All posts by Business School

A COMPARISON OF COSTCO TO WALMART’S SAM’S CLUB”

Wayne F Cascio
Business Ethics: The Big Picture,Pages: 276.
An intuitive argument for companies paying low wages is the affordability of their products. Walmart is typically assumed to embody such an approach. It is through low wages that Walmart is able to keep prices so low, or so the argument goes. Walmartisthe largest retailer in the world, and yet part of that company, the Sam’s Club warehouse portion of the business, is not the market leader in its area (warehouse stores). The top warehouse retailer is Costco, and this is the case even though Costco has fewer stores than Sam’s Club. Additionally, Costco employees are in a better position in terms of wages and benefits than Walmart employees. This seems to be a violation of the seemingly intuitive idea that low prices require low wages. In this article, Wayne Cascio explains how Costco has managed to maintain its place as the market leader while maintaining employee wages and benefits. Assuming that the same model would workfor Walmart, the natural question is, are the practices of Walmart morally justifiable?It is also interesting to note that Walmart seems to have recently increased its externalized costs. Cascio references a recent study that claims that one 200-person Walmart store results in costs to federal taxpayers of over $470,000. A more recent Mother Jones article cites a new study by the same group that

Applied psychology in talent management

Wayne F Cascio, Herman Aguinis
SAGE Publications,
In Applied Psychology in Talent Management, world-renowned authors Wayne F. Cascio and Herman Aguinis provide the most comprehensive, future-oriented overview of psychological theories and how they impact people decisions in today’s ever-changing workplace. Taking a rigorous, evidence-based approach, the new Eighth Edition includes more than 1,000 new citations from over 20 top-tier journal articles. The authors uniquely emphasize the latest developments in the fieldall in the context of historical perspectives. Integrated coverage of technology, strategy, globalization, and social responsibility throughout the text provides students with a holistic view of the field and equips them with the practical tools necessary to create productive, enjoyable work environments.

Forecasting the demand for radiology services

Murray J Ct, Marlene A Smith
Health Systems,Vol. 7, Issue 2, Pages: 79-88.
Since the demand for health services is the key driver for virtually all of a health care organisation’s financial and operational activities, it is imperative that health care managers invest the time and effort to develop appropriate and accessible forecasting models for their facility’s services. In this article, we analyse and forecast the demand for radiology services at a large, tertiary hospital in Florida. We demonstrate that a comprehensive and accurate forecasting model can be constructed using well-known statistical techniques. We then use our model to illustrate how to provide decision support for radiology managers with respect to department staffing. The methodology we present is not limited to radiology services and we advocate for more routine and widespread use of demand forecasting throughout the health care delivery system.

No firm Is an island: The role of population-level actors in organizational learning from failure

Peter M Madsen, Vinit Desai
Organization Science,Vol. 29, Issue 4, Pages: 739-753.
When a serious failure occurs within a population of organizations, members of individual organizations in the population attempt to learn vicariously from the event so that future failures may be avoided. This organization-level vicarious learning process has been extensively studied in the organizational learning literature. However, following a serious failure in one organization, a parallel process also plays out at the population level as population-level actors draw lessons from the failure and exert influence over organizations in the population in the interest of preventing future failures. Such population-level processes may exert powerful influences on organization-level learning, but have only begun to be explored in the literature. This paper begins to fill this gap by theorizing and studying the role of population-level actors in organizational learning from failure within and across organizational populations. It

ICT mediated rumor beliefs and resulting user actions during a community crisis

Onook Oh, Priya Gupta, Manish Agrawal, H Raghav Rao
Government Information Quarterly,Vol. 35, Issue 2, Pages: 243-258.
In the context of Internet and Communications Technology (ICT), this research investigates the acceptance of hate rumor and its consequence during a community crisis situation. Extending prior rumor research for this context, we develop and test a refined model using data collected from victims of a large scale (hate) rumor spread incident. Our data analyses present three main findings. First, during the crisis situation, platform characteristics of media synchronicity and richness of expression affected the likelihood of rumor recipients believing the false rumor to be a true message. Second, rumors received from people with closer social ties were more likely to be believed as true. Third, rumor belief during the crisis was associated with greater intensity of informational and behavioral actions. Our findings provide governments with insights to mitigate the spread of hate rumor especially under community disaster

A unified model for the adoption of electronic word of mouth on social network sites: Facebook as the exemplar

Navid Aghakhani, Jahangir Karimi, Mohammad Salehan
International Journal of Electronic Commerce,Vol. 22, Issue 2, Pages: 202-231.
Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has gained increased attention from both practitioners and academia. Its importance lies in its simplicity and yet its profound impact on customers’ attitudes toward specific brands or goods, and thus affecting customers’ loyalty and purchase behaviors. Although social network services (SNSs) have emerged as a new platform for eWOM communication, less attention has been paid in the literature to eWOM adoption on SNSs. Using the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and the affect-as-information theory, this study identifies factors that affect eWOM adoption on Facebook. We identify product-related information in a review, source credibility, peer image building, and tie strength as theoretically important variables in our study, and we examine their effect on cognitive and affective attitudes. We find that eWOM types (explicit vs. implicit) moderate the effects of cognitive and affective

Investors and stranded asset risk: evidence from shareholder responses to carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) events

John Byrd, Elizabeth S Cooperman
Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment,Vol. 8, Issue 2, Pages: 185-202.
To avoid catastrophic climate change risk, the case for fossil fuel reserves not being burned has become stronger. This is particularly the case for coal, as the highest emitter of CO2 per unit of energy, with large portions of coal reserves likely to become stranded assets, posing significant risk to investors. Technology in the past has come to the rescue, so investor valuations may depend on perceptions for the success of technology in reducing stranded asset risk. We examine whether coal company shareholders perceive coal as a technologically stranded asset by studying shareholder reactions to news about CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) technology breakthroughs and setbacks. We find significant positive reactions to CCS breakthroughs, but no reaction for setbacks. This suggests investors have embedded expectations of stranded asset risk into their valuations, but also recognize the significance of

Logical and inequality implications for reducing the size and difficulty of quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems

Fred Glover, Mark Lewis, Gary Kochenberger
European Journal of Operational Research,Vol. 265, Issue 3, Pages: 829-842.
The quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem arises in diverse optimization applications ranging from Ising spin problems to classical problems in graph theory and binary discrete optimization. The use of preprocessing to transform the graph representing the QUBO problem into a smaller equivalent graph is important for improving solution quality and time for both exact and metaheuristic algorithms and is a step towards mapping large scale QUBO to hardware graphs used in quantum annealing computers. In an earlier paper a set of rules was introduced that achieved significant QUBO reductions as verified through computational testing. Here this work is extended with additional rules that provide further reductions that succeed in exactly solving 10% of the benchmark QUBO problems. An algorithm and associated data structures to efficiently implement the entire set of rules is detailed and

Individual decision-performance using spatial decision support systems: a geospatial reasoning ability and perceived task-technology fit perspective

Michael A Erskine, Dawn G Gregg, Jahangir Karimi, Judy E Scott
Information Systems Frontiers,Pages: 1-16.
Increasingly, spatial decision support systems (SDSS) help consumers, businesses and governmental entities make decisions involving geospatial data. Understanding if, and how, user- and task-characteristics impact decision-performance will allow developers of SDSS to maximize decision-making performance. Furthermore, scholars can benefit from a more comprehensive understanding of what specific characteristics influence decision-making when using an SDSS. This paper provides a synthesis of relevant research and presents a two-factor experiment (n=200) designed to measure the impact of user- and task-characteristics on decision-performance. Using Cognitive Fit Theory (CFT) as the theoretical framework, we investigate the effect of geospatial reasoning ability (GRA), input complexity, task complexity, and user perceptions of task-technology fit (PTTF), on geospatial decision-making

Training engagement theory: A multilevel perspective on the effectiveness of work-related training

Traci Sitzmann, Justin M Weinhardt
Journal of Management,Vol. 44, Issue 2, Pages: 732-756.
Training engagement theory provides a multilevel depiction of the antecedents of training effectiveness. By multilevel, we are referring both to the hierarchical nature of constructssuch that employees are embedded in organizations and workgroupsand the temporal nature of processesemphasizing that macro and within-person processes are not static phenomena. The hierarchical nature of training engagement theory provides a broad account of how processes at various levels in the organizational hierarchy influence one another and contribute to the success or failure of training programs. The temporal nature of the theory advocates for examining the processes that occur from before training is conceptualized until the completion of training when examining the antecedents of training effectiveness. Thus, training engagement theory proposes a sequence model of the independent and joint effects of

Collaborative stakeholder engagement: An integration between theories of organizational legitimacy and learning

Vinit M Desai
Academy of Management Journal,Vol. 61, Issue 1, Pages: 220-244.
Organizations often collaborate with stakeholders such as customers, communities, and other groups to pursue shared goals, and these partnerships are known to affect an organization’s legitimacy with those groups as well as its access to information from them. While these concerns could be examined within each of their own independent literatures, existing theories are ill equipped to handle this process in tandem. Thus, studying these collaborations provides an opportunity to more broadly explore how organizations balance knowledge search or exploration efforts with their needs to manage organizational legitimacy. Accordingly, I suggest that collaboration facilitates access to external information, and that organizations pursue it when the information is needed to solve related problems. However, I also argue that collaborations reciprocally allow stakeholders to more directly scrutinize organizational practices

The impact of crude oil inventory announcements on prices: Evidence from derivatives markets

Hong Miao, Sanjay Ramchander, Tianyang Wang, Jian Yang
Journal of Futures Markets,Vol. 38, Issue 1, Pages: 38-65.
This study examines the impact of weekly crude oil storage announcements on oil futures and options prices. We document evidence of a strong announcement day effect on both markets, and find prices to move in anticipation of the inventory surprise. Futures returns significantly decrease with positive surprises and increase with negative surprises. There is no evidence of an asymmetric impact on futures prices. Nearthemoney options exhibit the greatest price sensitivity, and the magnitude of the price response of both futures and options declines with maturity. The results remain robust even after controlling for various macroeconomic and other storagerelated news variables.

Housing price spillovers in China: A high-dimensional generalized VAR approach

J Yang, Z Yu, Y Deng
Regional Science and Urban Economics,Vol. 68, Pages: 98-114.
Applying a proposed spillover index of high-dimensional generalized VAR framework, this paper, for the first time, explores housing price spillovers among 69 large- and medium-sized Chinese cities from July 2005 to June 2015. We find that city-level monthly housing prices in China are highly interactive with each other. Demonstrating the important role of government policy, data-determined systemically important cities in the price spillover network appear to be consistent with core cities supported by several regional development plans of the Chinese government and agglomerate in five relatively concentrated areas. A higher administrative status, population, city GDP and secondary education are significant determinants of the (net) positive spillover pattern. These findings shed new lights on understanding the housing market, regional development policies, and economic geography in China.

It’s not my job: Compensatory effects of procedural justice and goal setting on proactive preventive behavior

Run Ren, Aneika L Simmons, Adam Barsky, Kelly E See, Celile Itir Gogus
Journal of Management & Organization,Pages: 1-19.
In two experiments, we examined the function of procedural justice in signaling individuals’ value to the group by arguing that individuals treated fairly are more likely to engage in proactive preventive behavior, a behavior that involves proactively revising or correcting the mistakes and intentional deceptions of coworkers. In addition, we extend Staw and Boettger’s (1990) work on task revision and demonstrate that procedural justice and goal setting have compensatory effects, such that procedural justice can be combined with performance goals to reap the valuable aspects of goal setting while minimizing some of the unintended side-effects. Our findings also contribute to the ongoing discussion of the mixed effects of goal setting, as well as the effects of multiple goal assignment.

A Strategic Value Appropriation Path for Cloud Computing

A Kathuria, A Mann, J Khuntia, T Saldanha, R. Kauffman
Journal of Management Information Systems,Issue Forthcoming,
Cloud-based information management is one of the leading competitive differentiation strategies for firms. With the increasing criticality of information management in value creation and process support, establishing an integrated capability with cloud computing is vital for organizational success in the changing landscape of business competition. These issues have received scant attention, however. We draw on the resource-based view, dynamic capability hierarchy concepts, and the perspective of operand and operant resources to suggest a cloud value appropriation model for firms. We argue that, to appropriate business value from cloud computing, the firm needs to effectively deploy cloud computing and leverage cloud operant resources as firm capabilities in a hierarchical fashion toward the development of cloud computing-based service models in order to reliably achieve the desired business outcomes. We

Hospital Leadership in Support of Digital Transformation

Mohan Tanniru, Jiban Khuntia, Jack Weiner
Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems,Vol. 10, Issue 3, Pages: 1-24.
Evolving customer expectations and the rapid introduction of new information technologies are influencing business operations, and businesses need to transform themselves with new operating models to remain competitive. The traditional top-down administrative leadership approach is not sufficiently flexible to support the innovation needed to sustain customer engagement and retention. There is a need for both an enabling leadership that supports the exploration of innovative ideas quickly for viability and an adaptive leadership to transition the ideas that show promise into the current business model or a variation of this model to sustain growth. We define digital leadership as a strategic process that collectively uses these three leadership styles to create an ecosystem that advances a culture of innovation within organizations. This leadership process uses four foundational platforms to support business transformations:(1) An innovation platform to empower teams to explore ideas that create value using digital transformations;(2) An agile system and business platform to quickly design and deliver IT implementations;(3) A learning platform to support reflective discourse that leads to organizational capacity building; and (4) An adoption platform to decide when and what implementations get transitioned to the regular business for sustaining competitiveness. We will illustrate how digital leadership is used to transform the culture of a community hospital through several IS implementations recognized by external peers for their innovativeness

Information Technology and Sustainability: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

Jiban Khuntia, Terence JV Saldanha, Sunil Mithas, V Sambamurthy
Production and Operations Management,Issue 10.1111/poms.12822,
Research in operations management and information systems suggests that information technology (IT) can play an important role in managing operations that support environmentally sustainable (green) growth. Yet, few studies have empirically assessed the efficacy of green IT investments and initiatives, particularly in emerging economies such as India. This study examines the performance consequences of green IT investment and implementation in terms of energy conservation and profit impact. We analyze an archival dataset constructed from a survey of nearly 300 organizations in India, matched partially with objective data from a secondary source. We find that green IT investment is positively associated with a higher profit impact and that this association is partially mediated by a reduction in IT equipment energy consumption. In addition, we find that operationsoriented green IT implementation is

Corporations to the Rescue: A New Stakeholder Paradigm? An Overview for U.S. Corporations & Financial Institutions

Elizabeth S. Cooperman
International Review of Accounting, Banking, and Finance, Vol. 10, Issue No. 1/2, Pages: 23-42.
Whether corporations should intervene when governments fail to act on important public issues is an interesting question. With considerable political discord in the US many CEOs have stepped up as social activists by expressing approval or disapproval of public policies providing a platform for discussion to encourage positive government actions. Businesses and major financial institutions have also engaged in environmental activism as well. This paper provides a discussion of a paradigm shift from the single role of corporations to maximize shareholder wealth to considerations for multiple stakeholders, and new roles that CEOs of financial institutions and corporations have taken on including acting as social and ethical mediators for important public policy issues, focusing on key issues in the US

How Busyness Influences SEC Compliance Activities: Evidence from the Filing Review Process and Comment Letters

Katherine A Gunny, Judith M Hermis
Contemporary Accounting Research,
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reviews firm filings and issues comment letters on those filings. These comment letters play an important role in the assessment of firm value. These activities are seasonally compressed because over 70 percent of registrants have a December fiscal yearend. Research in other settings finds that busyness leads to negative outcomes. We examine how busyness impacts the frequency, scope, and timeliness of comment letters. We find that the SEC issues fewer comment letters when busy, the SEC focuses its limited resources on the most severe cases of disclosure noncompliance, and extends the amount of time between receiving a firm’s filing and issuing a comment letter. Despite this, we find no evidence that the SEC misses more serious compliance issues when busy. Our results have implications for policymakers responsible for allocating resources to the