Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

An Exploration Into The History And Significance Of The 'Planner' And A Comprehensive Business Plan For Launching The New Planner Company, Lala Letter Llc, Sydney Gonzalez

Honors Theses

This thesis accompanies my BFA in Graphic Design visual thesis show debuting the brand and products of Lala Letter™, a planner and stationery company. The written portion of this thesis contains a business plan outlining the operational, financial, and marketing strategies and objectives for Lala Letter. It also includes an overview of the evolution of written planners and stationery and discusses the impact of the digital revolution on the paper industry. Lala Letter is a startup stationery company targeted to young college women who currently use a written planner; its primary product is aesthetically innovative weekly planner. The product line …

Plan, Prepare Prosper - Farm Business Planning - Strategic Planning Overview, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Farm Systems and Economics published reports

Sustainable management of the land is a responsibility that is integral to Aboriginal Culture and has been successfully achieved for thousands of years.

In today's world land managers need to wear two hats __ the land management hat and the business management hat. Both hats working successfully together can create sustainably managed land that will benefit the Community, reinstating the land to its role as a fundamental core for Culture, as well as providing potential financial income.

The purpose of this workshop is to foster the awareness of strategic planning for Culture and Business to operate successfully within the same …

Tesla Solar Roof Marketing Plan, Mustafa Almuzel, Touraj Goudarznia, Ali Daneshi, Mohammadsaleh Saadatmand, Mufeed Yacoub

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

This marketing plan for Tesla roof has been written to find the best marketing strategies for this new product. Tesla roof was launched in 2017 as part of Tesla’s mission to accelerate the transition of the world into sustainable energy. The objective is to position Tesla roof tile as the first choice for homeowners seeking aesthetics and green energy, gaining market share within three years. The research shows that positioning Tesla roof in the solar market would be the most suitable approach for Tesla. Research and customer interviews analysis implies that the value proposition for this solar roof would be …

Nirsa Championship Series Volunteerism: The Perceived Impact On Professional Development, Jacob K. Tingle, Randall J. Griffiths, Dan Hazlett, April Flint

School of Business Faculty Research

The National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA) Championship Series (Series) has developed into the primary organization for governing extramural/sport club collegiate recreational tournaments. As NIRSA professionals describe it, the Series has also evolved into a platform for professional development. To date, however, no study has attempted to link professional growth and advancement to volunteerism at Series events. As such, the purpose of this study was to examine skills and competencies that could be correlated with volunteering at Series events. Using Astin’s Input-Environment-Outcome (I-E-O) model the research team explored the environmental impact of the volunteer experience by collecting data in two phases …

Big Brother Vs. Little Brother: The Big Four In Southern California, David Castro-Jiminez

Whittier Scholars Program

This project examines the digital marketing strategies of both Twitter and Instagram for four pairs of teams in the Big Four sport organizations (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL) in densely populated Southern California. The goal of this work is to study how respective teams market themselves via social media based on their socialized positions in the given market area. This has been done primarily through observational research which was then analyzed through social and marketing theories and cross-analyzed with professional articles relative to the subject. The main aspects this work focused on the social media identities, the quality/quantity of the content, …

Madrid Beats The Sox: Marketing Culture Through Community Outreach, Jonathan Lindblom

Whittier Scholars Program

Marketing, culture, and sports have all gone hand in hand for as long as commercialized business has existed. Spain’s Real Madrid has mastered all three of these and combined them into a brilliant business strategy or strategies. With this rich history, the club can boast that they are comparable yet uniquely opposite from the Boston Red Sox. Real Madrid owes its success as a sports team and also as a business to their promotion of their organizational culture. Despite the fact that both the Sox and Real Madrid are two of the most recognizable teams in the sports world today, …

Sustainable Homes And Going Green In La, Eric O'Brien

Whittier Scholars Program

This project will dive into the realm of sustainable homes or as it’s more commonly known, “Green Homes. The idea of building sustainable homes and structures in general is not a new concept in here Los Angeles, California, but with the consistent rise in population and the wide demographic held here in Los Angeles County, some folks are being left to conventional and environmentally detrimental homes. This project will begin with a brief overview of the history and current use of energy in the housing sector, then into the basis of sustainable building. Following this will be the topic of …

Successful Strategies For Reducing Employee Turnover In The Restaurant Industry, Jaun Derek Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee turnover remains a ubiquitous phenomenon that could negatively impact the operations and profitability of any business entity. For decades, managers, business leaders, and individuals in academia have devoted considerable time and resources to understanding and reducing the phenomenon. This qualitative multiple case study was conducted to explore the successful strategies that restaurant managers used to reduce employee turnover. The population sample consisted of 4 restaurant managers from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago who had successfully used strategies to reduce employee turnover. The conceptual framework used was the transformational leadership model. Data for the study were gathered using semistructured …

Strategies To Reduce Maquiladora Employee Absenteeism In Mexico, Antonio Jose Cachazo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee absenteeism is a costly problem, affecting organizations' ability to deliver products and services. Finding strategies managers use to help reduce employee absenteeism is critical to sustain operational capacity, control labor costs, and to achieve organizational success. Drawing from the Herzberg 2-factors theory, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore strategies implemented by six business organizations to reduce employee absenteeism in the maquiladora industry in Mexico. Through semistructured interviews, 11 management participants shared strategies implemented to reduce absenteeism. In addition, other data sources, such as organizational policies, management graphs, and meeting minutes were used. Data were coded …

Factors Affecting Employee Persistence In An Online Management Development Certificate Program, Todd D. Chester

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

An important approach to prepare new managers for increased responsibility is participation in online management development programs; however, there is a lack of information about the factors that affect employee completion of these programs. This study addressed how chief executive officers (CEOs) can implement these programs to rapidly develop new managers who are qualified to serve in the leadership roles left behind by many retirees. This qualitative descriptive case study explored employees' perceptions about persistence in an online management development certificate program at a U.S. nonprofit organization. Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory and Rovai's composite persistence model provided the conceptual framework for …

Share Retention, Underwriter Reputation, And Initial Public Offering Underpricing, Marcia Yvonne Reid-Grant

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Initial public offering (IPO) underpricing is a costly practice that decreases the IPO proceeds accruing to the issuing firms and can derail a firm's growth objectives. The purpose of this correlational study was to determine the relationship between share retention, underwriter reputation, and IPO underpricing among a population of IPOs issued in Jamaica. The efficient market hypothesis served as the theoretical framework for this study. Archived data for 52 IPOs issued in Jamaica from 1986 to 2018 were collected and Spearman's correlation matrix and heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors regression analysis were applied. The outcomes of this study indicated no significant relationship …

Community Public-Private Partnership Leadership Synergy In Tanzania, Hawa Yatera Mshana

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although the public-private partnership (PPP) concept in health and social health has been politically accepted as the best pathway to improving health outcomes in many developing nations, implementation lacks leadership synergy. Lack of awareness and engagement of community leaders about PPP interventions and their benefits affect accountability and ownership of health and social care interventions. The purpose of this study was to better understand factors that could promote partnership leadership synergy to enhance ownership and accountability for community health and social welfare initiatives in Tanzania. A qualitative empirical case study design was used; diffusion of innovation and the public-private integrated …

Leadership, Perceptions, And Turnover In Fire And Emergency New Zealand, Mark Anthony Long

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Fire and Emergency New Zealand experiences voluntary turnover at local volunteer fire brigades. The purpose of the quantitative component of this sequential explanatory study was to examine the relationship between volunteer chief fire officers' leadership styles, perceptions of organizational support, and voluntary firefighter turnover; the purpose of the qualitative component was to explore strategies that volunteer chief fire officers used to reduce volunteer firefighter turnover. The population for the quantitative study was 21 volunteer chief fire officers, and the population for the qualitative study was 6 volunteer firefighters. The theoretical frameworks that grounded this study were transformational leadership theory (TL) …

Corporate Social Responsibility And The Welfare Of Nigerian Niger Delta Landowners, Charles Oboh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The perception by any group of ineffectiveness in the dispensation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to major stakeholders may result in friction, reduction in productivity, and an overall loss of social and economic capital. The problem addressed in this study, which represented the gap in knowledge and practice, was that CSR initiatives in the Niger Delta region lack a community-centric framework to ensure optimal and sustainable returns on CSR investments for multinational corporations and local Nigerian landowners. The purpose of the study was to develop a deeper understanding of what it means to experience CSR for Nigerian landowners in the …

Procurement Strategies In Nigerian Ceramics Manufacturing, Emmanuel Korede Alege

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some developing nations struggle with a diminishing manufacturing output market share because of a lack of appropriate procurement strategies. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the procurement strategies that managers successfully developed and deployed to improve company performance. The strategic alignment model was the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews of 6 members of a Nigerian ceramics manufacturing company, as well as from a review of publicly available documents related to the performance of the company. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted to identify codes, extract subthemes and themes …

Strategies To Decrease Business Failure In Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises, Pantiva Navamarat

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In Southeast Asia, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fail each year; in 2010, SME failure rate exceeded 50%. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that some SME business leaders use to decrease the failure rate of SMEs in Southeast Asia. The target population consisted of 5 SME business leaders in Southeast Asia who demonstrated success in using strategies to decrease the failure rate of SMEs. The conceptual framework for this study was the Ulrich model, which supports the notion that a human resource manager needs to be involved in overall organizational decision making as …

Project Manager Strategies To Improve The Delivery Of Construction Projects, Luis Gaspar Crespo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The return on investment of construction organizations is at risk because construction managers fail to execute projects efficiently. The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies that construction managers used to deliver projects efficiently. The selected population was 10 construction managers from a single construction organization operating in Panama. The conceptual framework for this study was the McKinsey 7S. Data were collected using semistructured interviews, observations, and a review of public documents. Collected data were compiled, disassembled, reassembled, interpreted, and then conclusions were reached, as noted in Yin's 5-step analysis. Themes that emerged from the study included …

Cleaning The World One Smartlink At A Time, Ryan Zwahlen, Sarah Lucas, Sara Woika, Faith Goforth, Logan Hanreck, Rachel Schirripa

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project sought to develop the best sales plan for GOJO's currently developing product called SMARTLINK, a technology that transforms any hand soap or hand sanitizer dispenser into a smart dispenser. It allows the user to track current levels of solution among other uses.

Design Thinking: A Case Study Of Implementation Within The It Software Industry., Jean-Baptiste Liberge

Theses

In the global economy, competition and market pressures push the majority of company managers to drive with more efficiency by improving processes, optimizing performance and reducing costs. Companies are increasing shareholder value by improving cash flow' and cutting costs. How many cost savings can finance departments reproduce and for how long? Is this enough to lead their markets to deliver better services to their customers? Is it enough to build customer loyalty? The 11 industry fails to escape these constraints, operating in an intensely competitive market. To compete in this environment, companies need to face frequent new product launches and …

The Impact Of Entrepreneurship Education On Graduate Employability: A Cross Country Comparison, Rebecca Victoria Robinson

Masters

This thesis identifies and addresses a major gap in Entrepreneurship Education (EE) research. Specifically, it focuses on the entrepreneurial skills and attitudes embedded in employability skills. It tests the widely accepted assertion that employers desire more well-rounded graduates who possess entrepreneurial skills. Pittaway and Cope (2007) highlight an absence of evidence in the literature establishing a link between EE and employability skills.

It is the intersection of EE and graduate employability that provides the context for this study. This study examines the knowledge, skills and attitudes resulting from education and, in particular, from EE and ascertains the extent to which …

Barnes & Noble: Business Analysis, Wendy Gregory

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This thesis identifies how to conduct a Business Analysis. The publicly traded company for this project is Barnes & Noble.

The Performance Implication Of Obsessive Work Passion: Unpacking The Moderating And Mediating Mechanisms From A Conservation Of Resources Perspective, Dejun Tony Kong, Violet T. Ho

Management Faculty Publications

Work passion is an important determinant of work performance. While harmonious work passion (HWP) shows its consistent predictive value, obsessive work passion (OWP) appears to have a mixed relationship with work performance. To address this puzzle, we integrate research on OWP and emotional exhaustion with conservation of resources (COR) theory. Specifically, we argue that OWP determines emotional exhaustion, whose relationship with work performance is attenuated by leader-member exchange (LMX). By conducting a field study with a sample of 262 U.S. employees, we found supportive evidence, even when controlling for psychological detachment from work. The findings somewhat reconcile the inconsistent results …

Human-Intelligence And Machine-Intelligence Decision Governance Formal Ontology, Faisal Mahmud

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Since the beginning of the human race, decision making and rational thinking played a pivotal role for mankind to either exist and succeed or fail and become extinct. Self-awareness, cognitive thinking, creativity, and emotional magnitude allowed us to advance civilization and to take further steps toward achieving previously unreachable goals. From the invention of wheels to rockets and telegraph to satellite, all technological ventures went through many upgrades and updates. Recently, increasing computer CPU power and memory capacity contributed to smarter and faster computing appliances that, in turn, have accelerated the integration into and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in …

Three Essays On Ceo Risk Preferences, And Ability, Corporate Hedging Decisions, And Investor Sentiment, Sonik Mandal

Finance Theses & Dissertations

The derivative hedging research has looked at why firms and how firms hedge and if it increases value for their shareholders. In this dissertation we investigate the relation between CEO risk preferences and ability and whether if affects their hedging decisions and firm value.

In our first essay, we challenge the theory and previous empirical evidence that showed CEO risk preferences affects hedging. Using a sample of Fortune 500 firms and 5 years of panel data, and using inside debt (i.e., CEO pension and deferred compensation) and the CEO Vega and CEO Delta, as proxies of CEO risk preferences, we …

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 …

The Meaning-Making Structures Of Outsatnding Leaders: A Comparison Of Conative Capability At Conventional And Postconventional Leader Development Levels, Aidan Patrick Harney

PhDs

The majority of managers and leaders do not advance to postconventional stages of ego development (Boyd & Laske 2018), yet increased leader effectiveness has been correlated with the quality of personal meaning-making acquired at postconventional levels of maturity. This dissertation provides an original contribution to knowledge regarding the differences in personal meaning-making structure which are found by comparing conventional- with postconventional-stage leaders. This study focuses on the elements which make up a leader’s conative capability i.e. their conative intelligence and their conative complexity. Along with cognition and affect, conation is one of the three traditionally identified components of mind (Vandenbos …

Altering Time: The Effect Of Feedback Frequency On Employee Behavior, Nate Waddoups

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in technology have made it possible for employers to provide performance feedback to employees on a more frequent basis. This study investigates how different feedback frequencies can alter employees’ perceptions of time and subsequently how these altered perceptions influence employee productivity. I predict and find that feedback frequency alters the way employees break up or segment their work time—a process that I refer to as feedback-driven time segmenting. Ultimately I find that this process causes feedback frequency to have opposing effects on employee productivity. Specifically employees who receive more frequent feedback find fewer task efficiencies than employees who receive …

Antecedents To The Selection Of Ceos With Higher Levels Of Narcissism And How Ceos With Higher Levels Of Narcissism Affect The Ceo Succession Process, Ormonde R. Cragun

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the antecedents to the selection of CEOs with higher levels of narcissism, as well as their impact on the CEO succession process. The first study predicts how and when boards select CEOs with higher levels of narcissism. I predict when firm performance is low, environmental dynamism is high, and when environmental munificence is high, the board is more likely to select a CEO with higher levels of narcissism. I further predict that environmental conditions (i.e., dynamism and munificence) have a moderating effect on the relationship between firm performance and the level of narcissism of the newly-selected CEO. …

The Impact Of Cmo Tenure On Brand Equity And Cost Of Capital: Insights From Business To Consumer Industries, Tracey A. Swartz

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates the relationship between CMO tenure and firm risk as measured by cost of capital. The author develops a conceptual model linking the direct impact of CMO tenure on the firm’s cost of capital and indirect impact through brand equity. The hypotheses are tested using data on 125 public US-based firms between 2004 and 2013. The findings suggest that longer CMO tenure results in higher brand equity. Further, longer CMO tenure reduces cost of capital through its impact on brand equity. The author also finds that the impact of CMO tenure on brand equity is strengthened when the …

Three Essays On Corporate Finance: A Multilevel Inspection Of Target Capital Structure & Convertible Debt Issuance And Market Valuations Of Innovative Ability, Ashleigh Eldemire-Poindexter

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents empirical analysis of the capital structure, security issuance, value creation, and valuation concepts of corporate finance. Two analysis examine connections between firm capital structure and the use of convertible debt securities, which have mixed debt and equity attributes. The third analysis examines the valuation of implicit and explicit signals of firm quality.

Chapter 1, Convertible Debt & Target Leverage Adjustments, examines how does convertible debt affects advances toward target capital structure. Convertibles may improve leverage adjustments by providing capital that is less costly to issue and less expensive to service. However, convertibles can be risky liabilities with …