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Introducing ABR Volume 24, May 2021: Some Tips for Submitting Authors
Get PDFWe are delighted to present Volume 24 (Issue1) in May 2021. The COVID pandemic rages on in several parts of the globe, particularly in India at the time of writing. We wish our authors, reviewers, and readers to remain safe and healthy as we come out of this global pandemic.
For American Business Review (ABR), it is a matter of great pride and satisfaction that since our relaunch in 2020, we have received over 300 manuscripts and have about a 10% acceptance rate. Our editorial board members come from all continents and have active Google Scholar profiles and have published in A/A* journals in their disciplines. We try to restrict the number of reviews to two per year per reviewer to reduce the burden of review work. In addition, we seek to invite additional reviewers who are domain experts in the subject of the submission received
Politics Beyond Putin: Assessing the Future Stability of Electoral Authoritarianism in the Russian Federation
No full textIn time, all things must end, even the presidency of Vladimir Putin. One way or another, Putin will eventually by succeeded by a new Russian leader. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the unique instance of electoral authoritarianism that has developed in Russia over the past three decades and attempt to explain how this system will likely react when the long-serving president leaves office. Specifically, it seeks to answer a deceptively simple question: Will electoral authoritarianism in Russia survive a leadership transition? This case study of the Russian political system has been based on qualitative secondary research, which utilized existing literature on the theory of electoral authoritarianism (EA) and works by a range of experts on post-Soviet Russian politics in order to identify the specific characteristics that contribute to the stability of EA in the country. While the intense personalism of Putin’s rule and the gradual erosion of formal governing institutions are sure to leave the government weakened upon succession, evidence indicates that electoral authoritarianism is almost certain to survive. Various elements of systemic stability provide the necessary resilience for the regime to adjust to changing conditions. Most notably, EA in Russia is stabilized by the flexibility of informal governance networks (referred to as sistema), the support of powerful security services (collectively known as the siloviki), the vertical integration of the ruling party at the subnational level, and the complete government control of the voting process. These factors are almost certain to allow the electoral authoritarian status quo to survive beyond Putin by enabling the system to readily adapt to changing circumstances, overcome opposition by force when necessary, and maintain tight control of the carefully rigged but nominally democratic process that is the basis of this form of government
Antecedents and Outcomes of Duty Orientation Among Salespeople
Get PDFThis study analyzed the relationship among ethical leadership, duty orientation, perceived organizational support (PSS), organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and job performance among a sample of 45 sales managers and 203 salespeople. Duty orientation and perceived organizational support were found to mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and performance outcomes. Ethical leadership was a direct predictor of OCBs but not job performance. This study shows the importance of analyzing ethical leadership, duty orientation, and PSS and their relationship with OCBs and job performance in the salesforce
Race and Social Class as Factors Associated with Sentence Disparities: A Survey of Potential Jurors
Get PDFPrior research has found that bias, along with other extralegal factors, leads to the sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system throughout the United States. The criminal justice system has implemented reforms to address these disparities. Furthering research on this issue, I analyze previous studies that tried to determine the effects of bias on the decisions made by judges and juries. Most importantly, the present study aimed to determine the effects of race and socioeconomic class of the defendant on the decisions on potential jurors using a vignette based survey with randomized assignment. The results suggest that the potential jurors’ decisions regarding the level of dangerousness, guilt or innocence of the defendant, and recommended sentence are indeed impacted by the race and socioeconomic status of the defendant. The study results demonstrate that extralegal factors influence potential jurors’ decisions, inducing disparity. This indicates the need for more reform, specifically, more bias education and training
When Virtual Spaces Meet the Limitations of Traditional Sport: Gender Stereotyping in NBA2K
Get PDFVideo games have continued to increase in popularity. While the growth has been substantial, representation and acceptance of women throughout gaming environments, including those with traditional sport influences such as NBA2K, a basketball simulation game, have been lacking. Recently however, the NBA2K franchise added Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) player avatars to the NBA2K20 game. While this recent inclusion of WNBA avatars may be a great step in improving upon the concerning state of inclusion and representation of women throughout gaming, the reactions to and receptions of this change have not been fully explored. As a result, the current investigation, led by the tenets of hegemonic masculinity and bottom-up framing, sought to examine the perceptions of NBA2K fans, enthusiasts, and participants in regards to this change made by the NBA2K franchise in an effort to more fully understand the culture of gaming in relation to the treatment of women/girls. This objective was accomplished via an analysis of comments made through the social media application Instagram on the NBA2K20 WNBA inclusion announcement post. The Instagram comments were coded and analyzed through the use of the qualitative software Leximancer, which conducts thematic and semantic analysis on written words as well as visual text. Results revealed perceptions of the WNBA avatars embroiled with displays of hegemonic masculinity, demonstrating that the negative sentiments and framing women face within traditional sport settings are weaved within the virtual sport game simulations as well
Forensicast: A Non-intrusive Approach & Tool for Logical Forensic Acquisition & Analysis of the Google Chromecast TV
Get PDFThe era of traditional cable Television (TV) is swiftly coming to an end. People today subscribe to a multitude of streaming services. Smart TVs have enabled a new generation of entertainment, not only limited to constant on-demand streaming as they now offer other features such as web browsing, communication, gaming etc. These functions have recently been embedded into a small IoT device that can connect to any TV with High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) input known as Google Chromecast TV. Its wide adoption makes it a treasure trove for potential digital evidence. Our work is the primary source on forensically interrogating Chromecast TV devices. We found that the device is always unlocked, allowing extraction of application data through the backup feature of Android Debug Bridge (ADB) without device root access. We take advantage of this minimal access and demonstrate how a series of artifacts can stitch together a detailed timeline, and we automate the process by constructing Forensicast – a Chromecast TV forensic acquisition and timelining tool. Our work targeted (n=112) of the most popular Android TV applications including 69% (77/112) third party applications and 31% (35/112) system applications. 65% (50/77) third party applications allowed backup, and of those 90% (45/50) contained time-based identifiers, 40% (20/50) invoked some form of logs/activity monitoring, 50% (25/50) yielded some sort of token/cookie, 8% (4/50) resulted in a device ID, 26% (13/50) produced a user ID, and 24% (12/50) created other information. 26% (9/35) system applications provided meaningful artifacts, 78% (7/9) provided time based identifiers, 22% (2/9) involved some form of logs/activity monitoring, 22% (2/9) yielded some form of token/cookie data, 22% (2/9) resulted in a device ID, 44% (4/9) provided a user ID, and 33% (3/9) created other information. Our findings also illustrated common artifacts found in applications that are related to developer and advertising utilities, mainly WebView, Firebase, and Facebook Analytics. Future work and open research problems are shared
Post U.S. Afghanistan: An Assessment of How the Withdrawal of U.S. and Coalition Forces from Afghanistan will Impact the U.S. - Taliban Agreement with Supporting Historical Analysis Comparing the Decade after Soviet Withdrawal to Current Conditions in Afghanistan
No full textOn February 29th, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement to withdraw all U.S. and coalition forces from Afghanistan within fourteen months of the announcement of the agreement. In exchange the Taliban will: take certain steps to ensure Afghanistan will not be “used by any group[s] or individual[s]” to “threaten the security of the United States and its allies”; the Taliban will engage in intra-Afghan negotiations with the purpose of establishing a political power sharing settlement involving the Taliban for a post U.S. Afghanistan; and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire will be on the agenda of the intra-Afghan negotiations (Agreement for Bringing Peace, 2020).
This thesis seeks to answer how will the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan impact the tenets of the U.S. – Taliban agreement. The assessment will be divided by the three core tenets of the U.S. – Taliban agreement: a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, intra-Afghan negotiations to establish a political power sharing settlement involving the Taliban for a post U.S. Afghanistan, and counterterrorism guarantees by the Taliban (Agreement for Bringing Peace, 2020).
Each tenet will have its own assessment that reflects how that section of the agreement will function in a post U.S. and coalition force Afghanistan. The conclusion of each tenet’s assessment will be further supported by historical analysis that compares the operating environment after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan with the current operating environment in Afghanistan to ascertain how the departure of Western forces from Afghanistan will impact the U.S. – Taliban agreement.
The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, in 1989, resulted in the tumultuous decade of the 1990s: mujahadeen resistance against the communist government in Afghanistan, the collapse of the Communist government, the Afghan civil war, and Taliban support of al-Qaeda culminating in the attacks of September 11th, 2001 (Coll, 2004). Examining the aftereffects of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan as compared to current conditions in Afghanistan is critical in order to determine if the departure of U.S. and coalition forces will have similar effects to the Soviet withdrawal
Post-Great-Recession Human Migration Patterns in the U.S.: The Overlooked Impacts of Entrepreneurial Activity and Personal Freedom
Get PDFEffectively no scholarly research has been published in peer-reviewed journals on the potential migration impacts of environments that are more conducive to entrepreneurship. Similarly, the potential migration impact of personal freedom also is essentially ignored in the literature. This study seeks to add to the literature by investigating the impacts of both entrepreneurial activity and personal freedom on state in-migration patterns. Using a panel dataset for the post-Great Recession period 2010-2017, the empirical analysis reveals that all three of the Kauffman indices of entrepreneurial activity are found to exercise a positive and statistically significant impact on both net in-migration and gross in-migration. In addition, the index of overall personal freedom is found to exercise a positive and statistically significant impact on both of these in-migration measures. Thus, it appears that there may be good reason for future migration studies to take such variables into account when seeking to explain, understand, and predict migration patterns in the U.S
Change in Illiquidity of Family Firms with Institutional Pressure: Evidence from India
Get PDFThis paper investigates the impact of the family business on illiquidity in an emerging market and how it evolves with regulatory changes. The study uses panel data multiple regression on a sample of 25,418 observations on 3,606 firms from India within nine years from 2006 to 2014. The study finds that family firms have significantly higher illiquidity compared to non-family firms. Moreover, family businesses have successfully resisted the institutional pressure to decrease illiquidity and have also defied these coercive pressures to increase the illiquidity of family businesses finally. The study also found heterogeneity in the behaviour of family businesses based on their ownership characteristics
Who is Most Likely to Stereotype the LGBTQ+ Community?
Get PDFThere exists an extant literature investigating sexuality, gender, and stereotypes. It has examined how accurate people are at predicting sexual orientation and if there is an ability that can be developed, usually referred to as gaydar, to be able to tell if some is gay or not by looking at them. A lot of these finding suggest that participants are using societal stereotypes about sexual orientation and gender to identify people. Participants were sent a survey where their demographic information was collected. They read several vignettes and identified traits of the described individuals including sex and gender. It was hypothesized that straight cisgender men engaged in stereotyping more frequently than other groups and that individuals that adhered more to traditional gender role ideology would more frequently use stereotypes. It was also hypothesized that gender role ideology will curb the effect of participants’ gender/sexuality on use of stereotypes. The results indicated that identity did not significantly impact use of stereotyping, however beliefs about gender roles did