Management Information Systems Commons^™

Canines For Disabled Kids, Erin Jerrett, Margarita Mnatsakanyan, Colleen Reynolds, Yin Wang

School of Professional Studies

Canines for Disabled Kids have been working on behalf of children and their families to educate communities and promote service dog partnerships for almost twenty years. Their advocacy with local legislatures, business owners, and community leaders highlighted the difficulties encountered when differentiating service dogs from emotional support/comfort dogs. Service dogs are entitled to access by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), while emotional support/comfort dogs are not protected under the federal statute or to the same rights. Canines for Disabled Kids proposed a study to obtain a current count of licensed service dogs in the Commonwealth and investigate the feasibility …

How Decision Makers Learn To Choose Organizational Performance Measures, Annemarie N. Hooge

Theses & Dissertations

This study, framed by decision making, program theory, and performance measurement theory, explored the knowledge and experience that enable decision makers to identify organizational performance measures. It used a mixed method, exploratory sequential research design to discover the experience, knowledge, and skills (EKS) senior decision makers felt were important in learning to choose organizational performance measures. From the analyzed interviews, a survey was designed to measure the importance of the EKS characteristics. Qualitative analysis identified 55 life, work, or educational experience; knowledge; or skill characteristics and 23 effective measure characteristics. Regression analysis and PCA were used to extract 6 components. …

A Conversation Centric Approach To Understanding And Supporting The Coordination Of Social Group-Activities, Richard P. Schuler

Dissertations

Despite the widespread and large variety of communication tools available to us such as, text messaging, Skype, email, twitter, Facebook, instant messaging, GroupMe, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc., many people still routinely find coordinating activities with our friends to be a very frustrating experience. Everyone, has at least once, encountered the difficulties involved with deciding what to do as a group. Some friends may be busy, others may have already seen the movie that the others want to see, and some do not like Mexican food. It is a challenge everyone has faced and continue to face. This is a result of …

Adapting Agile In Regulated (Pharmaceutical) Environment, Prachiben K. Shah

Dissertations and Theses

Pharmaceutical software industries practice traditional approach for years, and when it comes to a change they are struggling to adapt new software methodologies such as agile; which is most commonly used by IT industries. The most significant factor required for successful agile adaptation is to make sure new practices should be aligned with the pharmaceutical regulations and the process should be validated and properly documented as per the guidelines. Apart from this, there are few challenges that Pharmaceutical companies are facing to adopt new changes. Those challenges mentioned in various research articles are highlighted in this research paper. This research …

Applying Agile Lean To Global Software Development, Piyansh Gupta

Dissertations and Theses

Although challenges of Global Software Development (GSD) are well known in the industry, practitioners and the organizations look for ways to improve results and overcome challenges. Companies have tried to implement many workable solutions possible to solve issues like poor communication, lack of trust, low morale and many other such issues prevalent in the distributed setting. With the success of agile, the methodology gained interest in leveraging its benefits to alleviate some of these challenges. Similarly, lean was also implemented in distributed software development to resolve issues. While each methodology provided some improvement in the results achieved in global software …

The Use Of Effective Risk Management In Cloud Computing Projects, Usha Kiran Marichetty

Dissertations and Theses

Project management is one of the most important procedures that promote delivery of services. Examples of such projects include cloud computing projects. Despite the potential benefits associated with cloud computing projects, there are a number of security risks that when not properly managed, can always lead into the organization suffering major loses. In the adoption of cloud computing systems, project managers should have secure and well-configured platforms to reduce and control risks associated with cloud computing systems. There is a need for adopting the best risk management tools, techniques, and operations to achieve the desired results in the process of …

Managing Sales And Product Returns Under The Word-Of-Mouth Effect : Pricing, Quality, And Restocking Fee Decisions, Sun Yuen Hui

Theses & Dissertations

This paper considers a two-echelon supply chain involving a manufacturer and a retailer who make their pricing, quality, and restocking fee decisions under the word-of-mouth (WOM) effect. To investigate the decision-making problem for the sales and product returns, we construct a leader-follower game model in which the manufacturer first determines his quality effort and the wholesale price and the retailer then decides on her retail price and the restocking fee. Our results show that the wholesale and retail prices under no WOM effect are smaller than those when the WOM effect exists; and, as the WOM has a higher impact …

Marketing Strategy Of School Of Professional Studies In China, Jiahui Liu, Jing Wang, Shuo An, Wengxing Wang, Yiwei Wang

School of Professional Studies

Chinese students are the most visible international presence at many universities across the United States, and the number continues to grow. Since 2010, The number of graduate students studying abroad has entered the period in which the increase has been declining. Under the circumstance of the weak global economy and high cost of education, the administration needs to attract the attention of Chinese students. In the process of competing for applicants, how to develop marketing strategies to attract students’ eyeballs has become an important means of trying to increase school income through Chinese students. The marketing strategy mentioned in this …

The Implication Of Agile & Traditional Method As A Practice In Pharmaceutical Industry, Vishant Shah

Dissertations and Theses

Traditional Project Management theory followed by Pharmaceutical industry since decades needs to be revitalized with implication of some modern ideas and techniques. Macro economy parameters such as government rules, regulation and economic stability is been changing the outset of the industry from time to time. Project Management approach followed by pharmaceutical industry needs to be revitalize, more adaptive and more agile to counter fit the changing needs.

Effective pharmaceutical project management enables new medical discoveries to reach us sooner and, perhaps, at less cost. To that extent, researchers and practitioners of project management art and science influence the treatment of …

Project Manager’S Perception Of Agile Methods Success, Ankit Sachdeva

Dissertations and Theses

Since it’s inception in 1970, the Waterfall model has been widely accepted and proven to be quite effective in the software technology development. As years have passed, there has been a rise in the number of technology companies and such rapid expansion in the software industry has called for frequent changes and swift delivery. To cope up with the increasing expectations, companies started to adopt new development processes and as a result, businesses witnessed several different process and Agile development methodologies like Scrum, Extreme Programming, Test Driven Development, to name a few. Companies were able to effectively work with change …

A Simulation Experimental Study On The Utility Of Pay Changes, Liu Ye

Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, we conduct an experimental simulation of 131 students from a university in Hong Kong and investigate the relationship between pay changes and the perceived values (i.e., utility). Applying traditional psychophysical methods, we measure the utility of pay changes (i.e., pay raises and pay cuts) of different sizes by individual responses (i.e., happiness/unhappiness). Drawing on utility theory and expectancy theory, we examine the function that best fits this relationship by considering common function forms including linear, quadratic, logarithmic, and power functions. Using regression techniques, we find that a quadratic function best fits the data, and the utility function …

Role Of Agile Methods In Global Software Development, Dinesh Chandra Kalluri

Dissertations and Theses

Currently software companies are developing the software applications that are developed by global software development teams. In order to develop the quality and cost effective software applications, companies are trying to adopt new methodologies for the global software development. Using of agile in global software development industry yielded benefits and challenges too. The researchers show that agile has many benefits in the software development and fewer complications. But suggesting the agile software development to the global projects is more challenging. This paper focuses on presenting the benefits and challenges in adopting the agile in global software development projects.

Agile In Construction Projects, Chen Jin

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Project Management For E-Commerce Businesses, Jui Tamhane

Dissertations and Theses

Companies implement different framework and strategies while developing a website. They invest a large amount of money in assessing the prospective market. Therefore, it becomes crucial to analyze the various steps that are important for a good project management of websites. The Ecommerce business world is much more complex. The companies now need to react quickly to global challenges and changing business environments. The research aims to answer and define the best project management techniques to keep the website running in the controlled and complex project environment.

Pharmacovigilance: The Role Of Pharmaceutical Companies To Protect Patients From Adverse Drug Reactions, Srikanth Nukala

Dissertations and Theses

Health Care Professionals (HCPs) play a vital role in the early detection, assessment and reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) to the Regulatory Health Authority or Pharmaceutical Manufacturer. It’s always important that HCPs should improve continuously about their knowledge, attitude and their practice towards Pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting. The main goal of the research study is to evaluate whether if pharmacovigilance training provided by the Pharmaceutical Company will improve the HCP’s knowledge, their attitude and practice improves towards Pharmacovigilance and ADR reporting (Alan, Melike, Sule , Burcu, & Yusuf , 2013). The training is provided through the electronic learning management …

Three Essays On Information Security Policy Compliance: The Role Of Social Influence, Adel Yazdanmehr

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations

Motivating employees to comply with information security policies (ISP) is a major challenge for organizations. Employees who do not comply with these policies can impose a serious threat to the safety of organizational information assets. Information security scholars drawing upon several theories have investigated various factors that can help motivate employees to comply with the ISP. Among many factors, social influence proved to be an effective force in motivating employee compliance behavior. However, its role and various effects on employee ISP compliance as well as its utilization mechanisms have not been deeply investigated. This dissertation is a collection of three …

Affective Responses To Technology Use: Examining The Dark Side, Exploring The Bright Side, David Agogo

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of individual, affect-related consequences from technology adoption and use is gaining traction in the information systems (IS) discipline. Efforts to explore affective reactions to technology have considered various positive, affective constructs (e.g., enjoyment, computer playfulness, and flow), with a more recent focus on the dark side of technology use and constructs such as technostress, technophobia, and computer anxiety. While some research has examined these negative affective responses to technology, construct definitions and relationships are not well-defined or theoretically grounded. A recent theoretical advance in IS, the Affective Response Model (ARM) categorizes affective responses to technology based on five …

Detecting User Demographics In Twitter To Inform Health Trends In Social Media, Christopher R. Markson

Dissertations

The widespread and popular use of social media and social networking applications offer a promising opportunity for gaining knowledge and insights regarding population health conditions thanks to the diversity and abundance of online user-generated information (UGHI) relating to healthcare and well-being. However, users on social media and social networking sites often do not supply their complete demographic information, which greatly undermines the value of the aforementioned information for health 2.0 research, e.g., for discerning disparities across population groups in certain health conditions. To recover the missing user demographic information, existing methods observe a limited scope of user behaviors, such as …

Empirical Assessment Of The Role Of Technology-Related Factors And Organization-Related Factors In Electronic Medical Records Implementation Success, Rangarajan Parthasarathy

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

The objective of this research was to investigate if certain technology-related and organization-related factors that have most often been associated with successful IT/MIS implementations in other information technology and information science domains are also associated with successful Electronic Medical Records (EMR) implementations. This research uncovered a unique set of technology-related factors and organization-related factors associated with successful EMR implementations from the perspective of healthcare enablers and healthcare providers. Specific technology-related factors considered in this research were the innovativeness of EMR (measured with respect to the relative advantage, compatibility and complexity of EMR), privacy and security attributes of EMR, and usefulness …

A Study Of The Impact Of Health Information Quality On Care Delivery Quality And Satisfaction From The Care Provider’S Perspective, Rashid Manzar

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations

The US healthcare system is rapidly adopting health information technologies (IT) in its quest to improve patient safety and deliver high quality care at a lower cost. As healthcare providers increasingly rely on health IT in caring for their patients, there is a corresponding increase in the impact of health IT on the outcome of care delivery. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of empirical studies on how health IT quality influences healthcare outcome. Using a comprehensive framework based on Work Systems Theory, a research model was developed to study the impact of health information quality on care delivery outcome and …

Social Media Use At Work, Kriti Chauhan

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations

Social media use permeates everyday life, including work lives of employees. Banning social media use at work may is not entirely possible, therefore it is pertinent to question whether all social media use is detrimental for employees and their employing organization. Social media research to date has found conflicting results. This research provides unique insight into within-person social media use and its outcomes, and opens an avenue for investigating social media using a new technology-independent measure. The study is anchored in the concepts of role theory from social psychology. The theory of role accumulation suggests that social media can be …

Parkview Pet Hospital: Veterinary Practice Management System Development, Ian T. Wiedenman

Honors Thesis

Parkview Pet Hospital is continuously searching for new deployments in their information technology architecture. As such, the organization needs a centralized system for recording and tracking key business processes and the data/metadata they create, as well as storing data regarding the company's inventory, employees, clients, client’s pets, and critical organizational actions. The problem, as it stands, is that the hospital lacks a robust system for storage of data, as well as templates for data entry, and reporting services that reliably produce the properly formatted data that serves both employees and clients alike. Parkview Pet Hospital has used many practice management …

Somali National University, Sharmarke Abdulla, Nikala Pieroni, Jenna Caskie, Sergii Odnodvorets, Tanyue Gong, Lahari Dasari

School of Professional Studies

The executive summary presents an overview of the principal conclusions and recommendations for Somali National University Faculty of Education (FoEd) regarding the following concerns: Difficulty with recruiting high quality prospects to the FoEd; Ineffective and counterintuitive use of social media as a tool to improve brand equity, as well as as a tool to attract and communicate with prospective and current students; Unbalanced gender ratio of current student body; Absence of student services and student supports; Low student retention rate; Limited resources for academic advising; This document is the result of a Clark University School of Professional Studies Capstone Project.

Economic Forecasting With Many Predictors, Fanning Meng

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation is focused on the analysis of economic forecasting with a large number of predictors.

The first chapter develops a novel forecasting method that minimizes the effects of weak predictors and estimation errors on the accuracy of equity premium forecasts. The proposed method is based on an averaging scheme applied to quantiles conditional on predictors selected by LASSO. The resulting forecasts outperform the historical average, and other existing models, by statistically and economically meaningful margins.

In the second chapter, we find that incorporating distributional and high-frequency information into a forecasting model can produce substantial accuracy gains. Distributional information is …

Information Technology Prioritization, In Merger Integration: A Grounded Theory Approach, Sandesh Dayanand Raikar

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This exploratory study, examines the significance of Information Technology (IT) Prioritization during the due diligence phase, in a merger integration scenario. In a world where firms are becoming increasingly dependent on information systems and technology, IT continues to play a progressively significant role within organizations. There is growing literature, on the increasing importance of IT in the business environment. However, till date, neither has there been a study regarding the role and impact of IT prioritization and IT integration schedule on the overall synergy savings, nor is there a study on the relationship between IT prioritization and the achievement of …

Technology Increases Efficiency In The Workplace, But Often Creates Chaos In The Process, Kathleen Merz Prester

Information Systems & Operations Management Theses

There is a multitude of technology solutions used in the typical workplace, aimed at increasing efficiency, but often chaos is created in the process. Can this chaos be reduced or eliminated? This paper seeks to answer that question. Specific technologies used in workplace environments and how they are implemented, including deployment, project management, and end-user involvement are dissected for a common thread. Underestimating the importance of communication is the common thread identified when chaos follows the implementation of new technology. The end-user requires constant communication before, during, and after the implementation process, whether the news is good or bad. Without …

Umass Memorial Healthcare Information System Job Ladder, Matthew Simoncini, Vamsi Kavuru, Antariksh Nanda, Tahaseen Mahaboob Basha, Vikram Patil

School of Professional Studies

The capstone project report emphasizes the importance of a job ladder and the need of an hour to implement it at UMASS Memorial health care. The scope of this project is to create a well-established job ladder at UMASS with pre-defined standards on job levels related to Information Technology department that would facilitate in hiring, developing and promoting employees at various stages.

Human Services Management (Hsm) Certificate Program Expansion To Western Massachusetts Feasibility Study, Paul Campbell, Patrick Deschenes, Maria Pacheco, Bradley Paul, Elizabeth Vittum, Jing Zhang

School of Professional Studies

One of the most popular cost-savings programs that the Providers’ Council currently offers its members is a Certificate in Nonprofit Human Service Management (HSM) provided in partnership with Clark University and Suffolk University. As human services providers are struggling to hire and retain qualified staff, the need to provide professional development opportunities to help grow and expand a skilled health and human services workforce is a critical issue facing nonprofit organizations and communities in Massachusetts. This feasibility study examines the viability of Providers’ Council and Clark University expanding its HSM Certificate Program to organizations and staff located in western Massachusetts. …

A Learning Framework For The Ywca Central Massachusetts, Dayna Ankermann, Manjushree Burdekar, Priyanka Joshi, Ying Song, Yumeng Chen, Xing Xie

School of Professional Studies

After meeting with the Director of Wellness and Health Equity at the YWCA Central Massachusetts (which will be referred to as the YWCA from here on out), we learned that as a non-profit gym and health center, it is heavily underfunded. The main focus of the project was to determine how to upkeep the facility while bringing in new customers with limited resources and budget. Due to the needs of the YWCA, our group focused on six aspects: revenue stream, donor retention, increasing membership, customer experience, social media marketing, and membership fee structure. After completing extensive research, we were able …

Viewability Prediction For Display Advertising, Chong Wang

Dissertations

As a massive industry, display advertising delivers advertisers’ marketing messages to attract customers through graphic banners on webpages. Display advertising is also the most essential revenue source of online publishers. Currently, advertisers are charged by user response or ad serving. However, recent studies show that users barely click or convert display ads. Moreover, about half of the ads are actually never seen by users. In this case, advertisers cannot enhance their brand awareness and increase return on investment. Publishers also lose much revenue. Therefore, the ad pricing standards are shifting to a new model: ad impressions are paid if they …