Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

A Strategic Audit Of Tesla, Inc.: Electrifying Our Future Or About To Run Out Of Energy?, Chloe Dana

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Tesla, Inc.’s stock had reached its peak during September of 2017. However, due to manufacturing delays of its new Model 3 sport sedan, cash flow issues, and a recent fatal autopilot accident, investors and consumers are questioning the firm’s long-term stability. Although Tesla has created technology that makes it easier for consumers to harness and utilize electricity to power their homes and vehicles, many wonder if the company’s stock price is about to figuratively run out of energy. The following will be a strategic analysis, illustrating the firm’s Current Strategy & Background Information, Situational Analysis & Issue Summary, Strategy Recommendations …

Google Strategic Audit, Margaret Witzenburg

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis fulfills the requirement for the strategic audit in MNGT 475H/RAIK 476. It discusses Google's competitors and the rest of the technology industry along with how Google fits into it all. It's a red ocean industry, so Google must continually innovate to maintain its competitive advantage. In addition to a summary of the current strategy and how Google competes, the thesis explores alternative strategies for Google to pursue given their strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats in the industry. It includes a timeline, potential budget, and contingency plan for the best strategy.

On The Shoulders Of Giants: A Meta-Review Of Strategic Human Resource Management, Kaifeng Jiang, Jake G. Messersmith

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Recent years have witnessed significant growth in the field of strategic HRM. This article summarizes the literature in this field by conducting a meta-review, a review of the reviews that have covered various topics of strategic HRM. In doing so, the authors highlight theoretical frameworks and empirical findings of studies in the field over the past three decades, identify methodological issues and challenges in the previous research, and discuss recent trends in the field of strategic HRM. The author concludes by suggesting some interesting and important directions for future work.

Supplementary material attached below.

Bang For The Buck: Understanding Employee Benefit Allocations And New Venture Survival, Jake G. Messersmith, Pankaj C. Patel, Christopher Crawford

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Providing employee benefits is costly for new ventures, yet offering such inducements is often essential to developing human capital. While a broad combination of employee benefits could yield synergistic effects, adopting a large number of benefits may not be feasible for resource constrained ventures. To ensure survival, while limiting misallocation of scarce resources towards benefits that have lower returns, entrepreneurs must be selective in choosing the benefits that generate the most ‘bang for the buck’. Our study assesses the effects of employee benefit offerings on venture survival odds. Based on a longitudinal sample of 1012 US-based ventures from the Kauffman …

Assessing The Validity And Reliability Of Family Factors On Physical Activity: A Case Study In Turkey, Sharalyn Steenson, Hilal Ozcebe, Umut Arslan, Hande Konsuk Unlu, Ozgur M. Araz, Mahmut Yardim, Sarp Uner, Nazmi Bilir, Terry T.-K. Huang

Department of Supply Chain Management and Analytics: Faculty Publications

Background: Childhood obesity rates have been rising rapidly in developing countries. A better understanding of the risk factors and social context is necessary to inform public health interventions and policies. This paper describes the validation of several measurement scales for use in Turkey, which relate to child and parent perceptions of physical activity (PA) and enablers and barriers of physical activity in the home environment.

Method: The aim of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of several measurement scales in Turkey using a population sample across three socio-economic strata in the Turkish capital, Ankara. Surveys were conducted …

Shared Team Experiences And Team Effectiveness: Unpacking The Contingent Effects Of Entrained Rhythms And Task Characteristics, Margaret M. Luciano, Amy L. Bartels, Lauren D'Innocenzo, M. Travis Maynard, John E. Mathieu

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

This study explores the conditions under which shared team task-specific (STTS) experiences in crew-based arrangements may negatively influence team effectiveness.We suggest that the entrained rhythms featured in social entrainment theory act as a dual-edged sword with the potential to generate complacency detriments in addition to the commonly cited synchronization benefits. We argue that the manifestation and influence of the countervailing forces (i.e., synchronization and complacency) on the STTS experience—team effectiveness relationship will depend on salient task characteristics (i.e., frequency and difficulty). More specifically, frequently performed tasks create conditions for complacency tomanifest (generating an inverted-U shaped relationship between STTS experience—team efficiency), …

“Optimizing The Performance Of Mean-Variance Portfolios In Various Markets: An “Old-School” Approach”, Roberto Stein, Orlando E. Contreras-Pacheco

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

The authors study the performance of mean-variance optimized (MVO) equity portfolios for retail investors in various markets in the U.S. and around the world. Actively managed equity mutual funds have relatively high fees and tend to underperform their benchmark. Index funds such as exchange traded funds still charge appreciable fees, and only deliver the performance of the benchmark. The authors find that MVO portfolios are relatively easy to manage by a retail investor, and that they tend to outperform their benchmark or, at worst, equal its performance, even after adjusting for risk. Moreover, they show that the performance of these …

Ripping Off The Band-Aid: Scrutiny Bundling In The Wake Of Social Disapproval, Varkey K. Titus Jr., Owen Parker, A. Erin Bass

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Activities that hazard the possibility of increased scrutiny are an unavoidable reality for many firms. While managers may face the need to engage in these activities, there is little research on when managers decide to do so. Existing theoretical perspectives on status quo deviations have not sufficiently addressed how managers order the firm’s essential activities that differ primarily in terms of the scrutiny those activities engender. Drawing from concepts in the accounting and political science literatures, we advance a “scrutiny- bundling” perspective that suggests that firms engage in scrutiny-hazarding action in the wake of social disapproval, assessed in this study …

Innovation For Creating A Smart Future, Sang M. Lee, Silvana Trimi

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

tToday, we live in a dynamic and turbulent global community. The wave of mega-trends, including rapidchange in globalization and technological advances, is creating new market forces. For any organizationto survive and prosper in such an environment, innovation is imperative. However, innovation is nolonger just for creating value to benefit individuals, organizations, or societies. The ultimate purpose ofinnovation should be much more far reaching, helping create a smart future where people can enjoy thebest quality of life possible. Thus, innovation must search for intelligent solutions to tackle major socialills, seek more proactive approaches to predict the uncertain future, and pursue strategies …

Innovation: From Small “I” To Large “I”, Sang M. Lee

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Innovation is the lifeline for every organization. The primary purpose of innovation is to apply new ideas or technologies to create new or added value for the organization. This narrow goal is for small “i”. In the dynamic digital age, however, the goal of innovation should be much more aspirational and noble: “doing well by doing good” for the society at large and humanity. This lofty goal of innovation is for large “I”. In this paper, we review the evolution process of innovation and propose how innovation can disrupt the barriers to creating a smart future, the aspirational goal of …

Examining Follower Responses To Transformational Leadership From A Dynamic, Person–Environment Fit Perspective, Bennett J. Tepper, Nikolaos Dimotakis, Lisa Schurer Lambert, Joel Koopman, Fadel K. Matta, Hee Man Park, Wongun Goo

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

We invoke the person–environment fit paradigm to examine on a daily basis follower affective, attitudinal, and behavioral responses to transformational leadership needed and received. Results from two experience sampling method (ESM) studies suggested that positive affect was higher on days when transformational leadership received fit follower needs (compared to days when the amount received was deficient or in excess of follower needs) and on days when absolute levels of fit was higher. We also found that positive affect mediated the within-person effects of transformational leadership needed and received on subordinates’ daily work attitudes (Studies 1 and 2) and organizational citizenship …

Entrepreneurship Everywhere: Across Campus, Across Communities, And Across Borders, Jeffrey S. Hornsby, Jake G. Messersmith, Matthew Rutherford, Sharon Simmons

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

This paper introduces the theme of this special issue related to “Entrepreneurship Everywhere: Across Campus, Across Communities, and Across Borders.” We explore three critical points as we set up the accepted articles for the special issue. First, if we are everywhere are we anywhere? Second, we focus on the importance of collaboration. Third, we discuss the importance of strategically planning on how your efforts intervene or integrate into the wider ecosystem.

Entrepreneurship is everywhere. A search of the term “entrepreneurship” on Google yields 132 million results. By comparison a search on “strategic management” yields a mere 17.2 million results. Despite …

Voice Of A “Seasoned” Ob Professor, Fred Luthans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

I will be making some highly personalized comments on the Aguinis et al. article* concerning rigor vs. relevance, renaming/rebranding I-O psychology, and I-O psychology vs. business school OB. Before commenting, however, I feel compelled to briefly frame my remarks from the perspective of my 50-year academic career. For example, I think it is important to note that I go back to the early 1960s at the University of Iowa, College of Business. I was studying for my Ph.D. in the just emerging field of management and organizations (nothing was offered called organizational behavior or strategic management). However, and very unusual …

Education Leadership Perspectives: Positve Ways, Iwasan D. Kejawa Ed.D

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Are outdated traditional education, information technological infrastructure, problematic issues in providing quality leadership education in many of our instittutions today? With this into considerations, are these issues vital in order to stabilize the political and economic embroidery of our institutions or organizations, and its psychological and sociological awareness? What are really to be taught in our institutions to educate the present and the future leaders in the society? It is found that education may be the training of the mind to perform desire functions or to perpetuate the modality of obtaining an end or result. Actually, the accessibility of leadership …

Blue The Bee Learns To Be Happy, Connie Reimers-Hild, Deborah J. Weitzenkamp, Connie Reimers-Hild, Kim Wellsandt

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Faculty and Staff Publications

Do you sometimes feel sad or blue and don't know what to do? If so, this book was written just for you!

Join Blue the Bee as she travels through Happy Orchard meeting her friends (Flutter, Buzz, Bonita and Ernie) to learn the 7 Happiness Habits. When happiness is a habit, it comes without thinking. You can choose how to spend your day and use your time. You choose how to live your life and what is on your mind.

Each page was designed to enjoy at any age. People can become pollinators of happiness in any life stage!

This …

Sentiment And Stock Returns: Anticipating A Major Sporting Event, Brian C. Payne, Jiri Tresl, Geoffrey C. Friesen

Department of Finance: Faculty Publications

This study documents the effect of the Super Bowl on the stock returns of firms that are geographically associated with the competing teams. We find significant upward return drift in the 9 trading days leading up to the Super Bowl, a pattern consistent with investors trading in anticipation of the game itself. The ‘‘anticipatory behavior’’ among investors leads to widespread pregame returns, which is not documented in prior studies. These pre-event abnormal returns are positive and statistically and economically significant for all firms, and the size of pre-event returns varies according to each team’s favored status. In addition, firms associated …

Positive Projections And Health: An Initial Validation Of The Implicit Psychological Capital Health Measure, P. D. Harms, Adam J. Vanhove, Fred Luthans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

In this set of studies, we conduct an initial validation of the Implicit Psychological Capital Questionnaire-Health (IPCQ-H), a short, easy to administer and score measure of psychological capital designed to reflect implicit schemas or cognitions surrounding one’s health. The results of two studies demonstrate that the implicit measure of IPCQ-H is correlated with an explicit PsyCap-Health measure (PCQ-H), but has very little construct overlap with measures of personality. Moreover, scores of the IPCQ-H were stable over time. Study 2 documents the predictive validity of the IPCQ-H with a number of physical and mental health outcomes. Implications for theory and practice …

Computer Science Technology Education: An Incredible Explosion, Iwasan D. Kejawa

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

This paper explore what computers are, their usages and their functionalities. Computers can be used to learn or comprehend the understanding of all subjects, be it physics aerobics, swimming, biology, mathematics, agriculture, chemistry, business administration or commerce, just to name a few. In education, computers are used to project information to individuals in the classrooms or anywhere education is taking place, in churches, homes, schools, conference halls and so on. It is also used to convey the logic of a subject or behind a topic. Computers play an important role in educating our mind. With the usage of computers, we …

Referral Hire Presence Implications For Referrer Turnover And Job Performance, Jenna R. Pieper, Charlie O. Trevor, Ingo Weller, Dennis Duchon

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

A great deal of research has been devoted to understanding the organizational returns of employee referral programs, particularly with respect to outcomes involving those hired through the referral process. Yet, no work has addressed whether the presence of a referral hire (i.e., the referred candidate who is hired and working in the firm) is related to behavioral outcomes for the referrer. Drawing on the social enrichment perspective, we theorize how referral hire presence (RHP), which is the time during which the referrer’s and the referral hire’s employment spells overlap, impacts referrer behavior. Using data from 265 referrers in a U.S. …

Athletes Quality Of Life After Retirement, Kevin Estrada

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Professional athletes have had a long life of being able to compete in the sport they love. Once retried, most athletes quality of life worsens. Injuries and the dramatic change from competing sets up a former athlete for adversity. Most people believe that athletes are privileged individuals that earn too much money for the work they do. However, consequences such as bankruptcy, depression, and even suicide points otherwise.

●The findings show that although athletes might have a gifted early life the quick change in lifestyle sets them up for failure. Also I agree that former athletes have a worse quality …

Gender Pay Gap In Athletics, George Siliman

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

The pay gap is a measure of what women are paid relative to men. It is important to to minimize the gender pay gap in athletics so it can successfully help society move in forward progression and not hinder on the past. The effects on women in professional sport setting, and the overall difference between males and females in athletics all play a significant role on the fluctuated pay gap.

Women play a prominent role in athletics but the lack of compensation devalues them as competitors and athletes. In sum, I learned about the fluctuation of the pay gap between …

Review Of “Dreammakers: Innovating For The Greater Good” By Michele Hunt, Dreammakers (Dreammakers.Org), Sang M. Lee

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

This is an inspiring book about DreamMakers, those individuals and organizations that have the audacity to rethink, redesign, and co-create a new world view of doing well by doing good. These dream makers aspire to reset the workings of the world to alleviate major ills and problems that societies face today. To understand and appreciate this book fully, we need to know about the author.

Michele Hunt is an extraordinarily successful lady with colorful professional background. Upon graduation from college (BA in Sociology from Eastern Michigan University and MA in Sociology from University of Detroit), she worked for 9 years …

Motivating Employee Referrals: The Interactive Effects Of The Referral Bonus, Perceived Risk In Referring, And Affective Commitment, Jenna R. Pieper, Jessica M. Greenwald, Steven D. Schlachter

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Research has provided compelling evidence that employee referrals result in positive outcomes for organizations and job seekers, but it has been limited on how organizations can increase the likelihood of obtaining employee referrals. Using the theoretical lens of social exchange theory and tenets from expectancy theory, we tested two common assumptions of most employers: A referral bonus motivates employees to refer, and higher bonus amounts incite greater likelihood of referring. We theoretically developed and tested a model integrating the effects of perceived risk in referring and affective commitment and their interactions with the referral bonus to better explain the likelihood …

Nonprofit Pay In A Competitive Market: Wage Penalty Or Premium?, Christian King, Gregory B. Lewis

Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

Two competing theories argue that the nonprofit sector pays differently: Nonprofit employees may accept lower pay to be able to do meaningful work for a good cause, or they may earn higher pay due to nonprofit organizations’ tax exemptions and weaker incentives to hold down wages. To test these opposing expectations, we use the 2005-2013 American Community Surveys to examine pay differences among registered nurses working for nonprofit, for-profit, and public hospitals. We also test hypotheses that public and nonprofit hospitals have smaller pay disparities by gender, race, and relationship status. We find that pay is highest in nonprofit hospitals, …

Evaluating Data Quality In Reports Of Sales In A Retail Establishment Survey, Kristen Olson, Xiaoyu Lin, Timothy Banks

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper examines failure to use records in sales reporting across about 12,000 store owners participating in a retail measurement panel in a Southeast Asian country. Reported sales based on the storekeeper’s memory (oral reports) were lower than those from records, as expected. More surprisingly, oral reports acted as a supplement to record-based reports at the same store, such that stores that had oral reports had higher total sales than those with invoices. Although stores were expected to either have or not have a reliable record system, many stores used both. Findings varied over individual categories of products. Little research …

Artificial Intelligence In Engineering Risk Analytics, Desheng Wu, David L. Olson, Alexandre Dolgui

Department of Supply Chain Management and Analytics: Faculty Publications

Risks exist in every aspect of our lives, and can mean different things to different people. While negative in general they always cause a great deal of potential damage and inconvenience for stakeholders. Recent engineering risks include the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster from the 2011 tsunami, a year that also saw earthquakes in New Zealand, tornados in the US, and floods in both Australia and Thailand. Earthquakes, tornados (not to mention hurricanes) and floods are repetitive natural phenomenon. But the October 2011 floods in Thailand were the worst in 50 years, impacting supply chains including those of Honda, Toyota, Lenovo, …

Developing An Innovative Entity Extraction Method For Unstructured Data, Waleed A. Zaghloul, Silvana Trimi

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

The main goal of this study is to build high-precision extractors for entities such as Person and Organization as a good initial seed that can be used for training and learning in machine-learning systems, for the same categories, other categories, and across domains, languages, and applications. The improvement of entities extraction precision also increases the relationships extraction precision, which is particularly important in certain domains (such as intelligence systems, social networking, genetic studies, healthcare, etc.). These increases in precision improve the end users’ experience quality in using the extraction system because it lowers the time that users spend for training …

Competitive Repertoire Complexity: Governance Antecedents And Performance Outcomes, Brian L. Connelly, Laszlo Tihanyi, David J. Ketchen Jr., Christina Matz Carnes, Walter J. Ferrier

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Research summary: Past inquiry has found that implementing complex competitive repertoires (i.e., diverse and dynamic arrays of actions) is challenging, but firms benefit from doing so. Our examination of the antecedents and outcomes of complex competitive repertoires develops a more nuanced perspective. Data from 1,168 firms in 204 industries reveal that complexity initially harms performance, but then becomes a positive factor, except at high levels. We use agency and tournament theories, respectively, to examine how key governance mechanisms—ownership structure and executive compensation—help shape firms’ competitive repertoires. We find that the principals of agency theory and the pay gap of tournament …

Environmental Policy Performances For Sustainable Development: From The Perspective Of Iso 14001 Certification, Sang M. Lee, Yonghwi Noh, Donghyun Choi, Jin Sung Rha

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the financial performances of environmental policy by using the long-term effect of ISO 14001 certification. Drawing on a natural-resource-based view of the firm, this study examined abnormal performances of ISO 14001 certified firms on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) in the USA during the period 1996–2010 employing a rigorous event study methodology. The results indicate that the profitability variables showed immediate positive abnormal effects after firms applied for the ISO 14001 certification, while the market benefit variable showed gradual improvements after obtaining the certification. However, ISO 14001 …

Pulling In Different Directions? Exploring The Relationship Between Vertical Pay Dispersion And High-Performance Work Systems, Jake G. Messersmith, Kyoung Yong Kim, Pankaj C. Patel

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Vertical pay dispersion (VPD), a hierarchical pay structure used to motivate employees, has traditionally been studied separately from high-performance work systems (HPWSs). As a component of HPWSs, incentive-based compensation schemes focus on employee- or team-level incentives. However, the influence of the simultaneous utilization of VPD and HPWS on performance remains understudied. This study addresses the question of whether these approaches to managing human capital serve as complements or substitutes to one another. VPD and HPWS are argued to substitute for one another with respect to motivation- and skill-enhancing practices. The opposite notion is true in regard to opportunity-enhancing HPWSs, which …