioned a team of five accounting students to develop a forecasting model using analytics. The student team was from the Accounting Analytics Capstone (SMU-X) course offered by the School of Accountancy, Singapore Management University (SMU), in January 2018. For this project, the student-consultants applied their knowledge of accounting data and analytics, combining it with a multidisciplinary approach to solve real-world complex financial analytical problems that have real-time consequences.

"It's Personal": A Case Study Analysis Of The Strategic Management Of Resources In A Historically Black University Athletic Department., Brigitte M. Burpo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative case study examination of the strategic management of critical resources in an HBCU athletic program. It begins with a historical overview of HBCUs and HBCU athletic departments focusing on the systemic and societal influences that contributed to the current state of HBCU athletic programs. This dissertation later discusses the influence of a lack of financial resources on HBCU athletic departments further depletes the ability to operate with a competitive advantage. Chapter One focuses on the historic background of HBCUs and their formation as well as the societal influences that depleted critical resources. Chapter Two covers …

The Effects Of Firm Age And Firm Size On Strategic Agility And Performance, Jonathan Henry Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Strategic agility is a relatively new construct in the field of strategic management which describes the degree to which a firm is flexible with its business strategy. Strategically agile firms are able to change their market focus, product mix, key resources, or business models quickly in order to exploit opportunities. This study advances our understanding of strategic agility by empirically testing the Doz and Kosonen (2010) model of the construct in a cross-section of firms in multiple industries with several contingency factors including firm age, firm size, and environmental turbulence. Using CEO-level survey data, the model is validated, and nine …

Fintech Regulations In The United States Compared To Regulations In Europe And Asia, Victoria Williams

Honors College Theses

Fintech, or financial technology, is an up and coming industry and yet at the same time has been around since the 1950s. In Europe and Asia, there has been a lot of innovation, and lawmakers have been forced to keep up with regulating the rapidly growing industry. However, the United States has not risen to the occasion of properly regulating this industry and can learn from countries in Europe and Asia on how to effectively regulate fintech. This essay explains generally what fintech is, why it must be properly regulated, how countries in Europe and Asia regulate it, and how …

Sloth Speed: Finance Classes Slow To Incorporate Important Research, Ellis Pristash

Honors College Theses

Traditional finance contains many models which misrepresent human behavior. In order to mathematicise the field and make it more like hard sciences, economics in the 20th century presupposed that people act “rationally.” In economics, rationality means adherence to the neoclassical model, which presents persons as utility maximizers. This presupposition was useful for certain applications but dominated the academic landscape. Later, the Chicago School of Economics built on the rationality premise, advocating less regulation in favor of the free market. The Efficient Markets Hypothesis was built on these same ideas and argued that markets have a wisdom that individuals do not. …

The Lack Of Asian American Representation In American Pop Music, Victoria Noriega

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this study is to analyze why there are fewer East and Southeast Asian Americans in the American pop music industry compared to other ethnicities and to see what factors influence these statistics. The data analyzed consisted of five interviews, all of whom were involved in the music industry as either musicians or managers. Data from the most recently signed artists to the top three major music companies, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group, was also analyzed to see the most popular genre signed and most frequent ethnicity signed. From the data gathered from …

The Equifax Hack Revisited And Repurposed, Hal Berghel

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Reports on the recent indictments against Chinese hackers regarding Equifax.

Cases Concerning The Accounting Profession, Samuel Crews

Honors Theses

These case studies were conducted to investigate different matters in the accounting profession. They range from topics on comparisons of cities to the impact of political decisions on the economy to an investigation of a company's financial statements.

Financial Accounting Case Studies, Paul Andress

Honors Theses

This thesis is a combination of twelve different accounting case studies. These cases represent a culmination of two semesters’ worth of research on various topics that will help my career as an accountant. The cases range from company case studies to in-class activities including an excel certification course. The cases caused me to think critically about topics that affect the accounting profession which are not typically covered in my accounting course work. For example, the cases investigated Brexit, the financial crisis of 2008, and universal basic income. Also, the cases provided me with advice through interviews with experienced people in …

Understanding Other Transactions, A Dod Contractor's Perspective, Justin Parker

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

After losing financial leverage over the private industry due to self-investment in Research and Development (R&D), the Department of Defense (DoD) sought out new ways to acquire critical technology from the private industry. To address the problem of many companies no longer needing to work with the administratively burdensome and regulatory heavy FAR-based supply chain, the DoD adopted NASA’s Other Transactions (OTs) through congressional action in 1989. Unlike FAR-based contracts, OTs are not subject to many of the laws and regulations that caused the private industry to become disengaged from working with the DoD. As Congress continues to expand the …

Healthcare Facilities Management Leadership Style Compared To Traditional Healthcare Business And Clinical Leaders, Joshua Paul Ashlock

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The healthcare environment presents constant challenges related to the provision of safe and quality care to patients. Interactions between traditional business and clinical healthcare leaders and healthcare facilities management leaders are increasing to meet the environment of care needs for healthcare organizations. This study examined the leadership style differences between two healthcare leadership groups, represented by the American College of Healthcare Executive members as well as members of the American Society of Healthcare Engineers and provides insight into the leadership trait differences between these groups. Transformational leadership traits and self-perception of outcomes for leadership showed higher within the ACHE group, …

The Negative Impact Of Ambulatory Acquisitions On The Cost Of Business Health Insurance, Elizabeth Thomas Koss

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation research study was designed to contribute to the growing body of academic knowledge regarding the increase in acquisition activity (Capps, Dranove, & Ody, 2018) and the annual increase in the cost of health insurance premiums for small to middle size businesses (Camilleri, 2018; Cowley, 2004; D’Arrigo, 2019; Guo & Tao, 2015). This research specifically addressed the HCPCS billing rates of procedures before and after acquisition. Further, it examined the annual increase in percentage of ambulatory physicians compared to the increase percentage in health insurance premiums. Finally, the increase in health insurance premiums was evaluated based on age, type …

Effective Leadership Practices Of Blue-Collar Workers In Manufacturing Organizations, Graham Wesley Howard

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study investigated and analyzed leadership’s impact on the frontline, blue-collar workers in manufacturing industries in the Southeastern United States that were non-union companies. This study is a qualitative, multiple case study that investigated leadership practices at three different manufacturing facilities. The specific effects of leadership that this study focused on was how leaders affected employee outcomes such as turnover, satisfaction, and motivation. The results of this study identified a need for leadership training in blue-collar, manufacturing industries as well as the need to develop stronger leader-follower relations in order to improve employee turnover, satisfaction, and motivation within manufacturing industries.

From The Battlefield To The Civilian Labor Force: What Are The Obstacles Facing Military Veterans In Successful Reintegration To The Civilian Workforce?, Frank Hernandez Jr

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological research study was to explore and understand the difficulties and challenges that thousands of combat veterans have encountered in their reintegration into society and the civilian workforce. The research study was guided by the four research questions: What were the lived experiences of combat veterans as they transitioned from military service to civilian employment? What were the challenges and difficulties that combat veterans experienced when seeking civilian employment? What are the successes that combat veterans have experienced in transitioning to the civilian workforce? What perceptions do human resource managers have about combat veterans and …

Thematic Atmospherics Within Small Coffee Shops: A Study, Brittany Dobill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Coffee shops represent a popular form of business in today’s economy. Atmospherics represent a tool used within all types of businesses including coffee shops. Customer loyalty represents a key goal in marketing and business. Within this study, the researcher combined the topics of coffee shops, atmospherics, and customer loyalty. This study consisted of a qualitative case study exploring the impact of atmospherics within coffee shops and customer loyalty. The researcher conducted several interviews and observations during the field study. The main themes that emerged from the field study are comfortable, unique not a franchise, and reoccurring customers. Within this writing, …

The Study Of The Impact Of Cultural Intelligence (Cq) Training On Cq Measures Of Expatriate Employees In International Business, Mykka C. Fisher

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The loss associated with failed expatriate assignments remains significant for international businesses. Leadership within global organizations that can manage cost and improve the chances for success offers an advantage to the firm. Individuals who demonstrate high measures of the four aspects of cultural intelligence (CQ) increase their ability to adapt to new cultural situations and adjust successfully within the new cultural environment. Training regarding culture proves effective for increased cultural awareness and cultural assimilation. This quantitative experimental study was conducted to determine if specialized training related to an individual’s personal cultural intelligence could significantly affect the four aspects of CQ. …

Maximizing Returns For Investors Using Modern Portfolio Theory And The Efficient Frontier, Charity Smith Parkinson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

There exists an efficient frontier upon which there is an optimal point of allocation of an investor’s assets among different types of investment vehicles. Identifying this point and allocating a portfolio accordingly allow an investor to capture the highest market return with the least amount of risk. This research study offers a model which can be used to find this optimal investment allocation and discusses the challenges and assumptions associated with using it. Using techniques discussed in Markowitz (1952), we obtain the optimal allocation of wealth for two portfolios of 13 and 12 assets, respectively. Such a model is not …

Stock Option Pay Versus Restricted Stock: A Comparative Analysis Of Their Impact On Managerial Risk-Taking And Performance Extremeness, Wanrong Hou, Steve Lovett, Abdul Rasheed

Management Faculty Publications

This study investigates how two stock-based incentives affect the risk-taking behavior of CEOs. We compare stock options and restricted stock in terms of their impact on the magnitude of investments and performance extremeness. We test our hypotheses using data for 23 years starting from 1993 for a large sample of S&P 1500 firms. Our results indicate that both stock option and restricted stock pay increase the magnitude of investments undertaken by CEOs, but that stock options have a much stronger effect. Also, stock option pay increases the likelihood of both big gains and big losses, but restricted stock reduces the …

Chefs' Perceptions Of Zero Waste Cooking In Restaurants, Josephine Reardon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine chefs’ perceptions and practices relative to current and potentially future efforts to decrease food waste. Through qualitative inquiry, this research aims to identify food waste reduction practices in Northwest Arkansas restaurants; chef’s perceptions of these practices and zero waste cooking; the impact these practices have on successfully implementing sustainability; and the biggest challenges in reducing food waste in restaurants. The results of this study will assist chefs and restaurant owners by providing guidance on practices easily utilized in restaurants currently.

An interview protocol, with five sections, was conducted with ten chefs at …

Data Breach Consequences And Responses: A Multi-Method Investigation Of Stakeholders, Hamid Reza Nikkhah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The role of information in today’s economy is essential as organizations that can effectively store and leverage information about their stakeholders can gain an advantage in their markets. The extensive digitization of business information can make organizations vulnerable to data breaches. A data breach is the unauthorized access to sensitive, protected, or confidential data resulting in the compromise of information security. Data breaches affect not only the breached organization but also various related stakeholders. After a data breach, stakeholders of the breached organizations show negative behaviors, which causes the breached organizations to face financial and non-financial costs. As such, the …

Perception Of County Extension Agents’ Organizational Fit After Participating In The Mentoring Component Of The Cooperative Extension Service Onboarding Program, Angela Blacklaw-Freel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine the perception employees of the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service (CES) after participating in a mentoring program. The CES implemented an onboarding program in 2010 which included a yearlong mentoring component for county extension agents because they were resigning at an alarming rate. The study aimed to illuminate if the mentoring program increased the county extension agents’ perception of fit after completing the program by determining if they felt they possessed characteristics that were compatible with the organization.

This study was founded on the mentees’ viewpoints of their perceptions of person-organization (PO) fit, …

Accelerating Leadership And Professional Development For Adults: Developing A New Measure For Assessing Kegan’S Constructive Developmental Orders, Tom Pierce Coker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much has been learned and theorized about adult development and its importance in leadership effectiveness and professional development interventions thanks to the framework proposed by Kegan’s Constructive Developmental Theory (CDT). However, research and practice in this area has been hindered by the difficulty of utilizing the current method for assessing constructive developmental Level, the Subject-Object Interview. The present study addresses this problem through the development and preliminary validation of a new self-report instrument that measures the Levels of development described in Kegan’s CDT. This new measure, the Constructive Developmental Self-Report (CDSR), was constructed through theoretical-based item generation that utilized both …

Hello Girls On Strike: Telephone Operators, The Fort Smith General Strike And The Struggle For Democracy In Great War Arkansas, Kyra Schmidt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In September 1917, Fort Smith telephone operators formed a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Soon after, company leaders dismissed two of the women who were instrumental in the formation of the union. After many attempts to meet and negotiate with the company leaders, the remaining operators walked out and began striking on September 19. This strike lasted almost four months and brought chaos into the city including the indictments, trials, and convictions of the mayor, J. H. Wright, and chief of police, Jim Fernandez. The election after Wright’s conviction saw the first female votes in Arkansas history. …

A Dynamic Account Of Self-Efficacy In Entrepreneurship, Michael M. Gielnik, Ronald Bledow, Miriam S. Stark

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We present a dynamic account of self-efficacy in entrepreneurship that integrates social–cognitive and control theory. According to our dynamic account, variability in self-efficacy energizes action because it involves self-motivation and discrepancy perception as competing motivational processes. We argue that variability and the average level in self-efficacy nascent entrepreneurs display over time support the enactment of entrepreneurial intentions and predict business ownership. The proposed positive effect of variability further implies an inverted u-shaped relationship between self-efficacy at a single point in time and business ownership. To test these hypotheses, we repeatedly assessed entrepreneurial self-efficacy of nascent African entrepreneurs during a 12-week …

Semantic Understanding Of Smart Contracts: Executable Operational Semantics Of Solidity, Jiao Jiao, Shuanglong Kan, Shang Wei Lin, David Sanan, Yang Liu, Jun Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Bitcoin has been a popular research topic recently. Ethereum (ETH), a second generation of cryptocurrency, extends Bitcoin's design by offering a Turing-complete programming language called Solidity to develop smart contracts. Smart contracts allow creditable execution of contracts on EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) without third parties. Developing correct and secure smart contracts is challenging due to the decentralized computation nature of the blockchain. Buggy smart contracts may lead to huge financial loss. Furthermore, smart contracts are very hard, if not impossible, to patch once they are deployed. Thus, there is a recent surge of interest in analyzing and verifying smart contracts. …

Satisfaction Of High-Level Athlete Management In Universities In Sichuan Province, China, Yudong Tang

Student Works (2020-2029)

With ongoing development in the construction of high-level sports teams in Chinese universities, the Chinese Ministry of Education is paying more and more attention to the running quality of high-level sports teams in universities. Evaluation of the construction quality of high-level sports teams in universities has received extensive attention from universities and society. However, for various reasons, the main body of high-level sports team evaluation comprises government agencies and universities, and, there is a lack of research on management systems of high-level athletes from the perspective of high-level athletes themselves. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to …

Prospects Of Incubation In Supporting Agrobased Industry: Evidence From Malaysian Agricultural Research And Development Institute, Subramaniam Sarpaneswaran

Student Works (2020-2029)

Agricultural incubation system plays an essential role in fostering the national agriculture systems. This study is mainly based on a single public agricultural research institution in Malaysia, which is, Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institution (MARDI). The main objective of this study is to examine the relevance of incubator support system in fostering capabilities development of incubatees. In this regards, the selected four MARDI’s agro-based incubatees have been studied qualitatively via indepth interviews. The emphasis is on assessing the different supports system at different incubation stages since there is lacking comprehensive studies on monitoring the agrobased incubatee business performance during …

The Role Of Brand Credibility And Brand Experience In Post-Consumption Outcomes Of Hotel Choice Among Malaysian Muslim Consumers, Rosli Nadzirah

Student Works (2020-2029)

This research investigates the importance of hotel attributes in examining Malaysian Muslim tourists' hotel choice. Based on the mean-end chain theory, it explores the relationship among nine constructs; hotel attributes, brand credibility, brand experience, brand attachment and post-consumption outcomes which consisted of satisfaction, revisit intention and word-of-mouth, as well as travel motivation and Islamic religiosity. A total of 474 valid and usable self-administered questionnaires were collected through purposive sampling technique. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was deployed to validate the research model and the research hypotheses. The result indicates that brand experience fully mediates the relationship between …