Scholars @Bentley (Bentley University)
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Ironic advertising: Theory, evidence and practice
Get PDFIrony is one mechanism that advertisers use to attract consumer attention. Although ironic advertising (IA) is utilized in the mass media, it has received surprisingly little conceptual or empirical attention from marketing scholars. Perhaps one reason for this is that in marketing irony has been viewed primarily from a postmodern perspective. This is in marked contrast to psycholinguists where the phenomenon is approached from a more ecumenical, realist point of view. This dissertation is based on the premise that a realist approach to ironic advertising would produce insights for both marketing theory and practice.
This dissertation comprises of three papers that look at ironic advertising from different, but complimentary, perspectives. The first paper proposes a definition of ironic advertising and develops a theoretical model of ironic communications. In the second paper the model is empirically tested in a series of experiments. The third paper seeks to look at the relationship between perceived brand value and ironic advertising
Justice in Compensation: A Defense
Get PDFBusiness ethicists have written much about ethical issues in employment. Except for a handful of articles on the very high pay of chief executive officers and the very low pay of workers in overseas sweatshops, however, little has been written about the ethics of compensation. This is prima facie strange. Workers care about their pay, and they think about it in normative terms. This article\u27s purpose is to consider whether business ethicists\u27 neglect of the normative aspects of compensation is justified. I examine several possible justifications for neglecting compensation and show that they fail. What remains is a case for thinking that it is worthy of normative analysis
Refining the Firm-Stakeholder Engagement Model: An expanded theory of salience and firms\u27 responses to stakeholder influence
Get PDFThis dissertation revisits the theory of stakeholder salience set forth by Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997), exploring the ways in which the salience model might be expanded to more fully capture the elements to which managers pay attention, as well as the accuracy of the attributes that define stakeholders\u27 relationship with the firm. Two main questions are investigated: (1) what stakeholder elements affect salience? (2) Which of these stakeholder elements and attributes are most relevant to the explanation of salience? In a first tense, the nuances of the concept of stakeholder salience (Eesley & Lenox, 2006; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997) are brought to light in the development of a tetrad of constructs wherein stakeholders are more accurately envisioned as groups who ask the firm to undertake a specific requested action , via a request tactic, in regard to an issue of concern, and where these four elements are expected to affect salience. In a second case, the original attributes of salience—power, legitimacy and urgency—are reconfigured along the newly-formed tetrad and the interaction between attributes is further examined. Therefore, the main contribution of this dissertation is theoretical. Grounded in the assumption that firms behave to maintain legitimacy, this new model expands the original view of salience by drawing on the social approval literature to propose new attributes of salience. Notably, this dissertation argues that group status represents a superordinate construct that captures how managers initially respond to their constituents. Likewise, it is suggested that issue prominence, requested action legitimacy and request tactic legitimacy play an important role in attracting managerial attention. Taken together, these developments enable the construction of a new model of salience, which is presented in Chapter 4. The new model is then tested in a five-year study of shareholder resolutions, representing a request tactic, submitted on a myriad of prominent social and environmental issues by shareholder groups of varying status in the U.S. to tease apart the significance of the group, issue and requested action on firms\u27 responses to stakeholders. New research directions and managerial implications complete this document
An Unstable Balance: Exploration, Exploitation, and Innovation Decline during Development
Get PDFhe ability to innovate is considered central to firm performance and the consensus is that firms should balance exploration and exploitation innovation to succeed. Studies using an exploration/exploitation perspective have gained increasing interest, and have generally concluded that exploration innovation rates are too low. Researchers have concentrated on the early aspects of the innovation planning process: the Search, Portfolio Selection, and Design Phase, and have also studied the benefits of pursuing a serial or parallel pursuit of exploration and exploitation. Largely missing from exploration/exploitation innovation literature, however, is the development phase—which is among the longest and resource intensive phases of innovation.
This dissertation studies the exploration innovation that firms are able to finish—complete through development. As such it concentrates on development and how the initial exploration exploitation plan is accomplished. It focuses specifically on the changes to the planned balance of exploration/exploitation that occur after the plan enters the Development (R&D) phase.
The research comes to five overall conclusions. First, regardless of the plan for balance in exploration/exploitation that is determined during the Search, Portfolio Selection, and Design phases, exploration innovation declines from plan materially in the Development phase. Second, management regularly make decisions to add new unplanned projects to the Development schedule, which alter the original Development plan. Third, explorative innovation is disproportionately crowded out . Development manpower is systematically removed from exploration innovation during the development phase and is diverted to exploitation projects. The result is a lower rate of exploration innovation and increased exploitation. Fourth, the findings run counter to conventional scholarship that places Resource Based View tenets (skills and capabilities) and project team dynamics in the forefront of explaining development and innovation results. Instead, firm-wide Agency forces (opportunism) as well as Resource Dependencies were found to account for a majority of the decline in exploration innovation. Finally, these dynamics were found to originate from outside the extended project and development team.
This dissertation begins as a qualitative theory building investigation, using interviews at multiple software firms to expose and gain an understanding of innovation patterns and constructs. The resulting interview data are used to build hypotheses around two theoretical models (Agency Theory and Resource Dependence Theory) to explain the same DV of exploration innovation performance. Next, the theory-based IV\u27s of each model are operationalized based on tenets arising from the extant literature. The hypotheses are subsequently tested via a population study using a mail questionnaire sent to all U.S.-based commercial software SME\u27s. Statistical analysis follows, including regression, providing support for the hypotheses and the models of Agency Opportunism and Resource Dependence. Limitations and new research directions are identified
Does Distributive Justice Pay? Sternberg’s Compensation Ethics
Get PDFCompensation has received a great deal of attention from social scientists. Characteristically, they have been concerned with the causes and effects of various compensation schemes. By contrast, few theorists have addressed the normative aspects of compensation. An exception is Elaine Sternberg, who offers in Just Business a comprehensive theory of compensation ethics. This paper critically examines her theory, and argues that the justification she gives for it fails. Its failure is instructive, however. The main argument Sternberg gives for her theory points in the direction of a different one. This, in turns, helps us to see what a justification of Sternberg’s theory must look like. While focused on Sternberg, this paper is of general interest. It identifies what are likely to be important positions and arguments in debates about compensation ethics, and thus provides a jumping-off point for further research in this neglected area
An Analysis of the Structure and Evolution of Networks
Get PDFAs network research receives more and more attention from both academic researchers and practitioners, network analysis has become a fast growing field attracting many researchers from diverse fields such as physics, computer science, and sociology. This dissertation provides a review of theory and research on different real data sets from the network perspective. The focus is primarily on the structure and dynamics of social networks.
This dissertation is divided into three essays. The first essay examines a professional online community, and to the best of our knowledge, it is the first paper to address the social network of physicians. The detailed exploratory study and structure analysis show the main characteristics of the network. Moreover, we investigate the correlation between demographic information and physicians\u27 online activities. The findings shed light on the existing literature about the analysis of social media and professional social networking sites.
The second essay presents a model to find overlapping communities in networks. Our approach is based on clique percolation method, which breaks the assumption that each node can only belong to one cluster. Thus, it enables the analysis of a node\u27s multiple roles in the network. Content analysis is conducted as a way to validate the community mining results and to help us better understands the community structure and dynamics.
The third essay investigates the U.S. air transportation network. It explores the dynamics of the U.S. air transportation system and how it evolves over time. The mechanism driving the evolution of the network is proposed, examined and tested in the study. We find that aging effect and preferential attachment are the two mechanisms driving the evolution of the U.S. air transportation network. The network evolution model can be extended to analyze other networks as well.
In summary, my study on SNA applies an interdisciplinary perspective to analyze real network data. The dissertation empirically analyzes data from different fields, from transportation to social media. Methodologically, a new method is proposed to uncover the overlapping communities in the network. The examination of theoretical concepts, such as reciprocity and assortativity, are presented in the dissertation
Learning the “Craft of Auditing”: Applications of the Cognitive Apprenticeship Framework
Get PDFThis dissertation consists of three studies examining component(s) of the cognitive apprenticeship (CA) model applied to on-the-job learning in auditing. This abstract summarizes each study, including purpose, methodology, and findings. The first study provides descriptive evidence on the importance and pervasiveness of CA as a model of on-the-job learning (OTJL) in auditing, investigates changes in its use over time, and assesses factors that promote or hinder auditors’ learning through apprenticeship. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 relatively new and more experienced audit partners at a Big 4 firm, seeking their impressions about past and current OTJL practices in public accounting. Results show that apprenticeship is considered a key component of OTJL, but partners vary in beliefs about the levels in which it is currently practiced. Mapping partner responses to the CA model shows that apprenticeship as practiced in auditing may be incomplete, suggesting benefits to learning if additional elements were stressed by firms. We also identify characteristics of auditors and the professional environment that enhance and/or reduce the effectiveness of OTJL, including technology, time/work demands, feedback practices and reward systems.
My first study shows that partners are concerned that novice auditors require extensive “hand-holding” during OTJL. My second study addresses this issue through an experiment examining how awareness of availability of repeated task instruction, the learners’ choice to repeat instruction, and task-specific knowledge affect performance in a semi-structured substantive audit task. Results suggest that when lower-knowledge auditors are aware that repeated modeling is not available: their performance is indistinguishable from higher-knowledge auditors. However, when novice auditors are aware that repeated instruction is available, performance of lower-knowledge auditors is reduced. Also, I find that receiving more than a single instruction does not improve performance, regardless of learner knowledge.
The third study is a literature review examining how CA, as a framework of effective learning environments, is applicable to auditing. Tracing its components to the auditing literature, I identify opportunities for future research and for improvements in audit learning environments with respect to reflection, exploration, intrinsic motivation, and cooperation among learners
Essays on Hedge Fund Replication: Methodological Assessment and Development of the Factor Approach, Nonlinear Modeling and Policy Perspectives
Get PDFThis dissertation is concerned with hedge fund replication, a subject of a practical and theoretical importance, both from an investment and a risk management point of view. One of our goals is to extend known methodologies in order to enhance our understanding of an industry that is known for its secrecy and its lack of transparency. A second goal is to contribute to the quantitative finance literature with improved techniques for hedge fund replication. Hedge fund replication (HFR) is approached from the methodological as well as from practical and regulatory perspectives. The first two chapters provide the motivation and the theoretical and methodological foundations of this work. In the third chapter, we review and demonstrate the superiority of the linear tracking problem approach over more classical methodologies. This chapter also clarifies and explains in terms of portfolio management’s terminology how Bayesian filters, like the Kalman filter, actually proceed to find (close to) optimal solutions to the HFR tracking problem. We also demonstrate how practical concerns such as separating the funds’ beta and alpha are readily addressed by this dynamic approach. The fourth chapter extends the approach to nonlinear settings. We develop some advanced tools and algorithms which are needed to explore the presence and the replication of sources of nonlinearity in hedge fund returns. In the fifth chapter we introduce a methodology based on minimax filters (instead of Bayesian filters) which is robust to modeling misspecifications and therefore adapted for use independently of an underlying dynamic. We also introduce a new statistic, dubbed ζ, whose purpose is to detect the presence of unmodelled sources of performance. The sixth chapter addresses the problem of model and factor selection. Unlike most of the literature on the subject, we use a Bayesian variable selection approach. We develop a reversible-jump MCMC algorithm to estimate the posterior density of the models. The rationale for choosing this angle over the classical information criterion approach is also provided. Making use of the recent Madoff scandal, we examine in our last chapter the potential impact of HFR techniques on the regulatory framework of the asset management industry
The Ties that Binds: Colonies , Culture and Education Among Immigrants
Get PDFThere is concern among many policy makers of a dual problem: too many immigrants overall but not enough highly-skilled immigrants. Using recently available data we examine the factors which influence both the quantity and average educational level of immigrants in OECD countries in 1990 and 2000. We find that geographic proximity and former colonial relationships positively influence the overall number of immigrants but are negatively related to immigrants’ average educational level. By contrast, variables such as greater economic freedom, more generous asylum policies, and a common language and religion increase both the quantity and educational level of immigrants. More highly educated immigrants also appear to be more concerned with low unemployment rates among high-skilled workers in destination countries than in income differences between the destination and source countries. These results suggest that highlighting cultural similarities of destination countries can be an important feature of programs designed to attract high-skilled immigrants. Government reforms regarding asylum policies and economic regulation may also increase a country’s appeal to higher-skilled immigrants
Participation in the Workplace: Are Employees Special?
Get PDFI consider two influential arguments for employee participation in firm decision making: what I call the “interest protection argument” and the “autonomy argument.” I argue that the case for granting participation rights to some other stakeholders, such as suppliers and community members, is at least as strong, according to the reasons given in these arguments, as the case for granting them to certain employees. I then consider how proponents of these arguments might modify their arguments, or views, in response to this conclusion