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Unaffiliated Professional Service Providers and Their CSR Perceptions
Get PDFWe introduce the term unaffiliated professional service providers PSPs to define and classify a distinct set of PSPs who have recognized expertise in a product category, even though those products are not used in their supply channel ( e.g., a dentist recommending a toothpaste brand). The investigation aims to determine how the importance of sustainability is built in the mind of unaffiliated PSPs for two reasons. First, sustainability is significant in consumers' selection criteria and, second, these professionals are influential in their clients' brand choice. A major supplier to veterinarian clinics and hospitals aided with data collection. Responses from 467 veterinarians were collected and structural equation modeling was used to test a conceptual model of the determinants of sustainability importance for unaffiliated PSPs. Results indicate that eco-claims, alone, do not motivate the importance of sustainability in the mind of unaffiliated PSPs. Instead, social norms and expertise in sustainability are vital to the strengthening of the importance of environmental stewardship for professionals. The findings led to a proposed typology of perceived importance of sustainability and the expected behavior of the unaffiliated PSPs, thus opening a window into a new area of research.Kaw Valley Ban
Evaluation of the Empower Veterans Program (EVP) for Military Veterans with Chronic Pain
Get PDFBackground: Chronic pain is prevalent in the general population and among veterans. Despite the wealth of research on complementary and integrative health (CIH) approaches, the lack of current empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the Empower Veterans Program (EVP) limits utilization of this CIH approach for chronic pain management of military veterans. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a veteran healthcare administration’s EVP for improving pain and quality of life for veterans with chronic pain in Northeastern United States. Methods: This quality improvement project used pre-and post-intervention data that were collected from adult veterans with chronic pain who completed the veterans’ healthcare facility’s EVP between August 2017 and August 2019. Data on pain intensity, pain interference, quality of life, pain catastrophizing, and patient satisfaction were analyzed for this project. Result: Although data were abstracted from 115 patients, the final sample included 67 patients
who completed both pre-and post-intervention questionnaires. Demographics (age and gender) of completers and non-completers were similar. The pre-and post-intervention data were compared using paired t-tests. Comparison of pre-and post-mean scores resulted in statistically significant findings at a p value of .005 based on the Bonferroni correction. The medium to large effect sizes (Cohen’s d) supported EVP effectiveness for veterans with chronic pain. Recommendations: Based on the findings, stakeholders should implement program expansion to veterans in rural areas to improve access, and adoption of EVP by other Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities. Conclusion: EVP is effective in improving pain severity and quality of life in veterans with chronic noncancer pain based on the clinical and statistical significance of total and domain scores of tools/measures used.School of Nursin
The Effect of COVID-19 on Law Libraries: Are These Changes Temporary or a Sign of the Future?
Get PDFDue to the public health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the traditional roles of the library were altered spontaneously. These sudden changes, coupled with the reality that libraries often struggle for relevance in an ever-changing legal education landscape, force one to ask the existential question: what will come from this crisis and what will academic law libraries look like on the other side? This Article examines the responses from academic law libraries to COVID-19-related changes and emphasizes the need for strong communication skills and effective crisis management strategies from our library leaders, and also discusses which of the changes necessitated by the pandemic should be temporary and which of the changes speak to the future of academic law libraries
Credit Rating and Firm Value
Get PDFA topic of relevance to financial managers is the relation between a credit rating and firm value (VL). The general aim of this paper is to elucidate this relation with a specific objective of helping C corp managers choose an optimal target rating (OTR). To achieve these goals, we use the Capital Structure Model (CSM) to compute a series of firm value (VL) outcomes matched to credit ratings. The maximum VL (max VL), among all VL outcomes, identifies OTR. This identification begins with the matching of credit spreads and ratings by Damodaran (2019) for three firm categories: small, large, and financial service (FS). Given these spreads, we can compute costs of borrowing with these costs needed to compute VL and other numerical outcomes. Besides costs of borrowing, our numerical outcomes are based on other key inputs including US $1,000,000 in before-tax cash flows, C corp tax rates, and a sustainable growth rate. Major findings that guide managers include the following. First, Moody's A3 is the most common OTR. Second, growth firms generally require higher ranked OTRs. Third, compared to small and large firms, FS firms attain greater max VL values, higher optimal debt-to-firm value ratios (ODVs), and generally lower ranked OTRs. Fourth, relative to small firms, large firms gain less from growth even though they attain greater max VL outcomes. Fifth, only for FS firms can we find outcomes where operational cash flows are better spent on interest payments than retained internally for growth.Kaw Valley Ban
Sustainability Disclosures Are Coming!
Get PDFFinancial statement users want to know about public companies' impact on the environment, their contribution to the global community, and the responsiveness of their governance. Until recently, financial statement users found little in the required SEC filings and annual report. Instead each company may have produced an additional sustainability report, each one unique to that company that, with different measures, formats, and coverage. In addition, companies are asked for direct disclosures seek to provide investors with third party ratings on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. While these existing voluntary reports and rankings are useful, the evolution of financial reporting toward standardization is now being replicated in the increasing standardization of ESG repo,ting resulting in the possibility of comparable and complete information on nonfinancial measures of sustainability. The disclosure framework of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) has been adopted by 100 US and 75 international companies to provide industry-specific, financially-material disclosures on sustainability issues (see Table 1). Eleven Texas-headquartered companies are currently SASB reporters, and we'll explore the impact of SASB on financial reporting by looking at three companies from diverse industries: Waste Management, Halliburton, and Comerica.Kaw Valley Ban
Students' Ethical Decision Making: Are We Assessing What We Think We are Assessing?
No full textThe Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business' (AACSB) accreditation standards specify that all business programs must include learning experiences that address ethical understanding and reasoning. Coupled with AACSB's and other accrediting bodies' emphasis on assessment of leaming outcomes, universities have looked to assess their students' ethical reasoning in a standard and efficient manner. However, assessing students' propensity to engage in ethical decision-making is not as straight forward as assessing other skills. Ethical theories students' are expected to adhere to can vary and are inherently normative. Furthermore, theories are often at odds when suggesting an appropriate course of action, or require a subjective weighting of stakeholder importance. In addition, it is unclear if assessments are measuring how students would behave in the real world or students' perception of how their instructors expect them to answer. This paper examines these difficulties in assessing students' ability to evaluate ethical dilemmas by conducting an experiment on sophomore-level business students. Results indicate that minor changes to the presentation of an ethical dilemma significantly influences students' ability to identify a business practice as ethical or unethical. However, instructor does not influence students' evaluation of the ethical dilemma.Kaw Valley Ban
Quantifying Green Finance and its Impact on CO2 Emission
Get PDFGreat strides have been achieved through world leaders adopting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. This reflects an increased commitment to environmental sustainability. Green finance encompasses the investment process that supplies funds to attain environmental sustainability through greater utilization of renewable energy. This is the first study to quantify green finance as an "investment in renewal energy" and examine the influence of this quantification on carbon dioxide emission. Our empirical findings are encouraging as we offer overwhelming support that green finance had reduced carbon dioxide. This should motivate policymakers to continue investing in sustainable energy.Kaw Valley Ban
Nonprofits and Pass-Throughs: Performance Comparison
No full textNonprofits (NPs) resemble pass-throughs (PTs) in size. While not profit-seeking like PTs, NPs should still seek to achieve maximum firm value (max VL). Using a historical growth rate of 3.12% and the same risk class, we find the following. NPs obtain a max VL that is 51.63% greater than PTs. NPs achieve a 13.83% increase when going from a nongrowth max VL to a growth max VL compared to only 3.42% for PTs and NPs do this with a before-tax plowback ratio that is 26.63% lower than PTs. Such growth-related achievements occur because NPs, unlike PTs, are not taxed on retained earnings used for growth. In terms of the maximum gain to leverage (max GL), we find that NPs gain 2.25% less in dollars added from debt. However, if greater growth occurs under TCJA, NPs gain more and not less. Despite having 12.27% greater optimal debt-to-firm value ratios than PTs, the maximum percentage change in unlevered firm value (max %l\.Eu) from debt is 37.32% less for NPs. Even with greater growth, the max %l\.Eu is substantially less for NPs. NP's ability to profit more from growth and achieve less relative gain from debt can be attributed to their tax-exempt status.Kaw Valley Ban
Association Between Electronic Media Usage and Sleep Disturbances
Get PDFThe average U.S. adult fails to regularly attain the quantity and quality of sleep recommended by the Center for Disease Control (2019). One potential contributor to this epidemic is the increasing rate at which individuals utilize electronic media devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and televisions) before sleep. Usage of these devices has been reported to impair both overall sleep quality and the time it takes to fall asleep after entering bed (sleep onset latency; SOL) in American college students as well as in non-American adults. The present study examined the
relationship between electronic media device usage after bedtime on sleep quality and SOL across a broad range of U.S. adults. Adult participants (Mage = 39 years, SDage = 11 years) residing across the U.S. were recruited from a national crowdsourcing web service (Amazon Mechanical Turk). Participants (N = 98, 60% men) completed demographic measures as well as questions related to sleep quality and SOL. There was a significant positive correlation between electronic media device usage after bedtime and poor sleep quality, r(96) = .28, p = .005. The
relationship between electronic media device usage after bedtime and SOL was also statistically significant, r(96) = .59, p < .001. These results are consistent with previous research examining the relationship between electronic media device usage after bedtime and both sleep quality and SOL. These results contribute to previous literature, which suggests limiting nighttime electronic media device usage as part of positive sleep hygiene and overall healthier sleep.Department of Psycholog
Unsmoothing Defined Benefit Pension Plans
Get PDFThis case requires students to consider the alternative accounting policies that can be used for defined benefit pension plans. Students inductively consider two different company policy issues: market-related plan asset value and the use of the corridor method associated ,vith net gains and losses. Students compare up to five alternatives drawn from combinations of the policy choices and provide a Codification-based justification for each alternative as well as an explanation for the empirical differences they find. This case allows students to practice technology agility, data visualization, and
professional research and writing skills.Kaw Valley Ban