2025
Wade Brooks
2025
An Empirical Study of Informal Venture Capital: Structure, Strategy, and Investment Performance – Risk and Returns
This dissertation explores the performance and risk dynamics of staged investing in informal venture capital markets, focusing specifically on angel group behavior. Drawing on a proprietary dataset of 954 investment rounds across three long-standing U.S. angel groups, the research tests whether core assumptions from venture capital theory—particularly staging theory—hold true in settings characterized by limited governance, decentralized decision-making, and behavioral complexity. The first study tests the boundary conditions of staging theory by comparing the returns of first-time versus follow-on angel investments. Contrary to theoretical expectations, first-time investments significantly outperform follow-ons across realized and total internal rate of return (IRR), distributions to paid-in capital (DPI), and other capital efficiency metrics. Follow-on rounds, while less volatile, exhibit a higher rate of total capital loss, suggesting diminished strategic value and potential behavioral distortions such as escalation of commitment. The second study extends this analysis with a comprehensive risk assessment, incorporating volatility, variance, and survivorship measures. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis reveals that first-time investments not only deliver superior returns but also persist longer before failure. Quantile regressions further show that outperformance by first-round investments is concentrated in the upper tail of the return distribution— consistent with power-law dynamics typical in venture investing.
Rabi Egunjobi
2025
Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Pigouvian Taxation to Evaluate Environmental Impacts of Beverage Packaging: A Pathway to Sustainability and Circular Economy
Beverage packaging remains a significant contributor to environmental degradation in the United States, where billions of single-use plastic bottles, reusable bottles, and aluminum cans are consumed each year. These packaging systems contribute to escalating emissions, plastic pollution, and mounting pressures on waste management. This study offers an integrated approach that combines Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with economic modeling to evaluate the environmental and fiscal implications of alternative packaging systems, addressing a persistent gap in existing literature where environmental and economic analyses are often siloed. The methodology applies to a cradle-to-grave LCA by ISO 14040 and 14044 standards, using the OneClick LCA platform and TRACI 2.1 impact assessment. In parallel, economic modeling simulates Pigouvian taxes and deposit-refund mechanisms, drawing on U.S. household consumption data and peer-reviewed sources. The defined functional unit—one beverage container per household annually—supports standardized comparisons across packaging types and elasticity scenarios. Results indicate that reusable packaging, when used at least 50 times, achieves markedly lower emissions (0.11 kg CO₂e per use) compared to single-use plastic bottles (8.53 kg CO₂e). Moreover, the deposit-refund scheme consistently outperforms Pigouvian taxation in reducing lifecycle emissions, highlighting its potential for effective policy implementation. The system boundary encompasses all life stages from raw material extraction (A1) through end-of-life disposal (C4). Ultimately, this research delivers a policy-relevant, data-driven framework to internalize environmental externalities and promote circular economy transitions in beverage packaging.
Ngozi Ogoke
2025
Exploring the Impact of Innovative Technology on Financial Performance in the US Oil and Gas Industry: The Moderating Role of Company Size
The oil and gas industry, a cornerstone of global energy systems, faces mounting challenges from technological disruptions, environmental pressures, and market volatility. This study investigates the extent to which innovative technology enhances financial performance in the U.S. oil and gas industry and whether this relationship is moderated by company size. Grounded in the dynamic capabilities’ theory, the research conceptualizes innovation as a firm’s ability to sense, seize, and transform technological opportunities to sustain competitive advantage in volatile environments. Using a 20-year panel dataset (2002–2022) comprising 2,832 firm-year observations from 340 publicly listed oil and gas firms, the study employs fixed effects panel regression models and multi-year R&D capital stock to capture the persistent effects of innovation. Empirical results provide robust support for three key hypotheses. First, sustained investments in innovative technology measured through five-year R&D capital stock are positively associated with financial performance, as reflected in Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Investment (ROI), and Tobin’s Q. Second, company size, operationalized by market capitalization, has a significant and positive direct effect on financial outcomes. Third, firm size positively moderates the innovation–performance relationship, such that larger firms derive greater benefits from innovation than smaller ones. These findings highlight the scale-contingent nature of innovation efficacy in capital-intensive industries. The study contributes to strategic management literature by integrating dynamic capabilities theory with empirical evidence on firm heterogeneity and technological innovation. It offers practical implications for managers, investors, and policymakers seeking to enhance firm value through strategic innovation, especially under volatile market and regulatory conditions. The results also inform innovation policy by highlighting the need for firm-size-sensitive strategies in fostering technological advancement and financial resilience in the energy sector.
Jackie Patten
2025
Intergenerational Knowledge Hiding in the Workplace: The Moderating Role of Identity Salience and Ethical Leadership
This dissertation explores how generations influence knowledge-hiding (KH) behaviors in the workplace, with identity salience and ethical leadership examined as potential moderators. Drawing from social identity theory and social learning theory, I hypothesized that generational identities, shaped by ingroup favoritism and outgroup bias, would drive KH behaviors across generations. Identity salience was expected to amplify KH tendencies, while supervisory ethical leadership was proposed to mitigate KH behaviors through moral role modeling. Survey data from 463 Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y employees working in knowledge-intensive U.S. industries were analyzed using hierarchical regressions. Results indicate that generation (operationalized as age) significantly predicted evasive hiding and playing dumb behaviors, but not rationalized hiding, and not in the directions hypothesized. Additionally, employees did not engage in more KH when interacting with younger or older generations. Neither identity salience nor ethical leadership moderated the generation-KH relationship. Effect sizes were small, limiting the practical relevance of findings. Taken together, these results suggest that meaningful generational differences in employees’ KH behaviors may not exist. Contributions, limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.
Neil Pollard
2025
Capturing the Many Splendored Entrepreneurial Beast: Observing the Decision-Laden Journey From Novice to Effectual Expert
Effectuation emerged in the early 2000s as an alternative to the neoclassical economic strategy of segmenting, targeting, and positioning within the entrepreneurship literature. The original study by Sarasvathy (2001) was based on the decision-making of 27 male expert entrepreneurs as they navigated a hypothetical scenario called “Venturing”. The study found that effectual entrepreneurs take their existing means, skills, and relationships as a given and form companies based on their available means. A causal approach, taught in business schools around the world, suggests that entrepreneurs identify an opportunity in the market and assemble necessary resources to execute on a detailed plan. Existing research has shown evidence to support the effectiveness of both approaches. However, what is not yet known is how and when each should be used and whether characteristics of the entrepreneur suggest utilization at certain times. In theory, development researchers suggest that effectuation ought to be prevalent early and causation late as the firm formalizes (Sarasvathy, 2001; Fisher, 2012; McKelvie et al., 2020). This study observes the entrepreneurial journey from nascency to scale through the eyes of the company’s founder to explore the usage of effectual and causal logic in the entrepreneurial decision-making process. Using a novel dataset and coding/analysis process, the author extends existing effectuation research by shedding light on who (novice vs. experienced) might employ causal vs. effectual strategies and during which stage of a company’s life cycle (Conception, Gestation, Launch, Growth, & Exit) each may prove most useful. Findings suggest that the experienced entrepreneurs in this sample, regardless of previous levels of success, are largely causal at the outset of their new firms, while novice entrepreneurs are decidedly effectual early in their journey. Patterns also emerged to support the switch from effectuation to causation as the firm grows and formalizes, and a switch back to effectual processes in times of uncertainty.
Andrea Watson
2025
Called to Create: The Role of Competition for Resources in Motivation and Creativity Outcomes Among Calling-Oriented Scientists
Scientific creativity is central to solving societal problems and creating new knowledge. This research examines how scientists approach their work and under what conditions scientific creativity thrives. Drawing on Amabile and Pratt’s seminal creativity model, the dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation, I explore how work orientation, motivation, and creativity outcomes relate in a scientific setting. I further explore how competing for funding interacts with these relationships to yield greater creativity outcomes. I used quantitative self-report and objective data from a group of scientists working in a national laboratory setting. Calling was positively related to self-report creativity outcomes. Findings suggest that competition for resources may improve scientific productivity, but for true creativity (i.e., novel, useful idea generation), the results were not conclusive. Importantly, the results point to the need to explore additional mediators for the calling-creativity pathway beyond motivation. This work brings a novel approach by combining the creativity and calling literatures, and applying a creativity framework in the field at a national laboratory. Further, it sheds light on how managers and policy-makers impact scientific creativity through financial constraints.
2024
Marilyn Brock
2024
Influences on Small Business Leaders’ Decisions About Supportive Policies and Practices for Employees Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Abuse
Intimate partner abuse affects millions of individuals from all segments of society, and existing literature demonstrates that it has extensive impacts on American companies through loss of workplace productivity, reduced workplace safety, and employee turnover. While several supportive policies and practices have been suggested for implementation in business environments, many business leaders do not perceive the utilization of such measures as having business value. Thus, this study addresses the question, What influences business leaders’ decisions about whether and to what degree to adopt policies and practices for responding to employees’ experiences of intimate partner abuse? This dissertation is a qualitative study in which thirty-one small business leaders were interviewed. The findings indicate that external and internal environments, as well as leaders’ characteristics and perceptions, influence the type of stakeholder approach they might take, as well as their tendency toward a servant leadership style. Both their stakeholder approaches and their servant leadership styles then influence their decisions about implementing supportive responses for employees who have experienced intimate partner abuse. This effect is particularly strong for the implementation of informal practices. Planned behavior, stakeholder, servant leadership, and critical and feminist theories coalesce to form the theoretical model that is developed herein. This dissertation expands the fragmented research about the intersection between intimate partner abuse and business leadership, it develops a new combined theoretical model that could be applied to other areas of research involving sensitive and stigmatized experiences in employees’ lives, and it suggests ways in which sex, gender, and various elements of socioeconomic status could influence leaders’ and employees’ experiences of such situations. Ultimately, these findings provide new insights for management training and consulting, as well as an understanding of how best to support leaders’ decision making-processes.
Dale Collins
2024
Defining Value and Measuring ROI for Expatriate International Assignments in Firms That Internationalize as Born-Global Companies
The expatriate international assignment, a time-tested tool for global organizations, is known to be expensive and fraught with risks; defining its value has proven difficult for multinational firms in the twentieth century that internationalized using multi-stage theory. Recently, born-global internationalization theory has gained momentum among emerging firms, notably technology-based firms employing expatriate assignments. This study asks, how do born-global firms define value or benefit when determining return on investment (ROI) for expatriate international assignments? Multi stage theory posits firms first establish domestic markets creating well-developed cultures and sophisticated policies designed to mitigate risk and contain costs prior to internationalizing. Born-global firms have unshackled from needing to conquer domestic markets; instead, they muster their entrepreneurial nature with precocious boldness penetrating new markets quickly utilizing expatriate assignments as an effective tool. Yet knowing the costs, risks, and historical lack of defined assignment value, and the struggles multi-stage firms have measuring ROI, born-global firms deploy employees globally creating markets for their products or services as soon as two years from inception. Through a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with eight born global firms and fifteen stakeholders including assignees, a receiving manager, and global mobility managers as firm proxies, the study finds that born-global firms define value or benefit for expatriate assignments measuring ROI through nine dimensions. Of the nine dimensions, four are firm oriented, two assignee, and three shared. The firms in this study view the world through a holistic global mobility strategy generating ROI measures that account for observable and intuitive value or benefit. Firm ROI is achieved through effective talent strategies, proximity for innovation and collaboration, expanding knowledge and culture concurrently with internationalization, velocity of product development and brand awareness, and goal achievement. Individual assignees gain ROI through boundaryless career opportunities, location dynamics, knowledge and culture accumulation and goal achievement while concomitantly supplementing firm ROI. The reduction and containment of direct investment costs for assignments was important for firms in the study enabling observable and intuitive value or benefit components to increase assignment ROI. The research contributes to born-global strategy and the field of international assignment management.
Phillip Crippen
2024
Evaluating the Effect of Domain-Specific Large Language Models on Question and Response
Large Language Models have emerged to great fanfare in the Information Technology market. Business and Information Technology leaders are currently exploring ways to apply these models to assist their organizations in executing business processes and generating innovation. Software vendors, consultants, and academics promote various approaches to making Large Language Models work effectively for business. However, little academic literature is available today that quantifies the degree of improvement possible with these domain-specific approaches over the standard capabilities of generalized Large Language Models.
The study seeks to quantify the benefits of one approach, Retrieval Augmented Generation. The study uses a collection of questions across several topics with known reference answers. The context for these questions is used to assemble a study corpus. Responses are generated by both a standard Large Language Model system and a Retrieval Augmented Generation system. The study analyzes the quality of generated responses to determine the degree to which the Retrieval Augmented Generation responses differ from those generated by the standard Large Language Model.
Faye Farmer
2024
My Superpower: Research Collaborator Strategies Among Faculty Members Who Are First-Generation College Graduates
This inductive study examined the intersectional experience within research collaborations of tenure-track faculty who are both first-generation college graduate students and from racial and ethnic groups (as defined in the United States) that are underrepresented in STEM fields (as defined by the National Science Foundation). I interviewed twelve current and former faculty members from doctoral-granting universities in the United States. I used identity as the theoretical lens to explore research collaborations at the individual level. The interviews revealed three themes reflecting identity's role in selecting and being selected as a collaborator and working with a collaborator. The themes are: an authentic identity of self that is shaped through lived experience from both inside and outside the academy that is simultaneously obvious and revealed in collaborative environments; intentional attention to an external identity that connects the individual to their community while creating and enhancing pools of collaborators; and finally, identity informed and non-identity informed engagement as a collaborator and during collaboration. I contribute to the expansion and application of identity theory within collaboration. I found evidence that identity is an individual, reflexive process involving intentional decision-making before and during collaboration. I provide a conceptual model of identity-informed collaboration that includes identity alignment and evaluation of the value and cost of the collaboration. I move variables from social capital to cultural capital and add the following variables to cultural capital: language(s), ethnicity, and geographic location, as part of the specification of cultural experience within the Scientific and Technical Human and Cultural Capital (STHC) model. I provide recommendations for supporting and encouraging identity-informed collaboration that can accelerate the necessary diversification of the professoriate.
Greg Kuppenheimer
2024
Utilizing Machine Learning to Forecast Sector-Level Equity Returns from Sector-Level Financial Ratios
Academics and equity analysts often utilize fundamental financial ratios to evaluate an industry's financial and operational performance. However, sophisticated econometric methods could be improved for estimating these ratios' importance in predicting sector-level stock return performance. To address this gap, gradient-boosted decision tree methods were applied to the WRDS sector-level financial ratio database to identify if financial ratios effectively forecast sector-level stock returns in future periods. The findings show that these ratios are predictive and economically material, both stand alone and in combination with other macroeconomic factors. Using these predictions, long and long-short sector-level portfolios were created, and most of these portfolios consistently outperformed the market in absolute and risk-adjusted returns. Furthermore, these portfolios generate positive alpha in the presence of the well-established Fama-French factor models. This research demonstrates that sector-level information is effective in forecasting equity market performance.
Sheryl Moriarty
2024
The Effect of Financial Disclosure Medium and CEO Gender on Perceptions of Overconfidence and Credibility
I experimentally examine how investors react to an unexpected negative earnings announcement delivered using video versus audio by an overconfident female CEO versus an overconfident male CEO. The results show that the CEO's gender does not matter in terms of the delivery medium. I predict and did not find that CEO overconfidence is lower for a financial disclosure delivered by video as opposed to audio only. Further, the hypothesis that the perception of female CEO overconfidence is higher versus male CEO overconfidence was not supported. Overall, the participants in the study did not find either the male or the female CEO to be overconfident. I investigate and find that the participants view the unexpected negative earnings news favorably. The earnings announcement contained aggressive forward-looking financial information meant to increase the salience of overconfidence, however it appears the positive perceptions of the firm’s future outlook may have diminished the impact of the explicit signals of overconfidence and bolstered the credibility of the CEOs. To expand on the theme of credibility, I conduct a supplemental analysis and find that female investors find the female CEO to be significantly more credible than the male CEO. To explain this finding, I apply social identity theory which suggests there is evidence of strong female in-group favoritism. In a separate credibility and delivery medium analysis, I find that honesty is significantly greater when the male participant views the male CEO, and the female participant views the female CEO via video. These findings emphasize the powerful nature of gender as an NVC particularly when a firm considers the medium of delivery for a financial disclosure.
Cami Powell
2024
The Fractional Revolution: How Roles of Part-Time CFOs Are Transforming Organizational Structures
The rise of fractional work is transforming organizational structures. This 21st-century phenomenon sees skilled professionals moving towards fractionalizing their time to support multiple organizations through their work. Within the scope of nonprofit organizations, this research seeks to understand the impact of fractional CFOs (fCFOs) on organizational structures. Utilizing a case study approach, I explored how the evolving roles of a fCFO influence and drive organizational change. Through semi-structured interviews, archival data analysis, ethnographic journals, and grounded theory, this study analyzes the relationship between the fCFO roles and the organizational structure dimensions, as defined by Pugh et al. (1968), across three phases: (1) pre-fCFO engagement, (2) one-year post engagement, and (3) years two through seven post engagement. Findings reveal that the fCFO significantly impacted the nonprofit's structure by strengthening the organizational dimensions of specialization, standardization, formalization, centralization, and configuration. This study concludes that the successful engagement of a fCFO depends on clearly defined roles and deliverables that include financial guidance and recommendations, leadership of finance staff, audit support, and fiscal governance support, which leads to positive organizational change and long-term sustainability. The practical implications highlight the potential for delegating specific roles to fractional workers, allowing for flexibility and adaptation as organizations evolve. Theoretically, this research contributes to organizational structure literature by extending Pugh et al.'s (1968) framework to incorporate fractional workers and integrate role theory to understand their organizational contributions.
Lekshmy Sankar
2024
Balancing Act: Navigating Employee Autonomy and Neglect
The fine line between granting employee autonomy and inadvertently falling into patterns of neglect presents a complex challenge within organizational leadership. This study explores the question: What do leaders perceive as effective strategies for providing autonomy to remote employees without being perceived as neglecting them? Employee autonomy empowers employees to make decisions, while leader neglect towards subordinates (LNS) is defined through this research as a gradual decrease in a leader's interest or effort in sustaining positive relationships with employees. Navigating this balance is crucial to maintaining employee engagement.
This qualitative study uncovered nuanced perceptions on this issue using a grounded theory methodology and semi-structured interviews with leaders. The findings suggest the importance of regular check-ins with employees, deprioritizing external factors that influence or detract from leaders' attention, and the concept that autonomy could be an illusion in high-stress environments. A proposed model emerged to guide leaders in balancing these elements. In sum, this research underscores the intertwined nature of employee autonomy and perceived neglect from a leadership perspective in contemporary work settings.
Meg Weber
2024
The Entrepreneur’s Burden: Investigating the Interplay Between Impostorism and Entrepreneurial Identity
Entrepreneurship is often portrayed as a glamorous pursuit of success but conceals a darker side, exacerbated by impostorism, characterized by challenges, identity conflicts, and diminished well-being. This "dark side" of entrepreneurship is seldom explored due to our collective fascination with the central figure of the entrepreneur. Impostorism is a prevalent phenomenon among individuals who perceive that their role is beyond their capabilities and fear being exposed as a "fake." Impostorism can have negative consequences, including self-sabotage, missed opportunities, and difficulty in seeking help or support, which can impact the ability of entrepreneurs to take entrepreneurial action and experience well-being.
This study builds on identity, entrepreneurial identity, and leadership literatures to explore the impact, antecedents, and consequences of impostorism on entrepreneurial identity. Through a qualitative approach, I explored the lived experiences of entrepreneurs contending with impostorism and its role in shaping their entrepreneurial identity. Semistructured interviews were conducted with those who identify as experiencing impostorism, as well as entrepreneurs who do not identify as experiencing impostorism. Participants were entrepreneurs who wish to grow their ventures. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes and patterns within the data, guided by the research question: How does an entrepreneur’s experience with impostorism shape their entrepreneurial identity?
Ashley Williams
2024
Leadership in Extreme Contexts: An Emerging Typology
This study investigates the relationship between leadership and extreme contexts through the lens of rural hospitals facing environmental jolts. Rural hospitals offer a unique setting for this research, given their inherent geographic isolation, lack of resources, and the critical role these facilities play in their communities. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with Chief Executive Officers of rural hospitals, this research takes a grounded approach to build theory surrounding how leadership not only shapes but is shaped by extreme contexts and environmental jolts. The research results in four primary contributions. Namely, this study extends existing typologies on leadership in extreme contexts, proposing an updated model based on real-world experiences of leaders operating in extreme contexts. The research also supports the existence of a recursive relationship between leader and context in extreme environments. Next, it successfully integrates the previously distinct bodies of literature on extreme contexts and environmental jolts. Lastly, it builds out the relationship between adaptive leadership and jolts within extreme contexts, highlighting leaders’ short and long-term responses. Collectively, these results extend leadership theory and emphasize the critical impact context has in influencing leader behavior while also considering how leadership, in turn, changes the context, particularly in extreme cases facing environmental jolts.
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2023
Gwen Almodovar
2023
How Practices Drive Persistence: The Transformational Consumption Journey of Native Americans in Higher Education
In an academic environment where many higher education institutions tout their diversity and inclusion statistics, there is a decline in the enrollment of Native American students and a decrease in Native American scholars. The President of the United States, in an October 2021 briefing and with the issuance of an executive order named The White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Native Americans and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities, saw the immediate urgency to understand the systematic causes and implement evidence-based strategies that will improve and increase student enrollment and academic advancement. This research takes a qualitative approach and proactively seeks and interviews a sample of Native American college students to discuss their journey to higher education and their experiences as they continue to navigate through college. In alignment with the mission of Transformative Consumer Research, the goal is to empower, encourage, support, and disseminate research that will contribute to the well-being of Native Americans. This study takes a unique approach to researching this topic and focusing on Native American students that succeeded in their journey to higher education. The research is viewed through the lens of a transformational consumption journey, and the perceived hindrances identified in prior literature, financial resources, academic preparedness, lack of role models, and cultural incongruities are validated, and additional hurdles, including sense of belonging, lack of voice, and lack of parental/family/community support, are uncovered. Practice theory is relied upon to identify the practices these students put into place to overcome these challenges. The findings contribute to existing research by validating and extending previous findings, in addition to offering a novel insight into practices used to overcome the identified hurdles that ultimately drive the transformative consumption journey. The research assists in identifying elements needed to transform and encourage the reproduction of practice while also contributing to the field of Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) in working to solve complex social problems by striving to improve the lives and myriad conditions of the Native American consumer of higher education.
Cynthia Arthur
2023
Technological Acquisitions: The Impact of Innovation on Stock Performance
This paper investigates technological acquisitions and innovation’s impact on US acquiring firms’ stock performance between 2012 and 2016. Firms pursue technological acquisitions with the rationale of creating value, improving market share, and achieving economies of scale. Acquisitions have not always yielded the desired results. Overall, acquirers’ long-run abnormal returns tend to be negative. This study suggests that innovation positively impacts stock performance around the announcement date and one year after the acquisition. The 3-year post-acquisition analysis finds that technological acquisitions do not affect acquiring companies’ stock performance. A bump in the one-year post-acquisition performance dissipates over the three-year horizon.
Donyetta Bennett
2023
Breaking Down Barriers: The Impact of Segregation on Social Capital and Economic Outcomes
Breaking Down Barriers. Does social capital indirectly affect black/white economic outcomes via entrepreneurial activities? Does the relationship between social capital, entrepreneurship, and black/white economic outcomes change when social capital interacts with segregation? Drawing from Bourdieu's (1986) and Coleman’s (1990) social capital theory and prior scholars' regressive view theories of segregation, I propose that 1) social capital improves entrepreneurial activities and black/white economic outcomes, and 2) segregation’s interaction with social capital has an adverse effect on entrepreneurial activities and black/white economic outcomes. To perform the analysis, data were collected at the county- level from multiple sources and aggregated into one file by the Federal Information Processing Standard code (FIPS). The significance of the findings revealed that social capital has an effect on entrepreneurial activities and black/white economic outcomes. An increase in social capital works to increase black/white household income and reduce unemployment. The findings also suggest that segregation works to reduce entrepreneurial activities.
Dennis Dunivan
2023
Virtual Reality Influence on Moral Reasoning Through Compassion
This study investigates quantifiable links between virtual reality, moral reasoning, and compassion, contributing to the development of improved pedagogy for moral leadership development through experiential learning. It is the first empirical study to determine how specific virtual reality experiences potentially influence moral reasoning as measured by the DIT-2 (Rest et al., 1999), as well as the possible mediation effects of compassion on this relationship as measured by the Compassion Scale (Pommier et al., 2019). Although pedagogical implications are discussed, including the integration of virtual reality experiences into curriculum, the boundaries of this study are controlled to measure the direct influence of a consistent, repeatable independent variable on the outcomes of compassion and moral reasoning. Results show a significant shift in moral reasoning from personal interest to post-conventional thinking but do not support mediation through compassion. This study helps to build a foundation for the future development of educational and organizational process models that can integrate the advancing technologies of virtual and augmented reality into meaningful, pedagogical applications.
Joseph Giordano
2023
The Effect of Nondiagnostic Information on Internal Auditor Skepticism: Capturing the Dilution Effect
Internal auditors assigned to assess internal controls over financial reporting incorporate irrelevant information into their judgment, showing decreased skepticism when irrelevant information contradicts preconceived stereotypes of management, known as the dilution effect and attributed to the representativeness heuristic. Irrelevant information consistent with preconceived stereotypes does not decrease skepticism. In this experiment practicing internal auditors are provided an irrelevant description of the Chief Information Officer portrayed as either gregarious or introverted then subsequently receive relevant internal controls information. When the Chief Information Officer is described as gregarious, counter to common stereotypes, internal auditors assess risk as less likely to occur compared to when the Chief Information Officer is described as introverted or when no personality information is provided. This study controls for individual differences in trait skepticism, perception of information relevance, and CIO warmth finding that the effect of irrelevant information on skeptical judgment is stable regardless of internal auditor experience, gender, and presence of a professional certification. These findings provide insight into how internal auditors incorporate information into a risk decision indicating that irrelevant information has a significant role in skeptical judgment.
Chauntel Graves
2023
Experience Matters: Exploring How Firms Build Dynamic Capabilities Through Execution of the M&A Transaction Process
Existing M&A and organizational learning theory research suggests the firm can develop expertise in M&A process execution with each successive M&A transaction experience. The ability to align, assimilate and exploit this learning to build acquisition capability over time aligns with the dynamic capabilities theory. This study inductively explores how the firm learns from previous acquisition experience and continuously improves its M&A process capability. While there are three dimensions of dynamic capabilities, this study focuses on the Sensing dimension – identifying opportunities and threats meeting the demands of an ever-evolving business environment. Experienced M&A professionals suggest essential factors considered consequential to improving the dynamic internal process of executing M&A transactions. The goal is to build acquisition capability that enhances the firm’s ability to improve M&A performance. This research argues that knowledge derived from the effective implementation of the M&A process is as much a strategic variable as the transaction itself.
Ceara Hintz
2023
CEO, CFO, and Audit Partner Gender, and Accounting Conservatism
I examine the association between CEO, CFO, and audit partner gender and accounting conservatism using a unique sample that encompasses hand-collected data. While accounting conservatism reflects less risky accounting choices, risk aversion theory indicates that females are more risk averse than males. I apply risk aversion theory to accounting conservatism and investigate two research questions: (i) Does the CEO or CFO and audit partner gender influence accounting conservatism? (ii) Does a female audit partner influence the relationship between a male CEO or CFO and accounting conservatism? Using skewness as a proxy of accounting conservatism, I test three hypotheses. The results support my hypotheses and show: (i) the presence of a male CEO or CFO is associated with lower accounting conservatism, (ii) accounting conservatism is higher among firms with a female audit partner, and (iii) the presence of a female audit partner on the engagement increases the level of accounting conservatism with the presence of male CFO. The results of this study inform regulators, audit firms, researchers, governance boards, and shareholders on how females in the role of CEO, CFO, and audit partner influence accounting conservatism.
Jomarie Honcoop
2023
Enhancing Employee Voice in Government: Transparency, Trust, and Cognitive Empowerment
For organizational change to take root, develop, and realize the desired goals and benefits, employees are increasingly asked to be an integral part of the change process, to speak up and use their voice to point out areas to improve and ways to be more efficient. Organizations and managers must create a climate where this employee voice, a multidimensional construct comprised of promotive and prohibitive voice, is encouraged and heard, and where the employee is empowered to effect change and make improvements. Both types of voice are potent mechanisms for improving public services, and government organizations in particular, as compared to private and other businesses. This quantitative study investigates transparency, a multidimensional view of trust with cognition-based and affect-based trust, and cognitive empowerment and their relationships with both types of employee voice. The setting is a government organization that trains employees to see issues in the workplace and make changes to improve outcomes for citizens, save time and money, and improve the utilization of resources. Trust and transparency matter, until the climate supports psychological safety. Transparency and cognitive empowerment are found to be significantly related to different types of employee voice after controlling for various factors, including propensity to trust, social desirability, and psychological safety.
Andrew Kindfuller
2023
Not Too Scared to Enter: Understanding the Uppsala Model’s Complexity as SME Decision Makers Enter High-Risk Countries
Johanson and Vahlne’s Uppsala internationalization model is a framework for understanding sequential internationalization, experiential learning, and the commitment decision processes designed to answer the question: “Why and how do firms internationalize?” Each potential market is distinctive due to dissimilar languages, cultures, religions, ethics, political systems, laws, business norms, etc. – all these perceptual differences, which can potentially block the free flow of information between markets, are called “psychic distance.” By completing 34 detailed, semi-structured interviews with executives who have recently made significant financial or resource commitments to enter 28 different challenging countries, this is the first study to focus with a deep "emic" insider's perspective into the ways American SME decision makers utilize the Uppsala model’s state and change variables to enter objectively high-risk countries. The study shows how managers leverage the Uppsala variables – a robust combination of capabilities, commitment processes, knowledge development processes, and actual commitments and performance – to move forward with their internationalization plans, but in a more multi-dimensional and varied way than the Uppsala model’s prescribed sequential, unidirectional, and organized manner. Trust is the most important factor for a successful entry, allowing individuals to leverage trusted network connections. These managers were risk tolerant and were not slowed from entering due to perceptions of psychic distance. Those that acknowledged this distance reported better performance outcomes. This international business research contributes to existing theories on international expansion and psychic distance in high-risk countries, as well as providing practical guidance to managers considering such market expansions.
Erik Mekelburg
2023
Problems with Machine Learning, High-Dimensional Data and Forecasting Stock Returns
Using a multi-level ensemble design, we forecast international stock market returns with a novel high-dimensional data set of aggregated cross sectional firm-level predictors. The method includes considerations of model uncertainty, parameter instability, model density and non-linearities with machine learning, shrinkage and model averaging. We provide evidence that it is important to systematically focus on all four sources of forecast failure, shed light on the sparsity/density debate in the stock return forecasting dialogue and contribute interesting findings on the efficacy dimensionality reduction with principal components analysis and partial least squares. The robustness of the approach is demonstrated through applications in four international markets, the long range Welch & Goyal stock returns data set, and US interest rate forecasting.
James Phelps
2023
Supply Chain Finance: Exploring the State of Adoption with Small Business Suppliers in U.S. Defense Procurement Contracts
Innovative supply chain finance (SCF) practices offer alternative approaches to relief of cash flow distress for suppliers in an extended enterprise by enhancing access to and affordability of working capital. Adopting optional SCF instruments can be especially beneficial for small–medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are more acutely affected when credit conditions tighten. This explorative research described the state of buyer-led SCF adoption in defense procurement contracts used to produce highly technical weapons systems. A case study research design with embedded units across four groups of intermediaries was employed to compare the state of SCF adoption between a defense and a commercial business environment in the context of alternative working capital finance instruments. The study identified boundary conditions limiting the awareness and use of the buyer-led reverse factoring instrument for SME suppliers performing as subcontractors in the defense business environment. The study found that enterprise orchestration should be considered as a critical mediator for successful SCF adoption in the defense business environment. Contributions include descriptions of evolving motives, key enablers, and challenges of SCF adoption, emphasizing implications for SME manufacturers and suppliers producing vital components for the U.S. Department of Defense and the military services.
John Pritchard
2023
You Have to Play to Win: Value Capture in Open Innovation
Despite the extensive research on open innovation, debate remains on the relationship between open innovation and firm performance. No consensus exists on the measures of performance and the mechanisms that enable value capture remain largely unexplored. This dissertation addresses these issues in two parts. First, a theoretical model based on knowledge flows is introduced. Knowledge is at the heart of open innovation and this dissertation examines the role that external and internal knowledge play in firm performance outcomes. It integrates the dynamic capability view and open innovation literature to build a framework and set of arguments on how knowledge is necessary to capture value.
Next, an empirical analysis is conducted using an unbalanced panel of 3002 firm-year observations in the U.S. stock market for the years 2017–2021. The analysis examines the mediating impact of knowledge, derived from externally acquired and internally developed intangible assets, on firm performance. Results of the mediation analysis show that external and internal knowledge partially mediates the effects of open innovation but require time to diffuse within an organization. This dissertation challenges previous arguments that knowledge from open innovation is free to all. Rather, it demonstrates that firms must participate for value capture from knowledge spillovers to occur.
Sean Scally
2023
A New Era of Distilling: How Dynamic Capabilities Drive Transformation in the Distilling Industry
The distilling industry has a rich history, starting from when people realized that by adding water, sugar, and starch together, they could develop a drink with alcohol that was safer to drink than the water all around them. Over several centuries, this discovery has grown into a significant industry worldwide. In the United States, the distilling industry went from a farm-based barter system to a multi-billion-dollar industry in 2020 (Schwarz, 2021). The sector has faced changes in regulations and other external factors that challenge how distilleries maintain market share, status, and internal challenges due to operational capabilities and market demands. I am interested in the factors that influence distilleries' decision-making that leads to the firm transforming to the market they are in. Transformation allows firms to produce goods or services more effectively than its rivals. For this study, I use an inductive, qualitative method to look at how the distilling industry uses resources to determine how to sense and then transform their organizations to changes in the market. The study aims to provide insight into the capabilities that help organizations transform in times of challenges in the market.
John Sebesta
2023
Interactions in the Mind: Examining Metacognition's Role in Entrepreneurial Performance
To better understand the mental processes that shape entrepreneurial performance, this dissertation examines the moderating effect of metacognitive abilities on the relationship between cognitive style and entrepreneurial alertness on performance at the opportunity identification and planning stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Prior research identifies these factors as components of an entrepreneurial mindset. However, the present research develops and examines theoretically driven predictions regarding how the factors interact. Using a sample of seventy teams participating in a business plan competition enables performance evaluation at these early steps in the entrepreneurship process. The hypotheses were not supported, but post hoc analyses indicate that average team metacognition and entrepreneurial alertness influence performance more significantly than leader levels. Metacognition positively relates to performance directly and by moderating the relationship between cognitive style and performance. High metacognitive abilities likely substitute for an intuitive decision making style. Entrepreneurial alertness at the team level negatively relates to performance. Understanding these combined effects provides insight into how some entrepreneurs sense opportunities and pursue them under conditions of uncertainty. This study advances entrepreneurship cognition research by empirically examining metacognition's theorized but untested role in improving entrepreneurial performance.
Kelly Watson
2023
Sorry Not Sorry: Microaggression Perpetrator Learning Readiness Factors
Microaggressions are commonplace slights perpetuated against out-group members that reinforce negative stereotypes, often inadvertently and unconsciously. Workplace mitigation efforts have traditionally been focused on raising awareness with the belief that perpetrators are simply unaware of their actions. While these efforts have done much to raise awareness—especially for victims of microaggressions, who may be more sensitive than ever of their occurrence—some perpetrators consciously persist through awareness, often with even more negative implications to the victim such as minimization, dismissal, and further stereotype reinforcement. For perpetrators to change their behavior, in addition to classic behavioral change models that require capability, opportunity, and motivation, such as the COM-B model, I posit that a process of transformative learning must take place. In this study, I aim to identify individual readiness factors that contribute to someone’s ability to do the critical reflection and social discourse necessary for learning to curb microaggression behavior. Through a series of surveys, I demonstrate certain factors contribute to a perpetrator learning readiness versus resistance in response to microaggression feedback. Specifically, microaggression learning readiness requires motivational factors such as training, moral awareness, social justice concern, individuation, cultural intelligence, and low social dominance orientation. With implications for workplace bias awareness training, this research joins learning theory with behavior change research and organizational change models to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the process of changing microaggression behavior in the workplace. It also provides quantitative support for practical workplace interventions and targeted skill development for microaggression perpetrators.
T.H. Willams
2023
Tactical Allocation Through the Lens of Correlational Time-Variance, Determinants, and Regimes
We investigate correlations among six primary asset classes from January 1982 to December 2022. Our analysis extends existing literature, on the well-researched stock-bond correlation (SBC), by encompassing 14 supplementary asset class dyads and four correlational regimes. We challenge the archetype of correlational time-invariance that underlies buy-and-hold asset allocation strategies by implementing structural break tests and an innovative Wavelet Coherence (WC) methodology, where our findings reveal temporal instability. Through a multi-method statistical approach, we present robust and persuasive evidence of macroeconomic factors as determinants of temporal change. Leveraging time-varying Granger causality, we unearth elusive yet significant relationships. Our research pivots to practice, illustrating outperformance in portfolios constructed upon the principles of time-varying change, macro drivers, and correlational regimes, thus enabling investors to make more informed decisions, leading to superior risk-adjusted returns amid a dynamically evolving economic landscape.
2022
Martha Davis
2022
Working Here, There, and Everyware: The Impact of Virtual Work on Employee Belonging
| Globalization, improvements in information and communications technologies, and the COVID-19 outbreak have increased the prevalence of virtual work arrangements. This change in the workforce presents both opportunities and challenges to employees and their organizations, transforming how organizations operate and how workers interact with each other. This shift to more virtual work has a high likelihood of impacting other fundamental human motivations, such as the need to belong, which has significant implications for an employee’s well-being and the broader organization’s health. This study asks the question: How do collaborative technologies impact virtual employee belonging? The study proposes a conceptual framework of virtual employee belonging using the lens of belongingness theory and tests hypotheses by surveying employees with varying degrees of virtuality to investigate how the use of collaborative technologies impacts their sense of belonging. Results show that collaborative technology use will buffer the adverse effect of virtuality on employees’ sense of belonging, which has important implications for business practitioners managing virtual employees. |
Beth Flambures
2022
Family Ties: Impact of Socioemotional Wealth and Succession on Real Earnings Management
Private family businesses make up a significant portion of the world economy. While contributing to the larger macro environment, they also contribute critical resources to their communities and family units. Earnings management is a practice that is detrimental to future business viability. The motivation to use earnings management is different in family businesses as they have unique pressures and characteristics. Socioemotional wealth includes non-financial incentives exclusive to family businesses and is predicted to influence earnings management behavior. Succession is an event that is critical to all businesses, however, the pressure for generational transfer in family businesses can be greater due to resource retention that requires familial succession. The motivation to manipulate financial signals is potentially stronger when the company is executing a generational transfer and needs to display financial strength. This study finds that socioemotional wealth and succession impact real earnings management behavior in family firms. When succession is not present, the study finds that companies with high socioemotional wealth are less likely to engage in real earnings management. However, when succession is present, companies with high socioemotional wealth engage in real earnings management at a significantly higher rate than low socioemotional wealth businesses. The study’s experimental design using participants involved in a family business, offers a unique opportunity to better understand this critical portion of the economy and the characteristics and events that potentially impact real earnings management decisions in family businesses
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
Maurice Harris
2022
Going Backstage: Examining Justice Perceptions of Electronic Performance Monitoring
Organizations are rapidly adopting emerging technologies, popularly known in the media as “bossware,” that track the behaviors of employees. The use of these technologies to monitor worker performance is known as electronic performance monitoring (EPM) in the academic literature. EPM systems increasingly utilize advanced algorithms, equipping companies with the capabilities to expose employees' actions, thoughts, and feelings. Prior research on EPM has focused mainly on the reactions of front-line workers, ignoring the perceptions of employees who work at different hierarchical levels within their organizations. An organizational justice perspective is used to examine how a company’s decision to grant employees the ability to turn off EPM or “go backstage” is likely to be viewed differently by those who are at higher levels of a hierarchy in comparison to those at lower levels. Utilizing experimental vignette methodology (EVM), I find evidence that managers and front-line employees are likely to react differently towards having increased control of EPM. These findings may not be limited to EPM and could prove helpful in understanding employee reactions towards corporate policy implementations in a broader context.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
Matt Orlowksy
2022
Understanding Critical Reflection as a Leadership Development Methodology
How do leaders translate experiences into insights? Critical reflection is offered as a leadership development process that illuminates effective practices following an empirical analysis of 352 United States Air Force Academy cadet essays that describe their most profound leadership experiences. These essays are iteratively analyzed and interpreted using the critical reflection methodology. The essays were examined to find how young leaders turn experiences into leadership insights. The study takes advantage of the distinctive Academy leadership development context and the data available from cadets’ essays describing their profound leadership experiences. There are three contributions bounded in this dissertation and multiple avenues for future research. First, a contribution is made by extending established leadership criteria in Thomas’s and Bennis’s research on crucible experiences, Yukl’s discussion of experiential learning in organizations and leadership behaviors, and Schon’s work on reflective practice. The project demonstrates the primacy of reflection among crucible experiences. Reflection can be viewed as a light. It is not the leadership insight itself, rather, reflection illuminates the leadership mechanism within the experience itself and creates a more useful, readily available value or behavior in the future. Next, these conclusions were enabled by applying the critical reflection as a research method. This methodology resulted in an empirical analysis of the reflective essays. Finally, the dissertation speculates that by understanding how crucible experiences shape leaders, the criteria can be proactively applied to anticipate support necessary for developing leaders to extract the most learning from experiences. This conclusion is underpinned by the theoretical congruence between individual and organizational frameworks.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
Colleen Reilly
2022
Where Virtual Well-Being Becomes Reality
Strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, specifically quarantine and social distancing protocols, have exposed a troubling paradox: mandated isolation meant to save lives has inadvertently contributed to a decline in America’s well-being. Prolonged isolation due to more remote work and decentralized workplaces has been associated with widespread loneliness and diminished physical and mental health, with effects compounded by limited face-to-face access to social support systems. While remote communication technologies (e.g., video chat) can connect individuals with colleagues and social networks, remote technologies might have limited effectiveness in business and social contexts. This study uses Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory to explain and understand how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread within an organization. The research question is, “What factors may increase the likelihood of adopting a virtual world technology for workplace well-being?” This study contributes to the business and academic sectors to further understand the potential of this innovative positive technology to increase social connection and create a sense of well-being and community for both remote and office-based employees.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
Peter Tripp
2022
Could Alexa Increase Your Social Worth?
People have historically used personal introductions to build social capital, which is the foundation of career networking and is perhaps the most effective way to advance a career (Lin, 2001). With societal changes, such as the pandemic (Venkatesh & Edirappuli, 2020), and the increasing capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), new approaches may emerge that impact societal relationships. Social capital theory highlights the need for reciprocal agreements to establish the trust between parties (Gouldner, 1960). My theoretical prediction and focus of this research include two principles: The impact of reciprocity in evaluating trust of the source of the introduction and the acceptability of AI in interpersonal relationships. I test this relationship through the creation of plausible vignettes that the participants may have encountered in business. The results show that a higher trust of AI and could replace one side of the relationship, thus reducing the dependency on or eliminating reciprocal behavior.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
2021
Brian Hicks
2021
The Hotelling Valuation Principle: Does User Cost and Reserve Differentials Improve Validity?
This study investigates the relationship between leadership and extreme contexts through the lens of rural hospitals facing environmental jolts. Rural hospitals offer a unique setting for this research, given their inherent geographic isolation, lack of resources, and the critical role these facilities play in their communities. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with Chief Executive Officers of rural hospitals, this research takes a grounded approach to build theory surrounding how leadership not only shapes but is shaped by extreme contexts and environmental jolts. The research results in four primary contributions. Namely, this study extends existing typologies on leadership in extreme contexts, proposing an updated model based on real-world experiences of leaders operating in extreme contexts. The research also supports the existence of a recursive relationship between leader and context in extreme environments. Next, it successfully integrates the previously distinct bodies of literature on extreme contexts and environmental jolts. Lastly, it builds out the relationship between adaptive leadership and jolts within extreme contexts, highlighting leaders’ short and long-term responses. Collectively, these results extend leadership theory and emphasize the critical impact context has in influencing leader behavior while also considering how leadership, in turn, changes the context, particularly in extreme cases facing environmental jolts.
Will Ikerd
2021
Level Of Acceptance (LOA) for Scan-to-BIM Creation
This dissertation presents two contributions to the use of Reality Capture and Scan-to-BIM for facility management (FM). The first manuscript proposes a novel construct for accurately defining scope on Scan-to-BIM projects. Combining the concepts of tolerance, accuracy, and density of point cloud measurements, it will aid laser scan usage in new construction as-built validation, help renovation of existing buildings that lack as-built documentation, and support facility managers who lack accurate plans and digital twins of their buildings by helping determine and communicate the appropriate requirement for Scan-to-BIM. In view of making this process more efficient and cost effective, this article stablishes a minimum scan density for different elements of interest to building owners and proposes a novel construct, Level Of Acceptance (LOA) Specification, for establishing and clearly communicating laser scanning requirements for varying types of projects. The second manuscript proposes a novel construct of scan efficiency, applied to a case study of approximately 31 buildings and over 450 scans, to measure the level of effort required to laser scan for facility management. In conjunction with this second construct, it presents a novel approach with custom API algorithm to extract meta data from the reality capture and incorporate it into BIM applications to reveal the correlation of room types within a building and scan efficiency. The importance of this research is that it provides building owners a rational basis for assessing the cost, schedule, and value of Scan-to-BIM on their assets.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
David Lacek
2021
The Definition and Meaning of Blockchain
Although blockchain is still in its infancy as an operational practice, world leaders actively discuss the concept. Businesses should develop and recognize the value of secure information as part of an exchange. Business progresses from checking on transaction behaviors to an implicitly trusted exchange of cryptographic digitization of shared knowledge. Strategic leadership teams investigate adaptive system responses for governance in which rivals are network partners. The study explains why embracing blockchain in terms of technology concepts, or short-term benefit mechanisms will overlook powerful principles that can lead to a breakthrough business model and a global trade phenomenon.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
Barak Malkoc
2021
Corporate Ventures: Relational Microfoundations of Innovation Performance
Large, established companies invest in innovation to sustain and improve their competitiveness. In addition to in-house R&D departments, they acquire startup companies and operate them under a separate organizational structure. Corporate ventures’ success depends on many factors, such as available resources, compensation schemes, and acquisition strategies, which have been explored in the extant literature. This study explores the antecedents of corporate venture innovation performance through the lens of dynamic capabilities and social capital theories. Existing research on dynamic capabilities has explored its microfoundations of managerial cognition and top management initiatives. However, the development of dynamic capabilities requires actors’ level interactions and dialogue to generate tacit knowledge. This research closes the gap in the literature of microfoundations by exploring direct social interactions that may support high level innovativeness through the mechanism of humanistic influence. In addition, social capital theory that predicts the development of intellectual capital forms the basis to create competitive advantage. However, the study follows social psychology theory to identify relational antecedents that can predict removal of social and mental barriers and build the foundation of tacit knowledge creation. This approach is significantly different than traditional social capital development based on trust, network and the development of organizational norms. A survey questionnaire is used to extract primary data from 156 engineers and scientists working at a global medical device manufacturing company's corporate venture organization. Structural Equation Modeling is used to determine the significance and loading of relational antecedents that can predict the corporate venture's innovation performance. The findings confirm the antecedents such as conscious awareness, altruistic behavior and alignment of goals are significant to predict innovativeness of corporate ventures. The study expands the theory of microfoundations of dynamic capabilities and will be a useful guide to corporate venture managers.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
John Merli
2021
Microfoundations Approach to Risk and Uncertainty in the Uppsala Internationalization Process
This study answers rising calls in International Business to employ a microfoundations approach for greater insight on differences in managerial cognition for entering business in high-risk locations. Consequently, findings challenge the Uppsala model’s longstanding stance concerning the risk-internationalization association governed by strict firm-level analysis. I examine CEO decision-making through the lens of their values, represented by their political ideology score along the liberal-conservative continuum, to offer greater predictability for rationalizing strategic choices. Accordingly, political ideology proved a significant predictor for explaining the circumstances in which CEOs elect high-risk locations based on their political ideology’s degree of liberalism. Additionally, its interactions with prominent predictors, such as managerial discretion and compensation incentives, underscore how these influences are perceived differently between liberals and conservatives’ perception of risk.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
David Morelli
2021
Executive Coaching: A Cohesive Conceptual Model and the Qualitative Investigation of Executive Coaching Styles
Although blockchain is still in its infancy as an operational practice, world leaders actively discuss the concept. Businesses should develop and recognize the value of secure information as part of an exchange. Business progresses from checking on transaction behaviors to an implicitly trusted exchange of cryptographic digitization of shared knowledge. Strategic leadership teams investigate adaptive system responses for governance in which rivals are network partners. The study explains why embracing blockchain in terms of technology concepts, or short-term benefit mechanisms will overlook powerful principles that can lead to a breakthrough business model and a global trade phenomenon.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
Executive coaching is a field in search of a conceptual model to tie together disparate studies and theories. While several decades of research validate ‘that’ coaching works (Athanasopoulou & Dopson, 2018), it’s been unclear is to ‘how’ coaching works. For over two decades, the field has been calling out for a conceptual model (Kilburg, 1996; Athanasopoulou & Dopson, 2018) and hasn’t known where to turn. While several attempts have been made, each of them suffered from conflation and lack of specificity, perhaps due to the lack of theoretical grounding amidst coaching’s nascence as a field. Answering this call is important to scholars and practitioners alike, since knowing how coaching works can lead to better scholarship as well as better coaching effectiveness.
Building from extant literature, in manuscript 1, I map out a conceptual model within executive coaching based on the major constructs of coach attributes, coachee attributes, the coaching process, and the coach-coachee relationship, and outcomes. However, in so doing, an obvious gap becomes clear – there is a lack of clarity regarding the process of how coaching occurs. To solve this problem, I turn to the related field of leadership which faced a similar challenge many decades ago. Its conceptual models are well-established, and parallels between coaching and leadership are evident and informative. One construct in particular, leadership styles, has been the source of decades of research, yet is missing from executive coaching literature. I propose that understanding executive coaching styles is a necessary element that the field has been searching for. In manuscript 2, I take a qualitative grounded theory approach using the Gioia method of theory-building based on semi-structured interviews and non-participant netnographic data of 15 US-based executive coaches. In the data, I find seven distinct executive coaching styles which play a key role in how coaching works. These styles are described along with a process map to understand the role of executive coaching styles within the coaching process. Implications and future research are explored and set the stage for a potential explosion of executive coaching style research as a key player in the “how” of executive coaching.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
Mark Sharkey
2021
Hotel Executives’ Perceptions of Effective Promotion Processes and the Successful Transition from Single-Unit to Multi-Unit Management1
The growth experienced by the hospitality industry, especially the hotel industry, has outpaced its ability to develop future leaders. Like many organizations, the hotel industry employs a management hierarchy of single-unit managers responsible for each unit (hotel) and a multi-unit manager who oversees single-unit managers and their units (hotels). The vast majority of these multi-unit managers are promoted from a successful single-unit operation. The promotion can be challenging, and first-time multi-unit managers struggle to make a successful transition. Research confirms that this struggle is partially due to the need for a newly promoted multi-unit manager to develop a new and different set of knowledge, skills, and abilities: however, the specific skills and abilities needed for multi-unit managers to be successful, as well as the processes that might support the development of those skills, are not well understood. Through an inductive, qualitative study of the multi-unit managers in an exemplary case organization, Grandco, this study identified the factors that contribute to the struggle (or success) of newly-promoted multi-unit managers. The study provides a model for leadership development specifically designed for managers that are classic self-paced, learning-oriented, independent, experiential learners who, without the time needed to complete the cycle of learning, struggle to meet the new position requirements. In addition, the position requires more experience and an enhanced set of knowledge, skills, and abilities developed during a promotion (tournament) to improve the rate of success in these first-time promotions. It is the responsibility of a successful organization to seek out people with leadership potential and provide them with career experiences designed to develop their potential.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
CJ Thomas
2021
The Duality of Reality: Perception Creation Using Symbolic Management
People have historically used different types of symbols to signal an ideology, to create a sense of prestige, or to gain legitimacy. Examples of these types of symbols can be seen in displays ranging from marketing ads to presidential election materials. While these types of symbols tend to be socially constructed, and universally identifiable, the consequences of their use are less uniform in nature. This study explores the gap that currently exists between a symbol’s inherent value and the expected consequences of its use. My theoretical prediction includes two principles: The use of symbolic management to create symbolic environments and the concept of mental fit between the symbol displayed and the personal values of the symbol observer. I test this link through the creation and viewing of video vignettes containing specific types of symbolic value. Using a sample of university students, I find that viewing an ideological symbolic environment that matches the symbolic environment architect’s political ideology elicits higher levels of affect-based trust. Additionally, I find that comparative symbolic environments elicit higher levels of pragmatic legitimacy compared to environments containing isomorphic symbolic value.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.
Daniel Trujillo
2021
Airbnb Release of Latent Economic Value and Return to Equilibrium
We empirically consider Airbnb’s effect on a new variable in Short Term Rental (STR) research, second homes, employing a model pre-Airbnb diffusion (2009), and post-Airbnb diffusion (2019). In doing so we test our hypothesis that second home use will be converted to short-term rentals with the advent of Airbnb. We do so through a natural experiment examining housing stock. We create a schema to segregate tourist and non-tourist counties based on economic variables and deploy these in our research framework observing a shock to housing supply. Notably, we observe a structural change in the use of second homes resulting in the release of previously latent stock for economic gain. We also expand the level of analysis in short term rental studies by examining data outside of major metropolitan areas, focusing on the State of Colorado’s 64 counties. We employ linear regression models on a panel data set for the years 2014 through 2019 to examine the effects of Airbnb at this new level of analysis. We confirm an increase in rents and home values found in previous studies of large metropolitan areas but observe a diminishing effect over the years 2014 to 2019 in our sample. This potential return to equilibrium after the initial disruptive innovation of Airbnb a decade earlier warrants further observation to understand the antecedents which may include natural market saturation or improved regulatory stratagems.
In essay one, we offer direction toward meaning as we filtered a sample of research from over 106,000 articles and examined the word “blockchain.” The research landscape contains many definitions but remains sparse, considering blockchain as an overall paradigm shift for business and leadership. People in the research community and industry want an easy-to-read and understandable explanation. We discovered a continuation of the research drift, which sustains concepts of terminological ambiguity and technical determinism. When asked “what is blockchain,” the answer is ambiguous because it pertains to the sphere of influence and currently lacks convergence. Research paths to empirical proof and industry adoption suffer. A consensus definition based on the word choices in published research is improbable.
In essay two, we examine a case study that represents a seven-year conversation continuum. We share the development of leadership, governance, and business ideas toward the future, leveraging the strengths of a top world corporation in FedEx. We are witnessing the rise of software capabilities, the adaption of business models, and the decreasing footprint of an enterprise information organizational structure. As the rise of transaction speed increases, the order-to-door delivery speeds diminish the capability at speed to morph businesses into the context of mainstream and market application increases. Leaders have to see the paths to organize and govern that allow them to evolve beyond internal delivery speed metrics.
The definition of blockchain is, at best, shrouded. Learning about the meaning takes two perspectives, industrial and institutional. Industrial is a story of technology and the inner mechanics to make blockchain functional. Institutional technology shifts the paradigm wholly to the business model adaption. Industrial elements and treatises toward cryptocurrency obfuscate the most authentic view of blockchain intent. A growing sentiment shared here is that this “b” word though relevant seems inadequate to capture the meaning. Blockchain is teased to the market but advances toward implementation often stall.