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Accounting & Finance topics

"Enhancing the Benefits of Accounting Doctoral Consortia"

Advances in Accounting Education; Teaching and Curriculum Innovations

Anne Christensen · Professor of Accounting
Co-author: Shelley C. Rhoades-Catanach, Villanova University

Key Takeaway: Accounting doctoral consortia aid future professors in developing their professional network and research skills.

Summary:
Each year, hundreds of accounting doctoral students attend doctoral consortia sponsored by universities and academic organizations. This paper reports results of a survey of consortium attendees, and analysis of related consortium programs. We seek a better understanding of the benefits attendees perceive from these consortia, the content attendees found most valuable, and whether these consortia appear to achieve the goals of the sponsoring organizations. Survey results show that participants perceive significant benefits from consortium activities related to research, networking, and career management. Respondents did not find their consortium experience helpful on teaching-related dimensions; however, their comments suggest a desire for additional teaching coverage. We make recommendations to planners of accounting doctoral consortia and leadership of the American Accounting Association (AAA), a major consortium sponsor, intended first to address respondents’ desire for additional teaching coverage. Second, we highlight opportunities to link doctoral education to AAA’s strategic initiatives and its vision to provide global thought leadership in accounting.

"EIA Storage Announcements, Analyst Storage Forecasts, and Energy Prices"

The Energy Journal

Lisa Yang · Assistant Professor of Finance

Co-authors: Louis H. Ederington, University of Oklahoma
Co-authors: Fang Lin , Pittsburg State University
Co-authors: Scott C. Linn, University of Oklahoma

Key Takeaway: Our study shed light on the efficiency and interplay of EIA information releases and professional analyst forecasts and how this interplay impacts energy pricing.

Summary:
Regulators have emphasized timely and accurate information release as an essential channel for reducing information asymmetry and enhancing efficient pricing in energy markets. It is well known and documented that energy prices react to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA)’s weekly natural gas and petroleum storage announcements. We find that analyst storage forecasts bring additional information to the market beyond seasonal patterns and past storage flows and that the market promptly incorporates these analyst forecasts into oil and gas prices prior to the EIA announcements.

"Are Bond Ratings Informative? Evidence from Regulatory Regime Changes"

The Journal of Fixed Income

Lisa Yang · Assistant Professor of Finance

Co-authors: Louis H. Ederington, University of Oklahoma
Co-authors: Jeremy Goh, Singapore Management University
Co-authors: Yenteik Lee, Asia School of Business

Key Takeaway: Credit rating agencies served as a conduit for transmitting private information before the repeal and that the continued bond price reactions are likely due to regulations favoring higher-rated bonds.

Summary:
The Dodd–Frank Act (Section 939B) enacted in 2010 repealed the exemption of credit rating agencies (CRAs) from Regulation Fair Disclosure. Testing whether CRAs continue to provide new information to the market after the repeal, the authors find that the significant pre-repeal stock price responses to rating changes disappear after the regime change. Bond price reactions, however, remain significant. These results are even more significant at the investment–speculative boundary. Evidence suggests that CRAs served as a conduit for transmitting private information before the repeal and that the continued bond price reactions are likely due to regulations favoring higher-rated bonds.

Management & Marketing topics

"Expanding Strategic Opportunities in Nonprofits: Mapping the Interdependencies of Critical Performance Variables"

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

Laura Black · Professor of Management
Ed Gamble · associate professor of accounting
Andreas Thorsen · associate professor of management

Key Takeaway: Collaboratively created causal models help nonprofit leaders identify key leverage points for action in the face of competing performance objectives.

Summary:
Nonprofits facing complex financial and operational challenges often assess their performance with quantifiable dimensions that indicate organization success, such as the number of clients served or the amount of funding received annually. But these measures are often treated as if they are independent of one another when in fact they influence each other, often over different time frames. This paper reports on collaborative research undertaken with leaders of a community healthcare clinic in which participatory causal modeling was used to map how performance variables dynamically affect each other. The leaders used the causal model to identify key leverage points (far from the symptoms) for addressing organizational challenges. The study demonstrates an approach that other nonprofits can use to identify constructive actions when they are facing competing performance objectives.

"Operational efficiency, patient composition and regional context of US health centers: Associations with access to early prenatal care and low birth weight"

Social Science & Medicine

Andreas Thorsen · associate professor of management
Co-authors: Maggie L Thorsen, Montana State University
Co-authors: Ronald McGarvey, University of Missouri

Key Takeaway: Results from this study highlight that while the provision of early prenatal care and the efficiency with which a health center operates may improve the health of the women served by CHCs and their babies, the underlying social and economic conditions facing patients ultimately have a larger association with their health.

Summary:
Community health centers (CHCs) provide comprehensive medical services to medically under-served Americans, helping to reduce health disparities. This study aimed to identify the unique compositions and contexts of CHCs to better understand variation in access to early prenatal care and rates of low birth weights (LBW). Findings highlight that significant diversity exists in the sociodemographic composition and regional context of US health centers, in ways that are associated with their operations, delivery of care, and health outcomes.

"Do intense work experiences influence Growth Mindset, Emotional Intelligence and Knowledge Creation and Sharing?"

Journal of Organizational Psychology

Scott Bryant · Professor of Management
Kregg Aytes · Professor of Management

Key Takeaway: Intense work experiences helped increase emotional intelligence, knowledge sharing and growth mindset.

Summary:
We examined the impact of participating in Wilderness Conservation Corp (WCC) leadership development program on crew members’ emotional intelligence (EI), knowledge management/sharing (KM), and growth mindset (GM) during one summer of intense wilderness crew work activity. We found that low EI crew members experienced significant increases in emotional intelligence as the result of their experience. We also found that crew members that measured low in EI increased their perceptions of knowledge creation and sharing (KM) in the WCC organization after the experience. Finally, we found that those crew members with a more fixed mindset moved towards a significantly more growth mindset.

"Minimum Wages and Nascent Entrepreneurship in the U.S."

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy

Agnieszka Kwapisz · Associate Professor of Management

Key Takeaway: When faced with higher minimum wage rates, female entrepreneurs are significantly less likely to hire employees and nascent ventures with employees are significantly less likely of achieving profitability.

Summary:
The effect of minimum wages on employment is one of the most widely studied and most controversial topics in labor economics and public policy but its impact on early startups is poorly understood and under-researched. In this manuscript, we investigate whether minimum wage rates correlate with the probability that a nascent startup hires employees and achieves profitability, a topic that has never been addressed before. We found negative but not significant correlation between the minimum wage rates and a nascent venture’s probability of hiring employees. However, female entrepreneurs were significantly less likely than male entrepreneurs to hire when faced with higher minimum wage rates. For ventures with employees, higher minimum wage rates were correlated with lower probability of achieving profitability vs. quitting the startup process.

"Do Government and Legal Barriers Impede Entrepreneurship? An exploratory study of perceived vs. actual barriers."

Journal of Business Venturing Insights

Agnieszka Kwapisz · Associate Professor of Management
 

Key Takeaway: Government and legal barriers are not significantly related to nascent startups’ outcomes and are not major barriers for entrepreneurs.

Summary:
In this exploratory study, we investigate how the actual and the perceived level of government bureaucracy correlates with nascent ventures’ outcomes, a largely understudied topic in entrepreneurship literature. We use data merged (N = 922) from the U.S. Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II (PSED II), which tracked nascent startups over a six-year period, and the Economic Freedom of North America Index from the Fraser Institute. We find no relationship between state-level economic freedom and startups’ outcomes and no relationship between the actual and the perceived government bureaucracy. Additionally, government is perceived as a major barrier by only 6% of entrepreneurs (of whom only 54% actually check government regulations), and 1% of entrepreneurs list regulations as the main reason for quitting the startup process.

"Bike-Sharing Systems in Poland."

Sustainability

Agnieszka Kwapisz · Associate Professor of Management

Co-author: Tomasz Bielinski, University of Gdansk
Co-author: Agnieszka Wazna, University of Gdansk

Key Takeaway: Bicycle-sharing systems performance is positively related to cities’ population, tourism, number of bike stations per capita, congestion, bicycle pathways’ length and higher temperature, and negatively related to precipitation.

Summary:
Bike-sharing is widely recognized as an eco-friendly mode of transportation and seen as one of the solutions to the problem of air pollution and congestion. As there is little research exploring the performance of bicycle-sharing systems (BSS), many municipal authorities invest in their development without knowledge of their effectiveness. Therefore, the aim of this article is to identify factors that correlate with BSS performance. Data related to BSS and urban characteristics were collected for the 56 cities in Poland, which is the population of BSS systems in this country. Additionally, to support our findings, a survey of 3631 cyclists was conducted. Our main findings show that BSS performance was positively related to cities’ population, tourism, number of bike stations per capita, congestion, bicycle pathways’ length and higher temperature, and negatively related to precipitation. We have also found that one BSS operator was more effective compared to the others.

Click here to view the abstract and link to the article.

 "The Relative Importance of Transformational Leadership and Contingent Reward on Satisfaction with Supervision in Nonprofit and For-profit Organizations."

Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research

Agnieszka Kwapisz · Associate Professor of Management
F. William Brown · Professor of Management
Scott Bryant · Professor of Management
Robyn Chupka · (former) Adjunct Instructor of Management
Terry Profota · (retired) Associate Teaching Professor of Management

 

Key Takeaway: Transformational leadership correlates positively with the satisfaction with supervision and this relationship is stronger in nonprofit organizations. Contingent reward correlates negatively with the satisfaction in for-profit context but positively in nonprofit organizations.

Summary:
We study the relationships and intervening mechanism between leaders’ transformational and contingent reward behaviors and the raters’ satisfaction with their supervision in the context of nonprofit and for-profit management settings in the United States. The results show that regardless of the context, transformational leadership on the part of the manager relates positively to the raters’ satisfaction with supervision and that this relationship is stronger in nonprofit organizations. Our results also provide evidence for the differential impact of contingent reward in for-profit and nonprofit settings. In the for-profit context, the relationship between contingent reward and satisfaction with supervision is negative while in nonprofit organizations this relationship is positive. In both contexts, transformational leadership positively moderates the effect of contingent reward on employee satisfaction with supervision. Our findings contribute to an improved understanding of how managers’ different leadership styles affect satisfaction depending on the organizational context. Practical implications for managers in both nonprofit and for-profit settings are provided.

"Team Aspects of Hobby-Based Entrepreneurship."

Academy of Management Proceedings-Best Papers

Agnieszka Kwapisz · Associate Professor of Management

 

Key Takeaway: Hobby-based startups develop slower compared to other startups and are more likely to form a new firm if owners are solo founders or keep a larger ownership percentage in their hands.

Summary:
This research investigates how startup team characteristics correlate with a probability that a hobby-based entrepreneur forms a new profitable firm. We found that hobby-based ventures are more likely to stay longer in the startup process but do not differ from other ventures in the probability of forming a new profitable firm. Hobby-based startups are more likely to form a new firm if owners are solo founders or keep a larger ownership percentage in their hands and are less likely to form a new firm if teams are bigger or more functionally diverse. Based on these results we offer several actionable suggestions for entrepreneurs.

"The Influence of Political Candidate Brand Image During the 2012 and 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections."

European Journal of Marketing

Eric Van Steenburg · Assistant Professor of Marketing

Co-author: Francisco Guzmán, University of North Texas

Key Takeaway: When voters considered who might best represent them, the brand image of the candidate enhances the likelihood of voting for, or against, the candidate.

Summary:
If conventional wisdom is correct, Democratic voters are swayed by feelings for a candidate while Republican voters are impacted by party loyalty. However, previous research has demonstrated the candidate-brand relationship affects voters’ view of the candidate. This research investigates how prominent a role the candidate brand image has on voters’ decision making. Data were collected three weeks prior to the U.S. presidential election in 2012 and again in 2016. Results show candidate brand image and self-brand image are related to voting intention. In both elections, the losing candidate’s brand image was more of a factor when it came to voting intention as both candidates’ brand image mediated the relationships between self-brand image and voting intention for all voters. This link between candidate brand image and voting intention was demonstrated for perhaps the first time.

"Unplanned purchase decision making under simultaneous financial and time pressure."

Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice

Eric Van Steenburg · Assistant Professor of Marketing

Co-author: Iman Naderi, Fairfield University

 

Key Takeaway: Results give marketers insight into what strategies to adopt when consumers are experiencing an uncertain economy by explaining unplanned behaviors under external pressures.

Summary:
Two global recessions since 2000 have made consumers mindful about spending habits. At the same time, consumers are feeling an increasing amount of time pressure, which effects information processing and decision making. This research examines responses to marketing tactics when consumers consider personal finances, time availability, and the two combined. When considering extenuating circumstances, consumer purchase intention is often influenced by levels of impulsiveness. Therefore, three experiments examined how financial pressure, time pressure, and consumer impulsive tendencies jointly influence consumer decision making regarding an unplanned purchase. Results show impulsive and nonimpulsive consumers act similarly under time pressure, but purchase intention is suppressed under financial pressure. When experiencing both simultaneously, financial pressure dictates decision making.

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